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“You can’t threaten me, you piece of shit.
I’m her father. I’ll always be there for her.”

Paul took a step forward, which forced
Alma’s father to back up. “Not if I bury you.”

“You’re insane.”

“Maybe,” said Paul. “Now get the fuck out of
town. Or do you want to try and hit me again?”

The old man rubbed his wrist and Alma could
see that it was already turning purple where Paul had hit him. He
turned to her and pleaded, “Alma, baby, don’t go back. Let him die.
Okay?”

She couldn’t answer if she wanted to. In
fact, she only then realized that she’d been humming a tune as
tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Alma, you’ve got to promise me. Don’t go to
Widowsfield. Let him die!” He advanced threateningly, but Paul
caught the old man by the shoulder. Her father winced as Paul
forced him to the stairs.

“Get out of here.”

Paul shoved her father down the stairs and
the old man fell to the concrete. His head smashed against the
railing and he gasped in pain and shock, but then crawled to his
feet and darted away.

“Get your stuff,” said Paul to Alma as he
still stared down at the fleeing old man.

She couldn’t respond and continued to cower
against the wall, humming a tune as she wept. Paul turned to her,
concerned. “Babe? You okay?”

Alma shook her head and finally stopped
humming. She buried her head in her hands.

“Oh shit, honey. Don’t worry. I’m here,
okay? I’ll always be here.” Paul rushed to cradle her as Alma
sobbed. “I’m not going to let him hurt you.” He put her head
against his chest and held her. “I’d do anything to keep you safe,
babe.”

“He’s never going to stop,” said Alma. “He’s
just going to keep coming back, over and over.”

Paul tried to hush her. “It’s okay. I’m here
for you now.”

“I have to go back.”

“Go back where?” asked Paul.

Alma didn’t want to say, but knew that it
was time to confront what had haunted her all these years. Saying
the word felt like a curse and she hardly had the strength to utter
the name of the town, “Widowsfield.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Amid Chaos

Widowsfield

March 14th, 1996

Walter saw the creatures attack Winnie, but
there was nothing he could do. He was too frightened to save her,
and retreated up the stairs to the apartment above the book store.
He slammed the door shut behind him and then locked it. He wasn’t
content relying on only the deadbolt and started to pile up
whatever he could find against the door.

Winnie cried out in agony as the monsters
tore her apart. Walter apologized over and over as he barricaded
the door, but she’d done this to herself. Winnie had chosen to stay
down there. She had time to get up the stairs if she wanted to, but
she insisted on staying where the creatures could get her. Walter
didn’t have time to save her. He would’ve died too if he tried.

He continued to apologize to her as he piled
whatever he could find against the door to keep the creatures from
devouring him. Then he heard someone gagging in the room with
him.

Walter spun in terror to see who’d made the
sound, but there was no one in the room with him. Winnie’s
apartment was sparsely furnished, with only a rocking chair and
couch in front of the television stand. A TV tray was situated
beside the couch with a Reader’s Digest opened and face down on top
of it. There was a bland rug between the couch and the television,
and there was a small pile of white foam on it.

He took a trepidatious step toward the
bubbling mass.

A woman’s body appeared on the rug, followed
by a zinging crack of green electricity that coursed along the
metal legs of the TV tray. The electricity popped in the air and
was then gone, leaving behind the body of a choking ghost. Her
mouth was open, purple lips rimmed with foam, and she stared at
Walter before reaching out to him. Her eyes were bloodshot and her
wet hair clung to her cheeks.

She was trying to ask for help, but Walter
was too terrified to do anything but gape at her. The woman finally
succumbed and her head fell back hard against the floor, but
instead of thumping down, her head seemed to sink through the
floorboards. The rest of her body followed, as if it had suddenly
dissipated into vapor, and all that was left of her was the white
foam on the rug.

“Oh Lord,” said Walter. He made the sign of
the cross and kissed his knuckle. “Lord have mercy on my soul.”

He dared to step closer to the rug,
uncertain if he really had seen the woman, or if she’d been a
figment of his imagination. “What the hell’s going on here?”

