Skaydal - Demon's Forever

Dead Things Whisper

✦Dolly✦

I couldn’t move. The tomato greenhouse stretched in front of me, hot and still beneath the morning sun. Yesterday, the plants had been green. Small, but strong. Their stems had reached upward, their leaves open and bright, their roots tucked into soil my mother had tested and cared for as if it was something precious.

Now everything was black.

Not just one plant. Not just a few leaves. The entire row had collapsed inward, with stems twisted, leaves curled tight, and the soil beneath them dark enough to look burned. But it didn’t smell burned. It smelled damp. Old. Wrong.

“Dolly?” Mila’s voice came from behind me, but I couldn’t turn around. I stared at my hands instead. They looked normal. Pale fingers. Dirt under one nail. A tiny scratch near my thumb from yesterday’s seed tray. Normal hands. But hands that had killed a basil seedling. Mila stepped beside me and stopped dead. “No,” that one word broke something. I backed away from the greenhouse bed.

“I didn’t touch them,” I whispered.

“I know,”

“I didn’t, Mila,” I repeated, and she grabbed my arm to stop me from moving away.

“I know, Dolly,” the two of us stood frozen in place as we stared at the plants. I don’t know how much time passed. A minute. Five. Ten. But when my mother joined us, she looked bewildered for a moment. That is, until she saw what we were staring at. I glanced at her, and I saw her face change. Shock. Anger. Then, complete and utter confusion. My mother didn’t fall apart easily. So when she turned into manager mode, I wasn’t surprised.

“Everyone out,” she ordered. One of the workers nearby looked confused.

“Amani?”

“Out. Now. Close the greenhouse until I say otherwise,” the workers jumped into action and obeyed quickly. Mila tugged on my arm to pull me back as my mother crouched beside the first dead row. She didn’t touch the plants with her bare hands. She used a small tool from her belt and scraped black soil into a sample container.

“Mom,” I whispered. She looked over her shoulder at me.

“Did you touch anything?” she asked. I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out.

“She didn’t,” Mila answered, but my mother’s gaze remained on me.

“I’m asking Dolly,” I hated that she was even asking me.

“No,” I said. “I came out of the shed and found it like this,” my mother’s face softened, but only for a second.

“Ok,” she said, and that one word should have helped. But it didn’t. Because I could see her thinking: soil, water, fertilizer, magic, darkness, me. “Call Gavin,” my mother told Mila. “Tell him I need him here. I want the irrigation line shut off to this greenhouse. No water moves through this section until we test it,” Mila nodded and pulled out her phone. My mother stood and pointed at me. “You. Outside,”

“I didn’t do anything,” I hurriedly argued defensively.

“I didn’t say you did,”

“But you want me outside,”

“I want everyone outside,” she pointed out, and I knew it was true. Still, it hurt. I turned and walked out before she could see it on my face. The air outside felt cooler, but my chest stayed tight. I moved away from the greenhouse, past the stacked compost and seed crates, until I reached the side of the storage shed. Only then did I breathe. Or I tried to. A shadow shifted near the yard. I looked up and saw Riven standing a few meters away, near the water tanks. He had one hand resting against a crate, the other hanging loosely at his side. The black ring on his finger caught the light for a second. Of course, he was there. Of course, he was watching. Anger moved through me so fast it almost felt better than fear. I crossed the yard toward him.

“Did you do this?”

“Do what?”

“The plants,” I snapped. His gaze moved toward the closed greenhouse.

“No,”

“You expect me to believe that?” I shot out, as the anger twisted and curled inside of me.

“I expect you to decide for yourself,” he said, his voice calm and void of emotion. I stared at him for a long moment before I responded.

“That sounds like something guilty people say,”

“No. Guilty people usually say too much,” I took a step closer and then stopped. Suddenly, the strange silence returned, and it was as if the darkness inside of me had settled. As if it wanted to listen. To what? To Riven? I hated all of this. I didn’t understand it. But I shook my head, determined to blame him for all of this. After all, this all started when he arrived.

“You were here,” I said.

“So were you,”

“Careful,” I spat out as I forced myself to take a step back. His gaze dropped briefly to my hands.

“Do they always blame you first?” he asked, and I scoffed.

“No one blamed me,”

“Maybe. At least not out loud,” my cheeks heated at his words.

“You don’t know anything about me,”

“No,” he said softly. “But I know what it looks like when people are afraid of what they love,” I wanted to snap at him. I wanted to tell him he was wrong. That Skaydal loved me, that my parents loved me, that my friends loved me. But the words got stuck in my throat. It was then that I realized he hadn’t said that they didn’t love me. He had said that they are afraid. I turned away because I didn’t want him to see how much that hurt.

“Stay away from me,” I muttered.

“You already said that,” he said, and I was tempted to say something more. But I didn’t. Instead, I walked away. I hated him. I hated the way he sounded calm while I felt like my bones had been filled with bees. I hated the way his eyes stayed on me, not soft, not cruel, but sharp enough to make me feel seen in places I didn’t want anyone looking. Mila called my name from the greenhouse door. I went back because running from Riven felt too much like losing. My mother had placed markers around the dead rows. Gavin had arrived faster than seemed possible and was already kneeling near the irrigation line, muttering about pressure, filters, and who had last checked the valves. I tried to help. I really did. But my eyes kept going to the black soil. When no one was watching, I crouched beside the edge of the first row. I didn’t touch the plant. Only the very edge of one dead leaf. The second my finger brushed it, everything went quiet.

The yard. The voices. The wind. Even the darkness inside me.

For one impossible moment, I felt something beneath the soil. Not dead. Not empty. Just waiting. I snatched my hand back and stumbled to my feet. The soil didn’t feel dead.

It felt awake.

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