The sun was setting on what had been a beautiful day in late autumn... Pathetic fallacy a metaphor relating not the weather to our emotional state or current predicament, instead identifying with a seasonal, whispering reminder that our lives were about to fall.
We had been running all day, our efforts promising not salvation but instead a sincere struggle offering an extension of what minutes we hoped to have left...
The minutes turned to hours, and the three of us pushed through exhaustion and pressed forward, until the river before you in the photograph presented itself to us as we forced ourselves through the chilly black waters to the other side.
The witches behind us wailed a fury that pierced our very souls. They gathered on the other side, unwilling or unable to cross the moving water to claim our flesh.
We lay on the bank of the opposite side of the river, side by side, collapsed in a trio of heaving chests and steaming breath. Too exhausted to process anything more than to feed our hungry lungs, we hyperventilated with our eyes closed, hands clutching the sides of our heads to defend as best we could against that infernal auditory attack.
As we caught our breath, we slowly realized the wailing had turned into a gleeful, horrific, malevolent laughter. Lifting our heads, we saw the Evil Queen, taller than the others, her stinking mouth and rotten teeth in full view during her vile celebration, with her left arm extended, one broken and black nailed finger pointing across the river.
Not at our exhausted bodies, but over our heads, imploring a recognition on our part of what lay in wait behind us.
The daylight softened with each subsequent breath, and in unison we rolled on to an elbow to see what inspired such cruel delight in the demonic wretches we had just barely escaped.
Behind us, what our eyes registered inspired a renewed dread; what relief we had so briefly enjoyed should have been savored for more time than it was, such a short respite ultimately more a cruelty than a blessing.
A field, full not of trees and woodland creatures, but of shorter, human-built monolithic structures, designed to offer not respect for the departed, but as a warning to those still living.
Broken crosses, the remains of what once was rotten garlic, and rusted iron, indicating failed attempt(s?) on the part of those brave townsfolk, so very long ago.
Who, once upon a time, perished in their attempt to rid their community of the predators who relentlessly preyed upon the inhabitants of the long forgotten town, 15 miles from here, from whence the three had come.
VAMPIRES!
The rumours were true!
This morning, the three had been a group of four. Together, they had ventured out into the very deepest of the country, to search out the town, which legend says, once existed over the hills, deep to the north.
They had found the town, and it was not empty.
Their pursuers were relentless, and their intent was made clearly known when they had first made contact. An apple 🍎 had been offered to all of them, by a sweet little girl holding a basket and wearing a smile. Their companion had smiled back, and before thinking to question how this scene made any sense at all, politely took a bite of the biblically forbidden fruit, in a broken down Eden, by a gift bearer whose true nature was yet to be revealed.
The apple was not poisoned, it contained no worms or insects, and it resonated a palpable crunch as the first, and only bite, was relieved from its original shape.
Their companion smiled, enjoying the gift from the shape-shifting keeper of lies, and brought the fruit in for another bite...
When the apple EXPLODED in darkness, taking the bearer and inspiring such an awful wail of agony and acute, lonely, sadness that none of the rest of the group would ever forget, not that they had much time left to remember...
They had run all day, as the little girl seemed to rot as quickly as she grew, into the menacingly tall, dark robed cackling figure pointing at them from across the river, who had pursued them all day to where they found themselves now.
The sun crept ever lower on the horizon, and the rotten, yet still intact caskets, riddling the countryside, began making creaking sounds, seemingly of their own volition.
The friends knew what was coming. They had been chased here, intentionally. How many more had come before them? How many of their devourers-to-be, on this side of the river, had made the same mistake they had?
Disregarding the warnings, ignoring the pleas of the elders from their own village, and instead faithfully pursuing the promise offered by the visitor to their small, simple village the week before?
"The town exists! Forgotten to history, but it's there! I've seen it!"
The four agreed to investigate for themselves.
Upon this knowledge, the dark stranger left the following day.
The creaking of the coffins rose to a cacophony of splintering wood and shuffling sounds, and the only grace of that night was the new moon:
The three friends, clutching each other in the darkness of a night sans moon, were not made to bear visual witness to each others' deaths; the only evidence of which was made horribly known by the aggressive splattering of blood as it made hot contact with their skin.
In the distance, the forlorn call of a nightwolf beckoned the Grim Reaper.
