I've learned that poison is easy to come by. All you need is coin, and to find the right type of people. That, and the plants to make some of it grow just over in Chetwood. The little glass bottle is sitting on my map table, in the main room. I hadn't touched it since I set it there, and a bloody knife was beside it.
Blood was splattered on the floor, the drops leading into my bedroom from that room. There was a tiny puddle near my bed, formed by the dripping from my arm. I stared, for a good while, as if it didn't register in my mind. It looked like red paint. The house was silent, the quiet drops seeming as loud as bagpipes blaring, my ears ringing from the sound.
Meredith was standing in front of me, but my vision was blurry, I couldn't see her very well. I knew it was her, though, but I couldn't tell what she wanted with me. I think she was tugging at my arm, the one that wasn't hurt, but I couldn't feel it. Of course I couldn't feel it, she isn't real.
I tried to stand, or walk, I think. Did I? I just remember that I started wrapping my arm up, if just to at least stop the deafening sound, but now I felt the blood pounding in my ears. It was driving me crazy, if I wasn't there already. I left the house after that and next I found myself at the very edge of the cliff overlooking the Marshes, near that waterfall. Meredith was on down below, staring at me. She was saying something, but I couldn't hear her and she started shouting at me. Wind was blowing hard, whipping my hair around and stinging my face.
Love makes you do weird things, I think. It makes you imagine someone who is gone, it lets you overlook when your loved ones are treating you badly, it heals invisible wounds that you never thought would be healed.
I wanted to know what she, my only daughter, was saying. My dead daughter, whom I was somehow seeing, several years old. All I had to do was step off the cliff, to reach her. That was all I had ever wanted, right? To simply hold my baby, just get to look at her. She was right there, all I had to do was step off the edge. So I did.
