Love & Exorcisms | 18+ | COMPLETE |

- Chapter 10 -

I shivered as I walked through the fields. The long blades of grass whipped slickly against my bare legs, and seemed to rustle even when I did not touch them. I wrapped the black curtain around myself as best I could, but it was soon damp with the dew that clung to every blade.

I had to be dreaming. This could not be real.

It felt real. I could smell the fresh earth, I could feel the mist hanging in the air, the mud collecting between my toes. But it was impossible.

I could never return here.

I could not be here. Not after...

I stopped walking, stifling the gasp that choked up in my throat. There was a structure in the mist, an old house with gray paint that was slowly peeling from its dark boards. To the right was a barn, huge and crumbling, its doors creaking slowly on rusted hinges. I wanted to run, to turn around and plunge blindly into the misty fields.

This was my childhood home, my father's house. A nightmare made real.

Would they be there? Would my father be awake, tending the pigs in the barn, his tall tired body having grown more weary every day? I could still see his grizzled face, the bearded mouth that never smiled, the back that was bent by years of manual labor and the weight of money, troubles, and God. Would my mother be awake, sitting silently at her vanity as I had once seen her do in the early morning, her eyes glazed over as she stared hatefully at her own reflection, gently prodding the wrinkles that were ever deepening on her beautiful face. Would my room still be the same, would my clothes still be folded neatly in the chest at the foot of my bed, would the Bible I could not read still be sitting on my bedside table as a constant reminder that I was a slave to sin?

I felt physically ill just to look at it. Shudders grasped my body and not only because of the cold. The house was overflowing with memories I could not bear, the echoes of screaming, crying, and damning words still lingering. I had promised myself I would never go back.

Why was I here?

I approached the house warily, fingertips brushing the grass, my muddy feet finding drier ground as the fields gave way. I could hear the metallic whine of the windmill, still hidden in the mist. The porch steps groaned beneath my weight, the old boards sagging, fungus having found a home on the underside of the boards, little mushroom caps sprouting in the damp. The windows were dusty. They had not seen the thorough scrubbing of one of mama's rags in months. I pressed my face to the dingy glass, into the simple living room in which I had spent the majority of my youth. The furniture had taken on a brown tone, as if covered in dust. Cobwebs hung in the corners, wrapped around the legs of the piano my mother had never played.

Were they even here? Were my parents gone?

The thought made me feel cold. Not sad, not happy...but numb, as if my skin had become ice and my heart was stilled. Had they left after the wedding? Had they fled Lily Dale completely, too ashamed to face their friends and neighbors after what their daughter had done? Or...had they died? Had age and exhaustion finally taken them, and they were buried out here in the land they had worked for so long?

I stepped away from the window. I couldn't look anymore. Everything was swaying, as if the world itself were tilting. Why had I come here? I could scarcely even remember where I had been. Had I ever even left? Wind rustled the grass and the porch creaked with the sound of mama's rocking chair leaning. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the old chair move.

I turned as the chair slowly rocked. It wasn't mama sitting there.

The being that sat in mama's chair was scorched black, its skin wrinkled and crackling as if burned. Streaks of red glistened within the cracks, but whether or not it was blood I could not be sure. I smelled it again: the acrid stench of smoke and ash. It made me remember. 

I wasn't supposed to be here. I was supposed to be in my bedroom, in New Orleans, safe in my bed.

I wasn't safe here.

The being stood. Its head was covered in small, pointed horns the roots of which ran with rivulets of blood. I was frozen, torn between fleeing and hoping I would not be noticed if only I was silent. But it already knew I was there.

It turned. I was met with vibrant yellow, serpentine eyes. A tongue snaked from between its lips, running over teeth that were sharp and jagged. A sound came from its throat, a low chatter like the cry of a strange bird. I felt immediately nauseous, as if I would vomit. Terror overcame me. The feeling was so extreme I had the irrational urge to claw at my own flesh, to scream until my throat was raw, to gouge out my own eyes if it would only give me some escape.

I stumbled down the porch as it watched my every move. Where could I go, where could I run? It moved slowly, methodically, as if it knew I had no escape. A clatter on the roof drew my attention, and what I saw there made me stumble over my own feet, falling hard to the dirt. Another being crouched there, its skin translucently white, its body a mimicry of perfect feminine form. But its face was gone, shaved off as if skinned with a razor, so all that remained was a bleeding hole. As I stared, more blood bubbled forth from its throat, staining its beautiful form with color as red as summer strawberries.

"No," I choked. "No, no, no, please..." My eyes welled up with tears and my limbs were shaking too much for me to manage to get up. I crawled backwards in the dirt, as the creature on the roof began to climb down the side of the porch, its destroyed face turned nearly upside-down, all of its bones cracking. I scrambled towards the grass, hoping I could hide myself with it. I reached out, into the blades, anticipating that I would encounter the same damp, thick earth beneath my fingernails. Instead I grasped something cold and slimy.

As the grass wavered in the breeze, I caught a glimpse of what it was my fingers were grasping: a thin, gray limb. Dirty, rotten toes in the mud. I looked up...and saw the Gray One standing there, looking down at me with white eyes. Its bones seemed to ripple beneath its thin skin, its hair hanging so long and lank that it almost brushed against me. It billowed in the wind, and the Gray One opened its mouth.

"Why are you running, stupid girl?" it said. It was my mother's voice, my father's voice, the voice of my pastor. I cringed and sobbed and tried to drag myself away. But behind me were the Black One and the White One, encircling me with no hope of escape.

"This is only what you deserve," the White One's voice was eerily melodic, impossible to have come from that bloody hole of a face. It made my stomach lurch just to hear it.

"Blood will soon spill," said the Black One, in a voice that reverberated through the fields and within my own head. It was my father, it was my fiance, it was God himself. "We know you ache for it."

"Leave me alone!" I sobbed. But all three of them were reaching for me, bloody, rotten, burned hands outstretched. I feared their fingers would sink right into my skin, straight into my organs, twist them around and pull them out -

A/N: Oooo, cliffhangeeeeerrrrr. Lol, I'm mean :P