((This is my Halloween ghost story, complete with a horrible lesson buried within. It has ghosts,demons, and even an axe murdering witch, cuz, you know… It’s Halloween!! Reader discretion is advised!You’ve been warned! Enjoy!))
ABSENCE
By
David C. Daoust
Often, she would spend her time going through the things she missed most. And not just the obvious things like eating and sleeping. More detailed things, water on her tongue, her lips, down her throat, or even just her bare feet on carpet, or resting in her favorite chair, or snuggling deep in layers of blankets on her bed. The list would go on and on. She missed it all so much, the longing was unbearable. She wasn’t sure how long she had been dead, though it seemed an age since she’d felt anything but the numbing chill of the world around her.
The world was a grey void. She recognized buildings and landmarks, though she held no clear memory of anything from her life. She sensed others around her. They had no form she could discern, though she sensed they were people. There was a slight warmth about them, she knew they were the living. She craved that warmth most of all, though it was just a sense and not a real warmth at all. A memory of what she once knew. No matter how close she got to them, she could not feel that warmth as she once could.
Suddenly she remembered she’d been moving slowly to a light in the distance. Not a light like at the end of a tunnel, more like a massive explosion of light hanging in the distance. Glorious and beautiful, unique in this place, the light called to her, drew her in. It promised to relieve the dreariness of death, if only through discovering the reason of why it was there.
She thought again of her bare feet on carpet, and realized it was not the carpet she missed so much as just having feet at all. The gown about her… was no gown at all. Smooth and satiny she knew it was not. Again she saw the light, she had such a hard time remembering what she was doing, she moved closer. A dozen times her mind would wander, yet still the light beckoned.
Finally, she came within distance of the light’s source.
Hundreds of tiny lights, wisps, all rushed towards her, pushing and pulling at her being, though without the ability to affect her, they only amused her for a moment. The light still called and she moved forward. The wisps spun about her, more and more arrived in a swarm as she continued to move further into the light.
That was when she felt the hand grasp hers. Or that’s what it put her in mind of, strange considering she had no hands. It was a gentle grip and seemed to loosen, momentarily. She gripped it tighter, if only to feel something, the solitude had left her a craving for any kind of interaction. The swarm of wisps seemed to fall away as she continued to move in closer to the source of the light.
“Do you see him?” A voice spoke to her directly in her ear, clear and crisp, the noise a relief in the silence of death. “There in the center, do you see him?”
She wasn’t sure at first who she was looking for, though upon concentrating her attention on the center, she felt that same sense of warmth, she experienced from the living she had passed to get here. She found a man there, a living man bathed in the light; it seemed to come off him in waves.
“You see him?” the voice asked again, she found the mouth and then the face of who was talking to her. What could only be called a ‘being’ formed next to her.
She laughed as the loneliness washed away. If she had a heart it would have raced with the realization she was being talked to, something that had not happened in… she had no idea how long.
“Yes,” she finally answered, finding her voice, “Yes, I see him! Why?”
“Do you know him?” the being asked.
“I don’t know, I don’t think so.” She answered, though there was something familiar about him, “Truly, I do not know who I know anymore. It has been so long… my memories are vague.”
“He is hurt,” the voice informed, “he bleeds out the light… His soul is fractured.”
“But how?” she asked, baffled that this thing before her could be anything bad, “It seems so glorious!”
“That is pain, listen…” the being said grimly.
As she concentrated she realized the man was shouting some strange words, no language she had ever heard before.
“That is not his voice…” the being said.
Indeed she had never heard such a voice from any man.
“…Not the voice he was meant to have,” it continued.
“I don’t understand?” she was frightened, “What does that mean?”
“Touch him here, in his mind…” the being gestured and she knew just what it meant, “I will guide you.”
She did as was asked, and she touched the living. Just for a moment that warmth was more than just a memory. She almost lost herself, though the being prodded her away, allowing her to get a hold of her thoughts.
She was now a little boy, or within the memory of the little boy. She could see from his eyes. The boy had not been tucked in to sleep, as he usually was. She could sense his discontent with his mother’s absence. The blanket was loose around him. She felt where his mother usually kissed him on his cheek before she left the room. Though not tonight, his cheek was dry. The boy did not know why.
Suddenly though the room grew cold, she felt too, as a chill ran up the boy’s spine. A dark shadow appeared over the child’s bed, drawn in by the negative emotions. A claw descended from the darkness and with its touch, what she could only call a seizure came over the boy.
The sensation was like nothing she had felt in all her life, or all her time in death. She felt as the soul of the boy was gripped in that clawed hand, half his soul was ripped free of the small body. She felt as the scaled form took up residence in the space left behind. The boy did not make a noise, though she knew that boy felt everything, just as she had witnessed in his memory.
“His soul was fractured by a demon,” the being said as she regressed from the memory, “and all his life has been twisted by that scaly form within.”
“How? Why?” she asked frightened for the boy, “What can I do?”
“Know this, a soul cannot exist like this- fractured,” the being informed, “The pain, what you see as light, bleeds out as a beacon… Calling to wandering souls, lost souls… like yours… Souls that crave any feeling, even pain… I show you this so you understand why….”
“Why what??” she asked confused as the panic set in, “Understand what?”
That loose grip, which she had clung to so tightly, suddenly tightened around her in return. She realized it was not her hand it held at all, but her very being. She could not pull away. And the panic became so familiar, she recalled her own life.
She found herself within another vision. She was herself though; it was her memory from life. She was frightened, she was hiding. The young man was hunting her. She had found him in the darkness. She had discovered his secrets. The dead things and horrors he had kept hidden away. She knew he was mad, crazy, rotting death in his home, her home, he was her son.
The sound of the axe sliding on the ground behind him, taunting her, as he searched for her hiding spot, terrified her once again. Knowing what he was capable of… what was to be… the memories of that axe buried in her flesh all too clear…
“I’m sorry,” the being said and she snapped back from the old memory that faded just as quickly as it came.
“No, get away!” she pulled harder though found the grip only tightened.
“I’m sorry, we cannot exist on our own,” The face suddenly took on the same visage as the man yelling in the light, though twisted with hunger, “We would die if I did not feed us! The demon would take it, our body, fully, the demon would win and kill everyone in our lives… more than it already has… we cannot take anymore loss!”
“Feed on what?” She asked panic stricken, though already knew the answer.
The grip was no longer a grip, she was being absorbed, all that she was, was being torn from her. Absorbed into that fractured soul, the half of the soul discarded, the half tossed away like a banana peel or empty husk. It fed on her as it had done for years and years upon countless souls, to strengthen both halves, to stave off the demons will.
The demon-possessed man that now screamed out in congress with the beast, a demon witch, casting those horrible curses and spells that sank the world into darkness. The man’s fractured soul, tired of fighting against it, had fallen so far into the depravity and hate that the demon exuded, that he had allowed it to kill his mother.
He had killed his mother.
And the pain of the act haunted him for all his years.
And now years later, that same mother’s soul had wandered too close to the demon’s domain and it too was destroyed, leaving nothing but a small ball of light. A wisp, formed of panic, to wander the light’s source and try to warn other lost souls away.
—
Be sure to tuck them in tight,
And kiss them good night,
Every night,
Less a bad night fall your way!
Happy Halloween!
