Aftermath, Part 2
The dreams started that night after the funeral. In the dreams, she finds herself somewhere on the compound--in the woods, in the backyard, in the house that seemed to double in size--and she’s running. She’s running because she can sense Bray. She can hear him in the distance, and if she can just move fast enough she knows she can catch up to him. But every time it felt like she was getting close, a hooded black figure appeared before her, stopping her in her tracks. A cold sense of terror would fill her as the figure reached out its hand to try to grab her. She woke up before it got her, shaking and screaming because it felt like she knew that figure. Something felt so familiar about it but she never stayed asleep long enough to know why that was.
The fear from her nightmare would wear off and then she would go back to being numb. Numb and unable to do anything but lay in bed and stare at the wall. The others worried and tried to talk to her but they didn’t know how to help. They didn’t know how to help themselves. Grief had gutted all of them and left them empty. This loss had perhaps been the one they couldn’t come back from. They had thought that would be Brodie--and for Bray it had been--but this felt like it for them. How were they supposed to go on if the one who had brought them together was gone? It would have been one thing if this was forty years down the road and he had lived a full life. But it had been cut short and it had cut them all off at the legs with it.
It was a couple days after the funeral that the anger hit once again. They were at the table, attempting to eat dinner as a family. There wasn’t a lot eating going on though; with the exception of Braun, everyone was mostly just picking at their food. She found herself looking at them and growing more irritated by the second.Â
Walk away. That was what she needed to do. That would be the right thing to do instead of snapping. But the anger drowned out that little voice in her head, and she dropped her fork onto her plate, startling everyone with the clang of the utensil hitting the glass plate. “What the fuck are we doing?”
Erick and Elena exchanged glances while Braun took it upon himself to give his confused answer. “Eating dinner?”
Isabella rolled her eyes. “But fucking why? Why the fuck are we doing--” she stopped to wave her hands around, gesturing to the table “--this?? Sitting here like everything is fucking normal?”
Braun stared and blinked at her before shrugging. “It’s the only place big enough for all of us to sit together. Unless you wanna sit on the floor in the living room or something.”
“What I want is for us to stop this fucking charade.” She spat the words out bitterly, her voice rising and making Brodie Luke fuss and Gale flinch. Maricela stared at her with wide eyes before looking at Elena, clearly unsure of how to react to this.
Robert pushed his own plate away and tried to touch her arm. “Bella--”
“No! Don’t “Bella” me! I wanna fucking know why we’re fucking pretending everything is okay and normal  when it’s not! It’s fucking not!” She pointed to Bray’s empty seat at the head of the table. “He’s dead. We put him in the fucking ground and now we’re supposed to what? Pretend like we didn’t? Like we’re just gonna move on like nothing happened?”
“No. Nobody is saying that.” Elena spoke now, doing her best to keep her voice calm and even.. She looked so worn out and tired and maybe if Isabella had been in a better state of mind she would have shut up. She would have cut her mother a break because clearly she was struggling.
But she didn’t shut up. Her anger was too strong. Too fierce. Too poisonous. “Well it sure as fuck feels like it. Fucking making dinner like this family isn’t fucking broken.” She grabbed her plate and hurled it across the room, the glass shattering as it hit the wall.
“Don’t be mean to Mommy!” Maricela straightened herself up and puffed out her little chest. Under normal circumstances, Isabella found herself amused by her little sister’s attempts to be tough. But now it only made her angrier. “Or I’ll tell Daddy on you when he wakes up!”
“Daddy isn’t waking up, you idiot!”Â
“Isabella stop!” Elena pleaded to no avail.
“Yes he is!” Maricela threw her fork at Isabella, nearly hitting Robert instead because her aim sucked.Â
“No he’s not! He’s DEAD. He’s dead just like Uncle Brodie! We put him in a fucking box and we BURIED him and he’s not coming back out! He’s not waking up ever fucking again! Don’t you fucking understand?”Â
The silence that followed was one of the most uncomfortable things they had ever experienced as a family. Elena went completely white and looked like she had just been struck. Erick looked like he was about to be ill. Braun and Robert both stared at her, seemingly dumbstruck by her absolute audacity to scream that at a five year old. Gale looked scared to death, but Isabella didn’t acknowledge any of them. She kept her eyes on Maricela, who wilted and burst into tears, getting out of her seat and running to Elena for comfort.Â
“What the absolute fuck, Isabella?” Braun looked absolutely ready to throttle her.Â
“She has to fucking know.” She almost faltered. The flash of guilt that went through her almost made her apologize but she didn’t. “At the rate we’re going, we’ll all be fucking dead before she turns ten.”
