⚠️ Content Warnings ⤴
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This page contains depictions of gore and burial. Viewer discretion is advised.
Prompts included: tale, family, peace, survivor, beast, cold, loss, beauty, encounter, endings.
A gust of frozen wind whistles through this hallowed realm.
A field, a homestead, and a tomb.
That is where I reside.
Goodbye Ranger
CHAPTER I: O' WEARY HARVEST
Are you awake? That voice spoke in your ear, in a whisper barely audible but unmistakably there.
It was the kind of uncertain presence that lingered in the gap between sleep and waking. People told of it bringing around prophecies, or accompanying bouts of transcendentality that graced dreamers during lucid episodes; but either way, you cared little for visions that made folks believe they were touched by the divine or had their spirits roused by the holy. It visited often; every other day, it seemed, you would encounter it in your dreams. You never had enough of adventure, but you had ceased to chase fantasies you could not touch. Thus, over time, the voice became a hindrance only, and you paid no great attention to its calls.
Except this time, your vision let itself wander a few steps further into your nameless call. You were a flesh larvae curled inside a pupa, waiting to burst; you were a nascent bulb nested atop a pedestal, willing yourself into form beneath the covers. The veins that crawled and pulsed embedded, into the gloomy fold that fell over your eyes like smoke, became almost translucent, like the back of a snail's shell or the leaves of a cornstalk. But the cold in the coming months left no room for either.
Do you have to worry about the cold? Where are you anyways?
Your ears rang with the crash of rain in the distance. A whiff of burning incense made its way to you, and you felt something as hot as fire but gentler than silk against your skin. Something burned; something drowned. You knew of neither, but only fell in the embrace of ice-coated warmth.
You were seeing things that weren't there.
We were walking out in the fields just yesterday, and you suddenly grabbed my hand and pointed with the other off one side of the path. There was nothing, just crops. But you said there's a man there, standing, just standing and staring at you. You told me you heard heavy footsteps down the hall. And the Bible in your bedside table's drawer kept flipping open by itself. Out in the fields, you said, you could hear Mama wail. But Mama was always inside the house whenever we went outside in the evening, and the fields were large, and empty.
You screamed in your sleep about not wanting to marry, about dark men staring at you from your windows, about yourself being nailed to a cross. You would wake up crying and shake me by the shoulders, hard, and I would hug you and hush you while watching the door.
Every day now. Every night it's the same. One time you even broke your foot thrashing about. It woke you, and you became an inconsolable creature of sobs and pain, but Papa refused to take you to the doctor and said you'll heal if we just put our faith in our Lord and Savior.
I pray for you. Every day, with all my might. But it was fruitless. You're not getting better. Not at all.
You awoke to the scent and touch of dry grass.
A bleak expanse of grayish white stared down at you as you opened your eyes, and it was followed by an equally lifeless landscape coming into view as you sat up. A familiar clinking sound brought you to alertness; you felt momentarily confused and dug into your pouch, sighing when your fingers ricocheted against hard metal, disgruntled but grateful that the seventy-buck novelty item was still there. Squinting, your vision involuntarily tried to fill in some blue to the sky, but every time it did, the color would just slip away like absorbed watercolor on old matte canvas. On what remained of this land stood something resembling a homestead of sorts, but dangerously overgrown — an explorer's dream — with tall black chain-link fences around the property. Most were rusted to some degree, and there was a faded sign stuck on the gate that had likely read "NO TRESPASSING" if not for its sorry state.
Your eyes flicked to a small figure, like that of a child, standing at the gates. The first sweep of observation had not shown their presence to you, but you had clearly been noticed judging from their stare. Nothing about them seemed consistent. They had an air of authority over the place, like they were the land's rightful owner, but looked nothing of the sort. Straight, sable hair ran down their back, the perfect kind of taut, like knotless strings, without a single loose strand. They were pale, too, unreasonably so for someone who presumably works the land. They wore an open shirt and vest like a farmer aspiring to be a cowboy, but there was not a wrinkle on the cloth, nor a speck of dirt; their skin held not a drop of sweat. They stared at you with eyes that were too empty to be eyes, like forests prying beyond highway lights.
Something was off. They looked vaguely familiar, and you recall a face you had seen before printed on a tattered piece of paper, clinging desperately to the wooden telegraph post like how the missing child's family was holding on to hope.
