The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Echoes in the Mortar 
by Kathleen McCluskey 

   I don’t remember the blow, just darkness and the sound after, silence. It was a sharp, wet crack that ended my life. Then nothing, as if the forest was holding its breath. I linger here, fused with the rot of this crumbling wall. I am alone. Eyes I no longer have strain to see the last place I stood. The sunlight mocks me now, slipping through branches where my blood soaked the leaves. Something waits for me just beyond that corner, something that wants me to follow. Something that knows me.

My body is gone, torn from me in one awful second. All that’s left is the impression of myself, like a smudge in the air. I feel stuck. I do not know how long I’ve been here, time has no meaning in this place. I try to move, but I don’t. I hover. I sink. I seep into the moss and the bricks. The dirt where my blood sank deep has almost vanished.

Now, I hear it. A sound beyond the corner, soft, distant and terribly human. Weeping.

It’s not my killer. I’d know his voice, even distorted. He didn’t weep. He grinned. He looked right into my eyes as he raised that stone and smiled. He had led me to my demise, his soft blue eyes hid his malice. He planned his treachery, then gently holding my hand, he led me here.  No, he did not weep, it was not his nature. This weeping does not belong to him. It doesn’t belong to anyone I remember.

But it’s there, steady and mournful. It weaves through the trees like a current pulling me forward. To finally turn the corner. It almost sings with an ache to drift, to advance, to see. Though I have no legs to walk, its pull still tugs at me. It calls to me deep within the current.

The wall’s edge is sharp in my mind. It was the last thing I saw clearly. Red bricks, some crumling, others scarred with age. Moss crawling up like fingers, trying to bury what happened here.

I float at the edge and the weeping grows louder. It’s a woman, I think. Or maybe a child. No, it is something in between. The kind of cry that doesn’t belong in the world I knew. It doesn’t stop. It’s endless, melodic and strange. Is it grief? Is it a welcome? Or could it be something worse?

I wonder if it’s the path to Heaven. Or to Hell. Or some space in between, where the broken voices gather. Maybe they all come here, those who died like I did. Violent, sudden and forgotten. Maybe the weeping isn’t for me, but for all those who never got a chance to say goodbye. Those of us that were caught off guard by a broken trust. All of us that didn’t want it to end, the robbed ones. I must know.

I brace myself and lean toward the sound. I can hear my name. Not spoke but wept. It’s like a sound shaped into my name, buried in the crying. Drawn out, mournful, unmistakable. I find myself comforted but it’s paired with unease.

I try to pull away, but there’s no “away” to go to. I have nowhere but this corner. My world has narrowed down to this ruined wall, this patch of dirt and this sound that was never meant for living ears. I think it is time to move past the corner, I am not afraid.

I don’t know what waits there.

But I know it knows me.

And it’s been waiting a very long, long time.

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Fiction © Copyright Kathleen McCluskey
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Kathleen McCluskey:

The Long Fall: Book 1: The Inception of Horror

Lucifer always cunning and intelligent challenges father to a battle of wits. Being the angel of light he casts a judgemental eye upon mankind. He begins a war with his fellow archangels and God. Michael, along with his siblings defend their home and mankind from their deranged brother. Broad swords and hand to hand combat drench heaven in blood. The four apocalyptic steeds are released, each having their own destructive power. Betrayal and lust are at biblical levels. Understand the very creation of evil and the consequenses that transpire in the first of THE LONG FALL series.

Available on Amazon!