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Had the fire gone out? The man hadn't noticed. It could have been just a second or several days since the house had gone cold, one way or another his heart was colder than the house could ever be. It felt like an eternity since he was left alone, it felt like centuries- it felt like just a moment. He looked up from the stain on the carpet. Was it from the burglar or his dear wife? He couldn't remember, or never knew. He replayed the nights events for the 10th 12th 100th 1000th time. The braking of the window, the scream of his beloved, the dark brown eyes of the perpetrator, the pleading and fear in his sweethearts bright blue eyes. The six shots of the revolver, the spurts of red. He can vividly remember the feeling of the teenagers neck in his hands, the light leaving his eyes, the stiffness of his wife in his arms as he holds her and rocks.
Glints of yellow and orange glinted off the shards of the broken window, as the sun rose over the mountains. The beauty was lost on the young man as he slowly rose from the creeky wooden rocking chair. One foot after another he made his way down the old and cracking stairs, each scratching, sounding like scared girls to him. There in the middle of the exposed wooden beams and pink fiberglass insulation was a queen size bed in an inherited wooden bedframe that was slightly burned. in the middle of the dusty white sheets was a woman, his woman, skin white, or was it closer to gray, dried purple blood across her shirt, her eye sockets were empty and her mouth fallen open, her lips shrunken and blue. Her flesh was leathery, her gums pulling back from teeth starting to rot. Little white bugs crawled under the skin around every bullet wound along with her mouth, and ears.
The man reached out and brushed the back of his middle and ring fingers down the side of his beloved's mutilated face. So beautiful to him. So close and yet so far. So warm and yet so far from his blackened strangled heart. He rubbed her ear with his thumb, squishing and spreading the blackened red of a dying maggot, never taking his eyes from his loves shriveled and discolored ones. He felt no hunger, he felt no pain, he only knew he could not, would not let her go. He started to sing a perverted lullaby, something akin to the child's song.
Rock-a-bye, baby, in the treetop
When the wind blows, your body will rock
When the bough breaks, your body will fall
And down will come my baby, rope nuse and all
It wasn't how his beloved died but still he sang
Twinkle twinkle redend scar
Why I wonder are you here
Shine-ing on her fragile skin
Like a diamond in my eye
Twinkle twinkle redend star
Why I wonder did you come
He didn't know when he climbed under the covers but he was there now with his fingers threaded with hers. He pressed his mouth to her cracked and dried lips, kissing his deceased beloved, as if her heart still beat. If he didn't focus too hard he could hear it, her heartbeat, her steady breathing, the warmth of her skin. He could hear the call to oblivion, he could feel the pull into the realm of unconsciousness. He did not fight it, he welcomed it.
Darkness enveloped him, and so did the voices,the loudest his beloved.
"You should have let me go. You had so much time to let me go. Why did you hold on, I've been gone too long. It's your fault I can't move on, it's your fault I'm stuck in this realm of pain. You should have let me go"
"I can't let you go! You can't leave me! You can't leave me!" He shouted louder than he ever thought possible but it was like shouting into water.
"You should have let me go! Now we have to take you with us! You must go like you and us took the boy!" Red semitransparent hands grabbed him from behind. Hundreds. Without seeing them he knew. Knew they were spirits, the souls of the trapped and damned. The spirits of the worlds pain. A red spirit, so disfigured but so familiar came into vew. Her hands wrapped around his neck like he had done to the farm boy who had broken into there house and ruined their perfect future. 3 lives ruined in one night, the husband, his beloved, and the farm boy. Bright futures blown out like candles.
A mother carried flowers to her son's grave, a farm boy who made a very bad decision, leaving a man to take away his wife to burry. A scream ripped through the air, for on the hill was a gruesome sight. The willow where her son was buried, alive this morning was dead. In its branches were 2 ropes, on the end of each a nuse, in each nuse a body, the woman on the left, the man on the right just like their wedding day. The roots of the tree had grown out of the ground, clawing and twisting like tentacles. At the base was a skeleton, bleeding. The only skin the bruised skin around the child's neck. The Wooden coffin shattered, pieces tangled in the roots.
It only took a year for the town to become completely abandoned, a cursed ghost town where nothing grew again. Where anyone who entered either died soon after or was never seen again.