Thirsty for him

When I get to her room, I see my father already standing in front of her with a plate of food. The smile he has on his face makes me afraid of him. “Beast! You are a beast!” She yells as she throws the plate at the wall, which is no longer gray, but now stained brown from the stew our father made for her. Did I know Father could cook? Father walks out of the room still with that crazy smile on his face like a madman, “What’s wrong, Diana?” I ask worriedly as I see her lying there like a sick child. “He killed Hollister!” She says as she begins to cry hysterically.

Did Father kill Hollister? How does she know that for sure? She pointed to the wall where I saw a piece of flesh of a body with a moon. And I figured it out right away. He cut out his mark first and put his flesh in her food. What a sick thing to do, how could our father do this? Did I even know father well? Especially after I discovered this, which scared me the most. What if he is going to kill Varnic! I can’t let my father do this. Why can’t we fight this witch? Why are we fighting each other? I want revenge too, but not like this. Maybe just eat the one who killed Mom.

What am I thinking about anyway? It’s like my mind is also thinking like Nicroat. When I looked at the calendar, I knew why. Tonight is the full moon, this thing would happen sooner than I thought. I have to lock myself away to make sure nothing is going to happen to Varnic.

Hollister, did nothing wrong to our father, but he still is dead, just like my mother is. Okay, he had come to kill Mother, but letting Diana eat him was just disgusting. Just the thought of it made me sick.

I’m trying to figure out what to do and what I can do to control myself to stay here in my room. Moonless nights are meant for our species to sleep all night and take a hunting break. That means I have two more days to figure out what I can do, what we can do. Now that Father has killed Hollister, there is bound to be a war and I don’t know which side Diana will take because she is so angry with Father. When I was still in her room before I went to my room, she said she wanted to leave and die. She is a total mess, now that Hollister is gone, he meant more to her than I ever realized.

I don’t condone his act of killing Hollister and feeding it to her, but if he hadn’t killed Hollister, she would have killed him within two days. I know the feeling, the feeling of eating Varnic is getting stronger by the day. She could never have stopped this, I hope I can.

I hear my cell phone ring and pick up before looking at the caller, “Avery, listen to me, okay? You and your family can’t sleep tonight, okay?” I hear a voice whisper, Varnic’s voice. How did he get my number and what is going on? “Why? A moonless night means we have to sleep. We have no control over it, it controls us.” I had read about this in the book last night before I fell asleep. I’m still learning, and I hope one day I can control this thing inside me. The only thing I can hear from the other side of the phone is Varnic breathing, which makes me want him even more, just his breathing can drive me crazy. “They’re going to hunt you down this night, Avery. If you don’t listen to me, you’re all dead. Your father had to stay away from us, from Hollister. It’s because we were marked that I wanted to call. Finally, I will have my revenge, but not on you.”

That was the last thing he said before the line disconnected, my heart started beating faster in my chest. This is escalating fast, I had told Father to let it go and calm down first, but now we are at war and may even lose a father or sister over these foolish games.

I walk out of my room, still home from school, busy with all my thoughts to come up with a plan to save my father and sister from the pain. When I want to go downstairs, I bump into someone and collapse on the floor. I look up, “Uncle Phill? What are you doing here?” Uncle Phill lives in the neighborhood town and I hadn’t seen him in months, what is he doing here? “Don’t you have school today?” He asks me, whispering after these words, that my father had told him I was gone. This is not like him, this is so weird. He tries to fool me and says something about the light he was supposed to be fixing. Which I know is nonsense because there is nothing with the light. Now I know he is lying because I know what we are, and I know what he is.

It’s definitely something else, something I don't want to know. All do I hate all these secrets between us, “Uncle, you know I know what we are, and I am not stupid, you are here because of the moonless night, admit it. Something is going on, I can feel it.” He looks at me guiltily, looking for an excuse to get out from under our conversation, even though he knows he’s been caught. Now he’s trying to get away with it anyway, which I already suspected.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says as he grabs my hand and helps me upright. When he wants to step away from me, we freeze by a voice echoing down the hallway. For years, my mother had only told me I was crazy, but I could really hear it now. I want to step back where the voice is coming from, but Uncle Phil grabs my hand again, “Stop, Avery, there are things you’re not supposed to know and what you better not know.”

This makes me more intrigued by what they could still be hiding from me, and I will find out. After I escape from Uncle Phill’s grasp. I stand a little further down the hallway with my hand on a doorknob. I want to turn the doorknob, but suddenly Uncle Phil holds the door with his hand on the door locked.

“You can’t go in. Trust me,” he says in a nervous, crackly voice that meant there was something important hidden behind this door. This corridor was the forbidden part of the third floor. Where on the other side of the corridor is my room and as a perfect child I didn’t dare come to this part after all the scary stories my mother had told me as a child, about the bogeyman. Again I let my hand slide over the doorknob, “Stop! If you wake them up, they will be angry.”

I look into his eyes, which look tense, even a little scared. “Who are they?” I asked as he pulled me with him away from the door, pinning me against the wall on the other side of the door. Through which the door still beckoned to me, “The Tormented ones.”