Day 29:

Ghost / Forgotten

Pain in their thighs. Fire in their lungs. Dark blots in their vision.
Leaves brushed past them and branches whipped against their skins. They never relented in theri sprint through the foliage. No matter how dizzy. No matter how fatigued. Richard shot panicked glances all over.

He was nowhere to be seen. Morgan Abrupt… Was he gone? Did they get away?
One thing was sure, no matter how far they ran, they would never run far enough.

A swish cut through the air. Carmille felt a sharp pain in her armpit. Her habit tore open. Blood seeped from where her skin parted.
He was still out there. But where? The nun looked around from where she was cut. She couldn’t even tell where she came from. Where she was going. All she knew was that if she ever stopped, it would be the end.

Another slash whirred out. It hit Richard in the thigh. Just a shallow cut. Still, that a ruthless killer had them in his grasp struck deep.
The slashes kept raining down on them. The echo of a demented laughter screeched from all over. They couldn’t find him. They couldn’t dodge him. He was nowhere, and everywhere all at once.
Blood trailed behind them as they ran, painting the greenery red as they brushed past it.

It had become clear that this twisted angry spirit could end them any time it wanted. But he was toying with them. Proving a point.
They noticed something in the shadows. Glowing golden eyes. Dozens of pairs. Hundreds. These were of the werewolves hidden in the cover of darkness. The ones from whom they had sought cover. They were the ones cowering in the shadows, withdrawing as the humans approached.
Their isolation turned more oppressive by the second. Even the monsters shied away.

Carmille missed a step when running down an incline, tripping over her own habit. She rolled down the hill, and rolled over on her back. How ironic was it? Only once out of the forest did she trip up.
“Come on!” Richard yelled at her as he grabbed her hand, “Get up!”
But she wouldn’t get up. She couldn’t.
“My… My leg…” She yelled, tears trickling from her eyes. Finally the fall from the church tower had caught up to her, “G-go on… Go on without me!”

NAUH-HUA-HUA-HUA!!”
The charred creature that walked like a man came out of hiding. He raised his arm, the one with the knife instead of hand. He shambled forward, his gait awkward in a way that was hard to put one's finger on, as if his legs shifted in size between steps. The stiff blackened mask of flesh and skin melded together had fused with his skull into a perpetually twisted grin. His eyes remained unblinking, sunken into his eyesockets as his deep soulless gaze locked onto his quarry like a pair of black holes.

Richard fell to his knees. He dove towards Carmille and embraced her in his arms, shielding her with his body as he clutched her against him.
They were about to perish, but she was going to be the one to perish last.

The charred **** approached them as some inexorable shadow. Carmille hated that disfigured visage. Almost as much as she did the idea of losing her life to it.
She had to look elsewhere. Anywhere. She peered over Richard’s shoulder. There, she saw the most familiar scintillating motes in the distance, burning intermittently along that invisible trail. They had found the Walpurgis Night’s Band.
She couldn’t say for sure, but it looked like they had landed either on the other side of the Band, or on it.
Something about that gave her hope. She couldn’t explain the feeling. She tugged on Richard’s sleeve, reeling herself back. He followed. They shuffled backwards, hoping to move as deep within the dark side of the Walpurgis Night’s Band as they could manage.

Pain coursed through her body, but she bit it out.
The hideous shuffling of Morgan Abrupt picked up pace. He was going to get to them. Sooner or later. The impact on the foot on the ground for each pace got louder, both as he got nearer and as his foot trampled the soil harder.

He stomped on Richard’s chest, shoving him to the ground and pinning his body to the ground.
The infamous murderer for eighty years, Morgan Abrupt, raised his knife-hand over his head, ready to let it sink into his victim’s flesh.
Playtime was over.

