Dark Lady, Bring My Nightmares!

Harvest Moon: A WIP (Work in Progress)

A WORK IN PROGRESS, OR WIP, IF YOU WILL. IS NOT FINISHED YET, IN OTHER WORDS!!

I’m in love. For the first time in my life I have finally fallen in love. Unfortunately, he is currently dating my friend.

“Elizabeth, pass the salt, please,” Darla smiles sweetly, her softly curled blond hair slipping gently over her shoulder as she leans forward, her cleavage pressed at an advantage. I slide the salt over quickly.

“Three more nights and it will be the Harvest Moon,” Dwayne turns his green eyes to me at last and smiles the white-toothed smile that was the first thing I had noticed. “Will you be attending the festival, Elizabeth?”

“I’d like to,” I say as I glance at Darla. She is smiling at me in the tight-lipped fashion she has recently developed when Dwayne paid the slightest bit of attention to anyone besides her.

“Dwayne,” she calls sweetly and he looks in her direction, a gentle smile upon her lips. “Have you ever been to the Harvest Moon Festival before?” her lips curve around the delicate pastry she is currently eating and I look down at my plate.

“When I lived here as a child, yes, but not since I have returned to Salem,”

“We must coordinate our costumes!”

“Yes,”

His reply was a bit distracted but I am slightly distracted myself. I need to find a date…a date that I don’t love. A boring, drab, colorless date so that I can pretend to enjoy the annual festival of our town.

I eat my dinner and add to the conversation only when invited to and I try my best to forget that the man of my dreams was courting my friend and looking to me like a little sister.

***

My head is pounding. I can’t understand why, exactly, but I recall wine and fire, strange singing and erratic dancing. The Harvest Moon Festival went off without a hitch. Didn’t it?

It all comes flowing back to me in a mad haze of red wine, orange flames and blond hair. Darla! I groan and sit up. She and Dwayne had a fight and she had stormed off, refusing to listen to my cries or Dwayne’s apologies.

I sit up and brush my black locks out of my face and stifle a scream. Dwayne is sitting in the chair that attends my dressing table, his face drawn with worry.

“What is it?”

“She never returned home last night,” he sighs as he runs his fingers through his thick mahogany hair. I notice that he is still wearing the old time garb he had worn at the festival. “Her parents phoned me late to ask if she was with me.”

“Give me a few moments to wake up completely and we’ll go look for her, okay?” I see that Dwayne looks completely worried and so I decide, then and there, that he is not my true love.

“All right,”

He leaves and I slide from the large princess bed, my head feeling as though it weighs a ton. I look down and see that I, too, am still in my festival garb. I had chosen to wear a long black gown that had the appearance of a gothic witch. The reason for the Harvest Moon Festival is to become that which you would never become. I feel dizzy and so I sit on the edge of the bed again and rest my head in my hands.

“What are you doing?” Dwayne asks. I start and realize that I had dozed back off.

“I think I drank too much last night,”

“What you’re wearing is fine,” Dwayne replies testily and I stand to my feet. I am even wearing the lace up boots that were a nightmare to put on and even worse to take off.

“What I’m wearing…this is what I was wearing to the festival…I can’t wear this,”

“I don’t know what happened, Elizabeth, but something definitely went wrong at the festival. I woke up just as you are waking up now, disoriented, still in these clothes. I just want to find Darla.”

“Okay…okay, I’ll wear this,”

***

There is absolutely no sign of Darla. I don’t know what to make of it, I don’t even know how to react. Everyone in town that was at the festival is lethargic and dazed, drifting about town as though sleepwalking. Although, Dwayne and I are the only ones still dressed as what we would never be.

“I don’t know,” I say softly as we sit on a bench looking at the remains of the festival. “I just don’t know.”

“She couldn’t have just vanished, Ellie,”

“That is exactly how it appears, though. It is as if she has disappeared without a trace.”

Dwayne sighs and places his head in his hands. I know how he is feeling. Darla, although she has a fierce temper, would never leave Dwayne alone with me for as long as she has. I can only sit here and watch the breeze blow the leaves and trash about the large plaza as the workmen labor slowly to return the broad circle of cobblestones back to normal.

***

Darla’s parents glare at me across the room as Dwayne attempts to look unflustered during the memorial service. After three months of searching, Darla’s body was found in a shallow grave at Abby’s Park. The investigation showed that she was buried alive.

I cannot fathom what occurred that night. I can’t even remember much after Darla stalked off in a rage. As I told the police over and over again, there was something wrong with the drinks that night, that there was something wrong in general.

