Grey Matter of an Irish Aries

Repeat

Petrified, Sarah ran for her life through the deserted streets of Salem. Not too far behind her were dozens of crazed villagers who wanted her dead. Thinking quickly, Sarah ducked into an alley and waited for the fire-bearing demons to rush past. After making sure the coast was clear, Sarah carefully made her way home.
She pushed open the front door of her house only to find her nine-year-old sister lying in a pool of blood. Sarah knew instantly that the mob had been here. She closed her hand on her mouth to keep in the scream that burned to get free. Tears flooded the poor teenager’s face as her eyes stung horribly. Trembling, she reached out and touched her sister’s usually happy face.
Mary’s eyes were locked in sickening pain. Sarah turned from the frightening sight to wipe her own eyes. She lifted her sister into her arms and brought her outside to clean her. As she washed away the blood, she noticed that she had been stabbed several times in the stomach. Bruises and scrapes covered the poor girl, back and front.
After Sarah had cleansed her sister of her death liquid, she brought her back into the house to prepare her for burial. She had expected this to happen; yet she never wanted it. Sarah wrapped Mary in her favorite lavender dress. It had long sleeves, so Mary would be toasty warm in the ground. Mary loved the white carnation design of the dress. It had three flowers on the front and two on each sleeve. It was lovely. Mary always wore it to special occasions and Sarah knew that this was definitely one of those occasions.
The teenager sighed deeply as she recalled her mother sitting in her favorite red rocker. She had rocked back and forth for eight hours in sowing that dress for Mary. Sarah had one like it; only it was green with red roses on it. Sarah wiped more tears that had slipped down her face as she remembered her mother and father, who had died before this happened.
Sarah suddenly came back into focus. She was carrying her sister, like she loved to do when Mary was just a little baby, into the backyard to bury her, alongside her parents. Now, she cradled the child lovingly. Mary was always considered small for her age.
In the backyard, Sarah had dug a hole and was now placing her sister into it, covering her own sanity that had died long ago. She covered Mary with earth and said her last goodbyes and then, after the last dirt was placed with adoration, she swore eternal revenge on Mary’s killers, the mad townspeople she had once called her friends were now her harsh and hated enemies.
After muttering the ruthless words, Sarah walked back to the house. She moved about, occasionally picking up a possession that belonged to each family member. She picked up a sharp but smooth tool that had been used by her father, who had been a carpenter, a lovely sky blue shawl that her mother had worn all the time, even in the summer time when she went out to the market, a doll that had been Mary’s favorite. She had played with the blonde haired doll so much that its hair was now very short and almost falling out. It was after she set down the doll, still dressed in its black and white maid outfit, as it was when Mary got it for her seventh birthday, that a mixed set of feelings overpowered Sarah.
Several minutes passed, but time was neither noted nor important. In a few minutes, tables were split and turned upside down. Chairs were broken in half and stepped on with passionate anger. Smaller objects didn’t have a chance of being spared as they were flung in pure frustration across the room. Some landed with a smack on the wall, then, in pieces, slipped to the floor. The poor girl who lost everything collapsed to her knees. She screamed at the top of her lungs. “Why?” Tears kept coming and she wouldn’t, or couldn’t stop them.
Then, she calmed down. And suddenly, her bright blue eyes turned dull gray. They had one concept that was pierced into them: revenge. It was as if she was possessed and had lost all control of herself. Whatever it was that controlled her led her to the kitchen. It used her long and thin fingers to open the knife drawer and select the smallest but sharpest one in it. She stood lifelessly for a moment, examining the weapon.
Then, she heard beckoning screams coming from the front of her home. She floated to it like a ghost and stood at the front door. She could hear their calls. She went to the window and was immediately hit by a strong smell of fire that was so strong she needed to take a step back. When she had recovered, she stuck her head out the window and frowned. There were dozens of villagers right outside her door. And she knew every single one of them wanted her dead.
She listened to their cries.
“Surrender!” This was the voice of the local butcher yelling at her.
“Return to Hell, Bride of Satan!” She recognized this voice as her neighbor who had helped her bury her mother when she died a few months before of a “heart failure.” This is, of course, what the doctor had told her. She knew her mother had a good healthy heart. Her father had been hit by a brick in the head, while working on a house with a neighbor.
The neighbor outside.
It suddenly clicked in her head that these people had committed terrible crimes.
Because they thought she was the bride of the lord down under.
“Leave us, Witch!” A third called this out strongly, with passion.
The demands were growing louder and crueler.
Hearing these voices over and over finally made Sarah snap. We will give them what they want, one malicious voice commanded her. Without thinking, Sarah nearly tore the door off its hinges as she pulled it wide open. The outside air was hot from the fire, but she was used to it from before and so she stepped forward to face her foes. She stared at them, her eyes daring them to attack her. These demons inside her seemed to enjoy toying with them.
