Third Letter

 Dearest Coraline,
You spoke once of your regret,
I never forgot.

Cast out of your home,
You hid your swollen belly, 
And tried to survive.

Just a child then,
With no one to lend a hand.
I wish I was there.

Decisions were made,
Your mind and body suffered,
Documents were signed.

It was for the best,
neither of you would have lived,
But you kept hurting.

Late night tears were shed,
for a child you still loved.
They live now. You don't.

You were still broken
About the weight of your choice
When you and I met.

You felt unworthy,
But I admired your strength.
You were perfect, love.

Still, that hole remained.
A piece lost somewhere unknown.
A piece that persists.

You have left me. True.
But a scrap may still linger,
So I must find it.

So Long & Farewell

I dreamt of you last night, as I have every night since I heard of your death. Last night however, was very different.

I stood at the foot of your grave. The long stretch of soil still freshly turned despite you being buried more than two months ago. Your grave was the only one in a vast field of neatly cut grass. No matter which direction I turned, nothing broke the horizon. Nothing at all. Dim emerald blurred into the swirling violets and cobalts of a starry night sky, making it impossible to find where Earth ended and Heaven began. A sudden impulse took me and I stepped forward. 

I fell. 

The ground gave way to a murky body of water that was hiding just below the surface. All sense of direction was lost and I flailed uselessly, searching for air. At the bottom of the water, or at least what I perceived to be the bottom, I noticed a faint glow, so weak that it would have been easier to miss. 

I swam as fast as I could to the glimmer, praying that it was the surface. It reminded me of you, but I can’t say why. Every inch I swam, the light retracted by a foot. By the time I realized how hopeless the chase was, it was too late. I gasped and was forced to breathe in the bog, the last of my breath foaming out. When my lungs were full and my arms had stopped obeying me, the glow flared brighter with a brilliant flash of lime and the water began to roil all around me. Suddenly, my head broke free of the marsh, but I was no longer at your grave. 

This new and strange place had skies of solid ash gray, only interrupted by storm clouds with a bloody glow emanating from their cores. The constant flat fields were replaced with broken mountains of obsidian that shined like glass shards when enough light managed to strike them. There was a shore nearby composed entirely of pitch and brick colored sand, swirled separately in some parts and mixed perfectly in others. This beach was imprinted with countless tracks that seemed to originate from the water and lead inland. As I studied it, still puzzled with how I arrived there, other heads began to break through the water. Unlike me, they showed no confusion or hesitation. They simply rose and swam to the beach. Once the water was shallow enough, they walked, with no urgency, onto the sand and disappeared over a dune that hid the rest of the shore. One by one, I watched half a dozen people make this trec before I felt brave enough to follow. 

My feet weren’t even on the beach before the stench of decay swept over me with the breeze. I hadn’t smelt anything that putrid since my father found one of the neighborhood stray cats rotting under our porch steps. Fur and skin devoured by a thick coat of maggots to reveal gray muscle and cream bones. The sight, and smell, left a permanent imprint on me. A perfect depiction of decay that comes to my mind every time I hear or think of the word.

I covered my face with my arm and pushed forward over the sand bar. 

On the other side I found a crowd of people all standing shoulder to shoulder. Not one of them spoke, but so many wept and groaned that the air was filled with a constant hum, rising and falling in waves. I had no idea what to make of it. All I could do was watch over the crowd, my eyes unconsciously falling on and studying each face. Every single one of them was either confused or terrified, as was I. Even then I was motionless, until my eyes found you. You, standing right there in the middle of this unending congregation. It was just the back of your head, but I knew it was you in the pit of my gut. I charged forward.

Unlike the others, you were moving. Weaving through the crowd to a place I could not see. Fear that I would lose you for a third time pushed me to a near hysterical panic. I dove into the crowd, stormed between the ghouls, and leapt to make sure I could still see you over them all. I didn’t pay much mind to the people I passed, I felt as though something. . . awful would happen if I looked too closely at them. In my heart, I was afraid I would recognize one of them. I didn't feel that way before, but being so close to these beings made them feel more real.

