I remember the night Tony and his buddies vanished. It was Canada Day. We'd all been celebrating with a huge barbeque. Friends and family ate, drank, and ran around with with sparklers in their hands till it was darker than dark.

Tony, Eddie, and Reese had taken off on their bikes to seek adventure as twelve-year-olds do. I wanted to go with them, ride free with my older brother and his friends but my dad held me back, laughed and told me my little legs would not reach the petals just yet.

I cried as I watched them ride off.

They never came back home.

We searched for months, everybody did. The boys' faces were plastered on posters and  on the news from British Columbia to Newfoundland. No one was ever found, no bikes, no shoes, no bodies of little boys rotting away.

Twenty years passed.

I am twenty-four now. I still live in my parents' old place. They both passed. Both riddled with guilt of never finding Tony and the others. It took me a long time to bury the sorrow brought on by my brother the day he disappeared. 

Then one day, a knock came at my door. A twelve-year old Tony, missing for twenty years, bolted into the house and slammed the door with such might the windows shook. He looked up at me with feral eyes and I let out a mighty scream.

It was as though time had stood still for him. Where time had touched us it had not him. He fell into my arms , his clothes were ratty, his skin covered in dirt, he smelled like blood and the ground before it rains. Canine teeth protruded, his nails had grown long.

"She's coming Cameron," he whispered in a voice as gravely and old as a ninety-year-old smokers. He grabbed me tight, urgency in his tone. "We need to-" Wild eyes darted around the room. "run. Fast. She's coming."

What I saw terrified me. My brother, once full of life, looked skeletal. Tony looked like some mad, savage Peter Pan that had not grown up.

His words frightened me more than his ghastly look. Who? I wanted to ask. Who is coming?

He grabbed my face and pulled me close to his till we were inches apart. Dirt was etched into his pores, on lines on his face. His eyes were rimmed red. As if he had heard my thoughts, my brother replied, "The Dark One."

I jolted awake. Tony wasn't back. He was never coming back. He was dead, and so he was never coming back. I rolled over in my bed to face the wall. Cheap blue-jays rested on faded vines, almost gone. This room had been my parents. When I was younger, and it would pour, and thunder and lightning resonated through the house, I would come running here with Tony. It didn't bother me that he was eight years older than me. He would hold me and I would hold him, and he would tell me stories about the little birds on the cheap wallpaper. Most of it had long since peeled off, though some remained.

I sat up, and turned my alarm off. The clock read 7:15. My alarm would have gone off at 7:20. The only thing my nightmare had done was wake me up efficiently. I got out of bed, my feet landing on the cold wood of the master bedroom. My parents had put it in when they'd gotten the house. I hated it, but didn't have the heart to change it. It reminded me of them. My mother, my father, and Tony.

The bathroom was small, only a shower, a sink, and a toilet. I brushed my teeth, catching the occasional glance of me in the mirror. My hair was longer than usual. I knew I needed to get it cleaned up. My eyes were bloodshot. I'd barely slept last night. Too much work, more nightmares. Otherwise, I'd be fine at work today. 

Maybe red makeup, I pondered. It would hide the eyes. I settled on a pink eyeshadow, red lipstick, and thicker blush than I would have normally gone with. Standard business wear was thrown on at random. I was out the door by 7:35.

Breakfast was a bag of cheerios in the car. I picked up coffee from a little place downtown before parking at the temp agency. My boss's car was nowhere to be seen. Late, as always. The elevator from the parking garage hadn't been working for almost a month now. I climbed the three flights of stairs to my office, settling behind my desk.

The sign on the front of it claimed I was MaryAnn Joy. I hadn't bothered to change it. Besides, MaryAnn Joy was easier to pronounce than Cameron Desjardins. Most of the people who came in didn't know French, whether it was the more localized dialect or France French. I know a lot of English, but it was far from perfect. Tony had been near fluent in English and Spanish too. He had had a knack for languages. I was never very good at them, but Tony would only talk to me in English for nearly a year. I'm pretty sure he meant to annoy me, but I learned enough to land a secretary job. 

