• Chapter 13


    If My Heart Stops Beating


    The first thing I see is the fading light cast on a bare white wall by a dully lit candle. There’s extreme pain in every inch of my body and it takes most of my strength to even keep my eyes open.

    “Charlotte? Are you awake?” A familiar voice cuts through my haze. My struggling eyes look upward and a the face of Keaton is above me. It keeps blurring and I rub my eyes, hoping it will clear it. No improvements.

    “Yes.” I manage to croak. “Where am I?”

    “Oh, my room.” He replies as he casts a hand around. Then his eyes fall back on me and he pulls the heavy blanket up to my chin. “Get some rest. You’ve had a long and busy day.” I barely have time to nod before I fall back into darkness.

    I’m in an empty room and I see somebody standing before me. Who is it? Is that a guy? Is it Keaton? The guy has his hair, that’s for sure. He looks exactly like him from behind, too.
    “Keaton?” I ask cautiously. I walk forward and the guy turns and he looks exactly like Keaton.

    Looks. But he isn’t.

    And I can tell that from his blood red eyes.

    There’s blood trickling down from his mouth and he casually wipes a hand across it. Suddenly I feel a pain in my neck and I fling my hand up to it to find that it’s bleeding heavily and freely, and my fingers flow over the two tiny holes in it. The guy who looks like Keaton smiles at me, only to reveal two fangs protruding there. A gasp escapes my throat.

    “Who are you?”

    He just smiles, and then, suddenly, everything changes and I’m not longer standing in front of the guy who I now realize is a vampire, but in the local park. My hand fumbles along my neck and I find no trace of a bite mark. I breathe a sigh of relief.

    “Oh, I’m awake.” My eyes drag themselves along the park and then they fall onto two figures.
    Keaton and Ashlee.

    They’re holding hands and sitting on a park bench. Keaton is beaming and he looks so happy….like the way he used to look at me.

    “What is this?” I ask as I walk forward. The two of them look up and their moods instantly darken.

    “Oh, it’s you.” Keaton growls. I take an abrupt step back and stare in shock.

    “Excuse me?”

    “What, do you think he actually loved you?” Ashlee stands up and croaks her high-pitched, annoying laugh and I flinch, both at that and the pain of her words.

    “What are you talking about?”

    “Man, you’re an idiot.” Keaton laughs, “I was just playing you to get to Ashlee. I never meant any of those words. None of them.”

    “But…” I finally manage to gasp after a long moment that seemed to be forever. All the words, the smiles, the laughs, the hugs, the kisses……everything. It was all a lie. “What if….?”

    “What?” Keaton asks, confused. Then he grows annoyed when I don’t answer. “What if what?”

    “What if my heart stops beating?” I stare into his eyes and see the pure hatred and disgust there. And then I’m pulled into darkness.

    I’m in the room. Keaton’s room. But there’s no sign of Keaton. So, apparently, after having that nightmare, I didn’t see Keaton, I went looking for him, saw him and Ashlee at the park, and then all that happened. And how am I back here? Obviously I must’ve fainted and was taken back. And obviously Keaton is still at the park, because the room is empty.

    My bare feet carry me from his house to the cemetery. Once I’m in through the gates and in the familiar presence of the graves, I walk forward to my favorite oak tree where Scar, David and I once carved our names. We used to always come here, it was our favorite spot. And not too far from the tree was David’s grave.

    I fall to my knees and let the tears flow while I stare at the grave. Bending my face into my hands, I start to shake with un-controllable sobs.

    “Don’t cry.” A voice fades in and out. I bring my hands away and gasp at the familiarity, but don’t look up from the ground. “Don’t cry.” The voice repeats itself.

    My eyes blurred with tears look up to find the ghost of my brother sitting on his grave. My breath catches in my throat and I stumble backwards, staring in disbelief.

    ‘No, no.’ I think to myself, ‘There’s no way, no way. He’s not alive. He’s dead. You’re still asleep. Yeah, that’s it. Everything was a dream. No, no….’

    “You’re awake, Charlotte. I really am David.” He looks at his whitish mist of a body. “Well, uh, sort of.”

    “But……this is impossible. Ghosts aren’t real.”

    The hallucination claiming to be real laughs, “Yes, they are, Charlotte. You know they are, deep inside.”

    I did know. I could sense it. This was really the ghost of David.

    “This is so weird.”

    “Many things are weird and true, Charlotte. Just like demons, guardians, werewolves, vampires….”

    The image of the vampire from the dream comes to my mind but I shake it away and ask, “What’s a guardian?”

    “That’s not important now.” David’s ghost waves it away, then leans forward. “You’re in terrible danger, sister. There are ghosts and demons after you.”

    “Wh-what?” I gasp, “But why?”

    “Do you not remember what I showed you in the water? You were supposed to die, not me, and they are upset.”

    “But…..why now? And, wait, did you pull me in the water?”

    “Charlotte, when you die, and you weren’t supposed to die, you turn into a ghost and go to the Ghost Academy. When you’re of age, you get assigned a mission and if you accomplish it, you can either choose to go to heaven, or live as a human again. Or whatever creature you were.”

    “Is…..this your mission?”

