Available Darkness Season 2

didn’t accidentally start fires. Abigail pressed down on the red tab and started to run her thumb over the metal wheel again, bracing for death.
    Abigail wondered if she’d die quickly. She hoped so. Life was too damned hard — all she wanted was for the pain to finally end.
    Suddenly, Abigail heard a voice in her head that wasn’t hers, or any one of the many memories rattling inside her.
    “Abigail?”
    It was an unfamiliar girl’s voice she couldn’t remember ever hearing before.
    She opened her eyes and moved her head to search the room, but saw nobody.
    “Hello?” Abigail called out.
    “Don’t do it,” the girl’s voice said.
    Abigail realized the voice was in her head, like John’s used to sometimes come when he was communicating with her telepathically.
    Who is this? Abigail thought-asked.
    “My name is Talani. I’m a vampire, like you.”
    How do you know I’m a vampire? Abigail thought, suddenly afraid. Someone out there knew her secret. Someone she didn’t know. How could Talani speak to her? Was she close by, Abigail wondered, knowing as she did that Talani could read her thoughts and fears.
    Leave me alone!
    “Relax, Abigail. I’m just like you. I’m only 15. You and I are a lot alike.”
    You don’t know me, Abigail thought, feeling violated, wanting to run off and be left alone. She tried to shut the girl from her mind, but didn’t know how. She never had to defend herself against someone in her thoughts. Before now, it had only been John who could communicate with her like this.
    Talani continued, “I just wanted to tell you, you’re not alone. There are others out here like us. Good people, forced to hide from the rest of the world because of what we are. I don’t want to intrude on your life. I don’t want anything, really. I wasn’t even going to bother you, but I felt your pain. I couldn’t sit and do nothing, especially if I could make a difference. I just want you to know, you’re not alone. Don’t kill yourself, Abigail. I have to go now. I can only do this for a little bit at a time. But please … ”
    And then she was gone. Though Abigail hadn’t felt the presence enter her mind, she felt it leave — like a cold draft from an open window, except the window was in her brain.
    Talani? Abigail asked, testing to see if the girl was really gone from her mind.
    No response. As she lay in the gas-drenched bed, fumes stirring her nausea, she thought of Talani’s words, “You’re not alone.” Abigail wondered how many of her kind there were. She’d known there were some, and that many were bad, monsters feeding off the good. But what if there were others like her, like John, good people cursed through no fault of their own?
    She thought of John and wondered if he would miss her, or be happy to be free of the burden of looking out for a perpetual child? Abigail then thought of her new friend Katya.
    Will Katya miss me?
    Katya had been so concerned when she was sick at the restaurant. She actually cared. And though he wasn’t good at showing it, Larry cared, too. And of course, there was John. She thought back to the last time she’d seen him, and how he had hugged her as though he’d never let her go.
    If I kill myself, I’ll hurt them all.
    They don’t deserve that.
    Abigail’s tears were in full flow. She closed her eyes, trying not to think of the hurt she’d visit on those she loved most if she were to murder herself. She didn’t want to hurt anyone else. Taking her life was selfish. Yes, she’d be silencing her torment, but didn’t everyone have to deal with some amount of personal pain? Killing herself would add to her friends’ pain, especially John’s.
    Abigail couldn’t bear to cause any more pain.
    There had to be some other way to quiet her anguish, some other way to deal with her victims’ memories. She hadn’t even given John a chance to help her.
    Abigail sat up, looked down at Bobby, and said, “I’m so sorry.”
    She grazed his ashen cheek with her shaking fingertips. The corpse’s skin was hard, like burnt leather. She wanted to say something more, something the boy might be able to hear, but Bobby was gone, and Abigail was whispering to ghosts.
    She rose from the bed and headed downstairs. At the bottom, she managed to get the lighter’s wheel to turn and the flame to spark. Fire immediately engulfed her in a bright, painful blast.
    Abigail screamed, and was about to race out the front door, when she remembered reading long ago