I was gaining ground on you. I no longer needed to jump, you were just ahead of me. It was still just the back of your head, but the sight of you made my heart ache in a way that I had never known before I saw your obituary. Even hearing from a friend of your passing I refused to believe it. That changed when I saw your picture and name with a birth date and a death date. I have lost family members to disease and old age. Was left by lovers that I wanted to hold onto forever. But you? Losing you hurt more than anything I had ever experienced before. It wasn’t loss, it was dismemberment. A permanent wound that bleeds fresh every single time I think of it. You, you were my closest friend, closer than anyone has ever been to me before. I held you when you felt lost, and you stayed up with me when I couldn’t be alone. Everyone else could leave, everyone else could disappear, but you? You couldn’t, not to me. 

The hardest years of my life were the years that followed my ignored text messages and unanswered phone calls. I couldn’t reach you because you didn’t want to be reached. Why? I don’t know, you wouldn’t answer. 

So I waited. For years. For almost a decade. I waited for you. I had always hoped that someday you would come back to me. That we would meet at a bar, pay for each others drinks, catch up and laugh at some stupid misunderstanding that had been separating us. How differently would my life had gone if I knew I had you at my side? If you and I never went our separate ways? I waited for the day when I would get an answer, but now that day will never come.

You were only a few people ahead of me. 

I could have been there for you. I wouldn’t have left you alone. I loved you. I still love you. All you had to do was send me one message and I would have ran to your side, knocked the gun out of your hand, and wrapped my arms around you as tightly as possible. I would have saved you, if you just would have given me the chance.

I grabbed your shoulder and spun you around. For the first time in eight years, our eyes met. Tears streaked your face just as tears streaked mine. My mouth opened to speak. To ask you every single question I could possibly imagine.

Then I woke up. 

Your image lingered for a moment before fading into the reality of my darkened bedroom. My trembling hands tried to force my eyes shut so I could return to you, but it wasn't enough. I had to see you. I had to. 

It took two hours to drive here. It went fast since no one else was driving this late at night. Nearly another hour of wandering between headstones passed before I actually found you. On hands and knees I test the surface. There may be no grass over you yet, but the soil is solid. There is no water beneath this ground, only dirt, a casket, and a body. I guess. . . you're not here after all, are you Logan?

Second Letter

Dearest Coraline,

I remember you fondly

And it kills me so.

We met six years back.

Your smiling caught my eye,

Your eyes made me grin.

You hated your hair,

But those curls were the cutest

That have ever been.

The food you prepared,

So bizarre and yet so sweet,

I crave every day.

Your laughter, so warm,

Would improve my day and life.

Now you are silent.

Your shape was divine,

Especially against mine.

We will grasp no more.

I miss you at night.

We would embrace and feel whole,

Now I only grow cold.

My days are lonely.

I can only think of you.

Weeping is constant.

Everything you were,

Everything you could have been,

My whole life, is gone.

Fear The Fae

-Preface-

Jackson house sits far from the reach of the world. Crouching behind the black locust and silver maple trees, waiting for the day when ruin finally decides to push it to the ground. Lord only knows what possessed someone to build it in the middle of nowhere, but now I’m meant to suffer as a result.

It sat abandoned for so long that most folks forgot it was there. That is, until it was purchased last year by the Caldwells. Truth be told, I only know about it now because the man of the house has been causing so much trouble. Not even a full year since they bought that place and my department has been called out half a dozen times or more by the owner's wife. Husbands got a screw loose or something. He’s been screaming at trees and getting increasingly violent with her and the kids. Ever since the last call, we’ve started swinging by every now and again to check up on them. That's what I’m doing now.

