Available Darkness Season 2

room?
    Abigail finished the thought, then realized it wasn’t they who had come into her house — she was in theirs.
    Abigail screamed.
    “What are you doing in here?” the man shouted, reaching into his nightstand.
    The man fished out a pistol and aimed it at Abigail before she recognized the danger.
    “Where am I?” she asked, shaking, looking around the unfamiliar room, and trying to figure out how she’d gone from her bedroom to this one, and how far she was from her house.
    “We don’t have any money!” the man shouted, waving his gun. Anger rolled from his body in waves, tinged with fear in bright orange waves of aura.
    “I don’t want any money,” Abigail said, glancing at their nightstand clock. It said 5:30 a.m. She vaguely remembered going to bed early, not feeling too well, sometime around three.
    How did I get here?
    “I don’t know how I got here, sir,” she cried out to the man, backing away from the bed.
    “Look, Jack, she’s just a kid,” the woman said, leaning closer and looking at Abigail. “Put the gun down for Christ’s sake!”
    “No!” Jack said, “She might not be alone. You call the police.” The man reached out for the nightstand, handed the phone to his wife, then stood, cautiously holding the gun on Abigail. “You come with me, missy.”
    “Where are you going?” his wife asked.
    “To check on Bobby.”
    Bobby?
    As the man flicked the lamp on, her eyes found a framed photo on the dresser — the boy baseball player from her dream. Bobby.
    He’s real?
    “No, please don’t call the police,” Abigail begged. “I swear, I’m here by myself. I don’t even know how I got here. I just want to go home, I think I might’ve been sleepwalking or something, I swear, I don’t know what’s going on.”
    “Call the police!” the man repeated his order.
    “Please,” Abigail said, bursting into tears. “Please don’t call. I’m so scared.” Because she wasn’t sure what else to say, Abigail went with a lie. “I can’t go back home… He’ll hurt me.”
    The woman paused, clutching the phone against her chest.
    The man said, “What?”
    “My Daddy likes to hurts me. Tonight he was going to hurt me again, so I snuck out of the house. Now he’s looking for me. I was trying to find somewhere he wouldn’t find me.”
    Jack looked at her, licking his dry lips and likely trying to decide if he believed her or not. Abigail’s tears must have been convincing. He turned to his wife.
    “Hold on, Marge. She’ll wait here while I go check on Bobby.”
    “Thank you, mister,” Abigail said with her best feigned sincerity. She wasn’t sure what she’d do next, how she’d get out of the house without telling them where she lived, who her daddy was, or something to keep them from calling the police. She realized with dread that telling them she was abused probably wasn’t buying her too much time.
    Jack looked annoyed, like he thought the girl might be messing with him, but he couldn’t be certain and didn’t want to be a jerk to a child whose father was abusing her. He left the bedroom, leaving Abigail and Marge alone. Marge held the phone without dialing, but her eyes, filled with glassy suspicion, were all over Abigail.
    “What’s your name, Honey?”
    “Alice,” Abigail said, thinking of Alice in Wonderland , which was exactly how she felt, trying to piece together where she was and how she woke in a strange house. “What street are we on?”
    “1215 Elm Street,” the woman said.
    Abigail was five doors down from her own house. That’s probably why they looked vaguely familiar. She must’ve seen them on one of the few occasions they might have passed after sundown.
    Jack screamed from down the hall, “Bobby! Oh, God, Bobby!”
    Though Abigail had no memory of feeding on the boy, his father’s grief-stricken scream could only mean one thing.
    Oh, God, what did I do?
    Marge’s eyes lost their concern and started to crackle with fear. She fell back from Abigail and started to dial.
    “No!” Abigail screamed, launching herself onto the bed and swiping at the phone. Her hand locked onto Marge’s wrist and the feeding started, whether Abigail wanted it to or not.
    The woman screamed as her life force flowed from her burning body into Abigail’s, slowly at first, then faster. Abigail’s vision was replaced with a sudden cascade of memories from the woman’s life.

    Seven years old, bullied and running to tell the teachers: “They called me