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Harlan cackles. “See, you’re pathetic. You’re so desperate for my scraps that you’d settle for anything to fill those gaping holes of yours.”

Frida was right. Messing with one’s destiny has consequences. His haunting presence and the pain he is inflicting on me is all one horrid consequence.

A lesson I’m now learning, too late.

The fragile bones push their way deeper into my mouth, some breaking as they plummet down my throat, scratching me the same way Harlan -or what’s left of him- did to my pussy.

I want to scream in disgust, but all that comes out is a muffledcry of pleasure, as I come just in time for me to vanish into the abyss.

“Mark 16:18. They will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” Harlan hums, and I feel the weight of this life lift from my bones as a sea of wet warmth engulfs my body.

“Not you though, little sister. Your heart is sick and meant to rot with mine. Thank you for breaking me. It’s only right that I returned the favor.” A final whisper breaks through my consciousness, and I’m no longer in the grave plot—the one I dug up to be with him—one last time. I’m standing, naked, on a small sailboat with the waves whipping up on the boat, splashing onto me from the rough current.

Harlan stands in his cloak, with an extra in one hand, while his other is held out for me. Waiting for me. Waiting to welcome me to what awaits me after life’s burden finally lets me go.

A tall, ominous figure, also dressed in all-black, with a scythe in their hand, stands off in the distance. Though their face is difficult to distinguish from the hood draped over their head, they look angry.

Harlan pays the figure no mind as he helps me off the boat and drapes the familiar black fabric—the Heathen’s Cross cloak—onto my naked, clean, and blood-free body.

I feel renewed. Whole.

“Ready to pay?” Harlan asks me, reaching for my hand that now carries two coins, each marked with three circles.

“Not yet.” I answer Harlan, ignoring the cloaked figure waiting for payment to complete our passage just behind him.

Harlan waves over to him, signaling something with his hands, and the figure seems to agree. Nodding once before walking off.

“That’ll buy us some time, but I promise he will be after us if we don’t pay. I’ve dodged him as long as I can while waiting for you. I won’t be able to journey with you much longer.”

“It won’t take long,” I reassure him. Excitement blossoming in my new form.

“What do you have in mind?” Harlan asks. Excited. Full of Life.

“You’ll see.”

Harlan’s ink drawn hand finds my neck. The skeletal design that was on top of his hand now has spread to the entirety of his arm. His grip sinks into my neck. Hard. But I feel nothing.

No pain.

Only pleasure.

Alotof it.

“Welcome home, little sister,” he growls.

“This isn’t home, it’s Hell.”Remember.

“Yes, but now you and I… we’re free.”

Yep, free to do what I should’ve done a long fucking time ago.

EPILOGUE

“Good evening, I’m Joan Lantz, and thank you for tuning into Channel Seven News. With another Halloween behind us, it appears that our town can’t seem to escape the curse that comes to us with each trick-or-treating season. Though with the tragic news we are about to report, we hope that if nothing else, the good people of Mort can finally put a closure to the tragedies that have plagued us for far too long at the hands of the Samhain Killer, who until this day, has not been named, but is about to be.

A grizzly scene unfolded in the early morning hours today, when local law enforcement received an anonymous tip from a concerned resident driving on Summerland Drive reporting hearing a harrowing mix of terrifying screams and crying off in the distance, in the direction of the gated Rainey property.

Shortly after the tip was called in, law enforcement along with the Mort Fire Department, arrived at 333 Summerland Drive, which as many of you are aware is the address to what once stood as a pinnacle of unity and faith for our small town, Sacred Promises Church, which is located on the six-acre lot owned and lived on by Pastor Harlan Rainey Sr. The property was once split into two, three-acre lots, with a cemetery that divided the two. Pastor Rainey obtained the rest of the property after the neighboring owner, Lucien Suárez, passedaway, leaving no will in place. However, after what we have learned about the events of last night, how Pastor Rainey came to own the full six-acres is as eerie as it is damning.