That statement made Maricela wail and then Brodie Luke and Cash joined in and Isabella couldn’t take it. She stormed out of the room and went up to her old room, the windows rattling as she slammed the door shut behind her.
***
The dream came again. This time she was outside, standing where Bray usually did to give his sermons. Up ahead she could see the house, where two figures stood on the back porch. Bray and Brodie. She couldn’t see them clearly but that didn’t matter. She knew it was them. She ran towards them, her limbs feeling heavy and like they were moving through molasses. And the harder she ran the worse the feeling got. She opened her mouth to call out to them when the hooded figure in black appeared again. She couldn't see all of its face, but this time she could see its eyes. Its yellow eyes that seemed to stare right through. It reached out to her, its long nails grazing her throat as she just barely skidded to a stop.Â
Fiend. It was Fiend. She knew those eyes. She tried to scramble backwards but he caught her the second time, his hand wrapping around her throat and lifting her up in the air and--
The feeling of someone shaking her startled her right out of her slumber. She sat straight up, nearly screaming in fright. Her reaction scared Gale, who nearly toppled right off the bed. “What the fuck, Gale?” Her instincts kicked in and she grabbed him by the front of the shirt to keep him from falling.Â
“I’m sorry!” He sniffled and stared at her with wide, teary eyes. “I just wanted to make sure you were gonna wake up.”
“...Oh for fuck’s sake.” She let go of his shirt and rubbed her hands over his face. “So what, are you gonna shake us awake every day now?”
He shrugged his shoulders and put his hand up to his mouth so he could suck on his thumb. It was a regressive behavior that had started up again after Bray’s death.Â
Isabella let out a sigh and looked over to the bedside table. Her bottle of whiskey was almost empty, which meant she was going to have to leave the room to go get more soon.
“I think everyone’s mad at you. Cuz you yelled at Maricela.”
“I don’t care.”
“Doesn’t that make you sad?”
“No.”
Gale blinked, clearly not able to fathom such a thing. He was a sensitive boy, one who generally cried if someone looked at him wrong. “Daddy would be mad if he heard you yell like that.”
She just grunted. She didn’t even want to get into that right now.Â
“Bella?”
“What?”
“I miss Daddy.”
She should tell him that she did too. She should be more comforting to him, but all she could manage to do was grunt again.Â
“Will I see Daddy again when I die?”
“...Yeah.”
“When?”
“When what?”
“When will I die?”
“I don’t fucking know, Gale. Probably not for a long time.”
“Oh.” He mulled over what she said before he laid down next to her. “You’re not gonna die for a long time, right?”
She didn’t respond. She should tell him that was right. She should comfort him, even if it was a potentially bullshit response. But there was an idea that bloomed in her mind with his words. One that was so obvious that she couldn’t believe that she really hadn’t thought of it before.Â
Once upon a time, she had told Bray if he went then she would go too. And maybe it had just been a way to try to blackmail him into not trying to kill himself at the time, but things had changed. Now it could be a promise. A vow to each other that they wouldn’t leave the other one alone. And it would be better this way. It wasn’t like she was any help to the others. She was hurting them with how nasty she was being. They didn’t need that. They would be better off if she wasn’t here anymore.
