He abruptly pulled out of me and then grabbed my hair and threw me roughly to the bottom of the bed and then he straddled my face.

  “You wanted this. I remember you wanted this.”

  I nodded as he rammed so hard into my mouth that I gagged at the same time as I felt blinding pain in my jaw. I struggled. He thrust in over and over, grunting, pulling my hair. He pulled back and repositioned himself so he could go down on me again while he continued to thrust into my face. My feet kicked hard in my efforts to stop him from suffocating me. His mouth went between my legs; he bit down on my clit, making me cry.

  He grabbed my ankles to hold my legs still and that’s when I felt his release fill my mouth.

  He went lax, full weight on top of me.

  It was too much, but I didn’t want to pull away.

  Finally, he did. He looked down at me and smiled and then put his palm to my face affectionately.

  And I thought that my heart might splinter into a million pieces because maybe, just maybe… it worked.

  And then he reached toward the lantern and I thought maybe he’d turn it off and cuddle with me. He didn’t turn it off. He lifted an axe from the floor up high and I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see it come down on me.

  I didn’t see it. Instead, I just felt the force of it slash through my chest.

  And then I felt it a second time. Deeper. And it hurt. It hurt so fucking bad.

  And then… I felt nothing.

  ***

  I was sitting on the ground under the tulip tree again. Again. Sorrow filled me. This time, the sky didn’t go dark slowly. It happened quickly. I threw the tulip blossom and let out a frustrated cry.

  Did I write the chapters of my own fate, speaking about willingness to relive that first night over and over? I could not fathom that this man who loved me so much could not just kill me a second time, but end my life brutally in the very place he knew I feared the most.

  “Meow?” Archie looked up at me from my feet. He meowed as if to ask if I was okay. I wasn’t. I felt no pain, I was again clothed and free of blood and dirt. No chipped tooth. It was like it hadn’t even happened.

  “I’m sorry you’re stuck here with me,” I told him. He rubbed his head on my calf. I wished they could’ve taken him out of here when I told them to leave us here. Fear suddenly struck me as fog moved in. I looked up to the top of that hill and saw him under the spotlight of the moon. Holden.

  And I didn’t sit and wait for him to get to me. No. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. I fucking ran.

  I zigged and zagged, trying to outrun the mist that followed me. It followed me and it circled me, traveling backward, I knew, to him. It connected us. He’d be able to catch me. There would be no hiding from him with the bright spiderwebs betraying where I was.

  I still ran. I ran and ran and ran. Abruptly, the ground slipped away under my feet and I was tumbling. I was tumbling head over knees over and over until I found myself at the bottom of the hill, landing directly against his feet beneath the oak tree, the beautiful oak tree where we’d spent so many afternoons making out like the honeymooners we were.

  It was late August and we were under the tree. He fed me a strawberry and then kissed me, stealing it back out of my mouth with his tongue.

  “Hey!” I protested. “That’s mine.” I tackled him and sent him to his back.

  “Want another?” he asked as he reached over and snatched another from the colorful Tupperware dish that sat on our blanket.

  “Yes,” I pouted.

  He sat up, keeping me straddling him, his hand against my lower back.

  “Here.” He took a bite off the end and grabbed the back of my head and brought my mouth to his.

  I scooped the piece of strawberry out of his mouth with my tongue. He laughed against my mouth.

  I tried to regain my bearings. Before I could, Holden yanked me up to my feet with both hands by my jacket roughly and greeted me with a smile.

  “Hello, Isabella.”

  I struggled, trying to get out of his hold.

  “Wanna fight back? Want a weapon?” His eyes lit with excitement. “This could be fun.”

  “No,” I cried out, trying to wrench myself away.

  “Question, little wife?”

  I didn’t respond. He asked anyway.

  “Did you run because you love me and want to please me, so you’re giving me the chase you know I want, for something different today, or did you run because you think you can actually stop me from killing you?” He tilted his head and pursed his lips, mocking me.

  “Of course I didn’t want you to catch me. It’s not fun getting hurt, Holden.”

  “No, but it’s fun doing the hurting.” He threw me on the ground and yanked at my fly.

  “The sex was good, little kitty cat. I liked it. Just not quite as much as I like murdering you. Though, this time, I might tear you up inside while I murder you. Would you go cold in between your legs the instant you died if my cock was still inside you? Let’s find out.”

  He didn’t have sex with me first that time. He strangled me until the blackness came. He definitely preferred murder to sex, though sometimes he did both.

  ***

  I found myself once again under the tulip tree after he killed me yet again. How many times had it been? I’d lost track of how many times my husband had murdered me.

  The little kitty looked on sadly from the bush off to the side. He didn’t try to comfort me this time.

  Sometimes, it was quick. Sometimes it was drawn out. Sometimes Holden would speak to me, and other times he would just sweep a knife, an axe, a tire iron, a crowbar, or something else across me and I’d collapse.

  As the sky around me darkened, I didn’t run this time. I didn’t give him the chase. As I felt the mist curl around me, I just lay down on the ground, staring up at the sky and waiting for my fate.

  “Did you do something different with your hair?” the murderer asked, amused.

