1920 A&A AU. After the first wave of the Spanish Flu pandemic, the town of Emery has isolated itself as the illness which claimed whole families comes back. Arthur, a veteran of the Great War, has come to teach at the local school but is still in a state of shell shock from battle. Ariadne, her whole family gone last year, is deeply depressed and fears she won't survive the coming winter. But their inner demons are no match for the real danger of the towns people, now gripped with paranoia.
1.
~ Ariadne rolled over in her sleep and tried to hold onto the dream she was having.
She was partially awake now and could hear the howling of the wind outside. Or was it wolves who were howling?
She tried to keep the images of her dream intact. It was interesting and she always liked it when she had interesting dreams. Surely they meant something.
She was being murdered. Her and a group of other people were all dress in dark colors with traces of purple in their dresses and coats.
They were being hunted in the woods and murdered by unseen hands as they tried to hide. Tried to hide from the fearful thing that was killing them.
She could feel something sharp pierce her heart and looked down to see her own dark blood seeping through.
A young man had also been killed, but he cast off his body as though it were a old blanket.
"Are we dead?" she shouted at him in near panic as she saw the blood on her clothing. She sensed she had crossed over into another realm. The woods were darker, yet she could see better.
"Yes." the young man said. "I think so."
"No." she sobbed and searched for her body. "It's not fair!"
"It might not be so bad." he said gently and tried to comfort her as she cried for the loss of her own life. "We're not alone. That's the worst thing in the world to be... alone."
She didn't care. Didn't care that the others who died with her were now surrounding her and telling her it was going to be alright. She sensed they were good people. All their clothing dark and purple in this strange place. But she knew nothing would be alright again.
~ She woke up with a start. Her head pounding as the dream slipped out of her memory as though it were smoke. The house was too quite and that made her skin shiver with unease.
Her bed was too cold as well. She looked over at the hearth in the Harper family home. Her family, all seven of them, inhabited a small cottage on the outskirts of Emery. A town with a healthy population, but still deep in the country.
The cottage wasn't built to house the growing family and her parents had elected to simple crowd their brood into the front room, while the adults had the back to themselves.
It was a fair arrangement that meant Ariadne slept in a small bed with her much younger sister, Adel. While her older brothers, Sam and Ben, had the bed opposite. Their grandmother happily slept as close to the hearth as she could. Some night she would relent and sleep a few hours in the bed they had for her, but mostly she fell asleep knitting in her rocker by the warmth of the fire.
With all the people in such close quarters, there was always noise of some kind. Adel chattering, Ben and Sam arguing. Granny humming, mamma cooking or dad's heavy boots on the floor.
Now, there was nothing. No sleeping noises coming from anyone. Only the wind and it's odd howling trying to break through the windows. The heavy oak door creaking as the wind tried to force it open.
She looked at the door a long time. Half expecting some kind of specter to barge in and grab her.
She had been sick for days with a strange illness that sent her to the little bed in the corner. Her mother worrying about her as her father was telling her brothers not to go to town. She remembered being hot. So hot she felt she would burst into flames. Remembered her mother trying to cool her down with a cold water as she sweated and moaned.
She didn't remember much else as her body grew weak and the talk of the Spanish flu taking her soon reached her in her sleep. She didn't want to die. She was getting married int he summer. She wanted to wear the white dress her mother and grandmother were sewing the lace work for.
No, she didn't want to die.
The wind seemed to lose interest in breaking down the family door and Ariadne let out a sigh of relief. She peered around the dark room. The moonlight coming in from the window was bright enough to see her mother and father had made sleeping pallets on the floor. She looked at them curiosly before she felt Adel laying next to her. Her young sister, only seven years old, was turned away from her. Her hair was messed and seemed lank and sweated to her neck. It has always been long and shinny before.
"Adel?" Ariadne said horsely and realized she was very thirsty.
She swallowed hard and wanted cold water to drink. Maybe even with a little sugar in to help it go down.
She felt dizzy and weak from hunger as she nudged her sister awake.
"Adel?" she said gently. Her sister didn't stir at all. It was then Ariadne noticed how cold and ridged her body was.
"Adel." she said in shock. She rolled her sister's body over, and the moonlight coming in from the window cast a pale light on Adel's open, milky eyes.
Ariadne pulled away from the child as though she had been bitten. Her breathing coming in horrible gasps at the thought of her sister dead.
Had she done this? Did she hurt her sister in her sleep maybe? Adel was young and healthy, surely she wouldn't have died.
She looked at her parents sleeping on the floor. The stillness in the cottage broken only by Ariadne's heavy, frightened breathing.
"Mommy?" she croaked with her parched voice. "Mommy!"
She kept as far away from her sister as she could and crawled out of their shared bed. The wooden floor of the cottage was cold on her feet and she wished one of her brothers and thought to tend the fire before turning in for the night. The cottage was freezing and her body was too weak and her head hurt too much.
"Mommy?" she whispered approaching her mother's side. It only came to her much later, that her parents weren't making the sleeping sounds she was used to. Her father wasn't snoring his loud, bear like grumble. Her mother wasn't breathing heavy which meant she was peacefully in the land of dreams.
Neither one of them were making any sounds. Not even breathing.
"Dad?" she cried softly as she touched the cold, dead hands of her father.
"Dad?" she said shaking him. Hoping he would snap awake.
He and her mother didn't wake. They lay there on their bed pallets. Their bodies cold and like an empty shell.
She tried not to sob as she turned to her brother's bed. Two boys in their teens and never were there a pair of healthier young men. They were loud and boisterous at all times and their mother would often lock them out of the house to keep them from tearing it apart.
"Ben! Sam!" she said shaking them. Their skin even colder than their parents and Ben looked as though he had been ill just before he died.
This was a nightmare. Her dream had come true and she searched in vain for any sign of life. Nothing, nothing was alive in the cottage but her. She curled into a ball at the foot of granny's rocker. The old woman's head was thrown back in her final hours. Her sleeves rolled up as she was no doubt trying to nurse the suffering family until she herself gave up the fight to live.
Gone.
They were all gone. She felt a loneliness she had never felt before move and shift inside her as the wind howled. Only the howling wasn't the wind at all, but wolves outside her door.