    “My mission was to warn you about this danger-

    “But why did you pull me into the water?”

    “You have a lot of questions!” He sighs and continues, “Yes, I pulled you into the water. But you don’t understand.” His eyes dart around and he rushes, “Look, I don’t have a lot of time-

    “I WANT TO KNOW!!!!!!” I scream at him.

    “The Demon Lord was bored and wanted to start something, so he decided to posses me and looked back into my memories. He saw that night of my death and decided to go after you. But even though he’s left me, it’s as if part of him is still within me. So I have the demon side and my own side. The demon side pulled you in, and I decided to use that time to try to warn you.”

    “Oh….”

    “Yes, but listen. You can’t survive on your own, you need-

    A giant portal opens from behind his grave and his ghost gets pulled into it. I gasp and stumble backwards more, and then the portal closes and I’m left in a daze.

    “What a beautiful night.” A voice behind me makes me jump. I look over and see a figure leaning against the old oak tree. It steps out into the moonlight and then I see that it’s non other than Kellan, “Shame it’ll your last.”

    “Wh-what?” I stutter as I stumble to my feet. He slowly and casually walks forward, and I keep stepping back, closer and closer to David’s grave. “What do you mean, Kellan?”

    “Oh, my dear, I am not Kellan.” He smirks, “I’m the Demon Lord.”

    I gasp, not believing what I was hearing. “You-you possessed Kellan?”

    He laughs a cold, sharp laugh. “Yes, and now, with his Guardian powers, I can finish you off. No, wait, that won’t be any fun. Too typical, too old. Oh, I know,” The smirk on his face grows larger as he says, “I’ll just send you to hell.”

    Another portal opens up from behind me and thorny vines wrap around my ankles and pull me out from under my feet, and my face hits David’s gravestone. Instant pain flows through that area but I ignore it as I struggle against the vines curling up my body. But no matter how many times I try to pry them off they just grow stronger.

    The vines curl all the way up to my face and the thorns dig deeply into my skin, and I scream and thrash around, which only brings them in deeper. My head is forced to look at the portal to hell and I see ghosts and demons and everything evil ascending from it and I let out another scream. Everything around me turns to blurs and all I can see is that in front of me. Voices that scream my name fade in and out and I recognize them one by one, even though
    they are so, so far away…….Scarlet………Lance…….Kyle……and Keaton.

    Something flows up through my body and soon its possessed. My own reflection is played before my eyes and I see the vines squeezing and choking, the thorns digging deep into my skin. My body thrashing and the endless screams gurgling out of my bloody throat. My eyes a blood red.

    And then that and the thing possessing me are gone and I’m frozen there in shock. The blurs around me grow to the actual setting and I see everybody that means something to me behind Kellan as he talks words of a different tongue to his minions. Scarlet is forced back into a tree by vines and Lance is being circled by ghosts that are driving him mad. But then the world again turns to practically nothing except for some rays of lights. But there’s one that’s pure dark that I guess must be Kellan, and then I let out another scream of torture as a vine curls it’s way into my mouth and cuts the inside. There’s another one that’s silver and I see my brother’s ghost appear but it fades in and out, but I can hear him say, “Guardians. That’s what everybody in the Hathaway family is.”

    “What are they?“ I scream again as the thorns dig into my tongue but listen to him intensely.

    “They are guardian angels in human form. They are each assigned a real human and protect them. They have powers they use and if they are a son or daughter of guardians they will turn into them at age 18 and-

    He fades out completely but then, as the silver light which must be Kyle disappears, a new one fades in and out, just as David’s ghost had. It’s as if it’s a candle struggling to stay lit, and I can see it growing closer as it fades, and then, it turns into a pure, bright, golden light, and I can hear it yell my name.

    Then Keaton appears from inside the light.

    He tears the vines from my body and it’s just then that I realize my feet are dangling over the portal to hell in the ground. He grabs on to my hands and starts to pull me. But I keep getting dragged closer, and he with me. Soon enough, Keaton is holding onto the edge of the ground with one hand and is using the other to hold on to both of mine.

    “KEATON IT’S OVER!” I shout up at him, “IT’S USELESS, WE’RE GOING TO DIE!!!!”

    “NO! I WON’T ALLOW IT!” He shouts back down, “I WON’T ALLOW YOU TO DIE!”

    “WHY WOULD YOU CARE!?”

    “CARE IF WHAT!?”

    “IF…” My voice trails off and I look up into his deep brown eyes and repeat what I had before in the park, “if my heart stops beating.”

    “Charlotte, two things. One, that won’t happen as long as I’m around. And two, mine would stop as well.”

    His hand slips from the edge and we both scream but then, another one appears and grabs him. It pulls him up and soon we are on the ground again, and the portal closes up. I look up and see Kellan sitting there, panting because of the strength he just had to use to pull us both up.

    “Wha-

    I start to ask, but am cut off because I am pulled into Keaton. He hugs me tight and says, “I will protect you, Charlotte. I will not let you die, will not let your heart stop beating. Even it risks having that happen to my own, I will not care. As long as yours keeps going.” He pulls back and looks into my eyes. “I am a guardian, Charlotte. I am your guardian.”


    END OF BOOK ONE