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Vanessa was not okay I mean, of course she wasn't. It's been two weeks since she got herself unpossessed by the puppet with the help of her uncle Henry two weeks since her thoughts had been her own again, though they don’t always feel that way.
Some days they still feel foggy, but was she complaining? well considering where she was she probably was. But yeah it’s been awhile since she was possessed,
No thanks to Mike by the way. He probably had no idea what had happened to her. Probably didn’t even know she’d been possessed in the first place.
Does that bother her? maybe a little bit I mean, if it didn’t, why did she find herself at jumpers cliff? with her boots planted inches from the edge, staring down at nothing and everything all at once…?
She didn’t know about the cliffs until a few years ago back when she was still in high school. Back when a girl named Peyton Thompson had jumped off it.
Everyone in school was talking about it after that whispers in the hallways, hushed voices during lunch, teachers pretending not to notice the way the mood had shifted overnight.
Some people said Peyton had been acting strange ever since her best friend Marley went missing then randomly came back only to see Peyton's neck snapped the other way at the bottom of jumpers cliff.
People said no one had seen it coming. Vanessa remembered how strange it was, how quickly a person could become a story instead of a presence. A name people said quietly, like saying it too loud might make something else break.
But just like Peyton, she found herself at the same cliff she wondered what Peyton felt one second falling and another second nothing whether there had been fear, or relief, or something quieter and harder to name. No thoughts, no pain, no memories clawing at the inside of her skull.
The wind blows in her blonde hair as she takes it all in the wind cold and persistent, as if trying to pull her forward.
She closed her eyes for a moment and let it wash over her, breathing in the sharp air until her chest ached. Her body was here, fully awake, fully alive but her mind felt stuck somewhere else, trapped between what she did to poor Mike how she lied to him and what had been done to her mind.
She opened her eyes again the drop, the silence, the weight of the choice pressing down on her shoulders she felt it and she almost liked it.
And for the first time since the puppet had let her go, she didn’t know what she was thinking at all.
As she was lost in thought she hears the ringing her of her Motorola V60 flip phone the ringing fills her ears flipping it open she looks down at who’s calling her the contact reads ‘Henry E’ her uncle Henry her father’s best friend and business partner way back when
For a split second a terrifying, selfish second she thought about letting it go to voicemail. Maybe pretending she hadn’t heard it. But she quickly shoved the thought aside. This was the man who had saved her when no one else had. The man she trusted more than anyone in the world, Well. except maybe Mike… That realization hurt more than she expected it to.
So she sits down on the edge of the cliff and puts the phone up to her ear, her legs dangling over the sheer drop. The wind tugged at her hair again, making her shiver.
“Uncle Henry…?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. Almost immediately, she regretted answering the call. Almost.
“Vanessa, where are you?” His voice was sharp, urgent, carrying that unmistakable edge of panic that happens when someone truly cares
“I had a bad feeling. I don’t know why but I felt like I needed to call you. What's going on, is something wrong?" Each word landed heavy, stacking on top of the weight already crushing her chest.
He sounded desperate for an answer, like the silence between them was something dangerous all on its own.
Vanessa’s chest tightened. She fumbled for words, for something that would make this less real, less scary. But nothing came to mind
Because what if she did something before anyone did anything about it?
“Umm…” She swallowed, tasting the fear. No, she definitely was regretting answering now. Her grip on the phone tightened, knuckles whitening the cliff just below her, and she finally admitted it aloud, though only barely.
“I… I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admitted, her voice trembling despite her effort to steady it. “But I think I’ll understand in a minute.”
There it was. though very vague it was the truth She expected him to yell, to scold, to demand what's wrong. It's what her father would have done but Henry’s voice softened, careful, steady, like a rope thrown to someone dangling over darkness.
“Vanessa… listen to me,” he said, the desperation now tempered by control, the voice of someone who had faced the impossible before.
“You’re not alone. You’ve been through a lot… more than anyone should have to. Just… just don’t do anything you might regret. Sit down, breathe i-i’ll call Mike okay just stay there”
Vanessa closed her eyes again, the wind roaring louder now, and for the first time since she’d sat on the edge, she felt herself hesitate. With that she closed her phone
She stayed there on the cliff’s edge, legs dangling uselessly over the drop, hands clenched tightly in her lap. The questions came fast and cruel, piling on top of one another until she could barely breathe
What if I just jumped?
What if she did it before anyone knew where she was? Before Henry could get to her. Before Mike could pretend to care.