But before that could happen, things got hotter. Scorching even. A searing light consumed the very stars. Out from behind the hills a spirit floated towards them, made from fire burning of hatred and jealousy. Around her waist, a large cage of black metal encased her legs and feet. A manic grin, reflecting the same level of lunacy as Morgan Abrupt, split her face as she admired her prey.

“Oh. There you are.” She hollered, accentuating every syllable, “You think I had forgotten you? No, no. You made me this way. Now, you are the only one who gets to enjoy me, just the way you created me. Now come here!”
The black bars split open like the maws of a carnivorous animal, a burst of spectral flame launching around her like a blasting furnace. Her cackle broke the nightly peace as she glided down towards Morgan Abrupt. He ran. He left his victims to escape. He scurried towards the Walpurgis Night’s Band. Towards safety from the grasp of the will o the wisp. But her laughter grew in intensity as she closed in. As did her speed. The metal jaws closed around him, encasing him in a prison of fire against her pelvis.

“Mine.”
He hissed a feral shriek, sprawled at the bottom of the cage, where the phantasmal fire roamed over his already charred skin. He rattled the bars. They would not budge.
No longer would the murderous wrathful ghost roam the land of the living, or torment its denizens with his morbid fantasies. From then on, his days would be spent in the warped possession of this once prison warden. The will o the wisp **** her legs around her prey’s body. He could not escape her, nor wring himself out of her grip. Not while trapped in that cage. And there he would be confined for the rest of his days, the price he paid for pursuing the innocent and claiming their lives.

She sighed contently. To her, it was a dream come true. The same dream she had for all her life and beyond, and she rubbed her pelvis against him with the same fiery ferocity as she did in that dream.
“You did well, my little friend…” She half-whispered, “Your debt is now repaid.”
The will o the wisp soared back into the forest with her latest hissing and screaming lover. When she floated away into the distance, the light of her blazing body soon enough flickered away. The night returned to darkness once more, and silence swept over the fields.

Carmille cocked a brow. That last line didn’t seem to be aimed at Richard or herself, and it certainly wasn’t aimed at Morgan Abrupt. Who was she talking to?
Douglas?

In the corner of her eye, she thought herself see Douglas standing on a nearby knoll. When she turned to look at the knoll, nobody was there.
Guess she wasn’t talking to anybody in particular.
She turned to face Richard again with a smile.
He smiled back.
“Is… Is he gone? Is he gone for good?” He asked.
“I… I think so… I hope so.” Carmille answered, “We… we should go to the other side of the Walpurgis Night’s Band. In case more of those things show up.”

Richard and Carmille found their way back to the town of Cotts a few paces away. The night passed, and morning turned to evening. Richard and Carmille met once more, in the graveyard of the town.
“I made a little digging,” Carmille said, “Turns out that eighty years ago, the murderer known as Morgan Abrupt had trapped a group of youngsters in the Lourncotts Church. They reportedly lit the church on fire before he could slay each and every one of them. The fire consumed every single one of them, except for a single young man. They thought that was the end of Morgan Abrupt. But the murders continued. Since the young man was the only survivor, all suspicion fell on him. He was tried before a court, and the jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to **** by hanging of the neck. Throughout it all, he insisted that he was innocent. We now stand before that very man’s tombstone at this moment.”
Richard bent down and swept the moss away from the inscription:

Douglas Wouldes

“...What does that mean?” He asked, rubbing his hand against his trousers.
“I do not know,” Carmille admitted, “But I believe that if two fates are as intertwined as this, that connection does not die so easily. Not until it has been resolved completely.”
Richard nodded, “And now, we can only hope that it has been.”
“Yes. Hope. And pray.”

Douglas found himself swamped in blackness. He couldn’t tell for sure, but he felt the blackness did not obscure the location as much as it was the location. Endless blackness reached towards endless blackness in every direction. But he found a path. A trail of glowing orbs leading into infinity.
The orbs were like torches. Warm, and provided light and guidance.
He followed them, moving between one and the next. It would be a long way to go. But this time, he would not lose his way.