Labeled the village crazy lady, Maren Marrow has been seeing ghosts since her near death experience as a child. But it was the ghost of Cedric Swern Pemberton the Second who changed Maren's whole view of her curse with one request: get revenge for h...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Crazy. Psycho. Insane. Mad. Odd. Witch. Over the short span of my life, I've been called those things and many more I chose not to think about but still, I wonder why people think those things of me.
Because I See Ghosts.
No, I reprimand myself, it's only because my normal is different from everybody else's normal.
It's because I'm an outsider in the damned village of Harlem. It's because I stay alone in a burnt and depleted house all alone with my cat. It's because I'm named after my mother when nobody in Harlem names children after their mothers.
But to anyone else, it's because I'm crazy. And walking into the village center to get provisions only proved this fact.
My black boots kicked up snow as I stepped into the crowed, frozen square. I watched, my face carefully black, as every head turned to me and every voice dwindled to silence.
And God knows that there's no silence like the silence that follows in Maren Marrow's wake.
I pulled my fur shawl closer around my shoulders as I continued my ascension into the shopping booths. It was a week end, so naturally all the best vendors were open and everybody and their mothers were here. And there dead mother's mothers as well.
I didn't miss the ethereal bodies of the common ghosts strolling through the square, there bodies passing through the mortals like mist.
Some of the spirits laughed amongst each other, eyeing the living as if they were a wonderful spectacle. Others, had a sad, forlorn expression as they looked on.
I turned my eyes away, careful not to let anybody in the square see my attention on something that wasn't there. Conversation had hesitantly presumed among them and I took the opportunity to stop in front of the bread stand.
"One loaf please," I asked the flour covered old man, handing him a dull, dirty coin.
He looked me up and down, hesitating before taking the coin from me with a sneer. I held my tongue. Even if the vendors hated me, they wouldn't dare turn away business in this painful winter.
He turned away and hastily threw a loaf into a bag and threw it into my arms and whispered angrily at me. "Now get on, witch!"
I adjusted the bread underneath my arm, noticing the burnt outside of the loaf and only looked down at the old man, wondering why he would waste his last years of life talking down and being cruel to a young girl.
"You have a wonderful day, sir."
And I moved on, quickly grabbing what I needed from each stand while managing to partially tune out the glares and stares and whispers.
Partially, meaning I still turned a ear and listened to their gossip.
She's looking rather pale today, a sure sign of the devil inside her.