Work passed quickly. I took a couple calls. Left some memos for my boss. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then I was off.

~~~

"Bonjour, Cameron! Come in, come in." Natasha waved me into her office. "How are you?" I shrugged. 

"So so. I thought I was getting better, but then last night, well, I, uh, had the dream." Natasha frowned, looking thoughtful.

"Sit down, Cameron. We need to talk about this." She gestured at the couch. I knew she expected me to lie down, like the stereotypical therapy patient. I hated doing that, not seeing who I was talking to. It made me nervous. 

So I sat down, leaning against the wall. 

"So you had the dream again. This is, what, a month since the last time?" Natasha asked. I nodded. "Okay. That's the longest gap there's ever been, correct?" I nodded again. "Good to know. And it ended at the same time, 'The Dark One,' yes?" A nod again. "Alright. I'm gonna say the same thing I said last time. You were very young when Tony disappeared, and he was a very important part of your life. His disappearance was a major turning point in your early development. You believe, subconsciously, that had you gone with Tony and his friends, you could have saved them, led them back to your house. Your subconscious refuses to accept that you were too young to do much at the time, and so you think you could have done something." I sighed inwardly. Next came the prescription for sleeping pills. Natasha kept talking. "I'm gonna give you some sleeping meds. I want you to take one pill right before you go to sleep. If you actually take them this time, you should at least sleep better."

"Alright. I'll see you next week," I got up to leave. Natasha handed me the prescription she'd scribbled out. I stuffed it in my purse, promising myself to never acknowledge it.

~~~

I got home at exactly 6:30. I hadn't gone to the pharmacy to get the meds. The first time Natasha had prescribed them, I'd obligingly taken them the first day, and then hadn't gotten out of bed until noon the next morning. My boss had been furious, and so I didn't take them after that. I threw my purse on to the kitchen counter, and collapsed on the couch. I'd get myself dinner later.

~~~

I woke up at midnight screaming. A spring in the couch was pushing into my back. My head was at an odd angle, and I could still hear Tony whispering "The Dark One."

I sat up and looked around. The lights were still on, I was still in my living room, and Tony was still dead. It didn't matter how many times I had the dream, he was gone and never coming back. I wanted to believe it, I knew I needed to believe it, but I couldn't make myself believe it. There was always still the slightest chance. They had never found any of the bodies or the bikes. And that was enough for me to believe.

I got up and reheated some pizza. There was plenty of it in the fridge. I barely ever at anything that wasn't take out. I tried. I really did, but I couldn't make myself do more. Pizza was basically a staple of my diet now. I hated anchovies, but that was all I ever got. They were Tony's favorite, so I stomached them. 

The pizza tasted horrible, just like every time. Anchovies were bad, reheated anchovies were absolutely horrendous. I suffered through two slices, before lying back down on the couch, and falling back asleep.

~~~

I woke up this time to someone knocking on the door. I checked my watch. Four o'clock in the morning. Too early for someone to be at my door. The knocking continued. I fell from the couch before I managed to stand up. Then, I tripped over my skirt, tearing a rip down the side.

"Crap," I muttered. "I was needing a new skirt anyway."

At this point, it sounded like the door was being attacked by police force. Whoever was out there was very determined to get in, or at least get my attention. I stumbled around the corner from the living room to the foyer. Actually, it was less of a foyer and more of a small room with a closet and a welcome mat. I checked the peephole, but all it showed was a hand repeatedly slamming against it.

"Wait a sec!" I sounded "Attends une seconde!" I went with both languages just in case. The knocking didn't pause. Instead, it seemed to pick up. I slid back the lock. Before I had time to even move my hand to the knob, something shoved the door open. I fell backwards as the door hit me in the chest with such force I could have sworn I heard a rib crack. A small shape darted into the house, past me into the living room. I climbed up from the floor to follow the little shape.

It had found the kitchen. Correction: It had found the fridge and the pantry. Food containers lay scattered open on the floor. The smell of anchovies was everywhere. I had to resist the urge to gag. The thing, which was looking surprisingly human, was on the ground, seated in the middle of the mess, with a pizza slice in each hand. Half the containers were empty.

"Que se passe-t-il?" What the hell? The thing looked up, and I started. Dirt streaked his face. It was definitely a boy, no older than twelve. His eyes were puffy and red. A large and rather obvious scar cut across his left cheek. His hands were grimy and mudstained. Fingernails on both hands had been bitten down past the nail bed, and seemed to have bled out. Tattered clothes hung freely on his thin frame. One arm had a weird bend in the middle of the forearm, as if a break hadn't healed properly. But none of that stuck out at me.

The boy who was presently sitting on my floor was Tony. 

He was just like the day he'd disappeared, except more of a ragged feral Peter Pan type. It was just like the dream. Except I was awake. I was sure of it. Absolutely positive. And this wasn't how the dream went. Tony never made it to the fridge in the dream, and yet here he was, eating his favorite pizza by the box.

He finished the last slice. A small part of my mind had the sense to wonder how he ate all my leftovers. There were a half dozen pizzas in there at least, and he'd downed them in maybe a minute. He licked his fingers, before standing.

