The Darkness I Carry

Chapter 24: Running Through the Dark

The Empty Room

The motel room was stripped by the time they returned.

The bedsheets were gone. So were the coffees. Even the static on the TV had vanished, replaced by a quiet black screen that seemed to watch them both. It was as if the room itself had turned its back on them, erasing every trace of the life that had briefly existed in it.

Leah stood in the doorway like a ghost returning to her own crime scene, the silence in the room a reflection of the emptiness that she felt inside. She didn't flinch when she saw the bare walls, the empty bed. It was all part of the same game. She didn't need anything that tied her down. She never had.

"No more hiding here," Caleb said, his voice tight with something that resembled a mixture of exhaustion and resignation.

She didn't reply. She didn't need to. The answer was already in her eyes, cold and distant. She had long stopped hiding. Hiding had never been the problem. The problem was knowing exactly when to stop running and when to face the truth. And she wasn't there yet.

Caleb stepped past her, picking up the duffel bag from under the bed already packed. Of course, it was. She'd been ready to run before she ever told him. Maybe even before she brought him along. He had always been a part of the plan. He just hadn't realized it yet.

"Where now?" he asked, his voice flat, tired from the hours they'd spent together and apart.

Leah shrugged. "North."

"Why?"

"Colder places. Fewer questions. Easier to disappear."

Caleb nodded, then looked at her really looked at her for the first time in days. His gaze settled on her hands, still stained with the remnants of her latest kill. The cut on her knuckle. The flecks of blood under her nails. She hadn't cleaned it off. Or maybe she didn't see it anymore. Either way, it was a mark she could never scrub away, even if she wanted to.

"What happens when you run out of map?" he asked, his voice softer now, as if he already knew the answer.

Leah glanced at him, something unreadable in her expression. There was a flicker of something in her eyes, something dangerous and truthful all at once. It was as if she was on the verge of revealing a part of herself that even she didn't fully understand.

"Then I stop pretending to run."

The Pursuit

Detective Roland Avery clicked through grainy security footage on a monitor the size of his frustration. He'd been chasing shadows for weeks now. His patience was wearing thin, his gut telling him that something was wrong, but without the evidence, he couldn't make it right.

So far, all he had were faces that blurred together like meaningless fragments of a dream. Junkies. Truckers. A sad-eyed kid with a duffel bag who paid cash and kept his hoodie up. Room 6. But none of it felt right.

He paused. Rewound.

There next to the boy, there was a girl. Small frame. Pale. Unmoving. Almost invisible unless you were looking for her.

Jenkins, his partner, leaned over and squinted at the screen. "That the kid?"

Avery didn't answer, his eyes narrowing. He zoomed in, the resolution turning her into a smear of pixels and shadow, but something about the way she held herself still, watchful lit a fuse in his gut. This wasn't a normal kid. He knew it. She was something else.

"We need a name," Avery said, his voice cold, determined.

"I'll get it."

"No," Avery muttered, still staring at the screen, his voice low. "She's not in the system. Not properly. Someone like this? She's a myth. A ghost."

Jenkins was silent for a moment, trying to make sense of it all. "Then how do you catch a ghost?"

Avery stood up, his fingers tight around the edge of the desk. "You don't. You scare it. You corner it. And you hope it makes a mistake."

The Easy Crime

They stole a car from a grocery store parking lot.

It was too easy.

The keys were in the ignition. Groceries in the backseat. The engine was still warm. Leah slid behind the wheel like she'd done it a thousand times. Maybe she had.

Caleb hesitated before getting in. He glanced around, checking to make sure no one was watching. It didn't matter. It never did. The world was oblivious to the monsters that walked among them.

"Someone's going to come out of that store in five minutes with a toddler and a juice box," Caleb said, his voice cautious but resigned.

Leah didn't even look at him through the windshield. "Then they shouldn't have made it so easy."

Caleb got in. And they drove.

They didn't speak for the first hour. The only sounds were the hum of the engine and the rhythmic passing of the road beneath them.

Then Leah broke the silence, her voice quiet, almost casual. "You think I'm turning into something worse."

He didn't answer at first. What could he say? There were no words for the way she made him feel conflicted, scared, and yet unable to leave her. He wasn't sure if he was afraid of her or for her. Maybe both.

She kept her gaze fixed on the road, the miles unfurling like a silent countdown.

"You're right," she said, her tone level. "But maybe that's the only way to survive."

The Diner

At the next town, they stopped at a diner with flickering lights and wallpaper that hadn't changed since the 1970s. The waitress was too friendly, calling everyone "hon" as if it were her job to make strangers feel like family. She poured coffee like it was penance.

Leah ordered nothing.

Caleb got pancakes. He picked at them like they'd betrayed him, the syrup pooling on the plate in a quiet mockery of his life. He couldn't bring himself to eat.

"I saw your hands shake," he said finally, breaking the silence between them.

Leah didn't look up from the window. She could feel his gaze on her, but it didn't make her uncomfortable. It was just another reminder that Caleb was still there. Still watching her.

"You think that means something?" she asked, her voice flat, almost bored.

"I think it means you're not as far gone as you want to be."

She smiled a ghost of a smile, a curl of her lips with no joy behind it. "Maybe that's the problem."

The diner was silent except for the clink of silverware and the low hum of a fluorescent light above. The world outside seemed to move too fast, too clean, while they sat in this stagnant moment, suspended in time.

The Close Call

Outside the diner, a cruiser drove by slow. Its siren was off, but its presence was enough to make Leah stiffen. Caleb noticed it too. His voice was low, barely a whisper. "They're getting close."

Leah's hand moved into her coat, and Caleb knew what was there. He'd seen the glint of metal before. He couldn't let it happen. Not now. Not when they were so close to slipping away.

He put his hand over hers. "Don't," he said, his voice firm.

She looked at him, her eyes flat and cold, her expression unreadable. "I won't get caught."

"And I won't let you kill a cop."

There was a long pause. The cruiser had already passed, its red and blue lights flickering in the distance.

Leah's hand pulled away from the coat pocket, but the tension didn't dissipate. It hung in the air between them, thick and suffocating.

A Night in the Dark

That night, they slept in a field.

Not because they had to. Because Leah wanted to feel the dirt again. The quiet. The dark without walls. She curled under the stars like they meant nothing, like the sky was just a backdrop to a life that had long stopped making sense.

Caleb lay a few feet away, watching her chest rise and fall, slow and careful. He thought about the girl she'd been the girl before the blood, before the coldness took root. He thought about the monster she claimed to be, the one he had come to fear and understand.

But there was something else. Something in the way her hands trembled when she thought no one was watching. Somewhere between them, something human was still alive.

He just didn't know if it would live long enough to matter.