A/N: Sorry I've been MIA for a while. I'm afraid my health took a turn for the worse (I've been struggling with both physical and mental health). I've been so sick for the past year that my entire life had to be put on hold, including writing fanfics. I started this piece before my illness got real bad but was never able to finish it due to my health. Doing anything, including lying on the couch watching movies is exhausting; can't eat, can't sleep, can't think… but with an Aspie ADHD brain staying in bed resting is impossible (I'd go bonkers). I've decided to upload the first part of this Halloween fic despite it not being all done. Maybe one day I'll have enough brain energy and focus to write down rest as rest (Halloween 2016 ;p ). I feel bad because I've got a bunch of half-finished fics I don't have the strength to work on)) Until that day please don't hate me. Recovery is a bitch!
I dedicate this fic to Saint Dymphna who's been my guardian and kept/keeps me strong in the battle against my own body and mind.
Happy Halloween.
Quote of the fic:
"As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death… I'll rip out its tongue and make it choke on its breath."
-Unknown
OXXXO
It begins on a night like any other; wispy clouds passing over the crescent sliver in the sky, a chilly edged wind rustling the leaves of the large rowan trees in the front yard…. Halloween is right around the corner and Ben Wallis is just a little bit early in putting the finishing touches on this year's decorations, all he's got left are the lanterns but if he put those up now they'd go bad before the big day and he needs his lanterns at peek performance.
He goes all out every year, not because he's particularly fond of Halloween, it's a holiday which has lost its meaning, but because his daughter Felicia loves it. Every year she'd dress up as whatever Disney Princess she'd currently obsessed with and bounce from home to home on their suburban little street. Ben would go along with her. Hanna would not. Hanna would stay home arguing that the entire concept of Halloween is far too strange for her likes. She'd give Ben and Felicia/"Jasmine"/"Ariel" their 'Have-a-good-time' kisses and wave them off before going back into the house, closing the door behind her and turning off the porch light.
Felicia is not here anymore.
Ben will never forget the last day he saw his daughter: A sunny Tuesday morning in April twelve years ago, two days after her birthday. Felicia had just turned 7, Ben had gotten her the bike she'd wanted, the yellow one with the floral pattern and white plastic basket. When he left for work that morning she'd been riding it up and down the driveway with the widest grin on her face. Hanna had been watching from the window of the upstairs bedroom, smiling at the sight of their cheerful daughter.
Five hours later, while Ben is lecturing the sophomore Biology class at Beacon College, he gets the frantic call from Hanna.
Felicia is gone.
Just like that Felicia disappears from everyone's lives. She smiles, burns bright and then she's gone, fades out of future family photos that will now never be taken, her name tag is removed from the lockers at school and taken off the roll call lists. The purple glittery jar with chore-completed-reward money saved up for clothes and toys that will never be bought still sits atop the refrigerator but for the past twelve years it's been collecting dust instead of dollars.
Felicia's chapter is over but the book is still open.
The changes to their home are as great as they are subtle. There are still drawings on the fridge, some are yellowed around the edges others are brand new, most depict a happy house with a smiling sun, two great rowans, a man, a woman and a child. Always only one child.
They still sleep in the same bedroom, in the same bed, on the same mattress but the child curled up between them hogging the blanket and kneeing them in the stomach is no longer Felicia but Isaiah.
Tomorrow Isaiah turns seven.
He's like Hanna, he doesn't like Halloween. He even goes so far as refusing to step outside the door before Ben has taken all the decorations down, thrown them out or tucked them away.
Ben spends his days in the wheel; He get's up, makes breakfast, reads the paper, goes to work, teaches, comes home, does yard work, cuts the grass once a week, runs the mower over the persistent little sapling that insists on growing between the rowans, goes to church on Sundays, eats dinner, plays with Isaiah and helps him with homework, watches Hanna put their son to bed, prepares tomorrows lectures, watches an episode of Game of Thrones with Hanna then off to bed.
He's a professor so he's not all that surprised at being woken up at 2 in the morning by the shrill ringing of the doorbell. His students sometimes like playing pranks, Ben always half expects having a glitter filled horn bellowing in his face anytime he opens the door –and he's more than ready to scold the rascals because he may put up with their stunts at college but for goodness sake he's got a six-year-old boy in the house-.
But no matter how many college level drunk stunts he'd seen go awry in just the right way nothing could a have prepared him for the sight he's met with when he indignantly wrings the door open.
Two dirt covered teenagers –a strawberry blonde girl with leaves in her tangled locks and a pale, skinny boy with mud lining his face- barefoot and wearing nought but their nightclothes stand before him, swaying slightly as the cold wind gently whips their clothes, makes the frayed, mucky hem of the girl's pink nightgown dance and the boy's dirt striped Captain America shirt slick to his thin frame. It plays with the fringes hiding their downcast eyes as the porch light flickers, illuminates and hides their features in a display of light and shade over pale faces so eerie Edgar Allan Poe would be proud.
Their gazes slowly ascend 'til Ben is staring into their eyes. He's never seen eyes like those before; seeing but unseeing, sparkling but consumed by darkness -like something watching from behind a mask-. They're crying, fat tears streaming down making clean paths in the half dried swatches of soil on their cheeks.
There is something intense there that he has barley a moment to register for in the next second their mouths fall open and the twin wails spilling from their lips are otherworldly. It is like a sound from the depths of two restless spirits in withering blight fills the air; a gale that wraps around him and shatters the world. Ben reels backwards, heels skidding across the polished oak in hurry to get away. His foot snags the carpet and he finds both himself and a side table crashing to the floor.
Only then does he realize what they are holding.
It's nothing but a skull cased in patches of taut rotten flesh and tresses of once hazelnut hair but from the moment he sees it Ben knows it's her. He doesn't even notice the pain or the droplets of blood slipping from his fingers, diluting in the water from the shattered vase, because clutched tight in their grimy hands is Felicia's head.
That's all for now...
A/N: You read the note at the beginning right? It kinda explain everything...
Happy Halloween :)