  “What’s that cat’s name again? Didn’t you say it was Archie… what, three or four times ago? Is it the spirit of your dead ancestor? He never looks happy while he watches me kill you.”

  I didn’t cry. I didn’t frown. I didn’t do anything. I just waited for the blackness.

  10 – Holden: The Next October 31st

  He tried to move and felt that he couldn’t. There were chains wrapped around his body, which was sitting in a chair. He saw the familiar faces of the Young witches. Vivica. Veronica. Jessica. Danica. Erica.

  It washed over him, then. All of it. Like a vast wave of blood and gore with the sounds of his wife’s pained wailing assaulting his ears. He had full awareness of what he’d done, all that he’d done.

  Axes swinging. Crowbars. Machetes. Fileting knives. grips around her throat. Even drowning her twice or thrice in that creek. Remorse wasn’t an apt enough word. At once, as the memories assaulted him, he wanted to plead for a gun so he could blow his head off, so the memories would stop coming at him.

  “Holden?” Erica called out.

  His eyes snapped to the redheaded young woman’s face.

  “Did it work?” she asked.

  His face crumpled. There was no sound, no tears, just sheer agony etched across his features.

  A hand came down on his shoulder and stayed there.

  “It worked,” the voice said.

  Holden looked up and saw Veronica Young smiling with tears in her eyes while touching his shoulder. He remembered from before, when they’d last chained him, that this one could read intentions and history of people and objects through touch.

  “It worked,” another voice, an elderly voice observed. He was vaguely aware of a door closing.

  “It’s been a year, Holden,” Erica said. “A year of it. Over and over and over. You know what you’ve done, obviously.”

  He stared at his hands, hands that had been so lethal. He wanted to hack them off.

  “Where is she? Did you save her?” he somehow managed.

  “She’s at the site of the former tulip tree,” Erica replied. “Same place she keeps returning to. But the boundary spell has been lifted, so if Vivica sees good things for you two, we can release those chains so you can go get her out of there. We had to restrain you as a safeguard… we didn’t know what we’d be dealing with. Vivi?”

  “If she doesn’t see good things,” the one called Danica told him, “Despite what Veronica feels, we’ll have to destroy you.” The blonde leaned forward and glared at him, looking like she very much wanted to destroy him. “We all have to agree to let you out of here. All five of us.”

  The gazes of everyone in the room, this room he despised as he’d spent a year in here chained, all swung toward Vivica.

  Vivica was silent. Looking at him. Assessing him.

  “We can remove the chains,” she declared, finally. “And then we need to have a good, long talk before you go fetch your wife.”

  ***

  Isabella was lying in the grass, listlessly blinking at the sky. The black cat with the orange tail was on her chest, curled in a ball. It hissed at him as he squatted beside her. The cat was unafraid of him now, likely knowing he was out of that state of mind, but in the mood to show his displeasure.

  The cat lunged and scratched Holden’s throat with his little claws, breaking the skin. Holden did nothing in retaliation. The cat walked off and sat, lifting a leg to give it a tongue bath.

  Isabella hadn’t moved throughout that exchange. She was blinking occasionally, but didn’t seem to be ‘there’.

  The pain that seized his chest at the sight of her, at how she lay there, was too much. Just too much. After everything he’d done. The witch, Vivica, with the dark hair that had the sight (who looked a lot like her ancestor, the fortune teller Holden had met over two hundred years earlier) told him that they discussed wiping the memory clean for them both, but could not.

  He pleaded for Isabella’s state of mind. How else could she come back from being cruelly murdered repeatedly over the span of an entire year?

  They told him she would know what he’d done, she would remember it all initially as he had to pay the price by seeing the fallout, but the witches said that if he worked hard for redemption, it should dull and fade for her with time.

  For him? No. His penance would be the sharpness of his deeds without reprieve. His memories would not dull, though he would have the benefit of the sanity that was won back for him due to his wife’s sacrifice and the witches’ efforts.

  He’d listened to the one called Danica berate him over squandering the gift he’d gotten when he and Isabella broke the rule. He knew. He knew now just how severe the consequences were. At the time, last Halloween morning when she met him at the creek --- seeing her fall apart like that had put him in a state of being willing to do absolutely anything to comfort her. She was caught up in emotion and he’d allowed himself to get caught up as well.

  And the results?

  The need to kill. It truly was all he was. Like that hollow husk he’d been, but not hollow. Instead, sociopathic, due to the head that was firmly attached. He had reasoning power, judgement, and now he had those memories. Vivid, indelible memories.

  He lifted her into his arms and cradled her to his chest, and he sat on the tree stump. She was listless. Catatonic.

  “Isabella, I’ve come back. Erica found a way.”

  Nothing. No reaction from her.

  He’d hurt her so deeply, so many times that she was locked away in her mind. He carried her to Erica’s van. Erica opened the door and he put her on the fabric floral-covered bench.

  “Fix her. Please,” he pleaded.

  The blonde one who seemed to despise him most, Danica, began to use medical equipment to check Isabella’s vital signs. She then hooked up a contraption with a bag of clear liquid and a needle through Isabella’s hand attached to a long tube.

  “What is that?” he demanded.

