The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Keeper of Souls 
by Kathleen McCluskey 

Smoke curled into the morning mist, soft and fragrant, masking the bitter truth beneath. To a passerby, she was nothing more than a gentle village woman tending to clay pots and her fire. Her long hair shimmered in the dawn light, her hands moving with purpose. Her expression bore the serene patience of one at peace with the world.

But inside each pot, a soul screamed.

Mai knelt gracefully before the line of ancient vessels. Her fingers expertly fed wood into the flames that licked beneath them. Her checkered scarf fluttered slightly in the breeze. It was a token from her mother, a woman as cruel as she was clever.

“Not too hot,” Mai whispered to the flames. “They must simmer slowly, a rushed soul turns bitter.”

The wood crackled obediently. She touched the nearest pot, feeling the pulse inside. A faint vibration. Still conscious. Still suffering.

Perfect.

To the villagers, she was the cook for the temple festival. Preparing the sacred stew for the ancestors. They brought her herbs, roots, spices, and offerings. They never questioned what lay sealed beneath the lids. They smiled at her, bowed even, grateful for her devotion to tradition.

Tradition. What a delightful word to hide behind.

Mai’s lips curled as she opened the smallest pot, releasing a wisp of wailing wind. The sound was barely audible for human ears. But she heard it, and to her, oh to her, it was delicious.

“Sshhh…” She cooed, holding her face close to the pot opening. “You begged for mercy, remember? Did you give your sister mercy when you stood over her with a knife? Now you ask again. But, I am mercy, little soul. Well, I’m all that’s left of it.”

She resealed it and moved to the next.

Each soul she kept had a story. A lie exposed, a secret unveiled, a final breath taken in greed or betrayal. She didn’t hunt them. They came to her willingly. Drawn by her kindness. Her beauty. Her illusion. She took them in, not with violence, but with invitation.

“Come, sit,” she’d say. “Tell me your sins.”

And they did, God help them, they did.

No one ever saw them again.

Mai placed her hand on the final pot, the oldest. It trembled violently. The soul inside nearly mad with age. This one had been a tyrant once, the leader of a village razed with war. It was her first. The one her mother helped her trap.

“You’ll be the main course tonight,” she said lovingly. “The elders have grown thin. They need strength. Your torment will flavor the broth just right.” It was not meat that gave the stew flavor but their suffering. The flames distilled it drop by drop, leeching it out of the condemned.

She stood slowly, brushing soot off of her trousers. Her movements remained graceful, calm. She hummed an old lullaby. The one her mother used to sing as they stirred soul-steeped stew over the coals of their enemies.

Behind her, a child’s curious face peeked around the trees.  She had seen him before, always watching from afar, never speaking.

“Would you like to help me cook, little one?”

The boy stepped forward, cautious.

She would teach him, in time.

Someone would need to keep the fire burning long after her hands turned to ash.

.

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 judgmental 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 consequences that transpire in the first of THE LONG FALL series.

Available on Amazon!

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.

.

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!