Walter got on his knees on the hardwood
floor and edged his way closer to the rug. He didn’t dare get on
the damned thing, and kept his distance, but he needed to see if
the foam was real. He started to reach out to it, but then
retracted and chided himself. “What are you doing, Walter? Don’t
touch that shit.” He started to stand up when the woman’s arms
reach out from the rug. Her face was exposed for a moment, and her
expression of helplessness had changed to hatred. She grasped
Walter’s arm and dragged him forward until he witnessed his own
limb disappear into the floor along with the ethereal woman. He
cried out in terror, and tried to break free of her grip, but the
ghost was inhumanly strong. She dragged his arm into the floor and
then reached up to grab more of him. He tried to pull free, but
every inch of his flesh that had been pulled through the floor was
now stuck within it, and the woman continued to drag him down.

She gripped his hair and pulled his head
down. Within seconds he was staring at the darkened first floor of
the Anderson Used Book Store. He could see Winnie’s corpse, ringed
by the demonic creatures that were devouring her. The ghost was
below him. She smiled and finally released him before drifting
away, down to the first floor and sinking below it as well.

Walter was left dangling from the ceiling,
his body fused to the wood above. He clawed at the ceiling and
tried to move, but every twist of his waist ignited agony
throughout him, as if he were trying to pull himself apart every
time he moved. He started to scream for help before he felt his
spine crack from his movement.

He was left there to dangle, like a living
stalactite; an adornment of chaos; a witness of the horror below.
Blood started to flow from his open mouth and his vision faded. He
started to vomit, but it wasn’t food that slid past his lips.
Strips of flesh began to push through his throat and he yanked them
out to avoid choking. He pulled forth the fleshy pulp until the
strands were too long, and the pain too great, to continue. A few
minutes later, Walter finally died, but every second was spent
enduring agony that only hell could conceive.

Something was hiding in the shadows of the
store, and the creature’s teeth chattered as it watched the chaos
unfold.

16 Years Later

March 10th, 2012

“I have to go back to Widowsfield,” said
Alma as Paul held her.

“Why?”

Alma pushed out of his arms and stood up.
She squealed in pain when she put pressure on her foot, and then
limped through the door of her apartment with Paul following
behind. “I don’t know.”

Paul jokingly responded, “That makes
sense.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Alma went to the
breakfast counter and started to rifle through the contents of her
purse that had spilled out. She found Rachel’s card and showed it
to Paul as if it should mean something to him. “I don’t know what
happened there.”

“Okay, neither do I,” said Paul. “You never
told me anything about it. You just said that you wanted to leave
that part of your life behind you.”

“I know, and I did, but there’s more to it
than that.” She sat on the stool and started to tap the business
card against the countertop. She debated calling Rachel now, but it
was too early in the morning to wake her. Alma felt frantic and got
up to make a pot of coffee.

“Are you going to explain, or what?” asked
Paul.

“I can’t, that’s the problem.”

“Alma, you’re not making any sense.”

“What’s going on?” asked Jacker from the
hallway. He was still on the floor and was just now waking up.
“What happened?”

“Just stay there, Jacker,” said Paul.

The big man groaned, but did as he was told.
He folded his arms over his barrel chest and sighed.

Alma’s hands were shaking as she tried to
pour water into the back of the coffee maker. She spilled liquid
over the side and had to use her other hand to steady the
container. “I don’t remember what happened there. I get flashes of
things from time to time, but nothing ever seems to make sense.
There’s a whole chunk of time missing from what I can
remember.”

“Okay then, what can you remember?” Paul
went around the counter and took over making the coffee. He pointed
at the stool, commanding Alma to settle down and take a seat
without having to tell her to.

“Well, I guess before I go into that, I
should ask you what you know about Widowsfield. Have you ever heard
the legends and all the bullshit?”

Paul nodded as he wavered his hand. “Some of
it. I know you get pissed off and stop taking calls on March 14th
because there’re a lot of people that think you know what happened.
I looked up some of the websites about the place, but it all seems
like conspiracy bullshit.”

