CHAPTER EIGHT:
PROMISE ME
( trigger warning: mentions of violence, death, blood and gore )

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MAGGIE HAD ALWAYS HATED the colour of fire. She wasn't entirely sure why but the dark orange hue always seemed to set her on edge, twisting at her stomach until the organ was feeling inside out. Out of place. Fire was uncontrollable, a whole new level of discord and destruction. Where Maggie Sullivan was like the ocean, like the soft blue hue of a pale sky that did wonders for soothing the soul, fire was the total opposite; it burned relentlessly at her skin and her hair until she was nothing more than ash and bone. She refused to ever go near the fire, having no desire to burn, but much like the unknown that came with the flames, Maggie had no control over the contact.

The hair of her mother's monster was a bright shade of white blonde but she remembered the flash of red in the window that night, almost as if the fire was guarding the crime scene, herding the killer and victim together so there was no chance of her survival. It blurred with the sea of red before her now, a sign that she needed to remember.

"Maggie," her mother's frantic voice reached her ears as she was spun around. Maggie hadn't known it then but Delilah Sullivan had spied the trio of people standing outside her house and had known immediately that nothing good would come out of it. She needed to protect her daughter, even if it was the last thing she did. "Maggie, honey, you need to listen to me, okay?"

"What is it, mummy?" came six-year-old Maggie's high-pitched voice from seventeen-year-old Maggie's right hand side. The older version of her looked down, eyes sorrowful as she took in the tiny child with choppy pigtails wearing her barbie-themed pyjamas. Her last shred of innocence captured in the calm before the storm.

"You need to go upstairs and hide for me," Delilah ordered as she kneeled in front of her. "Don't come downstairs until I call for you, alright? Promise me, Maggie."

"I promise," little Maggie giggled like it was one big game. Then, with a kiss on her mother's cheek, she was bounding up the stairs to hide under her bed. She wouldn't stay there but Delilah Sullivan would be dead by the time her youngest came back downstairs. She had no control over what Maggie would see.

The memory seemed to blur around the seventeen-year-old version of her as time slowed down. Her heart was racing a mile a minute, stomach heaving with the urge to vomit as she heard the faint muffle of her mother's fading cries and her younger self's terrified whimpers. She fought through it, though, eyes locked on the red blur in sheer determination.

What are you thinking, Velma Dinkley?

She rushed across the room, legs weighing her down and eyes squinting through the fogged glass to memorise the face of the flames. It was a woman, her features thin and pointed. Her smile could only be described as wicked. Just like Maggie suspected, she had red eyes, as did the man beside her. His skin was dark, the bloody hue standing out against his angular jaw and dreadlocks. Maggie gasped at the sight, stumbling back from the window to fall onto the floor. Inches away from her face was her mother's dead one, eyes staring unseeing into her own. Maggie hurled and tucked herself against the lounge, fists pressed to her eyes as she begged the scene to change.

Then, with one last whisper from her mother's corpse, it did.

"You and I both know the truth, darling girl," a ghost of a touch on her knee sent her careening even further away. "So go out there and find it."

The words echoed over and over as the damp carpet changed beneath the skin of her bare legs. Instead of cotton, there were leaves and wet soil. Maggie let out a sob, slowly lowering her hands and taking in the sight before her.

"No," she whispered and shook her head fiercely. "No, Maggie, wake up, please."

Carson had blood spilling from the bite on his neck as he sat up slowly, the empty veins evident beneath his transparent skin. It was clear as day he was dead; just like he was then, just like he always would be. Maggie wished she was able to forget what he looked like, what he sounded like, forget him. She wanted to wake up one day and fail to recognise the boy taking up most of her pictures. Her heart would be free again; but alas, Carson Burns was never going to let her go. Instead, he reached for her with bloody fingertips, the trio of monsters creeping out of the shadows to stand behind him and laugh, their mouths open wide to reveal red-stained teeth.

"Find them, Maggie," he wheezed out, voice taken by the slice of his vocal chords. But like with Delilah, his words etched themselves onto her brain and she couldn't resist committing them to memory. "Find them and make them pay for what they did to me."

Time seemed to slow down again. Carson's fingertips hovered in front of her face for a moment before falling limp into his lap, his eyes rolling into the back of his head as the blonde-haired man stepped forward to drag him out of sight.

"No," she screamed. The trio laughed again. "No, Carson, don't leave me here."

