Only dark edges, p.1
Only Dark Edges, page 1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
This Story Contains
ACT I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
ACT II
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
ACT III
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Acknowledgements
About the Author
ONLY
DARK
EDGES
Katie L. Carroll
Copyright © 2023 Katie L. Carroll
All rights reserved.
Published by Shimmer Publications, LLC
Cover images used with permission from the following Pixabay users:
darksouls1, Anemone123, dimitrisvetsikas1969, anaterate
Paperback ISBN: 9781958575031
eBook ISBN: 9781958575048
Visit the author’s website at www.katielcarroll.com
To the ones we’ve lost—
And the ones left behind
Who are there for each other
THIS STORY CONTAINS
themes of grief from loss of a sibling and
depression, including suicidal ideation and
attempted suicide. It also depicts
underage alcohol and drug use.
Please read with care.
Act I
“And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
Act II, Scene II
Chapter 1
Grief is a storm that churns deep inside me. Others can’t see it, but they can sense it—even those who don’t know I’ve lost someone.
Today everyone here knows I’ve lost Gemma. My sister. My best friend. My twin-not-twin.
I stand facing the long line of mourners, my mom and stepdad next to me and on the other side of them, Gemma’s casket. A small comfort that my parents decided on a closed casket because the idea of Gemma’s lifeless face and body laid bare for all to see makes me want to throw up.
While everyone here knows of our loss, none of them see what it’s doing to me.
They can’t see the winds that wrap around my heart, swirling tighter and tighter until it strains to beat against the gale. They can’t touch the rain that fills my lungs, slowly drowning me in my own feelings.
But if they looked into my eyes long enough, they might get a flash of lightning. The flickering light sparking something ugly inside of me.
If they listened closely, they might hear the rumble of thunder deep in my churning belly. The resonant sound threatening to burst and incapacitate all around me.
If they looked.
The problem is that no one wants to stare directly into the storm of grief. Their gazes brush across the surface, sense the turmoil inside, and recoil. A protective instinct that allows them to think it will prevent them from the same fate of suffering. Or keep them from remembering their own losses.
I don’t blame them. I wish I could do the same. Offer up my condolences and move on with my day, my life, pretend like nothing tragic has touched me.
I can’t because I’m trapped from the inside by this storm. Slowly, silently spinning away from reason. Wishing someone would stop and notice I’m drowning.
But drowning doesn’t always look like drowning. The one time I almost drowned for real there were no flailing arms or cries for help. It was a stillness, a glassy-eyed look. It was barely keeping above water, face tilted toward the sky. Surviving but barely.
That’s me now, only the water isn’t surrounding me. It’s inside me.
The ones who are supposed to notice, who should be there to throw me a life preserver, are stuck in the storm of their own grief.
So it’s me and this storm. And I don’t know how long I can contain it before it spins out of me and rips a path of destruction through my life, destroying anyone who dares to get close.
Chapter 2
I have a survived a whole summer without Gemma.
Being not quite a full year apart, we called each other twin-not-twin. Other people called us Irish twins because for seven days every year—from my birthday on March 15 until hers on March 22—we were the same age.
Though Gemma would always argue that having just turned an age and almost the next age are not the same. But for one glorious week, my smile was always a little bit bigger because my sister and I had something special in common: our age.
My next birthday will be the last time I’m the same age as Gemma. And once the birthday after that comes, I’ll forever be older than my big sister.
These are the thoughts that keep me up at night. Tonight, on the eve of my junior year and what would have been Gemma’s senior year, I lie awake and miss my sister so badly, it’s a physical pain deep in my chest.
It’s no surprise the first word I ever spoke was “sister.” I worshiped Gemma from the moment I met her.
I was only hours old when she came to the hospital to first see me. She spent most of her time playing on the floor with a giant stuffed bear that was her big-sister present. She went to hug the bear, missed, and bonked her head on the floor. Gemma cried so hard, two nurses came rushing in. My mom put me in the little newborn bed and scooped up Gemma. I was also screaming by then, so one of the nurses tried to comfort me.
Nothing worked to soothe either of us, and eventually we ended up on the bed next to each other. The story goes that I instantly stopped crying and put a chubby little hand on Gemma’s face. She quieted too and then started singing, not actual words because she was too young for that, but in the way that an almost one-year-old does.
My mom said I stared up at her with wide eyes, and I’ve barely looked away since.
And now I haven’t seen her face for two whole months. Tonight, along with the pain in my chest, the storm inside me is restless but manageable, less a hurricane and more a rumbling summer storm.
It’s not my parents who have tempered the storm; they’re still figuring out how to tread water themselves. Or my best friend, Jasmine, who has offered me little solace this summer. She looked up to Gemma almost as much as I did, and every time we’ve hung out, it’s been the saddest pity party ever.
