Among Us They Come, C.E. Vance [the reading list book txt] 📗

overwhelming joy, she consented to become his bride.

 

Sarah was everything he had ever dreamed of. She was his life, and their life together at the cabin was surrounded by their love.

 

With the water pail in hand, Sarah headed out the door, and Joseph's loss and heartbreak found him inside a dream.

 

Grabbing the lantern, and down the pathway toward the stream, Joseph hurriedly made his way in search of Sarah.  "Surely", he thought to himself, "she has to be somewhere."She couldn't have just disappeared from the face of the earth."

 

His search continued for hours to no avail. Then he heard a voice chanting. A female voice! It was coming from the clearing in the pine thicket, the place people called the devil's hole, where the old woman, who lived in the nearby hovel, practiced her witchery.

 

Making his way through the woods, toward the chanting, Joseph stopped at the clearing's edge, and his blood ran cold. His body gave steady shudder at the sight he saw while holding the lantern aloft.

 

Kneeling before a makeshift altar, made of stones and weavings of sticks was an old woman, chanting prayers to the devil himself. Other than being filthy, and dressed in pauper's rags, her worldly presence also reeked of the sinister bidding that she was about. She was the most loathsome creature that Joseph had ever seen. The sight of her turned his stomach to the point of retching. Pure evil was before his eyes, and the recognition of it made him sick.

 

Turning away in disgust, he soon felt her eyes upon him, and he angrily looked toward her. As he did, she laughed, and called his name. "Joseph, come to me. Come to me my love. Don't you recognize your loving wife?"

 

Her image immediately changed, and kneeling before the altar, built unto evil, was his beloved wife, Sarah.

 

"Joseph, my dear," she said. "I created this beauty for which your eyes crave. It's all for you, my love. The first time I looked upon you, and saw you toiling at the cabin, your body fit and muscular, I knew I had to have you, and I did."  Then she laughed a damnable horrible laugh.

 

Then without pause, she added. "I pledged all I had to become your wife, and have you all for myself. Even though I had already pledged my soul to the darkest of lords, I had something else to pledge, and without hesitation, I also pledged your soul." Then she began laughing again, and it was the most hideous laugh he had ever heard.

 

Lunging forward into the clearing, he unsheathed the knife on his side, and with the brutality of a madman, he plunged the knife into her chest, and he continued slashing and stabbing her until her screaming and throes of agony subsided.

 

The evil lay before him in a pool of blood, and his mind began to scream.

Retrieving the lantern, he began running, and running, until he came to the stream. Then he forgot why he was running.

 

Calmly he knelt beside the stream, and washed away the blood that had splattered him.

 

Looking about, he noticed the sun was rising; so he began the journey along the path, making his way to recruit the help needed to find his beautiful wife, because his all night search by himself had been fruitless.

 

Joseph bolted upright from the rocker. "Oh my God", he shouted. The memories came flooding into his mind. "Oh my God, I killed her" he said aloud again. He remembered everything now. His wife Sarah was the old woman, and he plunged his knife into her, over and over again.

 

His heart was racing, and the voices outside the door began to chant again, and this time he knew they were calling his name.    

 

Then a knock came upon the door, and a voice called out, "Joseph, it's me, Sarah. Let me in".

 

"No"! He yelled. "Leave me alone. You're dead! "

 

No sooner had the words left his lips when the door swung open, and there stood Sarah, and she began to laugh as she started walking toward him.

 

Then he saw the flash of a knife as she raised it, thrusting it into his chest, time after time, until he fell to the floor dying.

 

Looking toward the door, he saw them--evil things. Closer they came, and he screamed as they put their icy hands upon him. He then realized, they were pulling his soul from his body, and he screamed again.

 

 As he screamed, the words of Sara coursed through his mind. Not only had she pledged her soul to the darkest of evils, but she pledged his also.

 

The demons were there to collect the due, and they dragged his screaming soul out the door, and down the pathway, to the clearing in the woods.

 

C.E.Vance

 

The End

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Text: C.E.Vance
Images: C.E.Vance
Publication Date: 05-11-2014

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