Page 22

Twenty

Darkness. It’s everywhere. It’s in the starless sky hanging above me. It colors the fabric of the hooded people gathered around me. It has taken their eyes hostage. No matter the actual shade of their irises—whether blue, green, brown or some variant in between—darkness… bleak, robotic darkness is all that stares back at me. Everything feels as dark as Harlan’s newfound soul… or lack thereof.

“Drop her there.” Harlan’s instruction is met with a synchronized, and rhythmic clapping from the members who seem to look at him as if he’s their leader. An arguably confusing position and an extremely frightening concept to grasp. That Harlan, my once conflicted church boy, now stands with pride as an intricate part of Heathen’s Cross. I thought it was just a haunt, but clearly it’s so much more. It’s a movement, and now it’s my curse.

The wind picks up, and the already fallen leaves lift and scatter about as my body feels like it’s floating. I can tell from the way the leaves shift and scrape that I’m being taken to the graveyard between the church and house. I’ve spent too many nights in this part of the property when I lived here, especially in autumn, to not recognize the sound foliage makes when fallen on uneven and rough limestone graves .

Without so much as a word or warning, the many hands that aided in my journey to the graveyard vanish from my body. A sinking feeling implodes in my gut as I crash to the uneven ground. My body aches in response to the fall and the pain makes me more aware of the snake still wrapped around my limbs. I wiggle myself around, trying to signal my arms to move, but they don’t budge. Rendered motionless by the drugs mixed with fear, I’m unable to fight it like I should. He’s winning. He’s fucking winning.

Harlan stands over me, saying something to get everyone to leave us alone. Of course, they obey, all mumbling a familiar chant as they walk away.

“Fatum enim eligimus.” They repeat in unison until they are out of hearing range.

“Finally, just me and you,” Harlan announces as something mauve in color, wrapped around my legs, grips my attention.

I blink repeatedly, desperate for clarity. “Ewww, get it off me!” I cry, vomit rising to my mouth as I stare at the slimy, thick intestines wrapped around my legs. As sick as it is, I would’ve preferred the snakes.

“Shut up!” Harlan’s boot lands on my rib cage before he flips me over onto my stomach. “Look!” He directs my head, twisting his hands that dig into my jaw beneath my mask. “Tell me what you see?”

“This isn’t real,” I breathe out, trying to believe the words I’m saying. Standing before me is The Last Stop, with its ornate windows and uneven limestone porch. But it isn’t in town like I remember it, it’s here. On the property… in the graveyard.

“How is it here?” I mutter my question. “I don’t understand. How is this The Last Stop?” I again try to convince myself, but all I see is the shed to the graveyard that my stepdad kept locked once he found me snooping inside.

“No, sister, you wanted it to be your last stop. But each time you visited, you were denied access with only the crumbs of truth you had. You can’t gain full entry until you learn the whole truth. That’s the only way blood for blood can be achieved. My dad tried so hard to keep the truth from you, he definitely didn’t help matters much.”

“What truth?” I ask in desperation, unable to determine what is true and what’s not anymore.

“Here, let me,” Harlan says, walking ahead of me, with a key in his hand.

He twists it and opens the stubborn door that never opened with ease for me. Once the door opens, familiar scents of incense and musk fill my senses, like I remember when I visited The Last Stop. Though all my memories are as shaky as my limbs. The foundation I thought I knew, crumbling before me. “You were so close to discovering the truth about who my dad was, and it scared him. Then, after we both landed in the hospital, he was afraid of what you began to unearth. So, he locked it. He took your notebook and everything you held dear, locked it inside the shed, just like he had done before. But just like the previous times when he locked it, you found the key. You always found that damn key. He hoped that you’d forget about it and move on. Truthfully, we all assumed that you did move on, considering how long it took you to come back here. Now I’ll ask you once, why did you come back last night only to leave?”

“I didn’t. The first time I’ve come back here since I left is tonight.”

He sighs. “Fucking Christ, Araceli! Seriously? I know you make a living off lying on paper, but even now you’re going to? Why did you come back to me last night, just to leave me again?”

“But I didn’t.” Tears begin to line my eyes.

He wags his finger at me. “Don’t you dare cry, not yet. I only want your tears when I’m close enough to lick them off your face.”

“I’m only going to repeat myself one more time. Why did you fucking come so close, yet leave me again? Again, Araceli! You left me again!”