The dirt road leading to the house is washed out in some parts and cratered in others. Mr. Caldwell swore up and down that it was a project he would get too, eventually. If you go faster than a snail’s pace then you practically get thrown out of your seat traversing it. Tree after tree is pulled towards me by the headlights for what feels like a half hour before the house actually crawls into view. Admittedly, it's a grand building. What it lacks in convenience it makes up for in beauty. A vitorican tower on the left face of the house always grabs your eye first, jutting up three stories to a point. Beige walls, streaked green by the runoff from a moss patched roof, are restrained by scorched black timer moldings. Iron fencing, tall enough to give the most gifted climber a challenge and tipped in spear points, juts out of the building's sides and scurries deep into the woods. The front door is. . . open. Why is the door wide open this late at night?

I quickly throw the car in park and hop out. Lights are on throughout the place. It is far enough off the beaten path that none of the city sounds can be heard, but the house itself feels too quiet. Too still. Tiptoeing up to the stoop, a gentle thumping can be heard from within. 

“Police! Is everything alright?” I shout into the door.

The thumping stops for a moment, then begins again. Quicker. 

No choice then. I step inside.

The interior is as lavish as the exterior, but more recently renovated. Cream walls are held against burnt umber floorboards. It's a more narrow hallway, just like they used to make old farm houses with. As soon as I'm in the tunneled passage, my nostrils are stabbed by the sharp smell of iron. The noise is louder inside, echoing from the end of the hall. I call again.

“This is Columbus police, is anyone home?”

No one answers, and the noise continues. 

I creep forward to the middle of the hall where two entry ways reflect one another. The left opens into the dining room. It's dark, but the light from the hall vaguely illuminates the long table and chairs. It appears empty. To the right is the kitchen, fully lit. I wish I could describe the room, but the second I look in, all I can see is a crimson lake engulfing half of a woman’s body. Mrs. Caldwell? 

“Jesus Christ,” slips from my lips as I race to her side. Instinctively, my hand darts to her neck to check for a pulse, but I stop half way. Now closer, it's obvious that her skull is entirely caved in. You can’t even identify the face any more. The pungent scent of metal rolls over my tongue. Jagged shards of her skull encircle a swollen heap of mashed pink and gray flesh. Looking around the room, you can find most of the missing pieces thrown against the wall, splattering the counter tops, and spread across the floor. A hammer lies near her, smudged with bloody finger prints. A chunk of brain and a lock of hair still clinging to its head. 

A sudden churning of my stomach nearly forces me to vomit up my entire dinner, but the thumping from somewhere in the house slowly reels me back. I stand and draw my pistol. 

Returning to the hall, it now feels far more restricting than charming. A few more steps and it leads into the parlor. Bang, bang, bang, explodes rhythmically in my ears. Steel crashing against stone, that's what the sound is. It's coming up from the stairway to the left. Inching towards it, my boot slips and I nearly lose my balance. I have to grab at the sofa arm to steady myself. On the ground below, lies another pool of thickening blood. A part of me begs to not look. To merely go downstairs and find the source of the crashing. To only witness the nightmare once this is all done, or maybe not at all. I look anyway.

“God no,” I nearly sob when I turn and find the child sized bodies. Both are laying on their stomachs, right beside each other, hands tied behind their backs with twine. Even in the dimmed light, it's easy to tell that their heads are in a worse state than the Missus. Just spilled piles of gory meat that used to be two giggling little boys. They were playing tag in the front yard the last I was here.

My head jerks away from the grizzly scene, but now I’m face to face with a family portrait hanging on the wall. Mr. Caldwell forcing a smile, each hand on the head of a son as his wife sits between them. He just lumbers over all three of them. 

I wipe the tears away with the back of my free hand, snort back my running nose, and start descending the stairs with ragged breaths. Only two flickering bulbs provide any light for the large basement, but a man can clearly be seen. Sledgehammer in hand, he weakly pounds at the brick wall.

“Get them back, get them back, get them back,” the man mutters as he weeps. 

I squeeze the handle of my gun, trying my hardest to steady my hand. “Mr. Caldwell. . . Ronald,” I gently say, making my presence known. 

He freezes with a flinch and turns to me. Blood is splattered so thickly across him that it's hard to tell if he himself has any injuries or not. His eyes twitch as wildly as the rest of his body. 