"I thought you were going to lie there forever." They spoke with a southern drawl, light but still discernible, the diphthongs in their speech nicely complementing their airy tenor. "Are you lost, stranger?"
Something compelled you to grant a shake of your head.
"Good, good," the child nodded, almost talking in a mutter. "I shouldn't talk to you if you ain't a visitor. Have you interest in products of the land? The harvest is coming around this time of year. Come, I'll show you."
"Harvest?" The wind brought out the scent of autumn into the open air.
"Oh yes," answered the child, reaching up to correct your hat, "You're a lucky fellow; dropped by at a good time of the year."
You initiated the motion of slapping the child's hand away, but ended up only pushing on it slightly, and re-positioned your hat. They narrowed their eyes in displeasure, but did not comment.
You shrugged and responded with, "Why not?"
The little thing turned and walked a foot worn path into the field, gesturing for you to follow. "We have barley, pumpkins, and squash. And fruits, too, though they’re a new addition."
"Hold on, what're you called?" you questioned, following at a brisk pace.
"Now ain't that a question I ought to ask you," said the child, monochrome like an apparition. "I'm Lyka."
You looked them up and down. "Are you sure?"
They looked up to momentarily stare at you. You could swear you saw a strange, vivid glint in their eyes.
"Am I sure? Are you sure that the yellow cob you pick off is corn, or if the clear liquid in your glass is water? I'm sure, Jimmy boy, as sure of my own name as a person ever could be."
You paused. "I don't recall ever giving you my name… Lyka."
"Are you sure?"
You opened your mouth to object, but the child went first. "I know all sorts of things, Jimmy boy," they spoke with something like pride. "I seen many more things than you have — trust me, and you don't wanna be out after dark 'round these places."
And with that, the spontaneous duo took off, leaving the fence trembling behind them.
CHAPTER II: SILENT COUNTY
You had been walking for many a wordless minute. The child had told you they'd show you the fruits first, as you were quite new, and they had an awful lack of customers who desired the addition. The path you were on, now, led to something that looked like a disheveled barn or warehouse, years past its prime but still clutching on. The paint had peeled off and left only the bare brownness of wood. The more you looked at it, the more you were unsure of the building's purpose.
"Are you positive you've got fruits?" you asked, skeptical. "That building looks like it hasn't been saw to in years…"
"Ah, yes, the fruits," they nodded. "My pride and joy, but patient — you'll see them soon enough. I've still yet to clean out the orchard."
Somehow, the warehouse-barn looked even more unkempt from the inside. Stray, broken planks littered the floor in random clumps. At the back, old stains painted the wooden wall. The roof was half gone, and there was nothing left inside, nothing except for a hanger on the wall and a tattered basket hanging onto it for dear life. It was as if a beast had torn up the place sometime, or maybe a twister.
The child pulled the basket off the wall, and the hanger clattered to the ground as scrap metal, useless. "Right this way."
Stepping over the dull piece of steel on the floor, you followed them deeper into the recesses of the building. The sunlight streaming through gaps in the roof above looked almost blue. At the back door, nature grew inwards, creating a rough gradient into the overgrown field outside. It was a short distance from here to the orchard, or that's what you were told. This part of the farm in particular was completely uncared for; weeds grew about as tall as a man did, and they had clearly taken great joy in the matter, seeing the soils as their kingdom and their kingdom only. You couldn't see a thing. Lyka, though, seemed to know where they were going.
It had been in your peripherals earlier, but now the outlines were clear as day: figures, pitch black without features, stood in the tall grass. Each held a white cross to its chest. You couldn't tell, but it felt like they were watching the two of you as you continued up the path. The tips of the grasses almost hid their bloodshot gaze.
"Do you live here alone?" you piped up.
They looked at you in a weird way, a mixture of contempt and sinister worry. "Of course I do. What did you expect, Jimmy boy? Everyone's gone, so a little ghost couldn't be harmful. Rest your little head."
You turned around again. The figures still stood staring, heads turning with your every movement forward, until the angle between the jaw and shoulders hardly seemed normal.
"There are shadows," you admitted, "carrying crosses, standing out in the fields."
They stopped. "Say what?"
You gestured. The figures stared. Lyka looked in the direction you pointed, then shook their head.
