The Coven of Loss

"A countryside estate," the words came from behind me. Bag still in hand, I didn't quite register them, nor did I hear what was said next, "A little fresh air, a little scenery. Maybe this'll... take your mind off things." My uncle passed me on my left, a wry smile on his face as he flapped his arms as though he were conducting an orchestra, and servants moved about the front of the estate as though they were one. Currently, the second violin was taking most of my things through the large front doors.

And large they were! Doors made of a deep brown wood which framed glass... it looked fractured, but as I approached it, I noticed that it was but the design. Smooth on the surface, yet tendrils of carnage swept their way through the glass, from corner to corner, seemingly random in their decay. The rest of the house was nice, too, I suppose. The foyer was grand, with two identical curved staircases leading to a second floor. High ceilings masked the definitive and gave leeway to imagination. In another life I would've run around, trying to imagine what could hide up in those dark corners and shadowed arches.

"We'll be up on the third floor," said my uncle. He means well, but he wasn't ready for this, for me, and I know I wasn't ready for him. His brother (my father), and my mother were killed in a hit and run not three weeks ago, and while I lay silent in grief, as I still lie, it was decided that I stay with him.

But he's old, older by far than my father, and he never had any children. He means to live with me here, thousands of miles where my real home is, and if I didn't know any better, I would say he's trying to keep me here. He told me in the journey from the train station to this estate that he doesn't want me out on the grounds, and he doesn't want me to venture into town. I even overheard him telling the staff to keep an eye on me; to make sure I stay in the house. And what could I do but nod my head?

***

The walls of my room are white, silken almost. They are the only pristine part of the house left. Or so my uncle tells me. He maintains that I spend most of my time in this room, resting away. The servants bring me food while my uncle is at work, and then we eat dinner in the kitchen together. He tries so hard to make conversation with me, but I still have no words for the world, only those on the page. I see fear in his eyes. He's scared I may become a mute. So today I'm going to try and talk to him at dinner. Perhaps I can find something we have in common.

***

I spoke to him yesterday, if only a little. I told him the soup was good. He smiled as I've never seen him smile before; I think he really cares. It should be a heartwarming thought, but instead I feel as though the hearth burns outside of me; I am the snowflake which falls so delicately, helplessly watching the fire burn inside a house.

My room is still sparse. After two days it is filled with one suitcase of clothes from my home, and a few boxes of things I thought were worth bringing to this strange new place. My bed is wide, much wider than a person of my rather diminutive size could ever need, and from it I can see to my left a window, identical to the one which looms behind my head. The one to my left is tall, and comes down low, a little below my waist, allowing me to see all that goes on in the courtyard and street below... but it is barred, so the moonlight which pierces it comes in identical rectangles on the opposite wall.

There's a tree in the window behind my head. Sometimes the smallest branches get caught in the wind and they squeak against the glass. An insignificant, irritating noise, akin to the scratching of a mechanical pencil on paper. I try to sleep at night, but I rarely find comfort in this bed. The tree makes a sort of shadowed hand on the wall opposite me, it's skeletal fingers still barren in the summer heat. They reach down, further and further every night as the moon rises, and into them I see the beginnings of the walls breaking down. Gone is the silken white, replaced with a dull grey or worse, a fathomless black. When the hand comes, it's seems etched in the wall itself, carving out its place, clawing down for my hazy form.

Last night I saw it reach down fairly far before exhaustion caught me. Hopefully tonight I can find rest earlier.

***

Today I'm feeling much better. I had no dreams last night, but it rained today and that always gives me joy. I feel like the plants are drinking, somehow. Perhaps their petals, leaves, and other appendages reach up, trying desperately to nourish themselves, to reach that precious font of power and safety, while simultaneously entrenching their bodies in the soil, lest they be blown away by a breeze.

So I watched them today, the plants, my uncle says I'm not to go into town, though I'm not old enough for a license anyway, so I simply watch the plants from inside - he hates mud in the house as well. Perhaps tonight I may dream of my parents again. I've thought about almost nothing else for many, many days. It's strange to want something so much, though you know you may not have it. It's maddening, even.

***

The rains have departed, if only to make way for a coffin of gray clouds. In another life I might've gone outside for a game of football with my friends. But I have no friends here, so I just sit in my room, decorating.