***
She waited until nightfall, not venturing out her window until nearly two in the morning. She hoped by now everyone on the compound was asleep. She was still quick to run to the woods though, one of Bray’s lanterns in hand to guide her way. She supposed that she could do it anywhere, but didn’t want to. She wanted to be somewhere they would hopefully not hear the gunshot. She wanted to be deep enough in the woods where they would hopefully not find her body. The memory of her and Robert finding Robert’s mother after her suicide had been a rather traumatic one. As angry as she had been with her family, she wanted to at least attempt to spare them that.Â
She stopped running once she got to the woods and just walked aimlessly, going well beyond the perimeter. A sense of calm took over her the further she walked. This was the right thing to do. She believed that with every ounce of conviction she had. The others wouldn’t see it of course. Not right away. But they would. She truly believed that.Â
She walked until she got to an area of the swamp where the trees were so thick that she couldn’t see the stars or the moon above her. The light of the lantern felt so small in comparison to the darkness around her. She set it down at her feet and reached into her holster to grab the gun she kept on her. It was already loaded and she just held it for a second, taking a moment to close her eyes and taking several deep breaths.Â
I love you, Daddy.
She raised the gun and pressed the barrel against her head. Her finger went over the trigger.
A horrible howling noise came from behind her, the sound so loud that it felt like it was reverberating in her ears. She lowered the gun and whirled around, and even in the total darkness, she could see the figure approaching her. Its yellow eyes gave it away, as did its paper white skin and large, sharp teeth.
Fiend.
They stared at each other, girl and monster, and for a moment she wondered what the fuck it was doing here. But then she realized she didn’t care. Not only that, but the anger came back--an anger even worse than what she had shown the others.
“Where the fuck have you been?” She lowered the gun and took a step towards it. “You were supposed to protect him. That’s what you fucking did before. You saved him from the fire. You brought him home when he should have died.”
Fiend made another howling noise, and it almost sounded…mournful? No. It didn’t get that right. Not this bastard thing.Â
“You could have saved him. You could have made him strong. But you abandoned him. He didn’t feel you anymore after the Alexa thing.” She let out a bitter laugh. “Fucking monster couldn’t handle being betrayed by some fucking woman.”Â
Fiend growled now, its hackles raised by that comment.Â
“You’re pathetic.” She took another step forward and raised the gun, this time with it pointing at it. “You fucking piece of shit. You let him die. You--” She didn’t finish her own sentence. She pulled the trigger instead, the bullet going right between its eyes.Â
Fiend’s head rocked back but it didn’t fall. It barely did as much as stumble. What it did do was snarl and charge at her. She fired the gun instead, emptying almost all the rounds into its body before it crashed into her. Its weight knocked the air out of her and the gun dropped from her hand. For a moment it felt like she was flying with no sign of ever coming down. But come down she did. She hit the ground hard, a sharp pain going through her head as the back of it struck a rock.
And then there was nothing.
***
When she woke up she was on the compound, laying in the grass, not far from where Bray always preached to the Family. Except it didn’t really feel like the compound. Everything was too bright and hazy. For a moment she felt like she was dreaming. But the throbbing in the back of her head felt too real. This wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t home but it wasn’t a dream. It was something else.Â
She sat up and gingerly touched the back of her head. Her fingertips became coated with blood. Was she dead? Had Fiend done the job for her?Â
The sound of voices made her look around. She could see the Family gathered like they normally did when Bray gave one of his sermons, but it wasn’t Bray standing front and center. It was the hooded figure--the one she believed to be Fiend. Except it couldn’t be Fiend. Not in its true form. Fiend in its true form stood seven feet tall on its hind legs. This figure was only her height. But it still filled her with a sense of dread that she couldn’t rationally explain.Â
She turned her head and looked towards the house. Even through the bright haze that surrounded her she could see the house clearly. And she could see him. Bray, with Brodie, out on the front porch. He had found him again and now she had found them. She was almost there. If she could get to the house then it would be okay. She would be with them to stay.
She took off running, moving faster than she ever did in her dreams. She made it towards the cabins, running around the bonfire pit set up in the middle of the yard and jumping over some toys that littered the yard. Almost there. She was almost there, she was going to make it. She was going to make it she--
And then she wasn’t. She was suddenly right back to where she had started, only now she was panting and out of breath and fucking infuriated because she had been so close. “What the fuck?”
“I hate to tell you this, but that’s not the way, little girl.”
Isabella turned around. Standing behind her was an older woman with shoulder length blonde hair and sharp green eyes. It was a woman she had only seen in photographs--Bray had a box of old polaroid pictures in his room. And this woman was in the majority of those photos. “Abigail?”
