Chapter 72: Night Out
Once again, I had no idea where he was taking me, and I had a pretty good guess that he wouldn’t tell me even if I asked. However, I decided to ask anyways…
"Where are you taking me this time? It’s so late…" I said as I turned to look at him.
Hayden…he’s driving so fast now that the roads were clear.
"You’ll see…" he replied a little coldly.
It felt like his mind was really somewhere else, far far away from me. His eyes were on the road, but I could tell that he wasn’t focused on them at all. I wondered what he was thinking right now and why he seemed so disturbed. Did something happen while he was away? If I asked, would he tell me?
"Ok…" I mumbled.
The ride was much longer than I had imagined. Hayden was silent most of the way and I was left to figure out for myself that we had started to leave the city center and began approaching the outskirts of the city. Now I was seriously curious of where he was taking me.
The roads were getting darker as there were fewer and fewer buildings around and soon there were nothing but tall trees and the woods on either side of the road.
"It’s quite far…isn’t it?" I asked, almost as if I’m speaking to myself.
"We’re almost there…" Hayden replied softly. His reply surprised me a little.
The car climbed up a winding road up a hill and the road got a little bumpy and much narrower than before. There better be something interesting on top of this hill or something worth the long drive. We really came quite far.
"We’re here," Hayden announced non-ceremoniously as he quickly got out of the car.
I looked at the darkness that surrounded us and wondered where ’here’ was exactly. There were some public lights that lighted up some areas in soft orange light, but it wasn’t enough for me to see clearly. All I could make out was that we were surrounded by a lot of grass.
"Where are we…seriously," I asked as I got out of the car.
I was right, we were completely surrounded by soft and squishy grass. We were quite far away from the city which meant that it was dark enough for me to clearly see many twinkling stars up above us.
"Wow, they’re so pretty," I said absentmindedly as I stared up at the sky.
Hayden followed my gaze as he also looked up at the star-filled sky. It was a shame that we couldn’t see the stars like this when we were in the city center.
"You’re right…they’re really pretty," Hayden said as he admired them too.
I felt his warm hand reach for mine before he held my hand in his, a little tighter than usual. For some reason, I could sense that he was worried or thinking hard about something. I glanced at his face, but it was emotionless and cold as always.
"This way…watch your step," Hayden said as he led me by the hand.
We walked uphill a little bit through the grass before we arrived at what I suspect was our true destination for the night. Unlike the unkempt grassy area from before, the landscape in front of me seemed to be well maintained. The grass short and orderly and there were enough light on poles to properly illuminate the area.
However, I never would have guessed that he would bring me to a place like this…
A graveyard…and a very large one at that.
"This graveyard belongs to my family. Well, the Torex family or if you would like ’the gang’. Everyone from the gang who dies is buried here," Hayden explained.
"Oh…" I gasped in shock once again at the vast number of tombstones. Lines after lines of tombstones stretched as far as my eyes could see.
"I know what you’re thinking but I hate to break your illusion. The mafia gang actually doesn’t have a lot of death like what you would imagine from seeing a lot of shoot outs in movies and such. There’s just many of them because the gang is big and many have died of old age over the years," Hayden continued to explain.
"I see…" I whispered.
"Don’t get me wrong, many do die from fights and shoot outs as well," Hayden said emotionlessly.
The real question that I wanted to ask him was why he brought me here or why he came here in the dead of night, but I just couldn’t bring myself to say that out loud. I just hoped that he would slowly tell me his reason of his own accord.
Hayden walked along the lines of tombstones as he held my hand in his. I followed close behind him. It was dark and…I’m not a fan of walking in the graveyard when it’s so late at night…or even in the daytime for that matter.
"Watch out!" Hayden screamed suddenly as he grabbed my shoulders with both hands.
I shut my eyes and screamed like my life depended on it. My shrieking cry cutting through the silent night.
"Hahahahaaa!" Hayden’s laughed loudly as he shook my body a little.
I opened my eyes and stared at him as he continued to laugh like he was going mad. Did he just trick me? Just now, did he just…trick me?
--To be continued…