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Prologue

Cass

My first taste of darkness hadIt was too oppressive I couldn’t make sense of it, this darkness It was a word I knew, a concept I understood, but it was also not nor was dark inin it

So, so dark

Why was it dark?

I tried toNot that I could, withdown on so old and hard It was not the carpeted floor ofroorassy lawn of our yard

Unfamiliar sounds whispered hints to my ears

Swoosh, swoosh…

Creak…

The sound of water lapping underneath wooden planks

Wherever I was now, it was not home

Murmur of voices One, two, three…four…

Was that all of them? I couldn’t tell All I kneas that the people around me were not Mom or Dad They were not people I could trust They were…bad

Thud…creak…thud…creak…

Heavy footsteps heading towards —-

“Are you awake?”

No! I almost cried it out, almost allowed myself to be baited

The words came from the darkness

The darkness was alive It had spoken And now I knew

Oh God Now I knehy it was so dark The darkness was all…him, and it made me wish I was really blind like the others

But I wasn’t, and because I was not, because lasses, like canines with heat vision, I saw

I saw the darkness I saw him And I saw death

Inelse, like the sun, the sky, the ocean, and the earth, blended in a great blank white landscape Every creature whose heart beat was a fiery orange Or at least it used to be until Mr Darkness

Mr Darkness was so twisted inside his soul had sed every bit of light inside hie with black – empty, hollow, evil black

“You’d like to pretend you’re still sleeping?” Mr Darkness’ voice was cultured and filled with cold a my world apart

You’d like to pretend you’re still sleeping?

Rip, rip, rip, rip, rip, rip, rip, rip, rip