On Old King's Hill

“It’s really beautiful, isn’t it?”

The voice beside me took me by surprise, though I wasn’t sure why as Melanie had been there the whole time. I turned my body towards her, twisting the blanket barely concealing both of our bodies loose and letting the crisp air in to sting our exposed legs.

“I thought you hated stargazing?” I mused teasingly. This certainly wasn’t our first time driving up to Old King’s Hill to lay under the stars, but I knew she only put up with it for the activities that followed. With me still living at home and her having four other roommates in her tightly packed dorm, this was really the only place we could get any privacy. As much as I loved a beautiful night on the grass surrounded by nature, I had gotten used to the frustrated laments of bugs, dirt, and cold from my side. 

A small smile seemed to shift onto her face, though the rest of her expression was difficult to read. Even a few inches away the dark of the moonless night made her face nearly impossible to see.

“I used to,” she conceded, “but lately I can’t help but appreciate it.”

I opened my mouth to make a joke that ‘lately’ must have been within the last two hours since I distinctly remembered her grumbling about ‘just wanting to stay in the car for once’ when we parked on the dirt road we were now laying aside of. The words were halted the moment her lips caught mine, and I quickly decided there was no rush in trying to understand her sudden change of heart. 

I felt the blanket shift further up as her body folded over mine, briefly noticing the lack of cold I felt despite the frosty weather. Rocks and grass shifted below us as we twisted and turned, the empty wine bottle at our side knocking over with a light thud in the dirt. I couldn’t help but find myself amazed by the unexpected turn of events. Melanie and I had only been together for a few short months, despite knowing each other for years before. My feelings for her had started back as far as middle school, back when she was still the frizzy haired girl wearing oversized shirts covered with bands at least twenty years older than her. We became friends quickly, but I don’t think she ever saw me as anything else, not until the end of senior year at least. I’m not sure what created the shift, but I still remember the elation I felt when we took that step from just friends to something more. Still, I couldn’t help but fear at times that I was just a placeholder for her as we both made the terrifying transition from high school to university. As a friend, Melanie had always been a little distant and cold, and she was no different as a girlfriend. I had always been the one reaching out just to feel a little closer to her, so the sudden shift of her body clinging so tightly to mine left me in blissful shock.

“You’re amazing” I managed to breathe out as she pulled back, hovering over me with hands at my side. I attempted to look into her eyes but the curved edges of her body were all I could make out in the darkness. She was shivering. Our physical separation must have made the cold finally affect her, so I did my best to throw the tangled blanket around us again. 

“I wish I’d told you I love you” she whispered, the shaking worsening despite her now bundled appearance.

“I… what do you mean?” Love wasn’t a concept we’d treaded upon at all. Of course I’d felt it, realistically I think I had for years. But I never would have put that upon her, not this early into dating. I wouldn’t ever risk scaring her off like that, especially with the creeping doubt I still felt towards our relationship overall. Most days it was hard to remember Melanie even liked me enough to want to be with me, so I couldn’t even picture love being on the table. 

I felt something drip on my neck and went to wipe it off before several more drops joined in creating a light stream. Her shaking form started to make more sense as I realized she had begun crying. Bolting upright, I pulled her into my arms and tried to imagine what could have possibly triggered this. Sure we had bickered in the car up here as we always do, but she’d never cried over it before. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever seen her cry at all.

“Melanie, what’s wrong? What did I do?” I asked quietly into her ear as I held her head to my neck. A mirthless and wet laugh sprang from her and I felt her head slowly shake back and forth. After a few silent moments I prepared to ask her again when I heard what sounded like a door thundering shut in the distance.

I stared wildly out into the dark trying to guess where it came from. My car was only feet away, but appeared completely undisturbed. The sound seemed to come from further away but I couldn’t begin to guess from where. There was nothing else around, not for miles. I felt Melanie start to pull away from me when the sound rang out again.

“What is that?” I asked, confusion overtaking me. I tried to will my eyes to adjust enough to the blackness around me but there simply wasn’t enough light left to do so. If anything it felt as if the night was somehow getting darker, the stars dimming along with the unfamiliar sounds. To my left I noticed Melanie dressing, and I looked up to see the shadows of her arms wiping harshly around her eyes.

“I better go… but I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said with a heavy sincerity. 