Hardly a menial task, but I do feel it gets mundane. Which is why I'm writing this now, to take a little break. I wasn't able to take too many of my possessions in the suitcase, so most of them got thrown in boxes, poorly labeled and very dented by the time I got to them. A lot of the stuff is useless, so I'm throwing it away. The only things I'm keeping are old books which I might perhaps read again, and some random toys, like my Rubix cube.

I don't mean to bore you with tales of my personal woes, but it sure does bore me sometimes. I spent an hour today just playing with some ball attached to a paddle by a string. My uncle goes to work, and I'm left with faceless servants bringing me cold food every few hours. He says it'll get better, that the pain which he claims to feel as well will subside as the seasons change and the stars wheel overhead. He must be right; there is no future if he's wrong. No existence can be carved from so meager, so pathetic a foundation.

***

My room is presentable now. I've put up some old posters I had forgotten about from my childhood. My uncle saw that I'd also put up several pictures of my parents, though he demanded that I take most of them down. Out of sight, out of mind, though I cried a good bit after he'd left. He seems to be a rock at the bottom of a cliff by the ocean, braving the crashing waves with a stout vantage. I kept just one picture of my parents and I after all was said and done. It stays now in a place where my uncle can never find it, and where the hand will never reach it. I see it even now in the gloom of dusk, the shadows of that which has yet to fully emerge are more menacing than the thing itself, I think. Perhaps it's the inevitability of it's coming which frightens me, but I won't let it get me!

***

My uncle is at work right now. He's a town manager or boardsman or selectman or something like that. He tried to explain to me at dinner but I guess my mind was... somewhere else. Whatever he does, he must earn a lot of money, because this house is larger than any I've ever seen. But I mostly keep to my room, anyway, so it doesn't matter much to me. After all, that's where all my things are, and well, that's where you are.

I've tried reading some of the books my uncle keeps in the library, which is so large you have to use a ladder to reach the top shelf. In my younger days, or perhaps even now if I had the stomach for it, I'd slide that ladder back and forth against the shelves, brushing the backs of the books with my fingers and smelling the old paper as I flew by. But it seemed to me like I couldn't focus on the reading today. The words just moved along at their own pace, and while I was able to catch some of them, most just left the page before I could take them in.

I suppose I'll take a nap soon; the servants have told me that it's good for me. Perhaps they just don't want to worry about me traipsing about the house as much. They needn't fret, though. I've barely enough strength to come down for dinner in the evening. I know I'll get better soon, but this poisonous lethargy is upsetting me, and I have no trouble admitting that to you. I'll soon either be too fat or too skinny to play football at my new school in the fall, and that's the only thing that I was looking forward to here.

***

Last night the hand came down closer than ever before. Perhaps it was my imagination, but it seemed more defined as well. The increasing brightness of the waxing moon, maybe. Although I could have sworn it was something else, as well. The creepy thing reached down towards me, malice aforethought, as though it would pluck my soul right out of me and leave my body, now no more than a husk, on the bed. It was windy as well, which caused the fingers to creak and move as though they were itched at the very thought of it. It was a long time before I fell asleep, and even then it was not a restful night. Why, you ask?

The hand has followed me into my sleep, through that gateway of the subconscious and right into my dreams. I saw it last night attached to some being shrouded in the rising mist, reaching out for me with each gnarled finger ending in a talon. The other hand of the creature held a bag, of which I saw little. I tried to turn and run, but my feet were rooted into the ground, my spine held erect by some intangible pole. The creature seemed still to be about ten feet away (in dream feet at least), and it could only move slowly towards the clear patch of ground in front of me, where no fog was there to obscure it. However, I woke shortly before it was about to come into this clearing, and... perhaps you'll think me crazy for this, but I felt something inside of me this morning, as though this taloned beast had used his shadow of a hand to tinker around my stomach while I was asleep, as a doll-maker would do.

But still I suppose it is a new day, and while I can't stomach a breakfast right now, I am hoping today to at least eat lunch properly. Normally I just move everything around on the plate to show the servants that I "ate" my food. I do hope that whatever this illness plagues me so would depart quickly.