"You gone crazy already, Jimmy boy. This place is hardly healthy for your little heart, eh? Come, the fruits are waiting. The sun's getting low. And soon…"
They trailed off, balancing the basket handle on their wrist, the heels of their boots not making a single sound on decaying leaves.
That day, I just wanted you to be safe.
You finally slept peacefully, the result of that flailing that had worn on you earlier. I sat on my bed, letting my vision drift apart into the blurry nothingness.
I plunged you into untarnished silence. I want you to be free.
Your skin will flap open like the wings of a butterfly, the redness within flooding my vision, and my eyes will hold tides of rage and despair. And I will try my best not to look at your eyes, because though they were closed, I could see the gentle brown shining out from inside. And I will carry you over, gently, gently, and lay you into the ground. And I will cry for hours at your grave, a small wooden cross marking where the center of your forehead is, fingers running over the edge of that rusted knife mere layers beneath the dirt.
I close my eyes and stop myself from praying, and I pull on the gloves I had slipped out from the drawer, hoping to not taint your tender skin.
I try to lay an image of an animal over you, but your face casted too bright a light, so I have to push it away, then disconnect it entirely; only then does it get easier, and I keep my eyes squinted until everything is blurry.
I put pieces of you in the fields, and the stolen knife beside your head.
In my mind, I could see the Devil's pentagram branded across my back, feel the pain burning into my skin and dripping down like wet paint. The sun is setting. The sky would crumble and reach down with cerulean tendrils. My flesh would melt into vermilion.
God surely will not hear from a sinner, and I could only stare at the ground, daring to hope that you would ascend.
The orchard had naught but a single tree. There were skeletons of twisting garden all around it, stripped bare of their leaves and pocked with dark spots, fallen to the fate of having the life sucked out of them by termites, or some other dreadful plague of the sort. The centerpiece was dull, looking no less a pale clay imitation at its core, and bore only a single, red fruit. That fruit Lyka walked up to and swiftly swiped off the branch, and they played with it while walking back towards you, the basket now an ornament more than anything. You watched as they tossed it up, then caught it again in their hand like a ball.
They weighed it up and down and nodded. "It was a great harvest, this year's."
Maggots crawled beneath the apple's skin, making its figure writhe around, sculpting its red shape grotesque.
"It's gone bad," you pointed out.
They tossed you the apple, ignoring your complaint. "Here — have a taste. The best of the bunch."
You caught the apple out of reflex and felt it squirm in your hand, the unnatural movement taking you off guard. You threw it to the ground.
"Well, well, look at that," the child knitted their brows, eyeing you disapprovingly. "No one would appreciate the fruits. Even the animals didn't, though that was before I made adjustments to how I grew the trees."
"Your fruit's spoiled; I'm telling you!" you insisted, feeling justifiably concerned for both them and yourself. "It clearly brews things inside of it. You can't just dig in after it's been infested."
"My fruit has not spoiled. How could it be, when it's the only one alive? It had been struck with a blessing, a blessing to continue its life while the rest of this orchard slowly dies."
The child dropped their head, chewing at the bottom of their lip in an oddly grounded fashion, "You cannot eat from any other tree here, Jimmy boy, because — you see — the land ain't allowing it."
Suddenly a giddy expression overtook their face, and the rational voice in his head screamed that it was unnatural, freakish, like the maggots in that apple had crawled into their face muscles and pushed around at their skin.
"God has cast you out of His kingdom," they sang, unmoving but no less terrible than a pair of cruel eyes lurking from within the hen house. "You are abandoned, Jimmy boy, because you touched the fruit and placed it in your hands."
You felt something cold sliding up your neck; little fangs dug into your skin-
CHAPTER III: PSALM FOR THREE
-and then, you were awake again, mouth dry, hand empty. You looked for your trusty lighter on the beside, and when your hand hit polished mahogany, your stomach lurched. The bed groaned beneath you, anything but stable. Water crashed up in little waves onto the sheets.
"What in the world went down in here?" you whispered to yourself.
"Who knows?" a specter interjected from the shadows. The child stood fully lit in the moonbeams pouring in from the voids above; their face was solemn and ghastly, their expression spoke of sternness and nothing, but their eyes held a star-like sparkle, like they were holding back a laugh at a lone funeral.