It’s certainly not Camille. She still goes by the title of Gemma’s best friend, but that traitorous bitch doesn’t deserve it.
Gemma, Jasmine, Camille and I used to be an inseparable foursome. We were branches of the same tree, but the gale force winds of Gemma’s death have ripped us apart and tossed around the pieces until we’re little more than matchsticks littering the ground.
No, it’s my girlfriend, Emberly, that has kept the storm at bay. She briefly met my sister, who died right after Emberly moved to town. Somehow, it’s easier to be around someone who never really knew Gemma than to be with the people who knew her best.
Emberly is untethered as well, but in a totally different way. I’m caught up in an awful cycle of grief, while she’s trying to adjust to changing schools for her senior year.
She’s a swimmer, like Gemma was, and will be on the varsity team with Jasmine and Camille. Not me. It was a running joke among the inseparable foursome that I was the only one who wasn’t a gifted swimmer. The best I can do is dog paddle across the pool. Figures that I’d fall for a swimmer.
I roll over in my bed and face the wall so I don’t have to stare at the empty bed across our room.
My room…alone.
I talk to Gemma at night when I can’t sleep, which is most nights.
“Gemma, can you hear me?” I whisper to the wall. It’s quiet enough that if someone pressed their ear to the door, they wouldn’t hear it, but hopefully loud enough that Gemma’s soul—or whatever is left of her—can sense it.
I’ve asked this question every night since she died. Before, I wasn’t sure if I believed in an afterlife, but I do now. My last shred of sanity would evaporate faster than a puddle in the height of summer if I believed otherwise. A universe where Gemma doesn’t exist in some form is one I can’t fathom.
I sense her presence, too. She was there in the purple phlox that bloomed in the back garden the day she died. She was there on the beach when Camille, Jasmine, and I went body-surfing and I almost drowned. That was before I found out about Camille’s betrayal.
Gemma’s body has gone to ashes, tucked inside a sturdy little black box because our mother can’t bear to pick out a real urn or scatter her ashes, but something of her still exists. That’s who I whisper to at night…and hope for an answer. Or a sense of peace. Or maybe some closure.
Tonight I squeeze my eyes shut, deciding which of the details of my day to share with Gemma.
“School starts tomorrow.” I swallow through a throat thick as honey straight from the comb. “It was supposed to be our year. We were going to dominate the school.”
We had so many plans for the year where we’d both be upperclassman. It was going to be the best year ever.
I sigh and roll back to face her empty bed, easy enough to see with the streetlight creeping in behind the curtain on her side of the room because I didn’t bother to close the blinds.
Gemma’s bed is covered in the yellow and white afghan our grandmother made. It has the same herring bone pattern as my green and white one. I’ve spent enough time in her bed this summer to know my sister’s blanket still smells like her, honeysuckle body lotion with a hint of chlorine. One of the downfalls of being a swimmer is the lingering scent of pool water that seems to cling to the skin no matter how many times you’ve showered.
“Gemma, why aren’t you here?” My melancholy turns to anger. “Can you even fucking hear me?”
She used to always give me big eyes when I would drop f-bombs. Not that she was against swearing, but she said she couldn’t get used to them coming out of her little sister’s mouth. I would be quick to remind her that I’m barely her little sister.
I miss that look, and arguing with her. I miss so much.
The storm of grief stirs my insides, makes my stomach ache and sets my teeth on edge. It’s exhausting holding it back, but sleep still does not come.
As I wait for an answer that also never comes, light glints off the jar of sea glass on Gemma’s nightstand. We collected each and every one of those pieces ourselves, our most prized one a small red piece in the shape of a lopsided heart. I can’t tell what the source of the reflected light is, and it almost looks like the light is coming from the jar itself.
A breeze rustles the curtains near her bed, though I’m sure that window is closed. My stepdad works in heating and cooling and one of the few things my parents have splurged on is central air. The mysterious breeze blows over to my side of the room, bringing with it the fetid stench of low tide. I choke back a gag as my eyes water, the numbers on my bedside clock blurring as they click to midnight.
The gag turns into a gasp as a figure forms on my sister’s bed and whispers, “Delta.”
Tonight I may just get the answers to all the questions I’ve been asking.
Chapter 3
“Gemma?” I sit up, clutch the afghan to my chest.
“Yesss.” The word hisses on the rancid breeze.
The curtain stops rustling and the jar of sea glass is shrouded in darkness once more. The ghostly figure of my sister sits on her bed. I must be dreaming. I must have dozed off without realizing it and now I’m asleep and dreaming of Gemma.
