The Darkness I Carry

Chapter 25: In Between

The Frost on the Windshield

They woke to frost on the windshield.

Not real winter, not yet, but a warning. The air had teeth. Caleb's breath fogged the passenger window as Leah sat behind the wheel, unmoving, like a statue carved in the cold. Her eyes were focused on the road ahead, unblinking, as though she could see past the miles that stretched out before them.

She hadn't slept.

Just watched.

Watched the tree line. Watched the empty highway. Watched him.

The tension between them had grown sharper over the past few days. The silence wasn't uncomfortable, but it was deep—layered with everything that hadn't been said, everything that couldn't be said. She was always watching him, studying him, the way someone might watch the horizon, waiting for something to change.

"Where are we?" Caleb asked, his voice rough with the sleep he didn't remember getting.

"Nowhere that matters," she said, her tone flat, as though even this moment was too small to acknowledge.

The engine groaned to life. She didn't wait for him to wake up. Didn't wait for permission. The road pulled her forward like gravity, pulling them both to places they hadn't planned, but places they couldn't avoid.

The Abandoned Barn

Two towns over, they stopped for gas and left the car behind. Caleb didn't ask why. He'd stopped asking questions a while ago.

Leah was moving too fast, too decisively for him to understand the reasons, but part of him didn't want to. He had started to trust her instinct more than his own when to run, when to hide, when to disappear. But there were things that still made him hesitate. A lingering doubt that kept gnawing at the edges of his mind, even as he followed her without a word.

Leah paid cash for a cheap hoodie and sunglasses from a drugstore. Caleb stole a burner phone while the cashier argued with a man about coupons. They were good at this now good at blending in, good at being invisible. Ghosts in the daylight.

But ghosts get tired too.

At the edge of town, they found an abandoned barn, half-collapsed and smelling of mold and old hay. The kind of place you didn't ask questions about. It wasn't clean, wasn't safe, but it didn't matter. They didn't need safety. Not anymore.

Leah ducked inside, her boots making no sound on the soft earth. She sat against the wall, legs pulled up to her chest. Caleb stayed by the door, keeping watch, his body tense as he scanned the barn for any signs of movement. Neither of them spoke at first.

"Talk to me," Caleb said, finally, his voice low, worn. "About what?"

"Anything. Something," he pressed. "Before I forget what your voice sounds like when it's not cutting me in half."

Leah didn't answer right away. She just stared at a crack in the wood where light bled through, watching the day slip away. The sound of her breathing, the quiet of the barn, filled the space between them.

"When I was nine," she said, her voice flat, distant, "I killed a rabbit."

Caleb blinked. "Why?"

"Because it was screaming. Caught in a wire fence. Its leg was half off."

Her words didn't come with emotion, just the same cold detachment she wore like armor. She had learned to kill long before she learned to survive.

"I waited for someone else to come help," she continued. "No one did. So I found a rock."

Silence followed her confession, thick and oppressive. Caleb swallowed hard, fighting the lump that was rising in his throat.

"You think that's when it started?" he asked.

She shook her head, the motion slow. "No. That was mercy. This…" Her fingers twisted into the fabric of her sleeves, tightening. "This came later."

A Name in the Dark

Detective Avery had a name.

Not hers. But close.

Eleanor Jane Holloway. Born 14 years ago in Ohio. Reported missing at age 9. Ward of the state. Vanished from foster care. No sightings since.

Until now.

He stood in the flickering light of the station's back office, the hum of the fluorescent lights too loud, the air too thick with the stench of stale coffee and unspoken truths. Avery stared at the printout of a missing persons bulletin, a case long removed from the public eye, collecting dust and fading memories.

The eyes in the photo didn't match what he'd seen in the motel footage. But the stillness did. The same stillness. The same sense of waiting, of being too close to something dark to be seen.

He turned to Jenkins, who had been watching him for the past few minutes, his patience wearing thin. "We're not dealing with a killer pretending to be a girl," Avery muttered. He tapped the photo. "We're dealing with a girl pretending not to be a killer."

Jenkins didn't say anything, but his eyes darkened. He understood what Avery was trying to say. They were chasing something that wasn't human. Not in the way they knew. Something that had already shed its skin and left nothing but the remnants of a life it had long forgotten.

The Breaking Point

Night fell hard that day. The cold crept in, sinking into their bones, and the barn creaked under the pressure of the wind. Leah curled deeper into herself, pulling her knees tighter against her chest, her breath shallow, measured. The tension was unbearable.

Caleb leaned against a beam, watching the dust swirl in the pale light filtering through the gaps in the walls. The hours dragged on, the silence between them becoming heavier with each passing minute.

"There's someone I think you should talk to," he said quietly, his words breaking the stillness.

Leah stiffened. Her gaze snapped to him, cold and sharp. "No."

"She works with kids like you."

Leah laughed, but there was no humor in it. "There are no kids like me."

"She helps them anyway."

Leah stood abruptly, her movements sharp, almost desperate. "You want to fix me. Still. After everything."

Caleb flinched, his voice snapping with frustration. "I want to reach you. Before there's nothing left."

She turned away, shaking her head. "You don't understand"

"No, you don't!" His voice cracked. "I see you pulling away. Not from me. From yourself. You think if you stay cold long enough, the guilt won't reach you."

Leah stiffened, her fists clenched at her sides. "It doesn't," she said, but her voice trembled, betraying the lie.

"Then why are you still here?" Caleb's voice softened, his eyes filled with something close to regret. "Why didn't you run alone? Leave me behind?"

She didn't answer. Because she couldn't.

The Shadow in the Water

That night, while Caleb slept, Leah slipped out of the barn.

The woods swallowed her whole. She moved like a shadow between trees, boots silent on pine needles, her breath tight in her chest. There was something out there something buried deep inside of her, something she couldn't outrun, no matter how far she tried to go.

She stopped at a stream. The water moved lazily, reflecting the stars in fractured ripples.

Leah looked down at the water. Her face stared back at her pale, hollow-eyed, hair tangled, lips cracked. She looked like a stranger. A ghost.

But behind her reflection, something else moved.

Not the monster. Not the girl.

Something in between.

And for the first time in a long time, Leah looked scared.

Her breath hitched, a shiver running through her as she stepped back from the water, her hand clutching the earth as if it might hold her together.

She couldn't run anymore. Not from what was inside her. Not from what she had become.

The girl who had killed a rabbit to end its pain was long gone. But maybe just maybe the girl who had once known how to feel might still be hiding somewhere, beneath the cracks.