The Darkness I Carry

Chapter 18: The Taste of Ash and Bone

The next morning, the school doors never opened.

Not jammed. Not locked. Just gone.

Gone like pages eaten by flame. Folded into themselves, smooth and seamless, until there was nothing left but the outline of a door that once existed. The windows, too, clouded from the inside. Not with condensation, but with frost ice forming where there should have been summer warmth, thick enough to obscure the view. And the air was cold, cold as a grave.

No one could enter.

No one wanted to.

A chill spread through the town.

They whispered about Leah and Clara now not as students, not as girls. But as omens. Something had changed in the way they looked at the world. In the way they felt the world.

In the hearts of those still lucid, something coiled. Fear, yes. But also recognition.

They had seen Leah in their dreams. Seen her in the woods, with the smell of burning leaves hanging in the air. They'd seen her in reflections, her reflection smiling before they did.

The Beast, some of them whispered. The darkness from stories, from things they should have buried long ago. They remembered, then, in bits and pieces, what they had tried so desperately to forget. The soil wouldn't keep secrets anymore.

Not after what had happened to the doors.

Leah stood in the center of the gymnasium, surrounded by the smell of rot and old sweat. The floors, once polished and shining, now cracked and warped under the weight of roots. Thick, dark tendrils broke through the hardwood, bleeding sap that had a bitter, metallic taste to it, like rust clinging to the back of the throat.

The scoreboard blinked.

0–0–0–0.

It wasn't keeping score.

It was counting something else. A countdown.

Leah looked around, feeling the pulse of the place. The gymnasium, once full of laughter, of frantic basketball games and echoes of cheering students, now felt empty in a way that was almost suffocating. The space had become something else. Something older.

Across from her, Clara stood, tears running down her cheeks. Her face was full of awe, not sorrow, though the two emotions seemed indistinguishable now.

"The veil's thinning," Clara said, her voice soft, reverent. "They're almost here."

Leah didn't answer, but she nodded slowly, the weight of what was to come pressing on her chest. Her mouth tasted of iron and smoke. She raised her hand, fingers outstretched, feeling the weight of the energy that thrummed in the air around her.

Her skin had changed. Not just pale. Not just glowing. But traced with lines, lines that pulsed with each beat of her heart, as if something deeper, more primal, was weaving itself into her flesh.

A soft hum filled the gym.

It vibrated in her bones.

The children came again.

The sleepers.

One by one, they appeared, drawn to her presence like moths to fire. Their eyes were still distant, unfocused, but they knew. They always knew. They circled Leah in silence, their faces pale, their movements slow. The creature from the night before—the one still twitching, still formless—crawled to her feet. Its skin was soft and slick, like something that had just emerged from the earth.

It pressed its head against her ankle.

It purred.

Leah barely flinched.

Clara turned her gaze toward the old trophy case. The glass was no longer clear. It had melted into a ripple, like water disturbed by something heavy. Through it, Clara saw not the reflections of the past, but glimpses of the future.

Memories not yet lived.

Burning trees. Cities sleeping beneath roots. Leah standing on a throne made of hands—hands that whispered her name.

"She's ready," Clara said softly. Her voice wasn't directed at Leah, but at something listening. Something watching from the darkness in the corners of the room.

From the walls, the shadows peeled away.

The air around them thickened, and for a moment, it felt like the gymnasium was holding its breath. The shadows shifted and stirred, as if waking from a long sleep. They took form slowly, stretching limbs from the darkness, shapes emerging from the cracks in the walls. Limbs. Teeth. Eyes that opened sideways.

Voices.

Hundreds of them.

A cacophony of whispers, all speaking in unison, in chords that vibrated through the floor and up Leah's spine. The sound was like fingers running across a chalkboard, only deeper, darker.

They bowed.

Leah stepped forward, and the circle of children parted like water around a stone. Her footfalls cracked the tiles beneath her, each step like a command, like an oath whispered into the marrow of the earth.

Every breath was a prophecy.

She stood before them all, the children, the shadows, the gymnasium that had become something else.

"We will awaken the world," she said, her voice steady, final.

The shadows answered.

"We will feed."

Outside, the first tree split down the middle.

The sound was like laughter and weeping fused together, a collision of sorrow and joy. The bark tore apart, like skin pulled open. From within it, there was something more than wood.

Bones.

Not human.

Not anything they could name.

Across town, mirrors shattered. They didn't crack, they shattered, their pieces scattering like shards of forgotten memories. The reflections in them, twisted and wrong, flickered for an instant before collapsing, folding in on themselves.

The infection was no longer silent.

It sang.

It rose in the cracks between thoughts, between breaths, in the spaces between stars. The song was not one anyone could hear with their ears, but it was everywhere. Inside the walls. Beneath the earth. Through the air.

Leah raised her arms. Her eyes were open now, burning with a light that was no longer her own. The ceiling of the gym cracked wide above her. Through it, the sky stared back at her, red and pulsing, a color that had never been seen in daylight.

A sky that no longer cared for the sun.

The world was opening.

And the first scream of the new world echoed down.

It wasn't a sound that could be heard.

It was felt. In the bones. In the marrow. In the air that pushed against the skin like a weight too great to bear.

The scream was not one of pain. It was one of awakening.

And the taste of ash and bone lingered on the air.