she was swaddled by padding and secured by steel, even after she’d felt them rest the coffin on the waiting bier, her hearing remained clear so that each voice reached her. Each tiny laugh. Each whispered expression of joy that she was now gone for good. Only Lucille’s voice, raised in song, carried tones of loss, of regret.
Hardest of all had been Elijah’s absence. She’d let her mind pick its way through the insincere platitudes, and all-too-sincere expressions of joy, trying to uncover a single utterance that might have belonged to Elijah. She imagined that he’d been too devastated to come, or perhaps that he’d taken his own life so that he could join her in whatever world awaited. She’d since learned that both suppositions had been laughably wrong. The thought of her naïveté led her to reach out and claw plaster from the wall beside her. The thing within her listened on, communicating through images the pleasure it took in her plans of vengeance.
It had seemed like an eternity before she felt the first tremor of movement play out along her fingers. She came to learn that it had actually only taken around three days from awaking in the funeral parlor to regaining full mobility. In between, she lay motionless in the dark, with nothing to comfort her other than the entity’s presence. Quickly she grew used to sharing her mind and body with it, coming to think of it less and less as a parasite, and more like a twin soul, a part of herself that had been missing, a partner in the devastation she was about to let loose on the place of her birth.
She had come to rely on its instincts, on its magic—for that was the only word she could think of to describe its abilities—that it seemed to delight in sharing with her. It freed her from the casket, and unlocked the gate of the mausoleum with only a touch. It showed her how to hide from the daylight, and how to feed off the blood of dumb and lumbering animals until together, they were strong enough and quick enough to take down a running man. When it led her to come to this house, she didn’t question it. She followed its tug without a single qualm.
This place seemed to have been created for her. While the houses of the living rejected her—a force she didn’t yet understand held her just beyond the threshold—the old Cooper home had wanted her, welcomed her. It called to her almost as if it were a radio station broadcasting on the same frequency into which she was tuned. The thing within her had heard the house’s call, and caused her to bound along, her feet rarely touching the earth as she tore through the wooded ravine that separated the cemetery from the edge of the farm, the fields long since fallow, where the house sat.
Nearby, the train tracks took a sharp turn to avoid the bend of the river. Trains had to slow at this point, so it had become a customary place for the dirty vagabonds who traveled in boxcars to jump on and off. This area proved prime hunting territory, as the hobos often traveled alone, and were sure never to be missed. No one would come looking for them, so there was no chance of discovery.
Kudzu vine, rapacious and never sleeping, had nearly swallowed the old Cooper house whole. The slanting wood structure would’ve long since disappeared from sight were it not for the teenagers of Conroy, who came, year after year, wave after wave, drawn at first by the thrill of visiting a place where multiple murders had taken place, then by the convenience of a spot where most adults who’d known the Coopers couldn’t bear to visit. For years, the teenagers had kept the front porch and entrance clear of the vine, but they’d stopped visiting the house since Ruby had claimed it, even if they themselves couldn’t quite say why.
Darkness calls to darkness, horror to horror. Ruby once thought of houses as lifeless structures, nothing more than a joining of wood and stone and plaster. Void of personality and incapable of feeling or memory.
Hardest of all had been Elijah’s absence. She’d let her mind pick its way through the insincere platitudes, and all-too-sincere expressions of joy, trying to uncover a single utterance that might have belonged to Elijah. She imagined that he’d been too devastated to come, or perhaps that he’d taken his own life so that he could join her in whatever world awaited. She’d since learned that both suppositions had been laughably wrong. The thought of her naïveté led her to reach out and claw plaster from the wall beside her. The thing within her listened on, communicating through images the pleasure it took in her plans of vengeance.
It had seemed like an eternity before she felt the first tremor of movement play out along her fingers. She came to learn that it had actually only taken around three days from awaking in the funeral parlor to regaining full mobility. In between, she lay motionless in the dark, with nothing to comfort her other than the entity’s presence. Quickly she grew used to sharing her mind and body with it, coming to think of it less and less as a parasite, and more like a twin soul, a part of herself that had been missing, a partner in the devastation she was about to let loose on the place of her birth.
She had come to rely on its instincts, on its magic—for that was the only word she could think of to describe its abilities—that it seemed to delight in sharing with her. It freed her from the casket, and unlocked the gate of the mausoleum with only a touch. It showed her how to hide from the daylight, and how to feed off the blood of dumb and lumbering animals until together, they were strong enough and quick enough to take down a running man. When it led her to come to this house, she didn’t question it. She followed its tug without a single qualm.
This place seemed to have been created for her. While the houses of the living rejected her—a force she didn’t yet understand held her just beyond the threshold—the old Cooper home had wanted her, welcomed her. It called to her almost as if it were a radio station broadcasting on the same frequency into which she was tuned. The thing within her had heard the house’s call, and caused her to bound along, her feet rarely touching the earth as she tore through the wooded ravine that separated the cemetery from the edge of the farm, the fields long since fallow, where the house sat.
Nearby, the train tracks took a sharp turn to avoid the bend of the river. Trains had to slow at this point, so it had become a customary place for the dirty vagabonds who traveled in boxcars to jump on and off. This area proved prime hunting territory, as the hobos often traveled alone, and were sure never to be missed. No one would come looking for them, so there was no chance of discovery.
Kudzu vine, rapacious and never sleeping, had nearly swallowed the old Cooper house whole. The slanting wood structure would’ve long since disappeared from sight were it not for the teenagers of Conroy, who came, year after year, wave after wave, drawn at first by the thrill of visiting a place where multiple murders had taken place, then by the convenience of a spot where most adults who’d known the Coopers couldn’t bear to visit. For years, the teenagers had kept the front porch and entrance clear of the vine, but they’d stopped visiting the house since Ruby had claimed it, even if they themselves couldn’t quite say why.
Darkness calls to darkness, horror to horror. Ruby once thought of houses as lifeless structures, nothing more than a joining of wood and stone and plaster. Void of personality and incapable of feeling or memory.
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