Upon waking, he was in a cold sweat, shivering on the floor with numb hands and what felt like frost on one side of his face. He swiveled and scanned his darkened room for apparitions, still hearing in his mind the dragging of moaning, decrepit chains across a damp oily floor.

What was I searching for? It makes no sense. I know where she is. She’s right here…

He staggered to his feet, knowing that he would now have to get to work with stuffing her withering bones into a bag and then burying them. He trudged towards the bathroom, his whole body vibrating with an enigmatic uneasiness...

…To do this is to truly confirm her death, to cement it in the ground, to send her off to the fields, for the maggots and worms to eat at her and excrete her into the soil and trees. Is her soul already free, or is it still trapped with me inside this home of mine? Have I… have I imprisoned her in here all this time? Oh God, but to take her away from here…

He was shaking with sobs, scratching against the door, unwilling to go inside, but knowing it was his duty. It was best for her, best for him.

But is it? Is this what they want?

He could bear the pain of doubt no longer. With a forceful inhale, he kicked the door open.

But the bathroom was empty. She was gone. There was not even a stain. Not even a patch of mold. Not even a single hair. There was not even a drop of water in the tub. She was gone.

He felt sick, more than anything else. Not even confused, or scared, or relieved, or any other possibility of emotion that could greet him. There was only sickness that pervaded his mind. Not a thought could grace him. There was nothing, only a mental fever born of utter emptiness. He could not breathe, he felt a mighty weight crushing down on his chest, and he clutched on the door to keep his footing. For one moment he felt as though, in a luciferian irony, that his heart would give way and he would topple back into the bathtub and die then and there and become the very corpse his wife once was.

Instead, he staggered through the door, and in that very moment a godless freak leapt out and shrieked at him, and he turned to see a wretched ghoul that howled and clawed at him with pale red eyes that flew through the darkness of his room towards him, and he screamed in terror and swiped at the air and tumbled backwards onto the body-bag of the man he had slain, and in that moment he could finally sympathise with the sobbing soul he had taken from this world. And then the thing before him was gone. He spasmed and squirmed and sobbed on the floor. He felt true personal fear, fear of his own bodily annihilation, and he found that this sensation was similar to that which had plagued him in his dream. It clutched at his heart and squeezed it in its fist and stiffened his muscles.

But in the next instant he hurled himself up from the floor, and like a seething maniac grabbed a torch and shovel and flung the body-bag over his shoulder and scampered down the staircase and limped through the abandoned streets, heading out beyond the city and towards the forest that loomed over him and the world, and even as he looked seemed to tower further and further up into the plutonian vistas of star and cloud and ominous fidgeting light within. He tossed the bag off his shoulder and started dragging it on the ground as he began to stumble down the hills like a lost member of some tribal cult, grimacing and grunting like a diseased ape. Straight into the pitch-black woodland he stampeded, and as he reached the tree line, he heard an ear-splitting screech slice at the air above him and for one moment glanced back to see a train stabbing into the city and told him itself it was merely it’s homely industrial call but knew in his heart that it was not.

He pummeled further into the heart of the forest, and where the graves of trees were laid out before him, set to building his own grave for his shattered sobbing friend. And as he dug deep into the soil, he sensed that this man and he could well be rewarded the same sinful epitaph. He dug and he dug, and he dug until he was cloaked in mud and dust and a worm was wriggling in his damp sticky hair that hung about his face and cut at his frail cheeks. He hauled the body-bag into the hole, and with bulging, fidgeting eyes, rapidly covered the thing up with such primal haste as to appear possessed.

But just as he was about to finish his work, he hesitated. Before him was one final patch of bin-bag, and he suddenly desired to see the man’s face. He now had pity for the murdered soul and wished for his eyes to be seen upon one last time before they sank into the depths of the earth. He clawed back the bin-bag and recoiled in a singular spasm of every muscle and tendon and bone in his whole malnourished body, and he clutched at his skin and patted himself down and gulped at the air and began to weep and shout and stumble around and gawk like a stranded bird. For before him in that dismal grave was his own gaunt face and pale blue eyes and mouth agape with the fear of a thousand centuries. But before he could do anything at all, the face began to sink into the ground, the eyes clouding and rolling backwards in their sockets, the hair turning white and disintegrating, the skin burning into a putrid blackness, and the whole visage rotting away, leaving only the muddy, worm-infested earth. The trees around him wavered and washed over him with slithering leaves, and as he groped around aimlessly in the dark, finding that his torch had been stamped on and broken, the air around him began to breathe. All around him there were elations and exhales echoing in the wind, and suddenly, a mist thicker than any city fog advanced towards him, and soon he could hardly see in front of his own shaking, muddied fingers. But even in this blinding mist a bright white light beamed out at him. It burned right into his retinas, but he did not attempt to cover them. He stood there, dropped his shovel, and his entire body went limp. Like a moth towards the flame, he walked slowly and sleepily towards the great light, until his feet were ravaged by water, and the sudden icy cold woke his senses.