“Ron. . . what happened?” I ask with a blubber, losing all professionality. 

“They took them,” he croaks, his face twisting in agony, “They took them away.”

The horror on my face must have been obvious, because he tries to explain further. “They sent fakes and took the real ones, my family!” he cries out, raising his voice. “I have to do what they say, or I won’t get them back!”

His last words are a scream and I involuntarily jerk my pistol up a hair. A gesture that doesn't go unnoticed. Ron grips the sledgehammer with white knuckles. “I have to get them back! You can’t stop me!” He screams before sprinting at me. 

I’m so damn scared that I unload all six of the shots I got into his chest, each sending out a spray of blood. It isn’t until the last shot rips through his heart that he collapses to the ground with a slide. With that, Ronald Caldwell lies dead at my feet.

The Weeping Wanderer

How ironic that he should wander here of all places. He had stumbled across many ruins of lost civilizations over the years of his self imposed exile. The ruins of civilizations that he himself decimated. For the most part, he had never felt much more than a pinch of guilt in the back of his heart when he found them. But this was no ordinary city. After all, this is where he was raised. 

Piles of stone, eroded and smoothed but the wind whipped sand, were recognized immediately. These stones were once a great archway, carved into the shape of the mother goddesses, to welcome any weary traveler into the safety of the settlement. The faces could still be identified with a squint. As a child, he had spent so many evenings with friends racing from the arch to the fountain in the city center. There was no doubt in his mind that if he entered the ruins he could still navigate the way to his mother’s hut off of muscle memory alone. The thought choked him with anxiety.

He did not recall destroying the city, but he knew that he was to blame. His armies rolled across the dunes, burning everything in sight. There was no way he could be present for every scene of destruction. He had far too many matters to attend to when he was king. 

Yes, that was right, wasn’t it? He had been a king once. For a time. Not a ruler by blood, but by power. A position seized but his mighty strength and held by his unrelenting fury. The people deserved a cruel ruler, or so he thought at the time. Had they not betrayed, imprisoned, and tortured him? They hadn't. He knew that now. Only one man betrayed him. But only one betrayal is needed to forge a monster, if you allow it. And he had allowed it. A whole country had been dealt his wrath because a single man had ruined him, his own uncle. He had so much to prove then, so much hate to release. He would have scorched the entire globe if he had not been stopped and dethroned. 

King. A title that is simultaneously familiar and foreign to him. He had been a king, but that was a long, long time ago. Now? He was old. His haggard face grown even more decrepit than the rest of him thanks to the constant barrage of searing sun. Silver, mangy hair spilled from his face wraps and hood. A man once capable of splitting mountains now required a staff to hobble from place to place. Once a king, now a vagabond in a patchwork cloak.

The history of this village has very likely been lost to the world, but not to him. He lived it. He had climbed the steps to the lavish palace, left abandoned after his people overthrew the previous overlord and commander. He roamed the markets, peeked into the bath houses, and even worked as a potter for a year. He once knew these streets so well that you could blindfold him, tell him the name of any family, and he would be able to walk right to their home without falter.

But what of its final days? He had not been here for those. The blood that was spilt may not be visible, but it is here if you dig deep enough into the sand. The splintered and bleached bones of people he once called ‘neighbor’ still lay just beneath the rubble. The final chapter in this place's history was not seen by him, but he can feel it. Feel it in the muscles of his trembling body. A stranger would only hear the whistle of gusting wind, but within his ears it was the dying screams of the people who had raised him. The people he blindly butchered.

Why had he done it? How could he have been so foolish? So arrogant? Why did the world have to suffer simply because he suffered? How could he let such petty hatred blind him into committing genocide? 

Yes, if a stranger came here now they would find none of this history. They would only find more desert ruins and a terribly old man, weeping on his knees.

First Letter

Dearest Coraline,

I am riding this cramped train

In search of your ghost.

Although I’m haunted

With what I have done to you,

I still need closure.

It will never come.

Honestly I deserve none,

But still I’m seeking.

If even a scrap

Of your precious soul lives on

I have to find it.