***

It's been about a week since I last spoke to you, and I'm sorry for the lapse. My uncle found out I was writing and forbade me to do so, even going to far as to say he'd take you away from me if he caught me again. He says that he's an adult, that he knows better, and that the way to get over these things is to not think about them constantly, which is what I do with you. I just ladle my feelings on you and you take on their flavor like rice.

I apologize for doing that, by the way, I just have no one else to speak to besides you. The servants are too grown-up for me, and they all seem pretty busy at any rate. Maybe one day I won't need to use you this way... maybe one day. For now, I sit in this house musing on the fate of my parents, the only two that God will ever give me. They were simply walking across the street from their parking spot to the apartment we lived in and someone driving at a ridiculous speed didn't see them in the dark.

I think it's all a part of life, though. At least that's what I was told by my school counselor shortly before coming here. But I think he's wrong. There's nothing organic about this sickening, pungent odor which accompanies me everywhere I go. I cannot wash it off, and it seems to grow more visceral in nature as time passes, like a rot which has festered in me these last month. The cankerous sores are now spreading rapidly, and I've no way to control them.

Sometimes I dream that it never really happened. That I'm only here for a vacation, some quality time with the uncle I never knew too well in the first place. Towards the end, I'd see my parents waiting for me at the train station, waving at me as I got off the rail. Their smiles were as wide as ever, and while I can never remember exactly what they wear (it changes with each iteration of the dream), I always feel the warmth in their embrace, smell the rosy aroma of my mothers perfume and the powerful aura of my fathers aftershave collide in a brilliant canvas of scent, a tribute to the sense itself. It's here that the dream ends, and I'm left with the shadowy remnants of that evil, clawed hand searching deep within my frame for my soul, which it seeks with unwavering cruelty.

***

This morning the sun shone through steely clouds for the first time in a fortnight, and I've noticed that the sky is of a different color here. The brilliant angel blue sky from where I grew up has been desaturated slightly, resulting in a dull mix of periwinkle and powder blue. It also seems that the light hits objects differently where my uncle lives. The hues are deafened, and while I still sit and watch the flowers often, I now see that they aren't as vibrant as even the simple dandelions of the meadow behind my parent's house. Perhaps it's something to do with the tilt of the Earth, or the angle of the sun's rays here.

So, as the flowers no longer entertained me, I ventured out of my room for an extended period of time, something which my uncle says is good for me (so long as I stay in the house and get plenty of rest), and I discovered many rooms in the house previously hidden to me. Instead of the library which I normally frequent, I found my way into the kitchen, where a servant was preparing something for tonight's dinner. I gazed over at him with curiosity, yet for some reason a sickness overcame my stomach. So coldly did he chop the fish on the board that I felt pity for the poor beast, snatched so violently from his sanctuary, suffocated remorselessly under a newly blinding sun, and then shipped away without a second thought. It was then that I meandered away from that cursed place, hiding wanton tears with a downward look.

In time, I came to a room I hadn't seen before, even on the tour my uncle gave me my first day here. It was guarded by no one, and I heard not even the slightest patter of footsteps in the distance, so I tried to pry open the large double doors, which seemed comically huge for an interior room. The inside was pitch black, though I fortunately managed to spot a lantern on a table by the door. Once I'd lit it, I gazed around what appeared to be a large, circular space with shadows clinging to the walls, seemingly fearful of the light. Instinctively, I grabbed my chest, and the image of that awful clawed hand fiddling around with me seized my brain and seemingly wouldn't leave it be. But after a few breaths the tension faded, and I realized that these shadows on the walls were really weapons; swords, shields, axes, and spears from a forgotten time when men fought from atop horses instead of wedged in trenches, fearing for their lives and soaking in the gangrenous stench of stale blood and mud.

I moved about the room in a strange reverie, one which I am perhaps not yet broken out of, if you can tell. I can't place what about this room drew me in so rapidly, but in the wavering orange light of my lantern the sharp edges of these weapons glistened with a queer beauty... It's strange, now that I'm telling you all of this, my memory seems to have lapsed for some time. It's like I'm recounting everything through a haze which has yet to clear. I remember reaching out to touch the blade of a small axe, a hatchet really... reaching out for it as though I were in a dream, controlled by another being, perhaps. I touched the handle, tempted to take it off of the hooks it was displayed on and feel it's comforting weight in my hand, but I recoiled at the thought of it, seeing again that fish being mangled by the servant.

