Chapter 6 - It Has Come (a snippet)

A Chapter by Charlotte Craig

Carter is waking up from a deep sleep, entering a dream-like world, where she finds a person she did not expect.

I could sense that there was someone watching me. Someone sitting at my side, leaning over my face, and creating a shadow over my eyes. Normally the thought of being watched would make me shudder, send a shiver through my limbs, forcing me to wake up and smack whoever the creeper was. But my heart felt no fear, no will to attack this person despite the fact I didn't know who they were.
                I slowly began to open my eyes, taking in the blurry figure hovering over me. His image began to get clearer, allowing me to see a head of red curls and a pair of green eyes staring down at me. My heart pounded with excitement at the sight of the figure and the relief of not lashing out at this person washed over me as I looked at the man at my side.
                It was my father, dressed in a white shirt and pants that matched the colours of the floor, my bed sheets, and the walls surrounding us. I blinked several times, making sure that my eyes weren't deceiving me, that it truly was him that I was seeing and not just a projection of a memory.
                “You,” I breathed. “You're... are you really here?”
                My dad threw his head back in laughter, making me break out into my own fit of giggles.
                “Yes, Carter, I am.” He answered. The sound of his voice sent warmth through my bones, filling my heart with comfort. I remembered spending countless nights, trying to remember the sound of his voice, wondering if it had been deep and rich like Uncle Gabe's or raspy like my grandfathers. But it was neither. It was smooth, soft, clear... it was the sound of home.
                “But you can't be. You died... didn't you?” Everything in my brain seemed to be jumbled up and messy. It was like the place I awoke to wiped me clean of all my memories, perhaps even all I was before I arrived. My heart felt so light, like it was drained of all anger and sorrow.
                “To your world I'm dead, but to this one,” my father smirked, “I am very much alive.”
                “Where am I exactly?” I questioned. Part of me wanted to get up from the bed I was confined to, but I felt as though something was pulling me back, holding me down. I ignored the feeling, assuring myself that my body was just tired. But that feeling lingered at the back of my mind, letting me know that something wasn't entirely right.
                “Back in Elssador, probably laying in a bed just like this,” my dad answered, gesturing to the sheets that were fit snugly against my chest. “There is no way anyone could have jumped off a tower that high and walked off without an injury. Even someone as strong as you.”
                He smiled, bringing a hand to my face and stroking my hair back just as he had always done to assure me that everything was going to be okay. But the gesture did nothing for me. It didn't mask the feeling of uncertainty and confusion that his words brought me.
                “I jumped off a tower?” I asked, closing my eyes as I tried to force memories back into my mind.
                “Yes, you did. You jumped because you wanted to find me and your mother,” he said. A light bulb seemed to flick on in my mind, making all the jumbled memories and images piece back together. Me standing upon that high tower, the feeling of the wind pressing against my face as I pushed off, the sensation of falling... I remembered it all, even the deep sadness I had felt before I had jumped. But I never remembered the sudden stop, the bone shattering feeling of my body colliding with the ground.
                “Did �" did I die?” I stuttered, suddenly feeling the fear that I had been missing before. It wasn't death I was afraid of, it was the fact that it had been something I wanted. Death had been my intent. Yet laying in that bed, under that white ceiling, I didn't feel dead at all. In fact, I felt quite the opposite. My body was burning with life, with an energy that I hadn't experienced before.
                “No. You're not dead. You're just asleep,” my father explained, continuing to stroke my hair back. “But you could have died.”
                “How do you know all of this?” I said.
                “I never left you, Carter,” he spoke as if this was something I had forgotten, something that should have been seared into my memory. “I promised you that I wouldn't leave you no matter what.”
                “But you did.” Even the calming silence and the faint, soothing sound of water crashing up against a shore couldn't wash away the bitterness in my tone. It couldn't even completely wash away my anger that seemed to be slowly returning as I remembered all those nights of me crying myself to sleep, days of sobbing in the shower, going for long walks just so I could scream into the sky, all those times I felt so alone, so abandoned...