The light was gone, and he stood in the centre of a stream. The fog was all around him, and there was not one tendril of moonlight that crept through the tree line. Yet, he could now see as clearly as if it were day. He could see every wrinkle of every tree trunk, every bubble that fizzled in the water around his feet, even the spectral currents that wisped around in the air. But he could not hear a thing, for in place of sound was now an unbearable noiseless droning that brought him to his knees and shook the trees around him with an evil and oppressive force, tearing leaves from branches. The noise was so loud and deafening in its muteness that his teeth began to ache and his eyes bulge and his nose bleed and he clamped his hands on his ears for dear life. And then he could smell a reeking stench of mud and blood and rot swamp him and seem to be almost visible in the air and make the branches before him wilt and wither. And then he saw before him that the trees were bleeding. It was human blood, thick crimson snakes of gooey excretion, drizzling down through the cracks and crevices of every tree trunk. And the forest around him continued to wail and rage. And the droning in his ears was no longer a mute droning, but the scream of a thousand widows, flanking all around him that scratched and stabbed at his scorched eardrums like barbed wire against the breast of a babe. He spiraled around in agony, screaming in sync with his tormenters, searching desperately for the wretched figure of the apparition that haunted him, and he continued to spiral around, losing himself in the army of trees that tiptoed towards him, freezing in the icy winter water, and his mind was beginning to drown. And then, from behind a tree whose bark seemed to resemble that of a mortified human face, it appeared. She was clad in floral green and her flesh was a pallid white that dazzled in the midnight air as the mist cleared away. Her eyes were bulging, and her mouth was opened to inhuman levels, with blood pouring down from the lips like saliva. Her skin and hair and clothes were all dreadfully wet and floated about her in the air as she pummeled towards him, gaunt veiny arms outstretched with nails like daggers as tears flowed like rivers from her pale red eyes. And as she shrieked it was not the pain that hurt him so and made his heartbeat frantically and stab in all directions from his chest, but it was the sorrow. In that discordant wail was a terror and an anguish and a grief and a pathos so immense that it angered him to be so inflicted by such sadness. It was an intensity of feeling that maddened his senses and made his eyes twitch and his fingers spasm and claw at his hair and pull strand after strand out of his scalp and each of his nails seemed to want to dig into his very skull and let out his soul. But all he could do was turn away from his cursed banshee as it plunged through the air towards him. Her arms wrapped around him, and they stabbed through his clothes into his flesh with such a jutting coldness as to paralyse him and rip away the nerves from all they touched like a demented poison. She crawled all over him and he collapsed into the water beneath him, face submerged in the stream. But in that stream, there was something glistening, and he clutched at it, finding that it was warm and sharp. It was a shard of glass, and in it he saw his own eyes, bulging and bleeding and forever dilating, staring back at him in the water. His body was growing numb, his flesh overwhelmed with cold, his limbs stiffening and straining, his muscles burning, dissolving in the water around him, as the creature on his back continued to squeeze at his heart, and his brain throbbed and his heart hammered in his chest, and his vision began to slip away, but his mind was of a greater fury than ever…

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Oh, I will stab this dead bitch right in her foul and thankless heart! I will grab her by her tangled and twisted hair and shove her grotesque ungrateful face into the bottom of this sickly puddle, and hold her there as she shrieks and splashes, but oh! All her pathetic cries will drown out and echo far away to some other miserable man in some other haunted land! Ha, ha! And the whore will be drowned and her heart will bleed through her wench corpse! And then, and then, I will know it would be done and the cunt was dead for sure…

Arising from the water, blade laced in his victim’s eerie vapour, he stood over the corpse of the banshee that had plagued him so, and watched as it floated downstream and the currents of the river turned her head to face him…

…But of course it is her, who else could it be?

For one bitter moment he smiled bitterly at the thing, it’s drowned dead face confirming what he all but knew but had refused to accept. From since the first day, he sensed that the wailing corpse out there in the woods was the ghost of his wife. He had only been confused because he swore that banshees tended to warn of death rather than remorse it, but it was the fault of his naive mind for thinking such superstitions held up to any real scrutiny. But was she weeping over her own demise and his fear of addressing it properly, his failure to amend all she felt he had done wrong? Was that why she had tormented him beyond the grave? Indeed, he knew it was her, but was it this that compelled her?

And then after the smile there came cries, and he tried to lift her face out of the water and cradle her, but the body had already vanished. Was he really such a terrible husband? Did he warrant such a treatment? No. This was not that. It could not be that. Was it warning? But of what? Was it spite? But she was a spiteless soul… Was it warning? But of what?... No, he knew what this was. This was what everything else had always been. This was another message from his employers. This was his punishment, he saw that now, for not doing so many assignments when his wife was alive. He had always refused to kill for them. Steal, sabotage, of course. But kill? He could never. He would never. He would not… But this was the cost. And it led him to kill all the same. And from the cries there came anguish and desperation. He clasped his hands together and kneeled in his dead wife’s grave and prayed and swore, swore that he would never disappoint his employers ever again, that he would follow all their orders to the letter. He swore it over and over in the bitter cold of the river and let his prayer carry far, and knew that they would all hear him well, for they watch over him now, just as they always have.