"What happened to the food in the pantry?" it… they echoed, chewing over your previous words. "Who can really answer? Maybe a whole swarm of locusts came through the shed and tore every grain of corn to pieces."
"Or maybe there was nothing there in the first place," you argued. The specter's eyes flickered, watching your hands tighten around the knuckles, clinging to the sheets. Around them, at the foot of your bed and the heel of their ankle, water continued to swirl.
"Yes, maybe Mama and Papa never put anything there this year. Do you feel the chill in the house?" They closed their eyes and held up clasped hands to the moonlight, bathing it in overexposure. "There's been a bad drought, the worst autumn. Now winter will come, and the Lord has still not spared us His mercy. Something curses this land. Where has Mama gone? What has Papa done?"
Daddy has run off with the milkmaid, the voice in your hand sang. You snapped yourself out of your fancy. You'd heard this exact story somewhere before.
You're starting to sound a whole lot like the voices in my head, you don't say.
"Was that what happened?" you challenged. That stopped the ghost-child in its tracks.
"No, of course not," they met your gaze with a dry smile. In the darkness, where their self-made spotlight cannot reach, you saw a blunt, murky shape clutched between their fingers. It bore a sharp shape and sickle-thin edges. "What do you think happened, Jimmy boy? Give me a clue here."
"It's your house," the words tumbled out of your mouth in disbelief. "You— you expect me to know what kinda disaster befell your fam? Alright, lemme see…"
You took inventory of your situation, where your four limbs still clung precariously to the hard quilt covers.
"I'll give it my best shot, but for the life of me, I just don't know. It couldn't be flooding, no, definitely not. Even though there's this ten-inch pool that could drown a small child, and is currently holding up this bed like the Titanic as we speak. "
"Clever, Jimmy boy," your spectator began to clap, slowly and in sync with each echo that rebounded across the aged walls. "Very clever."
"Did I hit the mark?" you spat sardonically.
"No," dismissed the child as they brought the thing in their hands into the light. It was a metal handle, impeccably crystalline, attached to a wooden wishing well bucket. You raised your eyebrows.
"You— where'd the water come from then?"
"The ceiling," they pointed up at the roof with a slender digit. "There's been a leak."
You felt your jaw clench, "A leak? Ten inches of water! You've got to be kidding me, I—"
Your voice tapered off. So did the sploshing sound that pricked at the same part of your brain as wet mud.
"Cheese and rice," you turned your head downward. The bed rests on an ordinary piece of old-century carpet. "Where'd it go?"
"It's in the bucket," came the reply, as the child tilted the recesses towards you for goodness sake. "See?"
You did not. But it seemed to be hardly of concern to your host as they spun and crossed the room to the door. You heard the hinges squeak like they had never seen the pleasing cool of oil, and their shape dissipated into static. Silence filled the room, expanding to cram every crevice.
In the dead of night, the silence had eyes, but no lips to do the speaking. The air was weighed down by a thousand soundless words. At this hour, no soul dared breathe.
You stood and followed in their footsteps, turning the ornamental doorknob with a creak.
No one found what I did. But the aftermath was disastrous.
Mama went hysterical. She said she could see demons in the fields, and that Satan called my name in her dreams. She was gone one day, just gone. The neighbors said she moved away. Then Papa started praying twice each morning and placing crosses and small statues everywhere. He talked funny, but never spoke another word to me. And then he was gone too, but I heard no news from anyone.
They say I died in the forest sometime. That's the rumor.
I had cursed the house and the land. Myself, too. But it was a small price if it meant saving you.
It's lonely here in this field. At night, the moon is cold. The floors creak. The doors scream. The walls speak my name.
I locked the door to the place set aside for butchering and let all the animals free. I don't want to go there anymore. When I took up the cleaver, I almost chopped off my arm. Twice.
In any case, I've no longer got the guts to be a butcher.
You stepped into more water.
On the way downstairs, a painting had caught your eye, keeping you held in place for just long enough to perform what looked like a complete change of scenery. The wooden staircase still stood, but led up to nothing and down to a river. A little rowboat balanced on the water's surface, like a lone star in a city-bleached sky.