“Do you know why people think I know
something?” she asked.

He looked hesitant to answer. “Every time I
brought it up you told me you didn’t want to talk about it.”

“I know, but did any of the sites you looked
at talk about my brother’s disappearance?”

Paul poured the ground coffee into the
filter and turned the coffee maker on. “Yeah, but every site had a
different version of the story. I’d rather hear the truth, if
you’re ready to tell it.”

She wasn’t sure she knew the truth anyhow,
and started to draw circles on the counter with the corner of
Rachel’s business card. Each circle started large, and then shrunk
with each revolution, like a serpent’s coil. “Like I said, I don’t
remember much of what happened, but what I can has fucked with me
ever since…” she was overwhelmed by a sense of sadness that she
hadn’t expected. Her eyes welled with tears and she dropped the
business card to wipe them away.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you
don’t want to.”

“Should I leave?” asked Jacker from the
floor in the hallway.

Alma laughed. Jacker’s unintentionally
comedic timing was a welcome relief. “No, Jacker,” said Alma. “Come
here and sit down with us. Are you okay?”

The big man grumbled as he stood up. His
frame encompassed the width of the hall, and he looked embarrassed
by what happened. “I’m fine. Sorry, I have a problem with blood.
It’s pretty pathetic. I feel like such a dork.”

“Want something to drink?” asked Paul.

“No, I’ve got a beer around here somewhere.
Ah, there it is.” Jacker retrieved his beer from the end table
beside the couch. “Honestly guys, I’ll take off if you want me to.
I’ve already done enough damage here.”

Paul looked at Alma for an answer. She shook
her head. “No, you can stay. I don’t think you should be driving
right after passing out anyhow.”

Paul reached across the counter and set his
hand over Alma’s. “We can talk about Widowsfield later if you
want.”

“No,” she said. “We can talk about it now. I
don’t mind if Jack’s here.” She looked over at the giant as he
downed the rest of his beer. “Do you know about Widowsfield?”

“I heard you guys talking about it,” said
Jacker. “I think I’ve heard something about it before. The people
there disappeared, right?”

Alma led them into the living room and the
three sat down around the coffee table. There were stacks of old
magazines littering the table, along with several half full glasses
situated atop plates that should’ve been washed days ago. That, of
course, reminded her of Paul’s spotless apartment, and she felt
suddenly shamed.

“Sorry,” she said as Paul and Jacker sat
down. “Let me clean this stuff up real quick.” Alma gathered the
dirty dishes and carried them to the kitchen where she checked on
the coffee machine. It had hardly started brewing, but the smell
was already filling the apartment. She was about to get creamer
from the refrigerator when she realized that she was stalling. Alma
was trying to avoid confronting her past, even by only the time it
would take to make coffee. She forced herself to go back into the
living room.

“Okay,” said Alma before she took a deep,
exaggerated breath. “It’s about time I talked about this.”

Paul moved to the side of the love seat for
Alma to sit with him. Jacker was lounging on the center seat of the
sofa, and managed to usurp most of the space there. Alma sat beside
Paul and he pulled her to his side with his arm around her
shoulder.

“My father used to take my brother and me on
fishing trips to Missouri every spring, during our break.” Alma
started to absently rub her thumb over a ring on her right hand. It
was a simple silver ring with holes bored through it in random
spots. The ring was the only thing of her mother’s that Alma still
owned. “It was supposed to be a vacation for us, or at least that’s
what he used to tell my mother.” Her voice cracked and she took a
deep breath to steady herself.

Paul squeezed her shoulder and Alma smiled
up at him before continuing. “We didn’t do a lot of fishing. I was
pretty young at the time, I was eight and my brother was ten. We’d
been going there for a few years, and my mother would stay home. It
was supposed to be a chance for my father to connect with us.” Alma
twirled the loose fitting ring around her bony finger. “That’s not
what it was really about. I didn’t know it at the time, because I
was so young, but my father was using the vacation as an excuse to
meet up with one of his girlfriends. God, just talking about it
makes my stomach turn.”