“What do you mean you need to go? We drove here together… Melanie you can’t leave, town is miles away and I think there might be something…” I stilled as another thunderous slam rang out, and something that sounded like the murmur of voices seemed to settle through the air. I turned towards the noises, fear starting to mingle with my bafflement. Before I could restart my sentence I felt her small yet persistent hands start to pull me up. Melanie’s arms wrapped around me, though mine stayed stiffly at my side as I continued to try and process all that was happening around me.

“I don’t understand,” I said desperately.

“I know,” she said, “you never do.”

I pulled back to look into her face, recognizing she seemed to know something I didn’t. I could barely see the slight lines that separated her from the darkness behind her as the stars seemed to pale further above us.

“I come here most nights,” she finally said, “so I can see you again. I don’t really understand it still, how this room works, but it always brings me back here to you.”

Confusion started to overtake my features and I wondered briefly if she was able to see it. “This room? Melanie, we’re outside. We’re at Old King’s Hill, we’re not ‘in’ anything.”

A sigh escaped her lips here, one that you might hear a parent giving a child for asking too many questions to what most adults consider an obvious topic.

“It looks that way I know, but it’s not. We’re in a room. It’s actually quite small but you wouldn’t know that from being in it. I found it last semester, in the back of the library near the archives room. I couldn’t believe it the first time I walked in. I had been trying to find more information for an economics assignment I was working on, and suddenly here I was, back at this old hill, sitting next to you. And God, you looked exactly the same as I remembered. I’ve been trying to understand how this place works, but I haven’t dared to ask anyone else. I don’t want anyone else to find out. All I know is that I always come back to this night, my last night with you.”

A response failed to come to me. I couldn’t decide if laughter or concern should be the response to this insane story. None of it made sense, and I intended to tell her just as much when the murmurs started to increase their volume.

“I need to leave before they get to the archives room, they’re already coming through to lock the doors and close up,” she told me as she turned to the noise.

“Why?” I found myself asking despite my disbelief, “why do you need to leave?”

“I don’t think anyone else knows about this room, and I don’t want that to change,” she said. “I’ve tried staying through the night before, after the library closes, but it always ends up going dark and I just find myself back in an empty room” she finished sadly.

I looked up then to the stars and saw what I’d been suspecting. They were no longer shining, they had dimmed and were beginning to flicker like a faded neon sign in desperate need of repair. The feeling of a hand cupping my face led me to tilt my vision back towards the form of the only woman I’d ever loved.

“I mean it you know,” she whispered sadly, “I wish I had told you I loved you that night. Before it all happened.”

“Before what happened?” I asked, completely mystified.

“The crash,” she said as her hand slipped off my face. “I complained about the cold, just like always, and we fought, just like always. I told you I wanted to go home so you agreed to drive me back. We didn’t even get to the highway…” She trailed off, voice cracking.

“I don’t understand.”

“So you said,” she teased softly, though the humor of it sounded hollow. “I’ve been coming here most nights since I found this place a few months ago, and you never remember, though I don’t know how you could. It’s always this same night, these few hours, every time. I think I’m starting to understand it though.”

“How could you understand any of this?” I asked, surprised by the shaking of my own voice.

“Well,” she explained wistfully, “people come to libraries to get lost in tales. They escape the monotony and the pain of their daily lives by finding a story that’s better than their own. And this story, the story of you and me, deserved a better ending than what we got. So when I’m in here with you, it gets to end how it should have. It ends with me telling you I love you.” 

For all the times I had imagined Melanie standing in front of me saying these exact words I never expected them to make me sick to my stomach in the way I felt now. This was wrong, it was painful, not the fairytale ending she was claiming it to be. I closed my eyes as I tried to make sense of the emotions welling inside of me. 

“Melanie, this isn’t enough,” I started, but once I opened my eyes I realized she was nowhere in sight. In fact, nothing was. The darkness was nearly complete, only the faintest hint of light could be made out in the sky above. Terrified, I sunk back to the ground, my eyes fixated above me to the only thing my senses could make out. I tried to take in everything that had happened, but my mind was going blank the more I tried to focus. Then, suddenly, I found myself mesmerized as I stared into the dazzling light of millions of shining stars. 

“It’s really beautiful, isn’t it?” The voice beside me took me by surprise, though I wasn’t sure why. Melanie had been there the whole time.