And then from the praying there came the urge to run home from this evil place and prepare for his next assignment. He must redeem himself; he must honour the contract they gave him. And around him the fog had descended once more but he sprang forth through it all without a care for any obstacle, and sprinted home through the city, embracing with joy the homely humidity and soothing smog and the comforting alien lights that dispelled the darkness of night, and zig-zagged from corner to corner, and that he knew to be the eyes of his employers. And he screamed and swung and sprinted across the streets of the city that now thundered with the onslaught of rain that washed over his wailing body and cleansed him of his tears. He staggered up the stairs with all his might, and he smashed through his door with all his anger. And then he stood very still.

In the room before him were potted plants, were items of furniture with homely decorations, were pans boiling on the hob, were plates of food laid out on the table, were sets of curtains drooping gently and cushions propped up comfortably. And he saw that in the corner his cash was stacked up neatly, divided into planned sections, and was delightfully plentiful. And he heard the television play a calming wildlife documentary and he heard the radio talk of the local news; of new, interesting films to be screened at the nearby cinema, of the debut album of a punk band that was cherished in the clubs of the city, and of the construction of new apartment complexes for new immigrants to this small and serene city that was only one modest example of the many glowing, glittering cities of this bright new world. A lovely aroma of warmth wafted through the softly glowing place, and an air of tranquility graced his shivering skin, and the delicacy of his dinner caressed his nostrils and the homely ambiance stroked his aching ears and in his burning eyes before him was… his beloved wife. Oh, but it was his beloved wife, his beautiful wife, his young pretty wife of just twenty-two, his devoted wife, his loyal wife, his wife that would always smile, and would always hold his hand, and was forever his. His darling wife, his gorgeous wife, his living wife, his wife forever, his beloved wife. His wife, ever alive, always alive, now alive, alive before him. His wife that he loved with all his beating heart. She stood before him elegantly and with her bronze hair lightly kissing her golden cheeks and wearing her long flowing dress of glistening emerald flowers that she loved so much, and that floated around her marvellous figure like an enchanted atmosphere. She looked him over and smiled.

“Oh my, you look terrible baby. Bad day at work, huh?”

He staggered dizzily, shaking his head and turning away from her, unable to speak, and tossed away his hat and laid his coat onto the chair before him, and collapsed into his seat. His coat and hands were left with not a mark, not a speck of mud nor a drop of blood…

Was it all a dream? Had I simply fell asleep on that dismal black bus on the way home from work, and the intoxicating fumes infect my mind’s eye? Was it all such a fiction, was it all the plague of my own mind? Is it… but is it all a dream?! All of it?! All the pain, the sorrow, the torture, the grief, the, the… the violence, too? Oh, my beloved, were you never truly gone?!

Seeing his exhaustion and how he sat enraptured into some internal trance, she smiled at him once more and gestured to his dinner, and so, noticing her again, he did eat. A gust of wind blew in from the open window and cooled down his senses, and he soon was able to swallow the lump that had built in his throat, and breathe freely, as the air continued to caress him. He was about to speak to her at last, nay, run up and embrace her, but he saw that she had left to pour a bath, so he continued with his meal, lavishing in the banal peace of his surroundings, and the serendipity of homely warmth. And he spent much time leaning back into his chair, gawking around his room, at the grace of its decor, his face lit up with childish awe. And then something small and cool began to purr gently in the coat beside him.

His phone was ringing. He smiled, wondering who it could be. To be able to bring guests into this home! Life felt so normal again, and normal felt joyous, it felt euphoric, it felt serene, it felt… The phone in his hand felt rough and jagged with a layer of slime caking its casing. He picked it up and examined it. It was the very same phone he had found beside the bench, the one he had thought he had broken when….

But no, that was all a dream, right? But then this phone was a dream also?

It rang all the same. He held it in his ear as the icy wind continued to creep inwards and scuttled over his twitching neck. From the phone there came a voice, and it was clear for the first time. It spoke like the wind and whispered from afar, as if it had travelled from the bottom of the world. And in its voice, there was something strange that touched him and made him shudder. It spoke with such calmness, such peace, such articulation, but held such command of his senses. It spoke with true, undeniable authority. For all that it said to him, he could not pull the phone away, he could not sever the voice from his ear. The vow he made compelled him, but there was something more. Something reverberated in that voice, that snaked its way into every nerve in every joint in every inch of his body. It was seductive. It was oh, so, so seductive. In vain, he still tried to resist.

But, but my wife! My beloved, my beauty, my heart and joy, my everything! But her, but she is alive! But I love her, but she is mine! And I am hers, and she is here, and she is… she is…she…

But the voice still spoke. It echoed like a chant, flowing like the wind that pulled at his hair. And he shook and he squirmed, and he struggled and he tried to pull the wretched phone away from his ear, but he could not. And it spoke, and it spoke as if it had not even spoken at all. And it spoke all the same. And he heard. And it said unto him simply:

“...Kill…

…Kill….

…Kill.….

…Kill…...”

.

.

.

END