They didn’t respond for quite some time. Nobody made a single move, Sarah or the people who wanted her dead.
Suddenly and without warning, the antagonists reached out, seemingly as a single hand that grabbed her and clutched her so tightly that she couldn’t extricate herself. They dragged her through the streets. Her demise had already been set up. She would be hanged for practicing witchcraft. As she was pulled closer and closer to the rope with a noose attached, she remembered the knife. As she was handed over to her executioner, the one who would break apart the strings of her life, she whipped out her knife.
The girl broke free and sliced open the assassin’s stomach. He cried out in throbbing pain and fell to his knees. Sarah stepped over the now dead man’s body and toward the retreating crowd. Blood oozed from the tip of the knife and she soon lost control of her own actions. She swung the knife around as if it was a carousel, slicing through anyone not smart enough to move out of her way.
It wasn’t until the knife slivered a small boy, who happened to be Mary’s best friend, that she was able to take control of herself again. The spirits left her for a few minutes, laughing at her as they went. Everything around her was silent; the people feared her now and were unsure of what to do. Sarah dropped the knife that sent an echoed as it hit the ground. She ignored the pain it as vibrated in her ears and fell beside the little boy. She tore off her blouse and began to rip up into strips. She tried to save the little boy by pressing on his wounds, but nothing seemed to help. As the crowd looked on, not a single person stepped up to help the child. He died in Sarah’s arms and she was not happy.
Rising up, she stared intensely at the townspeople. She did this without moving her head. It was just her eyes like moved like a grandfather clock, ticking down the seconds until death. She began to walk around, stepping around the eighteen people who lay dead on the ground. The mothers grabbed their children, who stared in shock and terror. This was something that they only experienced in nightmares. Even the fathers and other men were not seizing the serial killer yet. Their arms were trembling and they could barely stand on their own two feet.
“This is all your fault!” She blurted out at the mob, who stared blankly back at her. “You did this to them.” Her fingers pointed first at the group, and then circled around those she had killed. “You killed my family and for what? Because you think I’m a bloody witch? You’re all going straight to Hell!” She yelled, matter of factly at them.
One sarcastic teenager decided to be rude.
“We’ll see you there, witch!” he called.
Sarah turned to him. Just then, the Ultimate Betrayer came up behind her and plunged the knife she had used before deep into her back. A blood-curdling scream escaped the girl’s mouth as she staggered around in horrible pain. A blow to the head was the final step in getting the rope around Sarah’s neck. It was pulled, gladly and with a proud look on the face of the executioner. Another one was gone.
She did instantly, but after a curse slipped out of her mouth and slithered around the crowd before vanishing.
“I will get you for this, even if takes an eternity.”
It disappeared out into the world where it would return some tine later to haunt the oblivious town.

1986, Salem, Massachusetts

Nicole and Eliza were best friends. They were strangers in their personalities, but had some of the same physical features; they both had dirty blonde hair and pale skin. However, Nicole had sky blue eyes while Eliza’s resembled a chocolate brownie. They also had opposite personality traits; Nicole was kind of quiet and shy, while her friend was outgoing and overfriendly.
Anyway, the girls’ history teacher had just announced a trip to the local witch museum for the following week. Both girls were excited, of course for different reasons. Nicole wanted to learn as much as she could about the town’s dark history, while Eliza just wanted a day off from school.
So, the girls got their permission slips signed and were allowed to go on the trip the following week.
That March morning was a cold one as the group stood freezing outside in the bus circle where there was no actual bus yet. Nicole was bundled up in a dark blue Old Navy sweatshirt and jeans and her friend was sporting a jean jacket covering part of a red devil top. Her jeans were shaking with the cold.
Both girls were silent as the bus pulled up and it wasn’t until they were settled in seats opposite each other that Nicole tried to break the ice.
“Do you believe in witchcraft?” she asked, curiously.
Eliza rolled her eyes as she lifted her legs and rested them on the back of the seat in front of her.
“I don’t believe in that junk,” she replied, “That stuff never existed. This museum is for the poor weirdoes who were either bizarre or had a lot of enemies.”
Her friend sighed.
“It’s much more than that,” she told Eliza, who nodded, uncaringly.
Eliza started playing snake with her cell phone and Nicole gave up.
Soon, the bus arrived and everyone opted to eat lunch first.
“Do you feel bad for all those people who died?” Eliza wondered aloud, suddenly.
“Course, don’t you?” her friend replied, sensibly, looking up from her turkey sandwich.
“Yeah, but I don’t care. I mean, it was a long time ago and it’s not like there were any specific tragedies.”
“The villagers were crazy!” Nicole exclaimed, setting her food down.