Dwayne is still under investigation and it is tearing him apart inside. He had, after all, only moved to Salem a year and a half before the tragic festival. He has managed to sink to the bottom of the suspect pile, right beside me, since a few people could actually recall that he stayed at the festival after Darla had left.

I trust Dwayne but I can’t help but wonder if they truly remembered him being there or they just wished it to be so.

Amazing Grace is being sung and I stare at the coffin holding my friends remains as her parents stare at me in bitter, yet mute, rage.

***

“Are you going to the Harvest Moon Festival, Elizabeth?”

I look at my mom and wonder if she is asking me just to upset me or if she is truly daft.

“No,”

“Look, honey, it’s been two years since Darla died. I think that you should try to carry on with your life. I mean, you and Darla weren’t best friends, right?”

I try not to roll my eyes. “No, mom, we weren’t best friends.” But we were friends and now she is dead. Dead.

“I suggest you go to the Harvest Moon Festival tomorrow night,” my mom says as she picks up her coffee cup and takes a sip.

“I’ll call Dwayne,”

I feel her glare rather than see it.

***

My head is pounding. I can’t seem to move my arms or legs and it is dark, extremely stuffy. My mouth tastes like cotton. I try to breathe but it seems to get harder and harder for me to do so. I close my eyes and think of what had happened.

The festival had been relatively normal, although I stayed away from the wine and food. I sat on the bench Dwayne and I had sat on while pausing in our search for Darla and watched the folks dance and celebrate the harvest moon.

Dwayne arrived very late in the evening and sat beside me, his breathing labored.

“I didn’t want to come,”

“I didn’t either,”

“I never should have let Darla leave that night,”

“If you keep thinking like that, Dwayne, you’ll never get any peace,”

“Do you have peace?” I shook my head and Dwayne studied me for a moment. “Why did you come?”

“My mom feels it’s time for me to move on,”

“Move on?”

“She argues that Darla wasn’t my best friend, which I guess is true but I cared for her,”

“I loved her,”

I sat in silence and tried not to think of Darla being buried alive.

I come back to the present with a gasp. Buried alive! That’s what was happening to me now! I was buried alive. I scream and kick, my feet coming in contact with wood, solid, coffin. I black out.

***

I wake alone and I can barely breathe. I know instantly that I am nearly out of air, that people will search for me as they did Darla and they would find me dead. They would cut me open and realize that I’d been buried alive again. They would blame Dwayne since he was the last one I was with.

Dwayne! I flash back to the rest of our conversation with fear.

“This has happened to me before,”

“What?”

“What happened to Darla. It happened to me before. That’s why I moved back to Salem. My girlfriend died the same way many years ago.”

“What are you talking about?” I had begun to shake and I was unsure if I was hearing him correctly.

“I think that someone is out to hurt me,”

I had trouble breathing then too but it was shock that caused it, not dirt. He handed me a cup of wine and I woke up here.

In a coffin.

Buried alive.

***

I breathe as shallowly as I can, daring myself to believe that Dwayne was innocent. Even dying I long for him to be all that I imagined him to be upon our first meeting. But, he admitted that this had happened before. Was he a killer?

I couldn’t really accuse him of being one since I can’t remember all that happened the night Darla died nor last night. But, if I died here would it really matter if he’s innocent or not?

I feel a pressure on my chest and I know that death is coming very soon. Could it be that Darla died this slowly? Maybe she panicked more so than I did. I was actually able to calm my breathing and extend my life but for what purpose? I can’t even tell if my eyes are open or closed, I can’t tell if I’m on my back or my stomach. The air is growing denser and denser, my breathing shallower and more labored. I drift into unconsciousness.

***

“Elizabeth…Elizabeth…”

I’m dead. Is that the angel calling my name? Did I see my life flash before my eyes? Did I suffer the regrets, experience the blessings, discover the secrets of life? I don’t believe so. All I remember is blackness and suffocation.

“Elizabeth…”

I draw in air and feel my lungs expand. I’m alive? I must be, if I am breathing. I slowly open my eyes and I see the lightening sky, the soft pink of dawn touching the horizon and Dwayne’s face.

“Elizabeth…”

There is dirt on his face and his shirt is torn but otherwise he looks fine. I try to speak but my voice feels like rough wood.

“I’m sorry…I’m so glad you’re all right…no, don’t speak.” He’s sorry? What does he mean, he’s sorry?

He picks me up and carries me and I am wondering what has happened. I mean, truly?