It’s the worst kind of dream. I’ve been having them a lot. Where Gemma is here and alive, but I can feel something is wrong, a nagging sensation that tells me this isn’t possible. Yet I can never get beyond the feeling to identify the problem. It’s like my brain can’t allow me to have this break from grief without tapping on my heart to remind me that she’s not supposed to be here, but it can only do so in the vaguest of ways.
It’s the worst when I wake. The crush of remembering that my sister is not here and never will be again. And I wasn’t even able to enjoy having her there in the dream. The grief storm never lets me rest, not even in sleep.
But tonight I’m too acutely aware of everything to believe this is a dream. I pinch my forearm and squeak when it hurts, confirming I’m awake.
“Delta,” the voice comes again. It’s breathy but distinctly Gemma. With it comes the stench of decay.
How many times in our 16 years of sharing this room have I heard her whisper my name? How many times in these last two months have I longed to hear it again? And here it is now, but instead of filling me with hope and warmth, I’m left with a cold pit of dread in my stomach.
“Gemma,” I say again, like it’s the only word I know.
“I’m here.” Her body blinks off and then on again in a slightly different position, posed on her side, head propped up on a hand. A position I’ve seen her in a million times. The figure is ethereal—I can see the curtains and window through it—but it’s there.
“Gemma!” I’m a playlist of one word stuck on repeat…a playlist of madness if I really believe that I’m seeing her ghost. It must be the lack of sleep and my stormy stomach catching up with me. It’s driven me to full-on hallucinations. “How are you…? What…?”
My thoughts stutter along with my words. Images of Gemma’s body in a casket, looking like her but also not, flit through my mind. Her hands holding a single rose. Her eyes closed as if in sleep, but me knowing they will never open again. Images that aren’t real because her funeral was closed casket.
It has me questioning what is real and what isn’t.
My feet find the carpet of their own accord and take me toward her. Her tenuous form sits up as I approach. I join her on the bed but not too close, keeping to the very end. While there’s not a wrinkle below her, my weight pushes down into the mattress and messes up the blanket. I long to brush her hair and have her brush mine as we used to do on this very spot. Tentatively, I reach out, but she shies away, and I halt in midair. Would there be anything for me to feel if I tried to touch her?
“Pleassse, don’t,” she says. “Remember my touch as it was when I was warm.”
The stench emanating from this ghost is foul. I’m reminded of digging for clams, the squishy wet sand in between my fingers and the funk of low tide in my nose. I recoil slightly and drop my hand to the afghan. It makes a light thud that’s so much more solid than Gemma’s figure.
“I don’t have much time,” she whispers. “I’m ssstuck in a terrible, dark place.” Her s’s hiss in an ominous way that sound nothing like the Gemma I knew. “Sssomehow I broke free, but I feel its pull. It won’t let me ssstay long.” Her ghostly head darts back and forth as if looking for lurking evil.
Hot tears prick the corner of my eyes. When Gemma died, I went from doubting if there was an afterlife to imaging a beautiful one for my sister. This revelation of a dark place for her soul, the fear so clear on her face, is unbearable. I don’t understand how she ended up anywhere other than paradise. She was always the kinder, more thoughtful one of the two of us, the angel on my devil shoulder.
I remind myself that I can’t trust this. It may not be a dream, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t in my head.
She moves as if to stand. Despite my doubt in her realness, I reach out. “Wait!”
She shines bright for a moment and fades back to translucent. “Oh,” she breathes. “Your love. That’s what’s allowing me to be here.” Her expression is wary, closed in a way it never was in life. She leans in, her festering scent palpable. “It wasn’t a missstake.”
My brow wrinkles. “What wasn’t a mistake?”
“My death.”
Gemma’s official cause of death was interstitial pneumonia of unknown causes, which is a bullshit way to say her lungs failed but the doctors couldn’t figure out why. Neither could the Centers for Disease Control when her case was sent there, and that’s basically all they do. She was classified as a medical mystery.
But I suddenly recall a conversation I overheard between the pathologist who performed my sister’s autopsy and one of her colleagues. She said Gemma’s lungs were so full of lesions, it looked like Gemma was poisoned. Is it possible that was the true cause of her death?
“No!” I clasp my hand over my mouth as what little I ate for dinner threatens to come back up.
It’s not possible. No one wanted Gemma dead. Everyone loved her. At least they acted that way when she was alive. But maybe not everyone felt that way. If Camille—the person who claimed to be her best friend—loved her, then why did she start hooking up with Gemma’s boyfriend, Logan, two weeks after her death?
But poison? Not possible. Because of the mysterious circumstances of Gemma’s brief illness and death, a very thorough autopsy was performed. The toxicology reports said nothing about poison. My parents hired lawyers we couldn’t afford to consider Gemma’s case. There was no negligence or any reason to believe it wasn’t a rare and tragic death of mysterious causes, not foul play.