“Well, yeah, but-“
“Well, they would burn a person and laugh hysterically at him!”
Eliza dropped her eyes downward.
“Wrong subject,” she said, sincerely.
She knew that her friend would ramble on forever, so she changed the subject. After a brief discussion about going the mall that weekend, it was time to go inside and start witch hunting. In the lobby, Eliza stood reluctant.
“It’s freezing in here,” she commented to Nicole, who eyed her suspiciously.
“It’s boiling in here,” Nicole responded.
“Then, why am I cold?” Eliza wondered.
Nicole couldn’t believe her ears.
“I don’t get how you could possibly be cold,” she told Eliza, who sighed and shrugged.
Later, the group passed a scene depicting a teenage girl being burned at the stake. Her blonde hair gripped her shoulders and her waxy face looked petrified, yet angry. Eliza felt oddly drawn to this scene and didn’t move with her group. She stayed motionless for a few seconds as if she had gone back in time and actually witnessed the burning. She had been staring at it some time when she heard a piercing scream. Confused, she turned her head side to side, attempting to locate where the cry was coming from. She blinked herself into reality and realized where she was. She looked straight ahead and saw her friend. She power walked to Nicole, who was gossiping with another friend.
“Can you hear that?” she asked, nervously.
Nicole looked at her.
“Um, no.”
“Oh, neither can I.”
Nicole was growing more suspicious.
“Are you okay?”
Eliza didn’t want to bother her friend, so she tried to lie.
“I’m fine,” she said, shifting her eyes side to side. Maybe the scream was just her imagination. She continued to walk with her friend, pretending nothing had happened.
Suddenly, she felt very hot. The screaming grew louder and louder inside her head. She tried to fight it off by putting her hands over her head, but nothing could drain out the noise. A bewildered Nicole struggled to ease a troubled Eliza.
“Eliza, this isn’t funny,” a concerned Nicole told her friend, sternly. She was getting nervous. Other kids were turning around and eying Eliza and laughing.
“Make it stop! This isn’t a joke and it’s not funny!” Her friend pleaded, defensively, as she squeezed harder and harder on her head.
“There’s nothing happening,” she tried to explain.
“Make it stop! Make it stop!” Eliza whimpered. Tears oozed out of her eyes and she was panting.
“I can’t make nothing stop!” Nicole reached out a hand to calm Eliza down, but Eliza pushed it away. The screams were near deafening now and she couldn’t take it now. She fled from the room with Nicole and their classmates gawking after her. A little red in the face, Nicole took off after Eliza.
She found her in the girls’ bathroom, huddled in a stall, sobbing and muttering to herself. ‘Stop! Please, just go away. Just go away!” Nicole opened the door and looked down at her tormented friend. “What’s wrong with you?” she demanded, nearly petrified herself. Eliza’s eyes were bleeding tears. “I don’t understand. What the f*** is going on?” She returned Nicole’s look, begging for a remedy. Deep in her head, the screaming revisited and she shrieked out in horrible pain.
Nicole listened as hard as she could, but she couldn’t hear anything except her friend crying. She hugged Eliza in a helpless attempt at comfort. She realized that she wasn’t going to be able to help her and she ran off to seek assistance from her teacher.
Left alone, Eliza was finally able to relax. She felt her eyes slowly coming together, as if they were magnetic, and before she could stop them, they had locked tightly.
When she was able to open them, she found that she was no longer in a bathroom stall in a witch museum. She was in an unfamiliar room. Sitting in a chair next to her was a small girl, probably about nine or ten, playing with a doll. She extended her hand out, but couldn’t touch girl. She sensed a connection to the youngster somehow, by the fondness that she felt for her.
Suddenly, there was an impatient knock at the door. The girl looked up in alarm, but walked to the door with the doll in hand. She reluctantly opened the door and was surprised to see an angry looking group of adults standing there. They charged into the room before the child was able to stop them. Immediately, they began firing questions at her.
“Where’s your sister, girl?” one roared.
“I don’t know, sir,” the child answered, nervously. The girl grasped the doll, as if it was some sort of security blanket.
“You are a liar!” another growled.
“No, sir. I’m not lying!” the girl swore, shaking her head in protest.
“Tell us, or you too shall die!” One man in his early fifties clutched the girl’s arm, tightly.
The girl was sobbing now.
“I swear! She left this morning before I awoke!”
“She is defending her sister, a witch!” an older woman pointed a gnarly finger at the girl.
Eliza’s eyes were glued to the poor girl, who was standing vulnerably between a crowd of crazed killers.
Meanwhile, Nicole was out of breath as she approached her teacher.
“Quick, something’s wrong with Eliza!” she exclaimed.
