Plague

Chapter 1: Playing Among the Dead

Her eyes opened to nothing but darkness. It was so black that she couldn’t see herself or her surroundings.  The girl couldn’t even see what she was wearing. It was as if she had been purged into some sort of endless abyss and robbed of sight, being forced to rely on her other senses to determine if what she was witnessing was fantasy or reality.

The floor was frigid, so much so that it burned her bare feet, and the air held an unsettling chill. It prickled her skin and caused goose bumps to surface.  She seemed to be alone.  The girl couldn’t hear any footsteps, nor could she hear breathing. The air was seasoned with the smell of salt and rust with a hint of iron.  It was too much like the stench of blood for her liking.  She attempted to rely solely on her ears as she picked up a low, almost unrecognizable and quiet noise. It was so far away that she could barely hear it, much less be able to point out some sort of source. It sounded like music. 

She attempted to stand so she could make her way to the sound, but something inside of her that felt like a combination of fear and dread told her to stop. The girl tried her hardest to act on the conflicting urge that beckoned her to venture towards the sound, but her body denied her.  It felt as if she was being held down by the cruel grip of hands around her ankles. 

Slowly, her pale white hand reached down in some feeble and cautious attempt to touch the hands; however, there was nothing but the chill of dead air at her fingertips. 

The feeling of being watched crept through her form, making its way up her spine and spreading through her with a tingling sensation.  The feeling was so profound that it was too overbearing to ignore.  She glanced behind her, long, wavy hair brushing against the bare skin of her arms as she did so. There was nothing but silent darkness.  How could someone be watching her when she couldn’t see or hear them? 

It was silly…but she couldn’t shake that feeling.

It was so certain that she closed her eyes tightly for a moment, squeezing her lids shut as hard as she could before they flew open like shutters that exposed her widened, green pupils to the darkness once more. She stared and concentrated. She swore she was hearing voices whispering in indecipherable languages.  The chill from the breath of darkness felt clammy against her skin.  A shiver crawled up her spine that caused her body to tremble and she could hear distant laughter reverberating in her ear drums.

The quiet giggles that haunted her within the cacophony of voices that whispered, taunted, and knew of her pain. The sound of laughter burrowed deep in her ear canal and she could feel the breath that was subtle enough not to be ignored. She felt the darkness pressing against her curvy body and attempted to move. A deep guilt seated itself in her stomach like an anchor and for some unknown reason, the unshakable feeling of being held down kept her from doing so.  Her throat felt dry but she tried to scream regardless. Nothing came out, breath lost to the dead air as more whispers filled the void around her.

All she could hear were whispers, laughter and the beating of her own heart. 

Suddenly, her senses were cut off. She smelled nothing, felt nothing but ghostly hands on her shoulders, the feeling of being watched remained and grew in intensity. The wavy-haired girl knew she was being watched and that feeling bore into the marrow of her bones. In that moment, she was thankful that the sensation of her fears was numbed. 

The feeling of being watched was still prominent. It was obvious, unshakable and undeniable. It lurked deep within her very being. She tried to ignore it but she could never forget it. Her heart raced, slamming against her sternum as her body began to tremble with emotion to the point of feeling as if she were going to break down or have an anxiety attack.

The girl is unable to glance behind her so she remained in place, perfectly still as she wondered when whoever was watching her would show up and claim her life.  

She couldn’t look behind her, but curiosity is in her nature.

Green eyes set sight on the very thing her racing heart and subconscious mind would expect from a room of deep fear, but not what her conscious mind would.  She desperately tried to hang onto whatever pathetic hope she had and then-

--

Bare legs violently kicked her covers away and a white, ruffled nightgown’s cloth waved in the awkward flurry of limbs that were thrashed about.  White covers cascaded from the wooden-framed bed as the girl rose up with a jolt out of her slumber. Her dark, wavy hair smacked against her face in mounds of unkempt glory. Green eyes darted across the room as she breathed heavily, a small hitch of noise caught between gasps. Sweat glistened on her skin as she glanced around the room.

“You don’t have any power over me!” She shouted in hopeless despair. “Just leave me alone! Stop it! Just stop it! There was nothing I could do!”

