Among the Fallen: Resurrection (13 page)

The camera suddenly pans on his colleagues, some looking less than convinced. The television suddenly switches to static then turns itself off.

Alex stood for a few moments as she twitched and trembled with upset, holding her arms as the bitter cold forced its way into her skin. She turned and looked over at all the newspaper clippings from across the room, taking in the headlines of her murder as a callous silence fell over the cabin.

She suddenly turned away, gazing over the old dusty cabin with an impulsive and ignorant lack of interest. Dust floated in the air and there was a rancid, but almost dead smell of something rotting; probably what she assumed to be Barrie that was stuck to the mattress, but where was the rest of him?

As the red light struggled through the dirty windows, she looked over at the bed and watched the sleeping ghost inquisitively; it’s snoring loud and gargled, chest bubbling with congestion. The floor boards creaked as she wandered around the decaying cabin, dismissing old and useless objects almost instantly as she searched for God knows what. She almost felt like she had partially lost the plot, walking around a dead man’s home as if he invited her, and what made it worse was that technically; he had. She quietly wandered around the cabin, nosily scanning for anything useful, until suddenly, she came to a dusty old diary. Picking up the heavy journal, she blew its plain and empty cover and a fog of dust flew into the air. She opened it to a random page in the middle and began to read the messy handwriting as best as she could.

Crazy Barrie’s Diary.

February 2nd 2012:
Another quiet day, I watch the lazy people drive past me pointing and laughing.

Am I funny or something? I have never really understood the people from the city, they mock me
daily. Would it hurt them just to stop and say hello?

February 3rd 2012:
–- no entry –-

February 4th 2012:
I often wonder and dream what I would be doing now if I had chosen the routes
another way. Getting a job, settling down and have kids. I consider myself lucky. I’m happy at least.

I’m happier alone. Well, I have Ben! We are happy.

Alex flipped through the diary looking for the last few entries. The wind outside howled through the trees and the old cabin creaked as the shape in the bed snored ghostly. Alex found the last diary entries and to her surprise they were dated a few months after the last date she remembered, and that being the day she died.

Crazy Barrie’s Diary: Last 7 entries

Thursday, 20th July 2012:
The Military were out the back of Landers Farm again today digging that
big hole still. I sat watching from behind a tree for hours. It’s one hell of a hole, at least 30 feet by 20

feet and deep enough to sink a house. Wonder what they are doing? Burying nuclear weapons? A
bunker maybe?

Friday, 21st July 2012:
A lot of activity today, Prison Transports and the Military all over the place.

Over on Landers Farm there’s still a lot going on. I wonder what they are up to. Had to leave Ben at
the cabin today, his barking almost gave me away yesterday.

Saturday, 22nd July 2012:
I feel really ill today; think I have a cold coming. The back of my nose is
really sore and I ache all over. To hell with the army today I can’t be bothered. The road sweeping
can wait too. I’m really not up to it. It’s Dottie’s birthday today! I miss you still my darling
sweetheart. Will join you soon, but not too soon hopefully xxxxxx

Sunday, 23rd July 2012:
I really feel ill, my breath is disgusting and I got great big blisters all over.

Hopefully Dottie’s traditional remedies will work. I really don’t feel right. Ben keeps barking. Maybe
he’s telling me to go to city and see the Doctor. I feel hungry but it’s strange, the more I eat the
hungrier I get, I can’t take my mind of the hunger, just keep thinking about food all the time.

Monday 35th July 2012:
Lumps of flesh peelin off me… really confused. Why does that damn dog
keep barkin at me? Skin burns and I smell like off meat…. Hungry… food not working

Tuesday, 26th July 2012:
No feelin ,, sick.. hubgry. Ate dog, good.

Wednesday, 27th August 2012:
–- no entry –-

Alex closed the diary and looked over at the dried up mess and fur in the corner only just making out the dog collar with
Ben
engraved on the tag. She held her mouth in disgust and watched the sleeping ghost for moment or two. She walked silently over to the decayed dog, its skull frozen in horror, scratched and gnawed with teeth marks. She reached down and pulled the collar as it crunched and cracked, peeling it from the floor boards; holding it up to the light as it glistened like a gold coin. She stared over at the sleeping ghost and looked at the collar with great sadness.

What had possessed the poor man to eat his dog?

She calmly walked over to the bed and placed the collar on the pillow and frowned silently. The lightening lit up the dirty windows and Alex’s shadow instantly flashed over the bed covers and wall, standing quiet as she soundlessly paid her respects to man she had never even met. Alex leapt down into the living room and looked over it one last time, noticing the television was not even plugged in. She grumbled with discouragement and gazed over the engine parts and specks of blood that led to the dog basket, frowning as the cold dust drifted past her lifeless eyes.

She turned and left the cabin, shutting the door and walking away from it with sadness. Suddenly, she heard a dog barking happily from within and the old man was laughing with joy, the dog skipping and jumping as the man inside played with his best friend until suddenly, the cabin fell into silence.

Alex looked down beside her and saw a slab of wood sticking out of the ground. She brushed it down and pulled the undergrowth from it and saw the name
Dottie
scratched into it, decorated with an intricate carving of flowers and birds. She stood up and turned with a tear in her eye, staring back at the cabin one last time as the smoke suddenly stopped bellowing and came to an end. The candle light dimmed and eventually went out, and then a creepy yet sad darkness fell over the cabin as Alex watched on innocently. As she walked away she heard one lone bark. She turned quickly and she saw words scribbled on the door that strangely, weren’t there before.
Thank you!