“Relax.” The teacher patted her student on the head and followed her back to the girls’ bathroom…
The quarreling grew more intense and the girl seemed to be on death row now. The crowd was demanding more information that the girl didn’t seem to have.
“This girl shall die for defending a witch!” one ordered the others.
The girl felt a sharp pain as one person after another stabbed her, viciously in the stomach, the back and face. The doll she had been playing with dropped to the ground, its maid outfit now dark red.
Eliza leapt forward to help her friend, but then everything went blank.
The teacher and Nicole arrived then and found Eliza unconscious in the stall. They rushed her to the first aid area of the museum and laid her on a cot, where she awoke about an hour later.
“What? Where am I?” She lifted her head up and looked around.
Nicole, who had stayed by her friend’s side most of that time, was there now.
“You are here,” she happily told her friend.
“Ha ha,” Eliza replied, still a bit weak.
“What happened to you?” Nicole wanted to know, suddenly.
Eliza debated whether or not to tell her about the girl in her dream.
If that was a dream, Eliza thought to herself.
Finally, she okayed it and went on. She explained everything and her
friend listened without making a single comment.
“What do you think it meant?” she asked, when the story was finally over.
Nicole shrugged. Maybe it was just a weird dream,” she suggested.
“Then, why did I go crazy before?” she wondered, doubting her amigo would be able to tell her.
She was right. Nicole shrugged and asked again if she was all right. Eliza nodded and sighed.
She stood up, feeling refreshed and started walking out of the first aid area.
“Wait, are you sure you’re okay?” Nicole asked, thoughtfully.
“I’m fine,” her friend assured her.
Together, they walked back to the group. A few heads turned around, but Eliza’s incident was old news. They continued observing the exhibits; Eliza didn’t hear any more screams or cries.
It was when they came across a prospect showing a girl surrounded by a mob all holding sharp death tools. Eliza’s back started to itch like mad.
“Nicole, can you scratch my back?” she twisted her body around, anticipating her friend to make it stop. Instead her friend let out a blood-curdling cry.
“Eliza, what happened to your back?” she yelled.
“What?” Eliza wanted to know, eagerly, not in a good way.
“Your back is covered in blood!” Nicole exclaimed.
Eliza ran a hand across the lower part of her back and examined it. Sure enough, it was coated in an oozing red liquid. She tasted it. Blood.
Suddenly, she collapsed to her knees in pain.
“What the hell is going on?” she demanded, twisting and turning to get rid of the pain. She looked up to meet Nicole’s eyes, thinking she might know what was going on.
In its place, she found her friend smiling.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” she asked, arrogantly.
She continued. “It sucks to be you.”
Eliza shook her head, totally confused. “That’s not nice!” she exclaimed.
Nicole raised an eyebrow. “Okay, maybe you don’t know. I suppose I’ll have to explain. How you massacred my entire family.”
Eliza narrowed her eyes, even more confused.
“Um, Nicole, your brother’s at home. He’s sick, remember?”
Nicole shook her head.
“I’m not Nicole. My name is Sarah and I am here to kill you, all of you.” Her finger moved around the room, aimed at nobody in particular. “You are the ancestors of crazed killers who murdered my family. Why? Because they thought I was a witch! And you know it’s funny since I really am a witch!” She started shooting fireballs out of her fingers and everyone darted for the door, plus their lives.
Eliza, still perplexed, managed to rise and hobble to a corner of the huge room. On her way, she caught sight of a small knife. It was stained with ancient blood.
Someone used this! She thought. She looked at Nicole, or Sarah or whoever this person was. Then, something clicked in her brain. That was her sister! She realized. Now, she’s avenging it! That’s why she’s back. That’s why all those weird things were happening to me. My ancestor was probably the Ultimate Betrayer or the person who really killed her!
She strained herself even more when she bent down to pick up the knife, but she ignored the pain that was burning inside her. She limped over to where Nicole or Sarah was doing damage and plunged the knife into the villain’s back.
The fiend turned around and stared at her. Her lips were trembling and her eyes were sad. This was not a villain’s face. It looked oddly thankful and satisfied.
Sarah’s body began to shake and her skin started to rot. Soon, it peeled away from the bone and plummeted to the ground, landing with a squish. Before long, she was nothing but a pile of ashes.
Standing quietly for a few seconds, Eliza mourned Sarah’s story. She turned on her heels and walked out of the museum. Once outside, she leaned against a column and cried for losing her friend as well.
It turned out that Nicole’s spirit had been sent to another dimension. Using the latest witch technology and a group of black hooded creeps who requested Eliza’s blood before they helped her, she was finally reunited with her friend.
After Nicole was brought back, she was a bit weary and very out of it. Eliza decided not to tell her what had happened that afternoon and told her she was drunk instead of the truth. She never discussed her awful experience with anyone and it eventually slipped away from her memory.