"Cameron, we need to run. Nous avons besoin de courir." His gaze flitted around the room. "Nous avons besoin de courir. Now." He switched between the two languages with ease, but just kept saying the same thing. "She's coming, Cameron. She's coming. Elle viendra. She's almost here. Elle viendra." I tried to say something, but my mouth just kept opening and closing, like a fish. "She's coming fast, Cameron."

"Who?" I managed to get the one word out. "Who?"

Tony's gaze settled on me as if he had just realized I was there. "She's coming Cameron. The Dark One. Celui qui est sombre. She's coming here. She's coming. She knows you're here. She knows where you are, where you were, where you are going tomorrow. She has always known. She will always know."

Tony started pacing around the empty food containers on the floor. I stared at him, shocked. He was looking around nervously again, eyes scanning everything. He looked at me again, and stopped his search. I wanted to say something, anything, but my mouth wouldn't work. Instead, a voice sounded behind me.

"Well, well. Tony dearest, you should never have come back here." The voice was quiet, smooth, perfect, and cold enough to freeze the desert. I got chills along my back, but couldn't make myself turn around. Tony was still, the first time since he'd come in my door. A slight whimper escaped his lips every second or so. "I told you, Tony. She would be safe if you stayed away. I thought Eddy and Reese should have taught you that. This was my last resort. I never wanted her to come into this." It sounded somewhat feminine.

Tony didn't move. Neither did I. Instead, the source of the voice did. She drifted in between Tony and I, not looking at me. Her gaze stayed on Tony. She was a pale figure in my kitchen. Black hair rained down around her in ringlets. She had a white floor-length dress the seemed to begin at her shoulders, as if it was part of her. Her feet were hidden beneath its folds, but were as quiet as a cat. Her voice seemed to match her looks.

"Dear Tony, stay right there for a second, will you?" Tony didn't respond to the being. He stared straight through her as she turned to me. Until that point, I had kind of thought she was pretty, in a terrifying way. When I actually saw her face, I tried to scream. Her eyes were solid black nothings that seemed to draw in all the surrounding light. Her lips were thin and pale. A small button nose seemed out of place, though it was definitely there. Though none of her features seemed to match, it was the scars that scared me.

They were red and big and oozing. All across her face. Little diagonal strikes, longer curved ones from ear to ear, across her entire face. Pus and blood seemed to come from every pore, every scar. It fell down her otherwise pretty features, along her dress, leaving streaks of red and grey. 

She smiled, and twisted the scary face into something absolutely terrifying. Her smile contained no humor or lightheartedness. There was a terrifying joy in there, as if she relished in torturing people. Or fluffy little bunnies. I doubted she cared which.

"Now Cameron. Why don't you come here?" She didn't shout, or even raise her voice, and yet I needed to do exactly what she asked me to. It was my only purpose in life. She took something from one of my kitchen drawers. "Cameron, dearest. Place your arm on the counter. It would make me so happy if you could just do that." Without hesitating, I did as she'd said. I could have sworn Tony whimpered again, as if he was crying. "And just leave it there, sweetheart. No matter what happens, just leave your arm there. And Tony? Come here now."

Tony started making his way to the lady. He seemed determined to stay exactly where he was, but his legs forced him to her side. She dropped the smile when he got there. Tears fell down my brothers cheeks.

"Sweety, Tony? Cameron has made me upset. I need you to kill her." Tony sobbed once, twice, and then she cut him off. "She deserves it Tony. She never found you. She never saved you. She gave up on you years ago Tony. She had the chance to save you, but she didn't take it. Why should you save her?" The woman gave Tony a small kitchen knife. He held it tightly. "Please, Tony. Do it quickly. Just a little slit on the wrist. She won't feel a thing, and it will punish her. She deserves it remember?" Tony nodded. "She could have saved you." Tony laid the knife on my wrist. 

The cold metal stung a little. Tony pushed the blade into my skin, puncturing down to the vein. Blood spurted up as he pulled it along the little blue vein just visible in my arm. The pain was immediate. I tried to scream, but I found I had no air. The little knife was covered in my blood, making it slick. Tony dropped it when he'd finished the cut. Blood spilled from the wound with each heartbeat. The lady smiled.

"Take the little knife Cameron," she whispered. "Take the knife. Hold it close to your little dying heart, hold it close to you as if it was your life. Hold it close, Cameron." 

I wanted to say something. Instead I blinked. Once. Twice. Thrice. And then I couldn't open my eyes any more.

~~~

The Whitehorse Daily

Cameron Desjardin was a wonderful young woman. She was kind to everyone, was liked by everyone, and will be missed by everyone. Her suicide is unexpected. She will be- (Continued on page 16, Obituaries)

Word count is 3013. Prompt is bolded. Thank you so much for such a fun contest, Nyhterides!!!