“I don’t,” I fumble my words. “I don’t,” I repeat, but before I can say anything else, Harlan yanks my wrists, dragging me across the dirt until I’m at the entrance of the shed. He moves inside, leaving me on the ground and as he walks to retrieve something.

A few moments later, he reemerges, and the entirety of his cloak is filthy. Dirt mucks it everywhere. He stares up at the moon, seeing the cracks of daylight infiltrating the sky.

“We don’t have much time,” he says.

“For what?”

“The initiation to be complete.” He deadpans, swiping at a small monitor in his hands. “Here we are. Look.”

Time stamped in front of me, October 30th, 2024— last night —I’m met with the view of me, dirty, full of mud, walking through the graveyard, in an almost catatonic state. I watch in horror as I drop to the ground, clawing at the ground— screaming . He presses fast forward and the time lapses, but there I remain just digging my hands into the ground until I stop with something white in my hand.

“See!” he exclaims. “You were here. You got what you wanted, and then you left. You weren’t supposed to leave. Tell me. What did you forget?” He roars his question.

“I don’t know.”

“Liar!” His words are like a whip.

“Since you are conveniently forgetting every-fucking-thing. Let me help jog your memory.” He tosses the camera down, and his hands latch onto me, dragging me back through the tombstones. He doesn’t stop, or let go until we near a loaded dump truck. The red buttons glare at me. “Look familiar?” Harlan asks.

“No. Not yet.” I try to fight him, but Harlan holds me in place with his possessive grip. Forced to look at what he’s showing me as he turns my head away from the truck, I now see a six-foot-deep hole in the ground. Paired with a temporary marker next to it with my name on it… written in blood.

I gasp, but my reaction is overruled as a sharp pain shoots into my thigh before a warm, wet sensation trails down, and my legs go weak. I peer down at the intestines only to see they aren’t intestines at all—they’re gone. Harlan’s snake has laced himself around my legs, locking me in place. His fangs sinking deep in my thigh, pumping his venom into me. “Good boy,” Harlan coos before clapping, and the snake leaves me as fast as it slithered onto me.

Harlan laughs. “You really thought those were intestines, didn’t you? That’s the drugs tricking you. Hallucinogens have a funny way of messing with the truth.”

“I hate this place. It’s fucking haunted,” I breathe out. Relieved that the snake is off me, but now I have Harlan to contend with.

He shakes his head, mumbling a no. “It’s not the house that’s haunted, it’s your heart.”

Harlan reaches over to my neck and yanks my necklace. I watch, stunned, as Harlan pushes aside the pentagram pendant as his fingers graze the large, curved bone hanging low enough that it becomes lost between my breasts.

“Good choice,” he praises, rubbing the bone, getting an unexpected level of arousal from it, judging from the primal grunt that just echoed from beneath his mask. “You should add actress to your repertoire. Pretending to come back for your ‘necklace’. Clearly, you came back for me … and oh, have I been waiting for you .”

Harlan reaches into his back pocket, taking out my journal from it. “We won’t be needing this anymore. All that was written is, and will come to fruition.” He grins, tossing it over my head. The thud on the ground impossible to ignore.

“You know what makes me hard, Araceli?”

I roll my eyes.

Bones and death, clearly.

“I don’t know… anything with a pulse?” I blurt, my sarcasm reemerging.

“Wrong,” he quips. “Your fear, because in it lies your truth, and I intend after tonight to exhume your truth as you have exhumed mine. I want to terrorize you until your screams turn your throat hoarse. I want to taunt you like putty in my hands. The same hands that will gladly strangle the life out of you, until that pulse that you think is the only prerequisite I have to get my dick hard withers away. That’s what gets me rock fucking hard.”

Without warning, Harlan moves his hands to my waist, lifting me high enough that he can push me into the open pit I stupidly dug in the ground.

Dust clouds form as my body crashes into the earth and he continues on. “That, and fantasizing of how pretty you’ll look when the olive of your flesh morphs into a lifeless array of purple and blue. All while those pouty lips of yours remain on mine until they turn cold and lifeless.”

He starts humming to himself as he turns around, “Blood for blood. Eye for an eye.” His voice trails off and he moves for a moment, out of my sight.

I hear the faint rumble of machinery begin, but it’s not loud enough that I can’t hear his voice. “Oh, brujita,” Harlan says, but it’s not his voice I hear, it’s Frida. “ I taught you better than this. Seeing isn’t always believing. You knew what you did. You knew what you had to do. But you ran like all the scared ones do .”