A blink, and you realized you were no longer on the staircase. Instead, you felt a rocking seat beneath you, swaying gently with every climb on a rippling surface. The little specter was sitting across from you, holding the oars. Pieces of driftwood floated aimlessly about in the surrounding waters; one of them, smoother than the others, appeared to bear faded letters. NO TRESPASSING. In hindsight, it might've been metal, rusted to a color that could be mistaken for wood.
The boat had started to move at some point during your cursory scan of the strange interior lake; you caught the gentle sloshing of the water as it was pushed aside by time-chipped oars.
"Look at how far I've gotten already," they started with a sigh. "The first day I was unprepared and had drowned after clinging to a piece of driftwood too small for even me. And now, I have a boat I can row as I watch the waters rise and cover everything on this land. A blessing of an ending. It assures me that all will be wiped clean, with the land being prepared for a new wave of humanity. But there is something that disturbs me."
"I would reckon there's a lotsa things that might disturb a softer fiend than you," you muttered, half-attentive like a child as you watched the various objects float by. The items lost to the hypothetical flood were getting more and more curious: here was a bolted chest, and there was a barrel spilling seeds of red, and over there, on the far horizon, was something like the top of a gravestone, or perhaps the side of a coffin. The water smelled stagnant.
"I am the person atop the boat. And that spells doom for the new world. Thus, it has to be reset to prevent what will happen or to force myself into repentance. Both seem easy. Only one was accomplished. I am still the sinner I once was."
From some never-sky above, it was starting to rain. The droplets were small but rapid, and the rain greatly increased in scale over the span of a few seconds. Too numerous to be possibly encapsulated by a mere leak. In the little gap of silence, you could hear the sound of a thousand tiny metal beads, tracing out a frantic rhythm as ripples scatter across the water's surface.
"The rain feels like home," you muttered, a sudden mourning overtaking your thoughts.
"Ah, but you see, you are not welcome here. That is why…"
"It's kinda weird, isn't it? Usually on days like these, I set up my —"
"Many creatures lie here, boy," they say, seemingly annoyed with you to the point of omitting your name. "You surely remember the night beyond the window — the swelling, infesting thing that made men blind. What's in place to stop it from decking below the door or tearing off the hinges with a measured hand? What gives you faith that tomorrow will come? How are you sure that your heart will continue to beat in your chest? Without the carefully balanced order, the horde runs rampant, and this whole place would—"
"There are no monsters," with a quick slight of your hand, you revealed your concealed lighter. The echoes of your click leapt across the surface of the water like skipping stones. "Only a trick of the light."
The child's irises followed the path of the flash. In their pupils, where there should be a little black hole, something else reflected back from the light. It glistened like red berries under your instrument's gaze.
Slowly, they reached out a hand and pulled yours down, bringing the flame out of their direct line of sight. "But you've disrupted the sequence of events."
Their voice was quiet as always, but there was an anger lingering somewhere in the air, a piece of loose thread stretching somewhere from the ceiling and showing in between their teeth. The serene landscape held back an intensity invisible to the eye, but as clear as day to the heart. All of a sudden, they let go of the oars and stood with such force that the boat wobbled and groaned in protest to the jarring shift in weight. Water was starting to seep in from the gaps between the boards. You stayed deathly still.
"You know what I fancy most about you, Jimmy boy?"
Lyka put a hand on the boat's side and leaned down. Though the small watercraft was woefully unbalanced, the child still managed to stand perfectly still; you were beginning to think, more by the second, that they were some actual undead creature.
"It's this."
They lunged at you with no warning, and then you were in the water — but it was not water, it was dry grass — but you could still feel it, the loss of air, something suffocating you, something cold gripping your neck — and you opened your eyes to the rotting field.
The farm you had previously toured now looked seven years abandoned; puddles of water dotted the mud; patches of brown intruded upon the grass. Far away, the farmhouse decayed. The warehouse no longer stood.
Not a single blade of grass on the land was alive.
CHAPTER IV: ASHES TO ASHES
Among the puddles, you walked alone.
Mud gathered around your sandals with every step. The leather straps dug into your skin, reminding you about how far you've trekked. The forest seemed ever the more far away; the trees up front were no more than faint impressions and gave the illusion that the forest itself had been pushed back. Rails cut through the land on a desolate corner, but no trains ever ran down from the inky horizons. Far away, a storm seemed to be brewing. The previously bleak and colorless sky now showed signs of nightfall, and a cough medicine green showed its tint just at the very edges.