I instead went to feel the blade again, and I cut myself. Imagine that! The blade is still sharp! Who knows how long that thing has sat in those hooks, untouched and uncared for. The sight of my blood seemed to break me from this dream-state, and I suddenly remembered that I was probably not allowed to be in that room, so I ran right upstairs to talk to you about it. My uncle will be home soon; hopefully he doesn't venture in there and feel the warmth of the lantern or see the small drop of blood I left behind. I'll just tell him it was a papercut at dinner, I suppose. What an odd day! I can see the beginnings of the hand make their place on the wall, so I suppose it's here to stay, if there ever was any doubt of that.

***

I think I saw something else besides the hand last night while I was in bed. I do not know whether this was simply a dream or not, but I seem to remember waking up with bleary eyes and seeing the bars on my right hand wall with a vivid clarity that only a clear sky could bring. I tried to turn to my left to get a glimpse on what that spectral appendage is doing but something was preventing me from doing so. I could only turn my eyes upward and see nothing but a black ceiling before frustration carried them back to the rightward wall - and there I saw him!

A man... or some gangly creature perched atop my window sill, crouched so that it's shadow looked like some degenerated frog. Or, it would've been plausible as a frog if it weren't for the two hands which groped the bars outside my window. I stared at his head, unmoving, for what seemed like weeks, until finally I made eye contact with him through a plane of conscious I was not yet aware of. Through the reflection of his face I sensed his ire, but what was it directed at? I searched within him so far as he would let me. Though I couldn't ask any questions of him (at least, none that I asked did he answer), I could journey through his psyche like I was skiing down a slope. I saw that he held contempt (but for what?) Before I could see too far into him, he leapt off the window with the grace of a ballroom dancer, and finally I felt free to move to my back and look at the hand, which, if I'm not mistaken crept away from my body as soon as it caught me looking. Sleep soon found me again, and by the time I'd woken up in the morning the hand was gone, blown away by the summer dawn. And while I kept no part of any other dreams I had that night, the anger felt by that ghastly beast stays with me even now. As I write this shortly after breakfast, I find my eyes wandering to that wall, where the hand still lurks, unseen.

***

There are thirteen servants about this house. I know that seems trivial, but as the rain has trapped me once more inside, I figured I may as well see who walks these wide halls; who cares for this monstrous house? Well I counted thirteen of them on my rounds today (rounds, it sounds so strange, so medicinal to describe my wanderings so). What exactly should be done with this information I know not... Perhaps I'll memorize their timetables and spy on them while they dismember fish. Who knows, but this house is growing smaller by the day. There are so many rooms I'm not allowed in that I may as well keep to my own, though that armory has been often in my mind.

I suppose I should be thankful that I still have a roof over my head, and food to eat every night. But does appreciation mask frustration? Is simply having enough, when I'm not happy with what I have? And what reason do I have to be ungrateful? The death of my parents... Truthfully, I still cannot think of them without a rock forming from sediment in my throat, and my eyes reddening like a shallow wound. This turmoil could perhaps be alleviated if I were permitted to venture outside, play in the yard, or perhaps go into town (I understand it's but five minutes away by bicycle). Yet I am trapped, not by the bars on my window, but in the confines of my own mind. I no longer feel I can stay in this house forever, not like my uncle, who's been here since before I was born.

What a sad man he is. He lives loveless, devoid of passion for all but his work. He prescribes me bed rest and relaxation for my grief, and seems to feel none himself. Perhaps the face he shows to me at mealtimes is a facade, used to mask his pain. But I now see through that thin sheet of paper he's masquerading beneath, and I see a cowardly, small man who'd almost forgotten his own brother's name at his funeral. A man who was never loved and thus shows no sign of the ability to reciprocate such feelings. Truly, I cannot stay in this house.

