The Haunted Traveler Vol 1 Issue 2

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pulping that hateful face, as her reedy arms clawed his
back and the wind howled, sending her hat dancing
among the headstones; snagged by its veil on a cross,
dripping blood down its pristine divinity.
Amid the dogfood squalor of her head one eye
still stared; judging, judging, judging. He drove his
fingers into the mess and plucked it out, flinging it into
the yawning pit they had dug for Gemma. Then he
plastered his steaming flesh with her blood, her bone,
her twisted brain, daubing himself with her vitals so
that Death would pass him by when He arose to accept
this gift.
The harsh perfume of pine knifed his nostrils
as the world shot into focus with a clarity that stole his
breath. He saw the money spiders on the headstones
swarm in red hieroglyphs, heard the clicking of their
tiny legs on the gilt lettering, heard the roar and pop
of the sun, and felt the earth beneath him shake. His
chest hair prickled with the coming storm yet the people
around him screamed in silence; moving in slow
motion, their fear like a fading echo, a badly dubbed
film.
He grinned, tasting Gemma’s mother on his
lips, her drying blood stretching his skin as the debris
of her corpse slid into his mouth.
‘I bring the blight you visited on Gemma,’ he
said, but even his own voice was lost as the ground
gave a volcanic burp, and the two angels, their eyes
diseased and virulent red, took flight. From the freshly
dug grave came a roar and Gemma’s coffin began to
rattle, the screws that held the lid ready to give way
from the barrage within.