The moon was starting to rise. The dampness of the air soaked itself into your skin, and formed an oppressive barrier around the place, the fields' numbing concoction. The crucifix-bearing watchers were becoming more numerous, like scurrying ants beneath your beam. Heedless, you held your lighter before you bravely. Its meekly light came in dims and bursts, painting a ghastly picture of this year's harvest.
The crops that grew all around you were all but rancid now, rotting in various shades of cancer white, enamel yellow, and the pink of over-scrubbed skin. The fractures in reality were peeling and cracking at the edges, splitting away to reveal something ugly. They always said you had a hyperactive imagination as a child; a precocious mind married with a hunger to uncover. You knew that all the grisly, macabre filth hidden in plain sight only made this hunger insatiable. And the blooming of a thousand wounds was the kind of train wreck you couldn't take your eyes off of.
Something was coming.
Before your brain had even registered a shape there, something was looming before you, something so large and indistinct that, for a moment, you had mistaken it for the evening itself. It shook its head unsteadily, but like a patient held under anesthesia, no sound left its grown-over skin.
You stumbled back, but its shadow climbed up the path you stood like a sunset.
It wore the unassuming outsides of a lamb, but a loop of dried blood circled its neck; its once-white hide was dirtied by dirt, grime, and death. A horizontal pupil drifted towards your direction, then two as it split itself down the middle, a tumorous cell dividing but still connected. Its muscles bulged — an eye blinked open on its skin; then another; and then a snake's tongue from an empty socket. Sheep didn't usually scream, or spark fear in any sense, but when the thing ripped opened its maw it was ten times the size it should've been, a viscous liquid glistening inside and dripping over its teeth and lips, its teeth sharp, yes, yellowing, and a tongue and eyes all over, and an ear-splitting screech resonated from within — and you knew it was a demon, every demon standing at the foot of your bed.
And you awakened, in the throes of the most painful breath you've ever taken into your lungs, just as the thing dragged its mangled body and charged.
You hissed as a hot flash of pain exploded across your forearm, as something heavy slammed into it. The bottom of your soles slid against the dirt, and you fell, scrambling like a madman. You were almost sure the creature was going to take you in its maw and consume you, and yet you could not make yourself close your eyes. You watched as the tormented face grew larger — still larger — and all of a sudden the host was in front of you, the motion of their body suggesting being thrown, like a stray kite blown by a hurricane. The beast stops in its tracks, growling.
"Lyka?"
The child turned its head, slowly, two degrees at a time. You had fixed your gaze on its face, and now you and the child faced down a… no, the ghastly thing was gone, and in its place stood a girl, almost a twin to the being that had been in her place seconds before, but this one more reminiscent of that face on the missing poster…you and the girl looked at each other in momentary silence. You could just make out a bright smile fixed on her face, but there was no light in her eyes, not even a reflection of the moon above. A long-sleeved white dress hung on her and fell long enough to cover her feet, with some sort of belt in the middle, the work of an amateur leatherworker. Sometime in the strange process of materializing, a warm tone was added to her hair, and the umber locks were now tied in a single braid that lay carefully beside her neck. She was saying something, but her voice was soft enough, and her form far enough, that you couldn't hear a sound.
-there? You could hear her voice now, clearly, no, too clearly, as if she had turned into yet another of the speakers resonating inside your head. Lyson?
Lyka was gone.
Your thumb had found the flame in panic, but as your eyes followed your arm down towards your hand, dreading what you might find, you realized that there was no burn mark on your finger, and the flame didn't hurt like you thought it would. It was solid, somehow, but smooth like polished glass. Like its shape was wavering in the wind, like what had just happened…
You gripped the antique tight, trusting that flash of insight that had just came to your mind, and felt the familiar smoothness of metal underneath your fingers. Bringing the camera's viewfinder towards your eye, you took in a loud flash crackling through the empty night. You seized the results as it was spat out towards you; what you found was honestly…not much of a surprise.
But there were again the rapid footsteps of the godforsaken creature, and you shouted for her to flee, but she stood there still smiling, repeating that name. And there was the sound of wood cracking as the poles overhead began to splint, and the streetlamps flickered and died, and the telegraph posts stayed in the air where they were, looming over you and the amalgamation of nighttime things, giant crosses built to cast away.