“Frida?” I call out, to which Harlan laughs manically.

“No, silly, it’s me. But sometimes they have a habit of doing that. You’ll learn soon enough. All that once was, has a tendency to linger. Whatever you heard, I wouldn’t brush it off. Trust your gut. It’s your gift. Well, our gift now. Fuck, Araceli, I could’ve given you the world. You know that? But you just had to tempt me. You had to insert me in your twisted fantasy. Now all that’s left is to give you the end you deserve, plus I’m not wearing this mask for nothing. It’s time to pay the Ferryman.”

Just like in the book. My book. My destiny.

He’s taking it for me. Ending it.

On instinct, thinking back to the picture in the journal Frida gifted me, I think of the Ferryman illustration. Remembering the woman with her mouth open to pay her debt. I need to pay my debt so he can finally forgive me, so I do just that, and I open my mouth.

“No. Boring. I already had your mouth. Now I want something else to warm my cock. Open your legs. Be brother’s gruesome little whore and play one last time with me. I want to make good on my promise and take you to where the sun doesn’t shine and never will again. Well, not for you at least.”

He jumps into the hole, dirt spilling in at a rapid pace. He quickly undoes his belt buckle, freeing his cock, then sits on top of me—pinning me in place. Within seconds, the blade I used to kill his father is at my chin, teasing my skin.

It feels better than I care to admit. For the first time in a long time—if ever—I feel at peace. At one with my roots—with my destiny.

I look past his hovering head and up at the sky, and the hooded members with their black cloaks reemerge, all wearing the same Ferryman mask that he is.

“I don’t know why I ever bothered trying to make you happy. Sorrow suits you…just like the blood I’m about to draw.”

“Harlan, I’m sor —” I begin, but he silences me with a growl. Something burns in my chest. The knife falls from my chin to my chest.

“I don’t want your apologies. I want to see how far you’re willing to fight for your life so I can steal it from you. Do you have any fight left in you?”

No.

“I want to crush you like you’ve crushed me. I think that’s fair, wouldn't you say?”

Yes. I answer internally. Knowing deep down there’s no other way this can end… or should.

Every pass he makes across my skin, I feel the knife edge slice through my clothes, and it feels like it’s cutting through me, opening me up further for him. As his frantic slices slow, I feel his other hand begin to trace circles, smearing my blood all over me, allowing the chilly night air to bite at my skin .

“A new holy trinity. Three deaths for one renewal,” he hums.

A hiss sounds near my ear, followed by a slimy chill that slithers and wraps around my neck, robbing my air.

“He missed you,” Harlan sneers, taking the snake’s tail and gently pulling it towards him, increasing the pressure around my airway.

Dirt continues to fall, clouding the air around us and before I can say anything or scream from the pain, he guides his cock into me with such force that I can feel a ricochet of pain latch onto my spine. His thrusts hurt more than the blade did. Each slam of his hard cock is more violent than the last. Yet each time he pulls back only to give me more of him, I clench my walls around him in anticipation. Not wanting to let him go. Hoping that the next harsh blow to my center will not only grant me release, but will release me from the guilt I’ve held onto for so long. For hurting him like I did, and for being the reason he’s become as cold as he has. I’m what made him like this. I’m responsible for taking something pure, and corrupting it so badly it turned him into a monster who’s now fucking me better than anyone ever has, or ever will. I ruined him, and now it’s his turn to ruin me.

He continues his punishing thrusts into my cunt. It hurts so bad yet the more he pumps into me, the wetter I become. I look up at him. Into the eye slits of his mask, and I can feel the hollowness in his stare. Suddenly, the mask he’s been wearing doesn’t look like a mask… it looks real . Strength ignites in my limbs and I lift my hand to his face. The decay, the jagged texture, the rot, all of it, is part of his skin. All of it is as real, and brutal, as the pounding I’m taking from him, willingly.

“Why?” I whimper.

“Because you made me who I am.”

“A villain?” I pant through the escalating pain and bliss dancing through my senses. Tricking me into believing that this isn’t the torment my mind knows it to be.

“No, little sister. The ending you deserve.”

“But I don’t want this to end.” I beg, but the stars that line my vision let me know that this will be the last time I feel him like this.

“Tighter,” Harlan mewls, and the snake follows his command. It slithers slowly under my neck, and back around, this time facing Harlan. “Me too,” he commands it, and it springs forward, latching onto Harlan’s shoulder. Taking its sweet time, it slinks its scales around his neck before nearing me again.

