Beyond Death

Prologue

Wrath

The scorching sun burned obnoxiously bright, its heat blistering your skin as sweat made your dress stick to you like a second skin. Charlie never thought to mention just how hot the West was.

Still, the heat was a good distraction from your exhaustion. You'd barely had a moment to breathe since your abrupt runaway, peace becoming impossible on top of the boat trip and train ride. Nearly three months of travel had made your bones weary, creaking in protest with every effort you demanded of them. Some part of you wanted to fall apart and sleep forever, allow grief to consume your soul and become a victim of your terrible circumstances. Perhaps the heat wasn't so bad, not when it distracts you from the ticking time bomb that was your emotional state.

The wheel of the buggy must have hit a rock, your body flying from your seat as the wooden wheels dramatized their mistreatment. The driver murmured something along the lines of an apology but he seemed rather distracted getting the horses back on a straight path.

"Deadcross shouldn' be too far off, miss," he said, his Southern drawl just as strong as the gentleman on the train. Fortunately, you were getting better at understanding the lingo.

Deadcross was a town right in the guts of Arizona, where the sun was at its hottest and crime was at its highest. The population was thin and the law enforcement was even thinner, but Charlie said, as far as crime went, Deadcross was on the tamer side.

It was, allegedly, a sleepy town, drama free on the surface. But everyone knew everyone and the secrets were like venom, lying under the skin and running through the veins of the town, lulling its victims into a sense of safety before choking them on their own blood.

Why Charles wanted anything to do with the town - or America, in general - was beyond you.

Then why are you here?

You hated that voice; the voice that was impossibly skilled at mimicking what Charlie would say, pushing you to think above what you'd been taught, frustrating you with its refusal to walk the path that had been set out for you. That voice was the reason you were in the West, heading to the very town that killed your brother. Why did you feel like a lamb being led to slaughter?

Sweat covered your hands but you couldn't blame the sun for that, not when scared butterflies desperately fluttered in your stomach and your clammy fingers scrunched at the fabric of your dress.

The dress was a last luxury, a comfort to battle the apprehension forming in your stomach like a cyclone. Every war in your life had been fought with tightly strung corsets and a tight lipped smile, it was what you knew and what you grew to be good at. Very soon, you would be stripped of all of that and play no more than a barbarian. But you had no choice, you had no title in America and the West was no place for a lady, not alone at least.

Deadcross rolled into sight and, while it was larger than you thought it would be, it was still nothing compared to the growing factory buildings you were used to - the ugly things monopolized all the land in London, corrupting the blue sky with awful smog.

You thanked the driver, handing him his money before grabbing your suitcases and beginning your exploration of the town. You tried to ignore the terrible stabbing in your heart, reminding you that you had to pack your entire existence away in two suitcases. As if the complex and puzzling soul of a human could be summarized to two small bags.

Stares burned into your skin as you walked through the town, poorly masked whispers of curiosity following your trial. Your mother would clutch her pearls at the mere thought of so many people out and about on a Sunday.

'It is a day for God!' She would exclaim with that breathy, strained voice of disbelief. She wouldn't writhe in discomfort at the judgemental stares of strangers - no - she would turn the judgment back on them, insecurity filling their every pore just for existing. Say what you will, your mother claimed to only care for the opinions of God and, for better or worse, she stuck to that claim like an oath. Whether it was plain ignorance or sheer confidence, you wished you were indifferent to what others thought.

Even if you had become skilled at masking your face like a piece of cold art, your skin squirmed at the stares, the pit in your stomach growing deeper with each whisper. Maybe that was the dehydration.

It wasn't long before you stood in front of the Hiraeth apartment complex, heart beating heavily as it gently reminded you it wasn't too late to turn back.

But it was.

The key burned in your pocket, the same key you had been agonizing over for the past three months. The key that led you to Deadcross instead of your honeymoon. The key that might unlock answers of Charlie's death.

There was no going back, not after all you had done to get there.

The door squeaked open, alerting the woman at the desk of your presence. She looked you up and down from behind her glasses, the pink on her lips upturned in a judgemental sneer. Hadn't Charlie said this town was nice?

"We don't get visitors very often," she remarked in that similar Southern drawl. "But this ain't a motel, hunny, go to the saloon."

"I have a key," you reply. You hated how your voice shook, how it bent to the slightest conflict in fear of being cut down. Maybe the next day you could ground your feet and find your strength but you were tired. You just wanted familiarity; the comfort of your own country rather than a blistering heat and a way of talking you didn't understand. But, at that point, you would've settled for a kind face.

The woman didn't care too much after that, boredly directing you to go upstairs rather than answer your questions. It was slightly worrying how little she surveyed those who entered the building but you were far too exhausted to protest.

Room five, that's what the key said. The bronze key that hadn't left your side since you received news of your brother's death, since the eggshell coloured letter came to torment you with the ink pressed into the parchment. How insignificant words seem until they mark the death of a family member.

A part of you though, maybe even hoped, the key wouldn't work - that the door just simply wouldn't unlock. You'd be disappointed, maybe even fall to your knees in disappointment. But you would pick yourself up and find your way back to London and everything would be just as it should have.

But the door unlocked and you knew your life would never be the same.