Prologue: The Fall

 

Prologue: The Fall

 

                I was just like every normal fourteen-year-old girl. I had wavy brunette locks that fell over my shoulders and big, bright brown eyes that glimmered in the morning sun. Freckles dotted my face. I basically looked like every other girl in the world.
          I liked the big bands and popular celebrities. I looked up to the it-girls, whoever they were at the time, and whenever they changed. I loved gossip magazines and going on and on about the cutest boy in my small Virginia town to my girlfriends. I always had some sort of obsession over an attractive singer or actor.
          What I didn’t know is that I am, literally, paranormal. The beginning to my “epic tale” sounds like some sort of high school love story, but it’s not. Not at all.

          It was a tepid day in late summer, and I was awaiting the arrival of Blake and Mason: my best friend and his brother. I sat at my vanity and started brushing my hair. As the bristles thumbed their way through, I observed myself and sighed. My head tipped a little bit to the side and my eyes glittered with the dim lamp in the corner of my room. I then decided that I felt like going into the woods to climb a tree or two.
          The moment I walked outside – I felt complete. I could feel myself getting tanner and more freckles appearing on my face. I even promenaded with my eyes closed for a bit.
          Behind my house was a forest full of thick trees with countless branches. I ran my palms along the sides of the trunks; they were smooth and my mind mellowed out every second I was out in the woods. I sighed and hummed a classical Irish tune.
          I looked at the trees I’d previously conquered with my older brother, Harry. Every time we’d climb a tree all the way to the very top, to the place where you felt like you were at the highest point on Earth, Harry would take his pocketknife and carve ‘H’ for Harry and/or ‘F’ for Faye (which is my name) at the bottom
          I sighed again and fingered at the letters. I smiled at the last memory we had shared here. No matter how old we were, we were always going to laugh about it. I knelt down and looked up at the leafy canopy. Might was well just climb it, I guess. That way I’ll be within calling distance... I thought. I yawned as I started my climb. A wry smirk appeared on my face. This, I was pretty sure, was the exact day that I tried and he succeeded to climb that particular tree. I pulled myself up and realized it had only taken me about a minute to get fifteen feet from the ground, at the least. A personal record.
          I grinned at my progress. I was impressed. I climbed higher and higher as fast as I could to test myself. After all, there wasn’t an ‘F’ at the bottom. I’d always thought that I was too small, but not any longer. I was almost there. I saw the light filtering down through the spots between the leaves. Their shadows danced away all over my body.
          I stood up, careful not to lose my balance. I bit my lip as I wobbled and gulped. I didn’t realize at the time that it was a bad idea to keep going; I mean, Harry used to do that sort of thing all the time. But, then again, he was a guy, what more is there to expect?
          I pulled the branches apart to reveal a beautiful scene. I never really thought about how gorgeous the hills were, so green, so...well...rolling! I lived in a truly pretty place. Then Mason’s beat up green car came into view and my face brightened. Blake was with him. They were there.
         There was another branch above me that I figured that if I stood up on it, my house would come into full view. The bough looked stable, so soon enough my stomach was in top of it. I was on enough to kneel and I peeled back the leaves. The limb went out a little further, and my house was half way out of the picture, so I crawled. The leaves thickened and the branch grew thinner. I didn’t think of the matter. I stood up, pulled the leaves out of the way...
       CRA-ACK!!
          And the branch snapped in half and I could no longer breathe. The air rushed through my ears and my body grew numb. My eyes widened as lean switches cut into my skin. My throat was dry, my voice box felt broken, and my wind pipe constricted. My head cocked as my eyelids slowly fell closed, for I was well aware that I was at the last chapter in my book. The credits of my movie were rolling. The curtain was closing on my performance.

                My life was ending.