Would Mike even care?
The thought burned would he just sigh, frustrated, and say this was exactly why he’d kept his distance? Maybe maybe some part of him would even want this. Would see it as a solution All I do is put him and Abby in danger, she thought bitterly. That’s all I ever do.
Every time she got close to people, something went wrong. Someone got hurt. If she was honest with herself, the pattern was impossible to ignore. Maybe she wasn’t meant to be trusted. Maybe she never should have been
Would it really matter if she was gone?
She swallowed hard, her throat aching as the thought finished forming.
It wouldn’t matter if I just-
Her phone rang.
Vanessa flinched violently, the sound cutting straight through her thoughts like a blade. She fumbled with the phone, nearly dropping it before forcing herself to answer the call
“Vanessa” it was Mike he sounded slightly annoyed. Like this call was just another problem added to an already long list. I knew it. I knew he didn’t care about me. She thought bitterly
“What’s going on, Henry called me. he told me to call you but he wouldn’t explain why” He sounded like he would rather be doing anything but talking to me
“I-” Her voice wavered. She had to force the words out. “Tell Abby… tell Abby I can’t hurt her anymore.”
“What?” Mike said. His confusion hardened quickly into frustration. “That’s the whole reason I distanced us from you. You know that, right?”
Each word hit like a punch.
She squeezed her eyes shut, nails digging into her palms. Her breathing started to speed up, shallow and uneven, panic creeping in despite her efforts to control it.
“Look, Mike, I’m- I’m sorry,” she said, the words tumbling out faster now her breath quickening “I’m sorry I keep putting you guys in danger. I’m sorry I can’t do anything right, and I’m sorry things ended the way they did.” Her vision blurred.
“I’m sorry I’m a useless bitch who does nothing but fuck things up,” she continued, her voice cracking completely now. “But I’ll make things better. I promise…!”
The silence that followed felt different.
Heavy. Alert
Mike finally seemed to get the severity of the call
“Vanessa what…?” The irritation was gone. He seemed to be panicked “are you in trouble, where are you?”
Her chest ached at the sound of his panic. Too late. It was always too late.
“I’m sorry Mike” She says as if she already made her decision The line goes silent for a while for a moment, she wondered if she should hang up and just get it over with
“Vanessa?” His voice came back, louder now. Urgent. “You still there?”
“Yeah,” she said quickly, almost automatically. “I’m here.”
“Okay,” he said, fear audible through the phone. “Okay. Do you need help?”
She stared out over the edge of the cliff, the world stretching out beneath her in a dizzying blur. The wind rushed past her ears, drowning out everything except his voice.
“Mike,” she said quietly, her tone dropping. “Where I’m going… I won’t need any help.”
There was a pause.
“…Okay,” he said cautiously. “So where are you going?”
She could hear movement on the other end fabric shifting, footsteps, the sound of someone grabbing keys. He was getting ready to leave. The realization twisted something sharp and painful in her chest.
Vanessa tightened her grip on the phone.
And still, she didn’t answer.
Mike waited on the other end of the line.
The silence stretched, unbearable, Her grip on the phone tightened, knuckles aching, as she stared out over the drop. The wind surged upward from below, loud enough to swallow the sound of her own breathing.
“Vanessa,” Mike said again, slower this time. Careful. “Where are you?”
She swallowed.
“I can see the whole town from here, hurricane has never been a very large town has it?” she says it's almost like she's reliving memories of all that happened in the town, the empty streets at midnight flickering streetlights, the same diners and storefronts everyone in the town grew up with.
A town where everyone knew everyone, where secrets never stayed buried for long. A town that had taken so much and still expected more.
There was another pause. A sharper one.
She shifted slightly, pebbles skittering beneath her boots and vanishing over the edge. She watched them fall until they disappeared from sight.
“It’s really high,” she added quietly. “Higher than I thought it would be. a few thousand feet maybe?” She hesitated, then murmured, almost absently,
Her heart hammered in her chest. She didn’t know why she was saying any of this. Maybe part of her wanted him to figure it out on his own. Maybe part of her wanted him to stop her without her having to ask.
“Vanessa,” Mike said, urgency creeping into his voice. “That doesn’t tell me anything.”
The wind tugged at her jacket again, harder this time, like it was impatient.
“It’s cold,” she murmured. “And loud. The wind doesn’t stop up here. It feels like it’s trying to push me forward.”
The line went quiet.
