After the sun fell, Will and I took a bus to the hospital. Luckily, Crosswood was a very small town, so it didn't take us long to get there. We rushed inside and to the front desk only to be told that we couldn't see her. Brittany had gone into surgery last night and was recovering. No visitors allowed. Apparently she had been driving drunk and crashed her boyfriends car.
The woman behind the desk insisted that I find a relative to stay with, as my mother wouldn't be released for several days. She didn't seem to understand that I didn't have any other relatives. My father and sister are dead! A line built up behind us and we decided to sit for a moment in the waiting room.
“I don't know what to do. I have nowhere to go.” I held my head in my hands. Everything suddenly came crashing down and my emotions overwhelmed me.
“You could come stay at my house,” Will said, though his words barely registered with me.
“Brittany once said something about an Aunt or a cousin in Drekenhall. Maybe I could stay with them.” I was getting dangerously close to hysterical.
“You don't want to go to Drekenhall.”
I froze at Will's serious tone, touched with fear. His face was hard, his jaw tight.
“Why not?”
He shook his head, the forbidding expression left his face. “Just...trust me.”
“Wait, you have a house?” Thoughts of the odd town of Drekenhall fled and were replaced by this new development. Will had never mentioned a house to me before. He spent a lot of time at my house but not all of his time. He didn't really talk about what he did when he wasn't with me. And I guess, selfishly, I had never wondered.
“Of course. It's not really my house, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“You'll see.”
“Oh.” I suddenly felt so ordinary.
“Be right back.” He went back to the front desk and spoke to the woman.
After a few minutes he walked back, smiling. “You're coming with me.” He took my hand and we left the hospital. As we walked down the street, I asked the question that was burning in my mind.
“How did you convince the nurse to let me leave with you?”
His face was smug.
“You glamoured her, didn't you?” I was smiling now, too.
“So what if I did?”
“No complaints here. I just didn't know you could do that.”
“There's a lot you don't know about me.”
I didn't have an answer for that and I wasn't sure if he was right or wrong.
“So...how are we getting there?”
“Walking, how else?”
“I don't know, can't you turn into a bat?”
“Haha,” he said, looking back and grinning wryly at me. “It won't take long, I live close by.”
It took us a few minutes of walking to get there. When we arrived, I realized what he meant by “not his house.” It wasn't anyone's house.
The property in question was run-down and abandoned. I imagined it had once been a beautiful red brick house, perhaps from the early 1900's. Now it looked as if someone had taken a wrecking ball to it, then stopped halfway through.
I was thinking that it looked strangely familiar when I remembered. It was the house that had shielded me from the rain and then...creeped me out.
We entered a stairway that went all the way up to the the third floor. As it turned out, the third floor was more or less intact. As I passed I noticed the wall missing in two small bedrooms. Or what had been bedrooms. Will had made his quarters in three rooms (a bedroom, living room and maybe an office?) What had once been separate rooms was now one large room with a few collapsed walls.
It was surprisingly simple. There was sparse furniture: a bed (not a coffin, thank goodness) and a few dressers, a radio sat on a desk by the bed, there was no chair. A mini fridge and a tiny cupboard sat near the bed. I noticed a candy bar sticking out. It was all very bachelor-pad-ish. There was also a closet, the door of which hung open to reveal a lot of black clothing. I noticed thick, black blankets behind each of the dressers. I walked over and pulled back a little of the material. The surprisingly still intact glass revealed the empty street below.
I replaced the curtain and turned to look at the other dressers. Genius, I thought. All of the dressers were in place to hide the windows. The room would have been pitch black were it not for several lamps in the corners of the room.
Will went and sat down in the end of his full bed. He took off his jacket and his boots, tossing them carelessly into a corner. He seemed so sad and tired in that moment, more than I'd ever seen him. I sat down beside him and wrapped my arms around his waist. He kissed my forehead and leaned into me.
“I'm sorry,” Will whispered. The sorrow in his voice surprised me.
“For what?”
“Everything.”
He shrugged out of my arms and stood up. He walked around the room switching off the lamps before returning to the bed. Then he stripped down to his boxers, pulled back the covers and laid down. I took his silence and the darkness to mean it was time for bed. I tossed off my skirt but kept my tank and thigh highs on. I went to the other side of the bed and climbed under the black sheets.
As I laid there staring at the ceiling, I couldn't help but wonder what he meant by 'everything'.