There was nothing there but she and her crippling guilt.  Her room was mostly barren, only having a few essentials and large pieces of furniture that were bathed in the dim light that came from her small, high window.  Beyond the wooden structure was a sky filled with fog and Victorian houses silhouetted in the distance.  

The girl’s breathing slowed as she sat there still.  She tried to calm her mind and shake off the residual fear and sense of illness that her nightmare had caused her. The air in her room was cold against her blazing body and the white, sleeveless gown she wore brought her no sense of feeling any better as it clung to her damp skin. After her wave of fright wore off, she was only accompanied by crippling guilt.

“Oh…it was a dream…” her voice was weak, even though she had not remembered speaking, “thank god, that was scary!”

She was safe now. Safe from the guilt that plagued her. Safe from his persecuting gaze.

Her sights set back to the window, gazing into the foggy atmosphere outside.  The dismal colors of the sky somehow offered some kind of comfort, some sense of familiarity and sanctity.  Never did she think that the diseased ridden exterior of her town would offer anyone any type of ease, but it wasn’t the depths of the darkness of her mind’s eye and that was better in comparison.

‘It’s been the same dream every night, over and over again. I wonder what it all means,’ her thoughts bombarded her as she moved her hand across her cheek to rid it of any hair that stubbornly clung to her skin.

Just then, a loud knocking jarred her out of her myriad of bewilderment.  Her body jolted in place and eyes widened as she turned towards the source of the sound.  It had come from the living room.  The girl made her way to the door, walking through the wooden floor of her room. She attempted to fix the mess of hair on her head as she walked through the living room to answer the door.

She grabbed the handle and opened the door slowly, only revealing her torso to the figure that stood before her.  The cool, damp air hugged her face but didn’t rid her of the sticky feeling her body kept from her perspiration.

“Hello, this is Josephine,” she greeted and was met with an unusually happy reply.

“Hey!” A male voice beamed.  He was in high spirits despite all that was taking place around them.

He was slightly taller than her with a broad frame and long legs and he looked to be pretty close to her age, in his mid-teens.  He wore clothing of the period: blood red trunkhose with lighter tights beneath, a wide, billowy red shirt that hung over his hips, a brown, leather belt on his midsection and a half-cape around his shoulders that had a single, gold button on his neck.  On his feet were red-tinted boots that went up to his knees with lighter brown covers that split in the middle. The teenager’s face was masculine, pale in skin tone with sharp features and almond-shaped eyes.  Atop his head was a mess of bright red hair with wayward spikes that made him look unkempt and bangs that were combed over one side of his face, cascading in a red heap and skewing the left portion of his head. He carried himself proudly and looked to be middle-class due to the fabrics he wore.

Josephine blinked a couple of times, trying to rid herself of momentary confusion before she opened her door a little wider.  He was a familiar face, so the need to be prude and hide herself dissipated. 

“Redway, oh hey. Why are you at my house so early in the morning?” Josephine asked. 

Although it was difficult to tell, due to the heavy shroud of fog, the morning was young and not too many ventured out.  Usually, those who did were running errands or going to work out in the marketplace.  The beaked doctors were probably about. People like Redway were an uncommon sight.

“There is this rumor I heard. I was wondering if you knew anything about it,” Redway was excited to relay this news to her.  Anything that was upcoming in the world of gossip was something that he raced over to tell his friend.  Even so, Redway was no ordinary town gossiper.  He delved into more…uncanny territory, taking a deep interest in anomalies, the paranormal and what lay beyond the grasp of death.

“Rumor?” Josephine arched an eyebrow, “not another one. What is it about this time? If it’s anything about the Memorial Building being haunted you can skip that. I’m tired of all of the ghost stories.”

Every time this guy had the slightest mythos or urban legend bestowed upon him through word of mouth he felt compelled to tell her and try to involve her in some manner or another.  In truth, Josephine just wanted to be rid of it all and cease all involvement in whatever debauchery he wished to be a part of.