She could picture him now she can hear him tell Abby to stay put and to not let any strangers in followed by a slam of a door “Okay okay are you on a building?“ he asked finally.
Vanessa closed her eyes.
“I think people come here when they don’t know what else to do,” she said, her voice barely holding together. “When everything feels too heavy.” her mind goes back to Peyton, her locker down the hall, the way everyone talked about her in past tense too quickly. How one day she was there, and the next she was just a story people whispered about.
Her chest tightened painfully. She hadn’t meant to say that.
“Vanessa,” Mike said, and this time her name sounded different. Not annoyed. Not distant. Terrified. “Listen to me. I need you to tell me exactly where you are.”
She shook her head, even though he couldn’t see it. Her gaze drifted down again, to the endless space below her feet.
“I don’t want to be the reason someone else gets hurt again” She added. “I don’t want Abby anywhere near this. Near me”
“Vanessa are you going to kill yourself?” The words hit her harder than anything else he’d said.
She sucked in a shaky breath, the wind stealing part of it away, and stayed right where she was on the edge, caught between falling and staying, between silence and saying the one word she was still afraid to speak.
“Vanessa, you’re not” Mike started, his voice breaking through the phone. “You’re not hurting anyone by staying alive.”
There was silence for a while. She could hear the roar of his engine as he frantically drives on the road. She could picture him scanning everything around him, buildings, highways, overpasses, anything tall, anything that could easily kill a person.
“Fuck your not on a buliding a bridge maybe?” His voice was tight with anger now, the kind that came from fear and helplessness colliding all at once.
Vanessa looked down at herself, at the way the dirt clung to her knees and thighs where she’d been sitting too long. She let out a quiet, tired sigh.
“The dirt’s starting to stain my pants,” she said softly. Absent-mindedly, after a pause, she spoke “There are giant rocks here.”
She drew in a breath, slow and shaky, the cold air burning her lungs before she spoke again.
“Mike,” she said again, softer this time. Tired. “I’m really tired. Maybe it’s finally time for me to get some rest… at the bottom.”
“No okay, no, don’t say that,” Mike said quickly, panic flooding his voice. “Please don’t say that. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for everything I did to you. But please please don’t talk like that.”
He took a shaky breath. “Just listen to me. Everything will be okay. I swear.”
Vanessa laughed weakly, the sound sharp and bitter
“Why do you care?” she snapped. The question came out harsher than she meant it to, fueled by exhaustion and disbelief.
There was a long pause.
“Because I was wrong,” Mike said finally. His voice was quieter now, begging for this all to be some twisted nightmare. “Okay? I was wrong. Everything I told you I was wrong about it- all of it.”
Vanessa’s fingers tightened around the phone.
“I can trust you,” he continued, words tumbling out faster now, like he was afraid if he slowed down she would take her life “Hell, you saved my life. And my sister’s. Two separate times. I shouldn’t have blamed the whole thing on you.”
His voice wavered.
“It was mostly my fault. If I’d just paid more attention to Abby, a lot of what happened wouldn’t have happened.”
The wind surged again, roaring up from below, but she didn’t move.
“But instead,” Mike said, “I blamed everything on you. And it was wrong. Especially after you took a knife for me. Especially after you ended up in a coma just trying to protect me.”
Vanessa’s throat burned.
“And even after all that,” he continued, his voice breaking completely now, “I had the audacity to tell you to stay away from me. Stay away from Abby. When I knew Abby loved you.”
His words hit harder than the wind ever could.
“I took that away from her,” he said quietly. “Ever since then she’s been asking where you’ve been. Asking if she can visit you sometime. And I never let her.”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
“I wouldn’t even let her talk about you,” Mike admitted. “Because I saw you as dangerous. But that’s not what you were.. That was the farthest from the truth.”
He swallowed hard.
There was silence again. She was too stunned to answer him. And Mike knew she wasn’t gonna answer him.
“Okay,” he said finally, his voice steadier than it had any right to be. Focused. “You’re not in a building. You’re not on a bridge.”
She listened to the sound of his engine, louder now, closer somehow.
“You crashed your car the last time we talked, right?” he continued. “So you had to walk.”
Her breath caught.
“How did you-?” she asked, genuinely startled, the words slipping out before she could stop them.
“Jeremiah told me” He recalled when he told him that too he was almost concerned for her, but was too mad to check up on her. “When he mentioned it, he sounded… worried. I should’ve been, too.”
“Of course he did,” she murmured. She felt only a flicker of annoyance at that overpowered by gratitude. Jeremiah had cared enough to say something. Enough to make sure someone knew.