“Look.” Thrust. “At.” Thrust. “Us.” Thrust. “So connected,” Harlan grunts. “So fucking doomed.” He laughs as he revs up the pace he’s wreaking havoc on my insides.

I never thought he could hurt me like this. I never dreamed he could hurt me so fucking good. But I have to remember, this isn’t him. It can’t be.

I close my eyes, hoping I’ll see him. The real him. Innocent. Alive . So eager to please me like he’s doing now, except not in the form my mind created out of lust. Hoping it would overshadow my guilt with my fantasies.

I open my eyes, and the Harlan of my living nightmares is gone. No longer hovering over me. Stabbing my eyes with his vicious blue stare. He’s gone. Really gone. Though I still feel the tempo of his cock pounding into me as he summons my impending release.

“Where are—”

“Shh,” he whispers. “Close your eyes.”

I do as he says and my lids fall shut. Suddenly, we aren’t in a filling hole in the ground. We’re back at Heathen’s Cross, back to years ago.

His head is buried between my legs, but where my skin feels warm, his is cold. Ice cold.

“Araceli. I. Can’t.”

“Shut up!” I yell.

“Araceli. I. Can’t. Breathe.”

Just like brother’s gruesome, greedy, and high off her ass whore. I heard him, but it didn’t register. His tongue, in one piece, not split, felt so good, as did the high I was riding. His plea only made me squeeze my legs around him tighter. He licked me until he couldn't anymore. Until he began his descent into unconsciousness while buried in between my legs and I blacked out.

It all becomes blurry until I hear the sirens. All over again, just like that night. Except when I look down, I see my feet, and when I look up, it’s Harlan tied and bound on the cross. Not me. Blood mars my hand. A voice whispering from deep within. Screaming at me. Telling me it’s all my fault. I did this to him. I killed him.

I killed the wrong one.

“No!” I open my eyes, peering down at my center. My naked, blood-stained body is covered in dirt… so much dirt. But Harlan isn’t there. It’s just my hand and the bone from my necklace. Harlan’s bone. The bone that I recovered, that I dug up, the night before… from his grave.

His fucking grave .

He’s not here.

This can’t be real.

“Except it is, little sister,” Harlan hisses in my ears. His deep whisper sends a trail of raised bumps down my spine.

“How?” I cry out. Voice trembling. My lungs are burning from lack of oxygen. The pressure on my throat and the dirt filling the hole we’re fucking in, it’s too much. I don’t know how much more I can take until it takes me.

A response doesn’t speak to me. Not audibly, or from within. But my hand moves, accelerating to a dizzying speed. In and out, the curved edge of his rib bone scraping at my insides.

“How?” I repeat to myself, now staring up at the night sky expecting to see nothing but the stars… but he’s there. I can see him. I can feel him. Fucking me. Punishing me with every violent thrust that may not look like him, but I know it’s him.

“Because your heart is haunted, that’s why. Keep going,” he whispers. “You’re so close.” Encouraging me from beyond. “You’ll learn the truth soon. Keep. Going. Don’t. Stop. You’re doing so well, taking my punishment in that greedy, dying cunt.”

I do as he says. Taking my punishment — my penance .

“Thank you for remembering me this time,” Harlan whispers, bringing his lips to mine. His tongue darts out of his mouth, breaking through the barrier of earth, filling my mouth with its suffocating promise.

The crest of my orgasm now, on the horizon. I pinch my eyes, bracing myself. A violent quiver explodes throughout my body as I give him what will surely be my last living burst of pleasure.

Ignoring the gritty mound of soil sneaking past my lips, expecting the split muscle of his tongue to war with my boring intact one, I keep my mouth open for him. As expected, a warmth emerges between my lips, but it’s not his tongue. It’s slimy, thick, and serpentine .

I gasp, folding my tongue forward, trying to fight it off, but it’s relentless. My airway, as if it already couldn’t stand a chance against the burial in progress, becomes blocked. Harlan laughs as he drives one final thrust inside me, as he steals my release.

“You’re vile, little sister. I’ll give you that. Vile and savage. What made you come harder, the memory of my cock or the dead serpent punching your tonsils?”

Dead?

It’s dead too?

I peer down towards my chest, and somehow, through the earth that’s engulfed me, I see a long strand of thin, curved bones jutting from my mouth.

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 muffled cry 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.

A lot of 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.