  She gave him a snotty look. “IV fluids. She’s catatonic, but her vitals are good. They won’t stay that way if she gets dehydrated.”

  Erica sat in the driver’s seat, plopping the little cat on the empty seat beside her and then started up the vehicle and they drove away. He stared back at that tree stump and watched it disappear when they got back on the main road. They wouldn’t get a chance to go back to their home for a last look. They were leaving the area before Holden was spotted, absolutely still on Wanted posters, just as his wife, according to the Young witches, was on Missing posters.

  ***

  It was a week into November, and they were at the witches’ home, a peculiar purple Victorian era house near the ocean. When she was well enough, they’d travel. He was going to talk to her about moving to Ireland. It was where his mother was born.

  Holden had been told that Jessica, the medium who was also a tech whiz, had quickly siphoned his wealth away when things went, as she put it, “tits up”. That money was aside for Holden and Isabella to start their new life. Everything in their home, including their farm itself had been seized. It didn’t matter. He didn’t even care if there was money to start over, but evidently he was still a wealthy man.

  “And our son?” he’d asked, caring more about his wife and baby than any amount of money.

  “He’s safe. Isabella bargained for him before she went in, though she needn’t have done it as Erica decided to take it upon herself.”

  “When will ---”

  “When you’ve shown us you’ve gotten your act together,” Danica hissed. “When your wife can function as a person. Would she want to function as a mother like this?” She gestured to Isabella, who was sleeping in the bed beside them. “Would she want her baby to be looked after by others, missing all that baby’s firsts, because she couldn’t lift her head off the goddamned pillow?”

  Holden held his tongue. That little witch was full of piss and vinegar. She really did hate him. Veronica, the second eldest had touched his arm with care and compassion.

  “Hopefully not too long. We’re not on any sort of timer with him, not while you both are still of parenting age. Isabella has lots of time. Don’t worry.”

  He nodded.

  “You need to be patient,” Danica told him. “Do you know how patient she was with you?”

  He blew out a long breath.

  “We’ll leave you two for now then,” Veronica said, nodding to the tray she’d brought in. “See if you can get her to wake and eat.” They left the room. Holden moved to the window and looked out at the water and found his forehead planted against the cool glass. He shut his eyes and blew out a long sigh.

  “Whaaa?”

  He spun around to find Isabella wide-eyed and bolting upright in the bed. She was staring at him and she looked alert. No, not alert, she looked positively distressed.

  “Isabella,” he moved to her, overcome with the need to comfort her.

  She let out a shrill scream and flung herself against the wall, as far back as she could get from him.

  He held his hand out. “I won’t harm you. Erica got us out. I’m --- me. It’s over.”

  She shook her head almost violently and dug her heels into the mattress, trying to push herself back, away from him, but with nowhere to go and the force of her actions, the bed began to come away from the wall and Isabella slid down in that space between as she fell onto her rump.

  She immediately scooted underneath the bed.

  Holden squatted, yanked the bedlinens away, and looked at her underneath the bed.

  “Precious wife, I can’t even tell you how sorry…”

  She screamed. She then sobbed out a horrible and animalistic cry, covering her ears and shutting her eyes, trying to hide within herself.

  Holden stood and shoved the bed away so he could reach her. He grabbed her and pulled her against him, put his back against the wall and began to rock her.

  Her eyes remained squeezed shut tight. Her hands remained over her ears. Cries kept coming from her mouth and then she chanted.

  “No, no, no, no. Please, please, please, no. No, no, no. Just hurry, hurry. Black. Make it black again. Please. Please.”

  He yanked the blanket from the bed, wrapped it around them and held her close. She continued with the chanting, covering her ears with her eyes squeezed shut.

  Holden had never been the sort of man to shed a tear. Never. But there, in that bright white guestroom with a view of the Atlantic ocean, the four poster brass bed askew in the middle of the room in the purple house, his broken wife in his arms and beside herself with insanity because she’d been murdered by him over and over and over again, Holden Holloway wept.

  ***

  At some point, she went loose in his arms; her cheek was pressed against his chest and her breathing was even in slumber.

  He heard movement outside the door and then it opened and Danica, the healer, poked her head in. For once, she didn’t glare at him. Her eyes were filled with concern.

  She stepped in. Holden got to his feet, Isabella still in his arms.

  Danica fixed the bedding and Holden set her down and the two carefully moved the bed back against the wall so they wouldn’t wake her.

  Danica gave Holden a nod and slipped back into the hall a moment, then returned with a tray of food, meals for Holden and for Isabella.

  “Should I go and come back in a few days?” he asked, not wanting to leave her but wanting her to have a chance to wake up without the monster who’d tormented her right there with her. Maybe if he left, they could get her essence back. And then he could approach some time later, when she might not be so petrified of him.

  “No. This is your cross to bear, Holden Holloway,” the witch replied. “Vivi says she’ll come back from this. You have to be patient. She was patient with you for a whole lot more than a couple days before her mind fractured. She did not once plead for us to get her out of there. Not once. She knew if she did get out, then so would you and either we’d have to kill you, or others would get hurt. Your wife is a fucking angel.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11