Mike didn’t respond right away.
She could almost hear the gears turning in his head, the way he pieced things together when something mattered. When Abby mattered. When she mattered, apparently no matter how hard she tried to believe otherwise.
“So,” he said slowly, carefully, “you’re definitely at a cliff. Right?”
The world went quiet.
Even the wind seemed to pull back for a moment, like it was listening too.
Vanessa said nothing. Her fingers tightened around the phone, her nails biting into the plastic.
“And there’s only one cliff close enough to your house for you to have walked to,” Mike continued, the certainty creeping into his voice despite the fear underneath it. “You’re at Jumper’s Cliff.”
The name settled between them, heavy and final.
Once again, there was silence.
Vanessa closed her eyes.
“Yes, Mike,” she said at last. Her voice was soft, “I’m at Jumper’s Cliff.”
The wind roared back to life, rushing up from below as if in response.
“I’m already halfway there,” Mike said immediately. His words came fast now, urgent and breathless. “Stay put. I swear, Vanessa just stay where you are. Don’t move.”
She opened her eyes again and looked down at the endless space beneath her feet.
Halfway.
The word echoed in her head, fragile and terrifying.
She didn't know what terrified her more the fact that Mike knew where she was or the fact that he was already halfway there
Despite what he’d said despite the apologies, the confessions, the desperation in his voice, ‘the lies’ her mind supplies she couldn’t stop the thoughts from clawing their way back in. He was only saying those things because she was about to kill herself that what was pushing him
That was all it was.
Once she was gone, he wouldn’t have to say them anymore.
She knew she could probably do it before he ever reached her. Knew she could end it cleanly, quickly, before he could stop her. Before he could talk her into believing something that wasn’t true.
And she knew that once she was gone, his life would be better.
Everyone’s life would be better.
That was the pattern, wasn’t it? Every person she met, every place she touched she left damage behind. Fear. Blood. Regret. She didn’t mean to. She never meant to. But intent didn’t matter when the outcome was always the same.
She just made people’s lives hell.
She knows damn well Abby doesn’t miss her even if she did Abby is just a kid Abby doesn’t know how much of a bad person she is by just existing
Abby doesn’t understand the danger Vanessa put her in Abby doesn’t understand that Mike almost died because of her actions she doesn’t understand any of that because she’s just a kid
Abby didn’t understand.
Vanessa did.
So she closes her phone. automatically hanging up on Mike. She takes a deep breath and she pushes off the edge
“Vanessa!” she hears a panic voice call from behind her with speed that she didn’t even know Mike had he grabs her, pulling her back to safety
She hit the dirt, breathless, shaking.
“Vanessa, what is wrong with you?!” Mike shouted.
She’d never heard him like this.
Not when his life had been on the line. Not when he’d been bleeding. Not even when he’d been furious. This was something else entirely raw terror cracking straight through him.
She stared up at him, stunned, her heart slamming painfully against her ribs.
“Mike…?” she whispered, like she wasn’t sure he was real.
He dropped to his knees beside her, hands still gripping her sleeves like he was afraid she might disappear if he let go.
“Vanessa, why the hell would you do that?” His voice broke halfway through the sentence. “I told you. I told you it wasn’t your fault. Why did you-?”
He couldn’t even finish.
The words tangled up in his throat, grief and anger and relief crashing together all at once.
She felt numb. Heavy. Ashamed.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry, Mike.”
The wind rushed past them again, but this time, she wasn’t on the edge.
She was still here.
And Mike was too.
Vanessa’s shoulders shook, Mike didn’t say anything. He just pulled her close, arms wrapping around her like he’d been holding onto the possibility of this moment the whole time.
She buried her face in his chest, letting herself finally feel the warmth, the steady heartbeat beneath her cheek. It was grounding, solid, real proof that she didn’t have to face everything alone.
“I- I’m sorry,” she whispered again, muffled against him.
He tightened the hug, his voice low and steady. “It’s okay you're alive, that's all that matters to me right now.”
For the first time in weeks, maybe months, Vanessa let herself breathe. Just breathe. Just be. And for a moment, the cliff, the fear, the guilt they all faded, replaced by this a hug that didn’t demand anything from her but her presence.
And for this moment, she was at peace.
But even as she clung to him, she knew the darkness hadn’t gone. It would be there again, later, creeping back like it always did. Right now, though, she could hold onto the warmth, the safety, the fleeting sense of calm
And that was enough.