Initium (The Nocte Trilogy 2.50)

“Nothing matters. Not anymore.”

My mother looks so sad and she whispers. “I’m so sorry, my love,” she says to me as she sits on the edge of my bed. “You did this for me, and I didn’t want this. I never wanted this.”

I don’t care anymore. I don’t care what she wants or doesn’t want. She will be taken care of, and my baby will be born, and I’ll sleep my life away dreaming of Phillip. That’s what I want.

It is that night that I first see them.

They have black eyes, and sharp teeth. They are shadows that move and meld into the walls, they blend with the night and howl at the moon. I shirk away, I move toward Richard, because even he is safer than whatever the shadows are.

He stirs in his sleep, but doesn’t wake, and I clutch the bedding to my chin, tucking my feet up beneath me.

But that doesn’t stop the shadows from moving, from approaching me, from sitting at my bed, panting in the night.

I hear long toenails clicking on the floor, click, click, clicking, and footsteps and growls. The growling comes from everywhere, and nowhere. It’s the night, it’s the air. It’s all around me, and the hairs raise on my arms and on the back of my neck. Something is here. I just don’t know what it is.

“Richard,” I shake him, and he wakes impatiently.

“What?”

“Do you see that?”

I motion toward the blackness, and there is nothing there now, nothing but blank wall space and the night.

He glares at me as he lies back down.

“Go back to sleep.”

I can’t.

I want to, because that is where Phillip waits, but now there is something here, something ominous. I feel it. I feel it.

I squeeze my eyes closed, immersing myself in darkness, and try to will the evil beings to leave. I count to ten and when I open them, the beings are gone, but there is blood.

Blood

Blood

Blood.

Streaming down the walls, flooding the floor, drifting beside the bed. Aghast, I drop my hand in it, and bring it to my mouth. I taste it, and it is sweet, and I can tell that it is mine. I can smell myself in it and the omen is clear.

I will die.

I just don’t know when,

Or how.

The blood swirls around me, and I close my eyes, and when I open them in the morning, the blood is gone, but it is still in my mind, and I still know what it means.

I call my mother after Richard leaves for the day and she comes immediately.

She looks into my eyes, and feels my fingers and wrists, and tests my pulse.

When she pulls away, she won’t look at me, and her eyes are so so sad.

“Was the blood black or red?”

“Crimson,” I tell her.