You knew, then, that it was too late.
You heard something else snap down, and a drawn-out, sickening crunch, as you ripped your gaze away from the body of a dead girl and ran.
Mama always said I had a dark, brooding look in my eyes. They were weirdly colored too, or the left one is. On one side of that iris there was a splotch of blue. People try to hide it, but I know they look at me like I was something unholy.
Maybe I was assigned butcher duty for a reason; maybe it was just you were a girl. But I was fine with it. From the moment you were born, I knew. I knew you were meant for Heaven. I recognized that sheer splendor about you; it was the same as I saw in my dreams; it was the same as that of saints. I was certain I had seen a halo behind your head when you straightened up from your evening work, bathed in a soft candlelight. I saw that light in front of me when they read me the gospels on Sabbath day. I saw it clearer when I beheld the words myself. Even if out of every ten, I could only understand one. Even then, it all appeared crystal clear before my eyes.
I wanted to tell you how I had died on that day, but I did not dare speak the thought for fear of casting a shadow on your ascent.
Oh Annika, I wish it needn't have happened. Whatever the demon that was in your lungs, I wish it had been me instead, so you could go through your journey unobstructed without the voices ringing in your lovely head. I wish I could raise a gravestone, but I was afraid; I was a coward, and now that the wind has blown away all the wispy rock markers, I don't even know where your head was laid to rest.
And Annika, I buried your favorite book with you, hid it under the soil and doused holy water over it — that little bottle that weird merchant-man gave us, you remember? — and just today I saw that white flowers had bloomed above its leather shell. Oh Annika, if I could, I would've given the entire chest's worth of books to you, but Papa had found our hiding place, and he set it all aflame.
Some nights when I go to sleep, I could hear you call my name. But Annika, dear Annika, I cannot come with you; your home is in a place I don’t belong.
You ran until your lungs collapsed, and your breaths came out in desperate heaves, and your legs gave way, but you remained standing. You peeked from beneath the brim of your leghorn, and Lyka was in front of you again, now walking with the same collective pace they had when first taking you through the gates. There were new dark stains on their vest, creeping outwards like something was bleeding from the inside. Or maybe they were always there, and you had been somehow too blind to realize.
"Tell me, Jimmy boy, if you intrude upon a ghost's haunting place, do you ever think to care about their tale? When the voices speak inside your head-"
— You're going to die —
"-do you listen, or do you tell yourself it's just the wind?"
— your job is not done —
For the first time in this surreal episode, they let out a laugh, with a child's innocence almost, but oh so jilted. "What would the spirits in the stories say? Ah yes, it's been lonely here this year, so — "
— just stay for a little while more, Jimmy, just stay, just for a little while more.
CHAPTER V: DUST TO DUST
The ghost-child with the splattered coat stopped to turn its head. A dry smile lingered on their lips, and their eyes glinted with an antagonistic light.
The place wasn't done with you after all.
"I'm tired of talking, Jimmy boy," they spoke with narrowed eyes. "I thought you were a guest. You turned out to be a parasite. You've ruined everything here, and-"
"But it was never much of a paradise in the first place." You stepped up. They took a step back, but you could harbor a guess it was by pure reflex. You spun the thin piece of film around your fingers and tossed them the photograph.
They froze on the spot, their expression instantly morphing into something almost resembling fear.
"What… did you do?" they whisper.
You open your mouth to answer, but a loud rumbling upsets any coherent explanation you could have produced. A gravestone rose from the ground, rough, unmarked, untouched. The little ghost stared, then walked towards it hesitantly, as if entranced.
You watched them kneel. Whatever they saw in the empty tomb, it seemed to have sucked them into a paralyzing trance. Something fixed them to the spot, unmoving — either from shock or tremendous grief. You paused to give them time; you looked down and saw petals of a certain white flower rising from within the soil. Or was it torn pages of books? You couldn't tell if the blemishes were the scattered soil, or the words that sat upon the page. At the edges of your vision, you could see the monochrome witnesses, standing in line. The wind had stopped. So did time.
You reached out, and your fingers landed on their shoulder. "I had a friend who was also disturbed by the darkness and everything in it. The streets where no lights shine, the desolate corners of the earth. I think they had me scared for those things at some point too."