She had enough going on in her life.  It was bad enough that her home situation was the cause of a lot of tension in her life and she was plagued with nightmares that she couldn’t shake.  Josephine was practically living in hell as it was and she didn’t need it infused more into her existence in this disease-riddled town.

Josephine had unseen demons that clawed at her sanity and state of physical being.

“No, this is a big rumor,” despite the apparent annoyance in the girl’s voice, Redway pushed on.  This was very important to him and he felt as if she should have at least given him the time of day.

“What kind of rumor?”

She would humor him alright, with all of the tact anyone would use approaching a conspiracy theorist.

“It’s been going all over town,” the red-haired boy’s voice held a serious edge to it. “It’s something in the graveyard. In fact, going there is the only way you can see if it’s real.”

Josephine placed a hand on her hip and leveled him with a look of vexation, “out with it, already.”

She didn’t have time to entertain this.

“Okay, okay,” Redway could tell that she was one step from slamming the door in his face. “Apparently, you can go to a certain tombstone.”

“Which one?” Josephine continued to show her impatience. She knew he was baiting her to question him further. “Does it have a name on it or is it unmarked?”

“The name on the tombstone is Gladys Goldwell. Supposedly, she was a real witch that got executed in the town square. If you go to her grave and bring daisies then you can see her spirit,” Redway thought this to be a profound discovery in his journey to find tales of the macabre and paranormal around Conversion Town. It was a small victory in his favor that made this mystery a step closer to being solved.

“So, that’s it?” Josephine wasn’t impressed.

“Yeah, and you have to call her out.  Eventually, she’ll show up and supposedly a lot of strange, paranormal stuff will happen,” he pointed his finger up in a matter-of-fact mannerism. “Then, you’ll get possessed by her and she makes you want to murder people in town in order to drag you down with her in the afterlife. You can’t get away from her either, no matter how hard you try. It’s said that she’ll drive you straight to death.”

The more theatrical Redway was about this, the more it sounded like some bullshit ghost story that had proven her hunch right.  This was a colossal waste of time and she didn’t know why he even came to her in the first place to talk about this gibberish.  Josephine was the person least interested in Redway’s stupid, fantastical fairy tales.  

“Yeah right,” she scoffed. “How can you die from watching someone’s ghost? That’s stupid. It sounds like some ridiculous tale woven by the paranoid. Besides, we’d have a lot of killers running around town if that were true.”

Was Redway really lowering himself to the standards of the common madman? It wasn’t as if he didn’t sound like one ranting like this about some ghost in the graveyard.  Honestly, if anyone but her heard him they would claim him to be a witch and have him hung on the grand gallows that served as Conversion Town’s second largest structure.

They were so massive and contained so many nooses that they could be seen looming in the background like a foreboding monolith on the horizon.  The structure looked even more ghastly when they were tucked away in the fog and illuminated by the cold twilight of the town.

“It's creepy stuff,” Redway tried to convince her to at least be a little interested in what he had to say.  He had come to her in confidence, after all.

“So, have you tried to summon her yourself?” Josephine squinted and looked down on him. 

“No,” Redway’s voice trembled a little, “I don’t want to get possessed…or die. Neither is good for my health. It’s a no-can-do for me.”

Just thinking about such a thing sent chills up his spine and caused his blood to run cold.  He didn’t want to entertain how it would feel to watch helplessly as your body slaughtered friends and loved ones while you still held a conscience but could do nothing to stop it.  The concept was horrifying, and he couldn’t help but become nervous at the thought of the loss of motor function.

In fact, the reason he had approached Josephine was because he was too afraid to really go through with any such thing.  It was something he wanted validity on, something he longed to seek the truth in, but something he never would dare to act on unless he had someone there to reassure him, or at least be there if something were to go awry and it ended up being more than just some old wives’ tale.

Redway’s heart rate escalated and his flesh grew cold against the dewy air of the fog-ridden town.  It was as if he felt like he was being watched, although he and Josephine were the only ones out in the area.  Few people were beginning to grow active and go out into the town to start their mundane lives but none paid them mind.  They were simply figurines in the background, faceless and nameless.

“What makes you think I want to go to the cemetery?” Josephine laced her hands over her well-developed chest.