                “Did I ever tell you about the day my mom died?” my father said. Curiosity sparked inside me and I shook my head. “I was young. Maybe seventeen, eighteen. She was sick, like me, but to a greater extent. She had been ill since the day I was born. As time passed, the illness spread, eventually slowing her heart. When I heard she was gone, it felt like my heart had been cut in two. Unlike your uncle �" who keeps his hurt bottled up inside �"” My father raised a brow, giving me a look that implied that this was a characteristic obviously passed down to me, “�" I let out my anger, my grief. Your Uncle Gabe found me in my room the night she died, sitting on top of a pile of broken glass from my window, blood smeared all over my hands. After that I became consumed by my grief, always trying to busy myself with other things so I didn't have to think about the pain that was eating away at me. It took me awhile to fight it, to remember something my mother had told me, a promise that I passed down to you...”
                My father paused, waiting for me to finish what he had to say, but I found that I couldn't speak. My throat felt tight, making me feel as if I was about to cry. I knew the words. Only then, after hearing his story did I remember them. He had said it to me one of the nights I woke up from nightmares, begging him to stay with me until I could fall back to sleep. I won't leave you, Carter, he had said. No matter what may come.
                “Those words,” my father said with a slight smile, reading my mind like he had always done. I swallowed, trying to hold back the tears that stung my eyes. I supposed that I had been so caught up in my own grief that I had let his words fly right over my head. I was so consumed by my loneliness that I hadn't really thought about what his promise truly meant.
                “When you said that, you were talking about the place we're in now, weren't you?” I said. “We’re in that world Uncle Gabe told me about?”
                “Perhaps,” my father smirked. “Or maybe I'm just an image in your mind, a memory.” I raised a brow, about to ask a hundred more questions, but instead he laughed, giving me a gentle pat on my shoulder as he shook his head. “Now isn't the time to worry over this. I am real and I am here with you. That's all that matters right now.”
                “But why am I here? Why are you here?”
                My father's smile faded slightly, his green eyes suddenly stripped of all humour. “I'm here because of you. I'm here to get you to believe.”
                “Believe? In what, the tooth fairy?” I jested, trying to lighten up his mood. Normally he would've chuckled a bit at my jokes, then shot back with an even cleverer one. But the corners of his lips didn't even budge. They remained in their straight, serious line.
                “No. To believe in something you are refusing to,” he replied.
                I froze, suddenly losing the ability to smile as well. “Elssador. Is that it? Is that what I'm refusing to believe in?”
                “Yes,” My father nodded. I gave a roll of my eyes which sharpened his tone. “Elssador is real, Carter. It is impossible, yes, but there are some impossible things that we need to be possible, that are made possible for our sake.”
                “You think there's a reason I'm there too, don't you?” I asked, thinking of King Wallace and Abias and the similar words that came from both their mouths regarding this topic.
                “Everything happens for a reason, Carter. The good things, the sad things, the strange things, they all shape us, mold us into the people we were intended to be, the people we are meant to be.”
                “And Elssador is doing that for me?”
                “Yes,” my father finally smiled, beginning to stroke my hair again. “It's changing you. I can see it already.”
                There were thousands of things I wanted to ask him. I tried to sit up to do so, but I felt that force again, that strong vigour that seemed to be holding me down. I tried to move my arms, lift them to hold my father's hand, but all I seemed to be able to do is clench and unclench my fists.
                “You can't fight it, Carter, the force that's holding you down,” my father said in a soothing voice.
                “You mean I can't stay?” I was always good at reading between the lines, especially his.
                “No, you can't,” he shook his head, pushing back another stand of my hair until it curled around my ear. “You're going to wake up soon.”
                It didn't feel like I was going to get up. In fact, it felt as though I was going to fall right back to sleep. My eyes grew heavy, making me struggle to keep them open. I could feel myself slowly slipping away into unconsciousness, away from him.
                “I don't want to leave,” I managed to say.
                “I know. I don't want you to either. Neither does your mother,” my father glanced over his shoulder at the door at the back of the room. Through the small window carved into the white wood, I could see the back of a blonde head pressed up against the glass. I felt my body tingle with excitement, with joy, but it was soon defeated by my weariness. “But you have to go, Carter. You're story isn't over, not yet.”
                I was giving into my exhaustion, allowing my eyes to shut. But I could still hear him, feel his hand against my cheek and the softness of his lips on my forehead. “Believe, Carter. Believe and remember this,” he whispered, “The time for you to be brave has come.”