But he couldn't hear her. Nobody could. Maggie frantically rose to her feet, twigs digging into the smooth skin of her heels as she took off running in terror. She had to find someone, anyone, who would help her search for them and make them pay.

For a moment, Maggie completely lost touch with reality. Then, with a screech and a sickening crack of bones breaking, the youngest Sullivan was being crash-tackled by two strong marble bodies.

"Found you," the fire whispered into her ear.

The flames licked her skin tauntingly. The forest burned, Maggie at its heart. Alone.

"Carson!" she woke with a terrified cry.

It was night time. The sky was a pale purple lit up by the moon's radiant shine. Her alarm clock read 3:37am, meaning only four hours had gone by since she went to bed, but Maggie found that she was wide awake despite the lack of proper rest. The moment with Paul on the beach earlier that night, the way he made her feel, was long gone as she hunched forward into a ball, hands shaking as she intertwined them over her face. She whispered the same words into her palms over and over again, as if they had the power to change anything.

"Please come back, Carson, please."

Truth be told, Maggie was scared. She hated it, hated how she jumped at shadows and read too much into stupid things like the meaning of colours. She hated how she couldn't go a full night of consistent sleep without waking up from a nightmare or a twist of uneasiness in her gut. It made her feel weak, no matter what her counsellor said. They claimed she was strong but she certainly didn't feel like she was. Maggie was a seventeen-year-old girl in her second last year of high school and there she was crying over a bad dream and hiding from the monsters in her closet. That wasn't strong. Her mother and Carson wanted her to be bold, to discover the truth and avenge them, but how was she going to do that when she jumped at the little things like tree branches?

Everything spun around her head in an endless loop as she focused on her breathing, trying in vain to calm her erratic heartbeat and thoughts.

Why did it have to be like this?

By the time her alarm clock read 4am, Maggie couldn't take it anymore. Every creak of the walls, every gust of wind shaking the window pane had her convinced the fire was back to get her. Every snore of Scooby's at the end of her bed, every drip of the broken bathroom tap across the hallway had her breathing becoming erratic again. So eventually, she pushed back her blankets and sprinted out of the room with shadows chasing her heels.

She slowed down past the rooms inhabited by her aunt, uncle and sisters, not wanting to wake them in fear of how they would look at her, but she knew Zeke would never judge (even if the others didn't do it intentionally.) She hesitated by his bedroom door, feeling completely and utterly foolish, but a particularly loud snore from Dakota's room had her whimpering and pushing the door open.

Zeke's room was lit up by the bedside lamp he'd accidentally left on when studying. Maggie caught a glimpse of his school work scattered across his desk as she inched over to where he lay on his stomach on the bed, snoring into his light blue pillow case with a frown twisting up his face. She reached out, tapping his shoulder so gently her skin barely grazed his shirt. The touch did nothing to bother him as he rolled onto his side with closed eyes, but they were quick to open when she tapped again, this time harder and more frantic as she heard a dog barking from a house or two down the road.

"Zeke," she whispered. He groaned and ran a hand over his face. "Zeke, are you awake?"

"What do you think?" he muttered back with a scoff, though there was no bite to his words as he sat up slightly to smile sleepily at her. Just as quickly as the expression came, it disappeared. He took one glimpse at her stricken face then sighed. "Oh, Mags."

"Can I sleep here?" she asked him sheepishly. "Please?"

"Of course," he nodded, reaching for the spare pillow and throwing it to the opposite end of the bed.

She took it gratefully, slipping under the cover so that her sock-clad feet were in line with his headboard. Once Zeke saw that she was comfortably hidden under his blankets, he reached over to turn off the lamp only to be stopped by Maggie's timid voice.

"Can you leave it on? If that's okay?"

"Sure," he frowned cautiously, then he sunk back into his pillows and sighed.

They were quiet for a long time. Maggie stared up at the roof with her brother by her side, safe and sound. But even with the steady rhythm of her heart, she couldn't help feeling absolutely horrible. She didn't know if he was sleeping but she had to say it anyway. The words just wouldn't stop spinning around in her head until she did.

"I'm sorry," she whispered tearfully. "I'm really sorry."

For a moment, there was heavy silence. Then, Zeke was shifting slightly and sighing again. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

Eventually, he fell back asleep but Maggie stayed wide awake, just listening to the sounds of his breathing until the sun rose and everything was okay once more. Even if it didn't feel okay in the slightest.