                My legs and arms were then paralyzed. I could have sworn I had watched my heart contracting and then making my chest thump. Soon, there was no air rushing past me. All I heard was my heart pumping and pulsating at an unbelievably swift rate. I started to hyperventilate, and the feeling of my body returned. I looked over my shoulder, going against the whispers of the wind telling me not to look down. I finally could scream as the ground grew closer. Tears filled my eyes as I glued them shut and clenched my teeth.
          However, when I hit the ground, I wasn’t dead. There were no twigs or roots sticking into my flesh; it was all soft earth. All the fall had done was knock the wind out of me. I gasped once my lungs responded and my eyes flew open as an automatic reaction. I most definitely wasn’t in Virginia anymore. I felt as if I was straight out of The Wizard of Oz. It was peculiar, that’s for sure.
          I sucked my teeth as I examined my cuts from the switches. The blood on my fingertips soaked into it fairly fast. I had landed close to a jutting boulder, so I used it to pull myself up. My knees knocked into each other. My hands shook. My breaths were heavy. My ears were ringing. My vision was blurred. My eyelids were trying to fall. I leaned my back against the rock and my head tilted by itself. I brought my face up toward the sky to find it a shade of violet with constant lightening flashes. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a lavender shape.
          It hurt, but I managed to turn my neck to the area where I saw the burst of color, and there was a women covered in the exact purple. “Ma’am? Can you... Tell me whe -- where I am?”
          The woman stopped and turned slightly towards me. “Welcome to the Dead Land.” She looked at me over her shoulder with cool eyes that somehow clashed with her dark hair.
          I raised my eyebrows and repeated in a neutral, staccato tone, “What... do... you... mean ... the... Dead... Land?
          She walked over to me. “What’s your name? Are you alright? Are you in pain?”
          I was constantly taking deep breaths. “Faye… And, yes. A lot... A lot of... Of pain... What,” I gulped down saliva to make it easier to talk, “is... Your name?”
          The woman shook her head, closed her eyes, and smirked. She put her face close to my ear and pulled back my hair. “As cliché as this sounds, you can call me your worst nightmare, for that’s exactly what I am, my love. For everything and everyone.”
          My brows rose extremely high and at that moment, the most painful thing that has ever happened to me occurred. If I had as much courage then as I do now, I’m sure I would have run, considering I’ve run from her multiple times by now. Oh well. If this hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have met Gabriel, and if I hadn’t met Gabriel, I wouldn’t have done anything I did in this epic tale. I wouldn’t know as much as I do today, or have as much courage.
          The woman grinned and she showed fangs. I felt like I was falling out of the tree again. She tucked my hair behind my ear and stuck her teeth into my neck. I gasped for air and tried to scream even though, yet again, I couldn’t. I found myself helpless, frail... Tears stained my cheeks. I felt dizzy, tired, and... and...
          And cold.
          I began to struggle and shake. The wretched woman grabbed me and my head started to fall. My vision dazed and the woman took her teeth out of my neck, letting me go in the process. When I fell to the ground, I landed on my knees, and my head hit the boulder. I blacked out.
          The woman laughed and put my hair back. “Sorry, Faye. You’re just irresistible. I’d take you, except you’re all out of fear. Have fun in the afterlife. Ha, goodbye.” She pulled her shawl closer to her body and walked away, not a sign of remorse on her face.

          Harry walked outside as Mason’s green Toyota Camry drove past the window. Mason and Blake got out of the car and Mason shook hands with Harry. “Aye. How are you doing?”
          Harry nodded. “Good, good. Yourself?”
          “Same. Is Faye inside? She usually is out here before you.” Mason commented, glancing about.
          “Quite honestly, I’m not sure. She went out here and just didn’t come back in.” Harry shrugged.
          Blake, who was generally quiet, said: “You think we should go look for her or something? I mean, she hasn’t come back, and she knew we were coming, so that could mean that something might be wrong.”
          Harry rolled his eyes, but Mason nodded. “Blake’s right, actually. This is unlike her. Most of the time she’s sitting on the patio when we arrive, since she doesn’t see us too often.”
          Harry shook his head and roared, “Faye! Mason and Blake are here!”
          They waited.
          Mason crossed his arms. He proved that he knew how to use his diaphragm better than Harry. “If you can hear me, yell back!”
          They waited.
          “I’m gonna go look for her,” Blake frowned. “If she had yelled back, we would have heard her. She’s good at screaming.” He put his hands in his pockets and turned around, heading towards the woods with his lazy saunter.
          “I’m comin’ with you,” Mason nodded. “I’m somewhat worried about her, too. We waited long enough that if she could have heard us, she would have been here by now. She probably would have come running.”
          Harry sighed as Mason turned the way that Blake was going in. “A’ight, fine, but I guarantee you she’s fine. I’ll put forward twenty bucks that she is.”
          Mason looked over his shoulder. “Okay. I’ve got money, but there’s plenty of room in these pockets.”
          The three boys walked into the forest, though Blake was more leisurely strolling than walking. Harry studied all the trees he had once climbed with Faye. As each trunk grew taller, the craftsmanship grew neater. The denser the woods got, the less H’s and F’s there were, with the rare ‘B’ or ‘M’. Memories came in flashes, raked with the sound of children’s laughter and shaking leaves. There were occasional yellow leaves hanging onto the branches, as for autumn would soon be on their plates. A light breeze pushed against Harry’s face and sandy blonde hair as he stared straight ahead. He hoped to dear God that his little sister was okay; with all of the memories flooding back into his head, he was reminded of all the good times they had shared.
          Blake knelt down and picked up a branch. It wasn’t the kind of branch that would have fallen off. It was too long, and was thick enough that it would take some weight or serious wind to snap if off. “Uh, guys, come here. Look at this. Harry, I thought you owe Mason twenty dollars.”
          Mason span around and took the branch from Blake. He squinted his eyes, managing to see through his dark auburn bangs it had come from the very top. “Did you do this?”
          Harry trudged over. “No, I haven’t climbed this one in years. I think I’d remember a branch like this breaking, though. Heh, Faye tried and tr...”
          He stopped as his breath became short. He looked up. “She couldn’t survive a fall like that. She’s gone.”