They didn't answer, so you carried on: "I know they took the most crushing parts of winters and the quietest summer nights, and etched them out onto paper and parchment — you hearin' me, Lyka? I couldn't remember, for the longest time in this forsaken place, I couldn't remember. But what I do know is that they made absurdity of the complex, and that absurdity made them smile, at their mahogany desk, where they chipped away at dreams and night terrors."
The child turned and reached up, an almost habitual adjustment of your hat. This time, you let them.
"And after the sun devours the horizon, and the sky turns a shade of golden blue, all that's left is ink."
The ground had begun to crack, and tumbled with the things beneath. The soil turned soft and you started to sink. The ghost-child named Lyka stood up to kiss the grave farewell, and walked first towards then past you, head slightly lowered, so that their eyes were hidden. The wind blew ever the more violent, and messed up their hair and collar, so that it almost looked like the child had sprouted the flapping wings of a raven.
When their voice rang out once more, it was not without a tang of woe.
"I never wanted forgiveness. I knew it couldn't be given. But there was still that agony, that constant nagging, always dragging me down from behind. I could not find where it was, or what it was.
"I don't know what you did, Jimmy boy, but you did something to the land. It churns even now. It dies. It renews. It reveals all atrocities committed within. But maybe it was…it was for the better.
"The house had suffered long enough — and now it's time to put it to sleep."
"I think, Lyka," you think they heard your last words, "Lyson, Annika. It's about time."
They looked up, finally, awkward but determined. The drizzle had messed with their hair, and water trailed down their cheeks and off onto the ground below as the storm raged. Their arms were curled at their sides, but there was a resolute set in their jaw. You couldn't tell if they've been crying.
Their outreached hand glimmered in the falling rain, and they mustered another smile. "Let's leave this place, shall we?"
And you took it, except you didn't; you reached out only to grasp air; and again your vision tumbled, and the pouring colors of autumn splashed against your skin.
The guest named Jimmy O'Brien awakened confused, years older, back home (or as close as home could be for someone of your situation). The passing years changed stuff, but other things didn't change at all. You still felt the strange mud underneath your soles and the dry grass sucking the life out of the air like it was all yesterday.
More than a decade had passed since then — you were sure — and what happened just now was some form of a twisted, prolonged nightmare. Any minute, it could fade, escaping like flitting shadows from your brain. But even then, there was something unmistakably static. You were anxious, hopeful even, sure and so sure that it was going to end. But still you kept your eyes closed, unsure if you wanted to return or leave, a lonely wanderer trapped in a never-ending dream.
It was bright with muffled sounds, a pouring rain diffusing with the light from the windows, a whispering cold draft tingling your ear.
You reached out, in the face of a vain hope, a blind moth to a flame.
And you found another hand in yours.
In the morn, someone came to the door. I don't remember much of his face. Cherry blonde hair, toned skin, light eyes, maybe. There was something defining on his face, something that probably drew stares and gasps from the passerby, but I can't remember. I didn't look that much.
He didn't tell me his name. I didn't tell mine either. He came alone with a weird, vaguely metallic-like thing that he called a camcorder. He said he came because this place is haunted. I looked him in the eyes and resisted telling him that I was the ghost.
I think he left already, now.
I would like to end this curse. Life is tiring as it is. I've not looked a mirror in the eye in forever; I tremble at my own name. But it would be unfair if he returns to see my broken body sprawled across the kitchen floor.
…I'll burn this journal today.
The pages would be reduced to cinders along with the wood, and the words to ashes along with the coal. The fumes from the fire would cleanse out the rotting stench.
Maybe.
Hopefully.
As you would have believed.
The days in this place were always cold. The mornings were cold, and so were the evenings, and the wind took all the sun's warmth at every noon. There was nothing alive on this land, nothing except myself and the plants, neither of which produced any sort of warmth.
But now I can feel something burning, something overly warm, tearing at me from the inside. All these years, the pain threatened to tear me apart limb by limb. But now it was not the pain that threatened me. It was the relief that did, the letting go.
I never felt the solidity of any other being. The friendly intruder seemed to disappear completely in the blink of an eye, like every other thing that had fallen out of place before. But I remembered everything he said, and everything he did. I tell myself, again and again, that it was real, as I feel myself crumbling into nothingness.
Some day, I think, this place would become a dry, rotten corpse. And I smile just thinking it.