Dear Edward - Heather Parsons (smart books to read .TXT) 📗

he was trapped in.
“You really shouldn't provoke him. He's dangerous and not stable.” Maya said as she made her way from the shelter of trees she was hiding behind. She would have gone home as told but she was terrified that the words exchanged between Jason and Edward would send him into a rage and she'd be punished for it. So she stayed behind.
Picking up his head was painful but Edward managed and with a slight turn, he tried to focus on Maya's face. Tried to see the pain and hurt she encased inside herself but something else caught his eye, something that terrified him to the bone.
Brianna's image shifted, she no longer looked like a sad, forgotten woman but a ghost, fading in and out. And she knew it would happen. The day of her death loomed near, frightened and scared she didn't want to go through it again.
Last year was her first time and her experience although horrific wasn't nearly as heartbreaking as it was this time around. As the days closed in around her the people she loved the most started disappearing. First her friend Amber, then her own mother and soon followed by her father. Who would she lose next? The question haunted her soul. Was she a curse laid down upon this earth to erase those that meant something special to her?
Soon there would be no one left and she'd be tortured, starved, raped and killed again. And she'd be more alone than when it first happened. Not knowing if the next time it happened she'd see her loved ones or they'd be forever gone.
Next year it would start all over again unless she could end it now. She had to end it, she couldn't suffer through this again. And unlike the last time, Brianna had found someone who could see her, talk to her, who cared. Hoping he would help her escape.
“I've only a week left. Edward please, I need your help.” Brianna cried her last tears before fading into an abyss.
Her strength was nearly gone. How long could she hold on? The days slowly disappearing behind her, the only place she'd be her strongest is the only place she feared. The place she took her last breath. The place where all her hopes and dreams died. The cabin.
Drifting through time felt peaceful but too soon she was back on the bed, in the cabin with him. “I knew you'd come back to me. There really is no escape, as I told you. No one will suspect me of harming you.” He laughed while she turned her head away. Following exactly what happened last time, feeling the fear envelop her and she cried.
Standing wide eyed with his mouth gaping open, Edward couldn't believe what he just saw. Brianna no longer sat by her grave, she wasn't anywhere around. Fear gripped him the hardest, holding his heart in a tight fist and nearly collapsing to his knees. His eyes lost their focus and through his ears all he could hear were her cries. Brianna's fear gripped him the hardest and with his last breath he collapsed.

~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~

The snow was once again falling all around the trees and cabin. Soft swirls of flakes made their path down from the skies to land on the earth below. It was a mark in time that worried Brianna the most. When the last snow flake fell she'd be killed again just as the year before and the year before that. Looking out the window Brianna fears came to life. Though she'd thought at first she was dreaming of the whiteness but now she was seeing it.
“Look at me!” He demanded, slapping her across the face to make her see he wasn't joking.
She refused even though she knew it would bring more pain to her. The ripping of her clothes, the grunts and heavy breathing from him still didn't force her to look away from the window. Longing to see his face outside it or an image of it before her time was over.
“You are beautiful and I knew from the first time that you hadn't been with another, when I had you.” He murmured in her ear.
“Get off me!” She screamed, her voice echoing into nothingness.
The back of his hand came across her face with such force she saw stars. Tears streamed down her cheeks while she screamed again. This time he didn't hold back, as he did before and hit with with all his strength, knocking her out so he could do with her as he pleased.
Edward's face flashed in her mind before everything went black and she pleaded that he find her and help.

TWENTY-ONE

Even though he could hear everything being said around him Edward didn't dare alert anyone of this. He wasn't ready for them to know he'd awoken.
The back of his eyelids was all he saw but the pain that gripped him didn't come from any physical being. This much he knew for sure. But how was this happening?
Years before Edward had figured that putting up a mental shield protected himself from hearing the whispers and cries of those no longer among the living. And in order to join the military he had to build it with enough mental strength to endure the devastating aftermath of war.
But this time was different. Brianna had managed to slip through and connect in ways that no one had ever done before. Living or dead. Feeling her physical pain that he shouldn't feel at all, hearing her begging for his help and not knowing if this time he'd gone overboard and crazy or if this was actually happening. Who would he ask? If anyone would believe him first off.
“I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I won't do it again.” Brianna's scared pleading voice was a whisper of a sound in his mind.
His eyes flew opened at the image he saw and instantly clutched his stomach. The sight was horrifying, much like what he saw at the cabin. But he didn't venture that far into it and what he saw when he blinked caused him to curse out loud.
“Edward what's wrong?” John asked hovering over the top of him. The acid built up in his throat while he watched the expression on Ethan's face change from sadness into pure horror.
Throwing the mask up to cover any feeling Edward was having, he turned to John and whispered, “nothing. Just bad dreams.” If only that was true.
The detective side of him sparked up and no matter how he felt about getting involved, he was. He needed to know all there was about Brianna Sampson then maybe he could figure out why she came to him and what he could do to help her. Even if it meant his heart would break he needed to know.
“You knew Brianna, right?” Edward asked peeking upwards to where John stood. “What can you tell me about her?”
John's legs started shaking, he knew one day someone would come asking. With the sudden loss of feeling he sat down and started reliving his worst nightmare. “Her parents, Christopher and Ella and my wife, Carol and I are good friends. We'd to go over to their house to visit and let the kids play. Jason has always been fond of Brianna, watched out for her and all. Then they started dating when Brianna was a sophomore in high school, Jason had already graduated the year before. He'd signed up for the military, promising he'd be okay and return to Brianna. He wanted to marry her and start a life together.” John wiped a tear away, his memories flooding back faster than he wanted them too.
“Woodland has always been a safe place to live, nothings ever happened here to cause any of us to think otherwise. But when Brianna started college, she was in one of my classes so I saw her often. Then there was a four day weekend and a lot of my students gathered together wanting to go camping. Brianna was thrilled. Lindsey, Chase, Adam, Jordan and a bunch of others all decided to go.
“All I know was Brianna was working on a project inside my classroom and when she completed it she left. Waving to me as she walked out the door. She was meant to drive herself to wherever the rest were and start their adventure.” He paused, “Lindsey called me two hours later and asked if Brianna had left yet. I told her she had and asked why? She'd sighed and said it was just like Brianna to be late and forget she called.
“It wasn't until the next day that I found out that Brianna never made it. That she was missing. The police called me and asked a whole lot of questions. Where I last saw her? Did she leave alone? What time was that?
“There was a large number of people out looking for her but we never found anything. Not even her car showed up and that thing would be near impossible to miss. Christopher and Ella held a candlelight visual every night and still do, only it's more private now.
“Sometimes I find myself still not believing she's gone and look for her. Walking clear into the woods and looking under everything I can think of of where she could be. I don't want to believe someone as kind and gentle and loving as Brianna is really gone. And now they say she was murdered, that someone is walking around Woodland a free man while she's not.” He dropped his head in his hands and cried softly to himself.
Hearing the love that John felt for Brianna out of the words that he spoke brought tears to Edward's eyes. She was as perfect then as when he saw her a day ago. A gentle soul who never meant harm to anyone but was destroyed and left like trash. How could someone be so cruel?
“I'm sorry. I didn't mean for you to relive it.” Edward whispered in broken words.
“I live with it everyday even without having to think about it, it's there. What I can't stop thinking about is was there something I could have done to stop it from happening? If I would have kept her longer or walked her to her car. Maybe driven behind her to make sure she arrived safely or found out where they were meeting so I'd know.” John shook his head, his hands balled in fists.