***

Last night I confronted my uncle about some of my happenings around the house. I first asked him about the rooms I wasn't allowed into. He told me those were rooms for some servants who stayed in the house overnight (though most left to go to their own homes). He speaks to me like a child, though my understanding is greater than he could fathom. I then queried about the armory, and my hands itched to get through those doors even as I said it. He shifted uncomfortably at this, and he told me that the previous owners of this house (some Governor and his family), had left the weapons in the house, for a purpose unknown to my uncle. He then asked me how I came to find this room, and what I did inside it. I could hear the anxiety, the tremolo, the fear in his voice. I then felt pity for the poor man; he was only doing what he thought best for me after all, and seeing as he had no children of his own, and that was enough to cause this viperous part of me to return to the shadows. Sullen now, I said I'd only been exploring.

Though now that I'm talking to you, I see that man once more at my window, and though I cannot see his eyes, I gaze directly into them, feeling his contempt at his imprisonment within this house. I can feel the hand stroke the back of my neck with its talons, though now the feeling is rapturous, ethereal pleasure. My skin breaks out in goosebumps under its touch, though it does not return. It simply lurks behind me, coming ever so close (I can almost feel it!), but then retreating once again. The man at the window shows me now, he shows me how he moves around the grounds, through the flowers, removing color from them in the night. Look how he creeps about! His legs glide smoothly, as though he were a leopard stalking a gazelle. And then I feel it again, the hand, and in that brief moment in which my eyes are closed from the pure divine melody of the hand's touch, the man returns to my window, crouched, grinning from within the night itself.

Now I must part with you for the night; I must sleep under the watchful eye of the man so that the hand may do it's work; God's work.

***

I have no intention of leaving my room today, even though my uncle has the day off from work. I heard him knock in the morning, but I ignored it, feigning sleep that I was once so sorely lacking. I hear his heart ache through that well of conscience from which we all draw breath, and I momentarily considered rising from my bed and greeting him with the warmth that he's attempted to show me over these past few weeks, though upon opening my eyes and seeing those ludicrous, suffocating bars splayed out on the rightward wall, I felt no remorse for my coldness. It was he who brought me here, he who told me to rest, to not even play games with the local children, and worst of all, to never venture out of the house. Well I'll show him! With God and His crouching man as my witness, there will be no depth of this house that I will not plumb.

I see it now, don't you? These servants, these creatures employed by some dark fate of my uncle's design, are meant to keep me here; they are the enforcers of his twisted will; the enemies of my freedom. The walls of my room are no longer silken white. They are now of a diseased yellow color, with the paint scabbing off, revealing the darker wound beneath. I must go now, sleep beckons me and I can see the hand righteously gracing the wall, even though the sun's light tries to ward it off.

***

When I awoke the hand was firmly set in my chest, twisting the cavities of my heart with savage force, a force which felt comforting, like a needle to the arm of a relapsed addict. My eyes were locked onto those black pits of the creature standing at the foot of my bed. Under the light of the full moon I could see him more clearly than ever, yet it was still as though he was looking at me through a veil; while his face was as black as the shadow it cast upon the ground behind him, and his body seemed distant, lost in some plane untravelled by the living. The only other part of him which was clearly visible was his hand; a gnarled, clawed thing, separate and yet the same as that hand on the wall. My eyes then fell on that hand, and though this creature's shadow should have blocked out a portion of the hand in it's shadow, the hand seemed more ingrained than ever on the wall, it's veins now pulsing, the fist clenching as tendrils of matter seeped off of it like resin dripping from a tree.

My gaze drifted to that beast once more, clearly displaying a lopsided grin though no features could be distinguished on his visage. In his now outstretched hand he held the lantern from the weapons room, already lit and casting good light on this sickly yellow wallpaper, with red paint now dripping from it's gaping hurt. A muddled, disgusting thing so far from the pristine white that it had started as that it would be laughable to describe it as such. I knew then my task before me, and so I rose from my bed with more authority than life had ever given me before, even in the days that I was happy with my family. Now, imprisoned in this facade of grandeur masking the hellish I seethe, and with this anger will I destroy Lucifer and all His demons.

The walk to the weapons room was quick, and I now thanked the hand, because it alone gave me the power to see through the Devil's veneer and expose the Hell in which I lived; but no longer! One glance behind my shoulder told me the creature was no longer following me, leaving me to complete this task alone, and I cherish that.

