The Dark Place (#FrightFest2016 Gold Winner)

The Dark Place - Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Five

1

Wendy Jones walked aimlessly through the downpour knowing that she could not go home, not while she was consumed with guilt. The last ten months had been torture. Her father spent more time at the hospital than at home, her mother had locked herself away in her room for days on end and it was all her fault. She had carried it around with her all that time, the knowledge that she had been a big part of what had fractured her family. If it had not been for her everything would have still been normal.

But she could not take the entire blame for the way things had turned out, the others had played their part too.

The next crash of thunder was so loud that she felt the pavement shake under her feet. She was already soaked through but she knew that she had to find some sort shelter before the lightning came. Wendy had always been afraid of lightning unlike her little sister. As soon as the first rumbles of thunder sounded across the sky Jane would run to the nearest window, press her nose flat against the glass and watch as the lightning seemed to make rips across the dark storm clouds.

Wendy hated thinking about her little sister. It forced her to remember and that was the last thing she wanted to do. She needed to forget, to think of something completely different.

Her mind drifted to the old building at the far end of the woods and the girl they had left behind.

It had seemed like fun at the time and that was the main problem when it came to being involved with Amanda and Sarah, they could make anything sound like a good idea. Half of the time Wendy wished that she could resist the other two but it had taken so long for them to finally except her into their little group and at such cost.

Jane had looked up to Wendy in much the same way Wendy had looked up to the other two girls. Everywhere Amanda and Sarah went Wendy went and little Jane would not be far behind. Her little sister was always ruining things, getting in the way and trying to join in. The other girls had made fun of Wendy, telling her that she had to look after the baby and asking her who the father was as if Jane was her child.

Her accident!

If that loud mouth Sarah only knew the truth she would not have been so smug. She would have kept her big trap buttoned if she had known that Jane had been as much her sister as she was Wendy's.

By the time her mother's affair with Jim Wilmot to come out during an argument between Wendy's parents Jane was already three years old. Wendy had always kept it to herself, never even letting her mother and father know that she had overheard everything.

Her parents drifted further apart and the more miserable they became, the more she resented her little sister. It took years for her parents' relationship to grow back to resembling what it had once been but by that time Wendy hated her sister so much that she couldn't even look at her.

Or at least she thought she had.

Last year on a stormy night she had watched her little sister die. Only after she had seen her last breath leave her did she realize how much she had really loved her.

The sharp scream sirens and the blue flashing lights snapped Wendy out of her haze and back into the down pour. She hugged her arms tight around herself, trying to gain some fraction of comfort, as she watched the car skid around a corner to the left and disappear from site. Soon even the sirens went silent leaving only the building rumbles of thunder and that horrible memory to keep her company.

2

The police car screeched to a halt outside the house on Granger Street where a large crowd of people had gathered, some of whom were already trying to force the front door open. Constable Morton unbuckled his seat belt and sped out of the car and into the downpour before his partner had a chance to think.