The woman smiled a bit and nodded before taking Isabella under her arm. “You’re not gonna make it going that way. The only way to him is through.”
“Through what?” Isabella tried to slip free but Abigail’s grip on her only strengthened.Â
“Through the trials. The tribulations.” Abigail continued to force her closer to the Family. To the hooded figure. “This family won’t survive another tragic loss. Not so soon. It needs its new leader. One who can prepare the next in line.”
“What the fuck does that have to do with me?”Â
“Everything. Can’t you see? Look at her.” Abigail pointed to the hooded figure. “Look at her. Truly look at her.”
Her. Isabella wanted to snap at the older woman and tell her to quit talking all cryptic. But then she looked at what was in front of her. The Family kneeling before the figure, hanging on every move it made. The figure swayed and swung her hands around, gesturing wildly.Â
But then the figure stopped, and Isabella could feel its eyes on her. Bony fingers reached up and pulled the hood off. And it was a woman. She looked to be in her twenties, with long, blonde hair that went almost all the way down her back. Her skin was incredibly pale; she was only a couple slight shades darker than Fiend himself. Her eyes glowed yellow and her lips were so red they looked like they were stained with blood. Despite all these things that should have been unfamiliar, Isabella recoiled because she knew this person.Â
It was her. She was fucking looking at herself.
“Your father was the man in the woods. He had me to tell him that, even if he didn’t understand it at the time. Now it’s your turn. Your turn to take the reins. To see us through this most unfortunate trial.” Abigail’s eyes shone with the kind of manic glaze that Bray often displayed when he got overzealous about something. “This family is your father’s legacy. He took it to places I never thought we could go. It cannot be allowed to die. We simply will not allow it.”
Isabella wanted to say she didn’t fucking care about that. She wanted to say it wasn’t fair to expect her to suffer just to lead the others. Bray had done that and she had seen the toll it had taken on him. She didn’t want to go through all that. She wanted to just get to him now. But Abigail’s last words made her falter. She opened her mouth, intending to ask what the hell Abigail meant by “we”. But she didn’t get the chance. She felt a presence behind her and then Fiend’s hand closed around the back of her neck, its touch burning her as it lifted her up and turned her around to face him. Its eyes locked on hers and she was falling again, plunging back into the darkness.
***
When she woke up again she was still in the woods, right where she had landed after her encounter with Fiend. She tried to sit up slowly, the throbbing pain in the back of her head quickly overwhelming her that it made her sick. She barely managed to roll over before she started to get sick, her heaves loud and violent as she puked. What came out of her wasn’t vomit though. It was a black goo, much like the kind she had seen Randy cough up when Alexa had been messing with him after the whole fire incident. The taste was awful on her tongue, and even after she was done the taste of it on her tongue made her gag.Â
“God dammit.” She winced and reached up to touch the back of her head. Her hair was matted together with dried blood, and she could feel a cut on her scalp. But as tender as it felt, and as much as it hurt, it felt like it should be worse. It felt like a type of blow that should have still had her unconscious.
Or kept her from waking up at all.
She pushed herself up to her feet and looked around. Bray’s lantern was still on the ground and she went and picked it up. It occurred to her she had no real idea where she really was. She had gone too deep in the woods to know how to make her way back. “Fuck.” She started just to walk, very much aware of how off she felt. Her conversation with Abigail, seeing the Fiend, seeing what Abigail insisted was to become of her…she wanted to brush it off and say it was bullshit. It was just some fucking fever dream that she had. But there was a part of her that knew it wasn’t. It was the truth. It was an unsettling truth, but the truth nonetheless.
She came out of the thickest part of the trees and looked up at the sky. It was gray, the threat of rain heavy. But her focus was on a single buzzard, which circled around until it saw her looking at her. And then, in a move that surprised her, it swooped down, landing on her shoulder, resting there. Its talons dug into her skin, but she hardly felt it. She just stared at it, considering her options before she reached up to lightly run her finger along its chest. “You don’t happen to know the way home, do you?”
The bird stared back at her before it took off, flying up ahead. She watched it for a moment before following, subconsciously humming like Bray as she went. The pain in her head faded away until she didn’t feel it anymore.
She didn’t feel anything at all.