Finding the room again was simple; the only sublime light in Hell. They opened soundlessly, and the shadows which played on the wall now bounced happily, rather than creeping the way they did before. Each blade, each sharp point glistened like dew on morning grass, beckoning me towards them. Yet it was not the sword, nor the spear which I saw. The hatched shone on the opposite end of the room. I moved towards it with slow deliberation, and upon grasping the handle I felt the precise balance this weapon had in my hand. It was not so lopsided and over-heavy as some of the swords may have been, nor as long and wobbly as the spears. This was my weapon, and I knew that somewhere in the night that the creature agreed.

A creak on the floorboards; someone's up! It must be a servant, sent by my uncle to foil my task, hinder my fate. But I saw him through the dark, extinguishing the lantern just as he turned to look into the room. Oh, he'd come in, but I would be out of sight; just another shadow on the wall. Slowly did he enter, calling out his master's name, and then mine in a faux fear, only meant to throw me off his pitiful scent, but I was on him before he'd taken three steps. I went at his stomach with the blade, piercing through with an unjust ease. A befuddled moan, but before another noise could be uttered, I sent the blade at his neck as he keeled over. He was on the floor now, blood gushed with little viscosity from his stomach, where the contents of his bowels were also beginning to gather, and from his neck, which was very nearly severed from his shoulders.

It was clear to me then that before the Devil could be smited, his demons needed to be eradicated. No trouble. No, no trouble at all. I knew where they all slept. I crept to their rooms one by one, the axe trailing blood and bits of bone behind me like a snail's slime. And in each of their rooms they lay soundly asleep, so one stroke at the neck was all I needed. Soon I saw red once more, this time through the mask of blood which now covered my face, dripping off in great lumps and staining my white night-shirt. My bare feet felt hot from being soaked in it, and my hands burned with righteous pleasure as they too were stained red. Soon there was but one demon to exorcise; the Devil himself.

I knew where his room was, though I'd only seen it on the tour he'd taken me on my first day here. In his blind arrogance he showed me the place in which he was most vulnerable. I climbed the stairs quickly, but still making sure to land softly on the carpet steps. Blood still trailed behind me. Soon I was back up on the third floor, and his door lay at the end of the hall. I crept towards it, salivating at the thought of my task. He would keep me imprisoned here? There would be no escape for him in the house of God. As my father would say, "It all catches up to you one way or another".

The door was easy to open, and silent as well. I saw him there, nothing but a measly lump on the bed, his chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm. Wasting no time, I came up to the side of his bed, seeing his face turned towards me, mouth slightly ajar. There was going back now; the seal on fate had been broken. I raised the axe, the blade feeling lighter than ever in my hand, the soreness of my parents only now fading away. Instinctively, I turned the blade around, so the butt of the axe came down upon his face. A blunt trauma which, while not enough to kill, broke his nose and sent teeth into his throat. His eyes jerked open, searching wildly as the adrenaline rushed to respond to this crisis. But I did not give him time. Again and again I brought down the axe, relishing each wet crunch, softer with each blow. Soon the body relaxed, the face now mangled beyond recognition, and still I did not let up. Each hit welled up another memory of my parents, and through each downward stroke that memory left me.

Finally, after an eternity I let the axe fall from my hand and wedge into the floor. The sheets were soaked with blood, the air tinged with the rotten smell of bile and iron. My own hands, face, legs... all were cloaked in red. There was only one part of my fate now to complete. I went back to my room, also on the third floor, and climbed out of the leftward window, easily sliding through the bars. The full moon rose high in the sky now, and I moved to the part of the roof directly over the front door. I looked down into the circle of concrete which welcomed guests to the gates of Hell, and there I saw them. The creature from my window, and five others like him. They were clearer to me now than ever. As was their well. The Coven of Loss stared up at me, waiting to see if I would fulfill this part of my fate. And I knew that I must join them. To no longer be alone in this world, I must be a part of theirs. And so, with no prayer nor chant aforethought, I jumped from the roof with utter surety, understanding at last about my parent's death.

And now I creep amongst them in the night, taking care of the hand as it cared for me in my time of grief. The axe sits once more in the weapons room, and that picture of my parents is still safe with me. There is no worry in my heart now, the Coven takes care of me, and I croon to the hand in the night. Hopefully soon another family will move into this home, and then another can be brought into this most humble, most gracious cloth. Once more I sit in my yellow, sickened room talking to you, but I suppose you can go now. There will be no more pain for me anymore.