She stood dumbfounded and stunned for a moment, the words of appreciation from a ghost she never saw or a person she had never met; either way as haunting as the next but again, she was not scared, maybe sad if than anything. She looked down at the wooden headstone and could not help regretting that she had not met the old couple and Ben when they were all alive, maybe if she had not listened to the rumours and stories she might have done, one day. She frowned silently as the red light passed over the cabin and turned cold once more; she turned away saddened and made her way back to the road. What was Barrie talking about the nosey old fool? The Military at Landers Farm?

She couldn’t help but wonder because to the best of her knowledge, Blackwater had never seen proper U.S Military personnel in its whole history, or at least she didn’t think so; maybe he meant her Fathers Security Service? She could never remember the name of it and despite how hard she tried, it was forgotten permanently. As Alex neared Blackwater Approach, she picked up the pace; all she had to do is get back into the city, this darkness and the constant tricks her mind was playing on her was beginning to annoy her. Once she got into the city, she would at least be blessed with light then and the situation was bound to improve.

Chapter Ten: Blackwater Approach

Alex wandered through the woods as she continued towards Blackwater. Barrie, despite keeping his head down and unsullied from the hustle of city life, still deserved to be missed by someone. Alex did nothing but ponder his death as she trudged along the dirty wet lonely road, her feet soaked to the bone and her limbs crying out in the biting cold.

The trees lunged into the sky, their branches scattered off and the black kindling bled up into the bloodshot heavens. She walked for what felt like miles, trudging through mud and water perilously as the lightning struck the buildings in the distance. The road and forest were never ending and the trees selfishly hid most of the landscape as they cuddled in the cold and darkness. She looked at the road in the distance and frowned without feeling, the beams of cold red light squeezing through the trees in front of her, illuminating the forest somewhat derisorily. Wind blew the leaves around in front of her, licking them around her as the ruthless gusts froze her painful eyes.

She ambled through the dense woodland for a few minutes before eventually sitting on a downed tree. She rubbed her throbbing feet and sat back just sighing with hopes lost and a fear of the unknown. As her eyes grew weary, a cascade of thoughts rushed through her mind as she grew all the more anxious of the future that loomed over her. She rubbed her dirty matted eyes and pulled her fingers through her water logged hair, straining it and flicking the water to the ground disheartened and tainted.

All of a sudden, she heard a noise, like a rope creaking? She paused in her tracks and simply froze silent and still. She looked around listening to the strange noise around her; seeing very little in front of her and almost nothing in the distance. She stood up slowly, creeping little by little through the dense woodland, following the eerie noise the best she could, changing direction from time to time as the creaking drew closer and closer, until suddenly, she froze. A cold sensation came over her and the tiny hairs on her neck stood up sending shivers down her spine.

“Help me… help me… ropes… I don‘t want to do it… help me… the ropes…” a voice whispered in agony as the noise of creaking rope got louder and louder. “… don’t marry her… please don’t marry her…”

Alex looked in every direction as the strange and sad voice continued around her, its coldness and sorrow as icy as the air she breathed, but there was nothing to be seen. She continued to walk as the crows watched her from the trees, nattering with each other as the lonely girl stumbled and clawed her way through the dark woodland. She inched along and paused, slowly looking up at a dead tree with malicious looking rope nooses hanging empty from the branches. Slowly, they swayed, frostily and bitter as the lifeless and outlandish looking tree reached into the air, its evil branches scratching their way through the forest around them.

She reached up to one of the nooses and touched one slowly. Suddenly, the crying voice stopped.

She stood hugging her arms in the cold, her head shaking and her teeth chattering as a cold wind blew the leaves around her, watching them spiral gracefully before falling to the ground. As Alex stood at the tree beholding its morbid looking, witch like guise, a group of people stood around her silent and still, their heads hanging to the side loosely on their necks; their eyes dark and featureless, their twisted throats bruised. As the ghosts watched her invisibly, she could feel their cold and ghostly presence all around her and shivered as their suffering filled the very air she breathed.

Behind her, a man walked up silently, his skin as white as snow and crawling with veins and patchy bruises. His neck was broken and his head sat on his chest, face out with blackened eyes and a long painful mouth. Alex could feel them all around her, their lost thoughts cascading through her mind and soul, heaving their intolerable grief with them as they watched her at the foot of their vile looking tree. Then another man appeared behind him, his head swinging and rolling around upon his broad shoulders. Alex stared blankly at the tree as the ghost reached out and touched her shoulder. Instantly, she spun round but saw nothing, just empty woodland and the darkness that fogged it obstinately.

“Hello?!” she said fearfully as their whispers filled the air, their language and words nothing more than inaudible rants and cries. Alex suddenly shivered, blowing steam out into the cold as they all closed in around her, walking through the dense forest effortlessly and without a sound. She spun around desperately, but they were gone, the dark and desolate woods now belonging to Alex once more.

“For fuck’s sake, Alex, get a grip!” she cursed with a paranoid irritation, convinced her mind was playing the dead forest against her. She swiftly sighed with lament and rubbed her arms, the coldness burying itself deep into her flesh as the road a few yards away called upon her once more.

She took one last look around and decided to head for the road, at least she could see all around her that way. She stumbled through the undergrowth, looking back at the creepy tree every now and then as the thick ropes creaked and swayed. She climbed the small verge and staggered onto the road as her feet healed without her so much as noticing. She couldn’t help but think that there was something that she had not been told, maybe something her ghostly advisor had conveniently left out. So far all she had seen were signs of death and pain, creepy and obscure landscapes in a world she knew as something else. Maybe the darkness and the summer’s night were playing tricks on her, illusions of a fragile mind tortured by the damned as they roamed freely across a land owned by the living. Maybe she was more susceptible to the dead now that she was one of them, a gift given to her by the Fallen just to add to her growing despair. There were so many questions going through her mind, yet all she could do was answer them with a guess and move on to the next.