Adeline

Adeline drove down an empty gravel road, not once passing another car on her way. She would pass a house here or there but Adeline knew this route like she’d driven on it all her life. As she passed a familiar house she noticed something, where the land was once empty a huge tree now stood, it looked as if it had been growing in the same spot for many years. Adeline shrugged it off and continued driving down the road, listening to her favorite C.D and singing along. Fall was approaching and the days had grown shorter and the nights longer. The moon hung in the deep midnight blue sky, the stars of the night covered by clouds as ice cold rain gently dripped down from the covered night sky. Adeline was gently laughing to herself about something a friend had said earlier that day. Adeline quickly looked into her back seat through her rearview mirror. What she saw would forever change her life.

As she looked back a young man was smiling at her. He was wearing a derby hat that covered half his face. His eye’s were a pale shade of sky blue and circled with large dark circles. Stitches lined his mouth making it impossible for him to open his mouth. He raised a boney white hand and waved at her, his long black nails cutting into the flesh of his palm when he closed his hand, producing small cuts that did not produce blood.

Adeline screamed and slammed on the brakes. Her car spinning violently from left to right and finally stopping, the front end pointing to the right the back end pointing to the left. Adeline was panting hard as she looked up from the cars floor. Dust that was blown up from the gravel circled the black car. “Who the hell are you?!” Adeline screamed as she turned around to look into the back seat, but the boy was no longer there. Adeline looked around confused and disoriented. Finally her eyes rested outside the drivers side window. What looked like a young girl was standing a little ways from where Adeline’s car had stopped.

Her arms hung down from her shoulders bone thin and white as paper. She was wearing what looked like an older night gown. The same color white as her skin and stopping just above her bare feet. ‘She must be freezing!’ Adeline thought quietly to herself as she looked at her own hands that were engulfed by a pair of hand knitted mittens. The girls black hair hung down her back in a long dangling braid.

Adeline unbuckled herself from the car and slowly opened the door, closing her jacket tight around her waste to keep out the cold as her short brown hair gently blew in the icy cold wind. “Excuse me, Excuse me ma’am do you need help?” Adeline cautiously asked as she edged towards the woman. Adeline gently placed her mittened hand against the woman’s boney shoulder. Suddenly the woman spun around and Adeline recoiled. The woman’s face was sunken in and a pale shade of white. The woman shrieked and latched her cold hands onto both sides of Adeline’s face. Adeline screamed as the woman’s razor sharp nails dug into her skin. The woman’s face grew ever closer, her mouth still gaping wide and horrible her breath a foul stench of rot and decay. The woman’s nose touched Adeline’s and Adeline screamed louder at the contact. She closed her eye’s and continued her screaming. “Look at me!” screamed the woman. When Adeline did not open her eyes the woman dug her nails in deeper. “Look at me!” the woman screamed again and Adeline’s eye’s shot open. The woman had transformed back into the boy.

Adeline’s mouth gaped in horror she tried to scream but no sound would come out. The boy tilted his head to the side and crashed his dry crack lips to Adeline’s open mouth. Adeline pushed and scraped to get the boy off of her but nothing she did seemed to affect him. Suddenly Adeline was alone. She looked around silent eye’s and mouth wide with fear. But before Adeline could move to run, A pair of hands grabbed her around her waste while another grabbed her around her ankles pulling her back into a cornfield.

Adeline silently lay, twitching as a horrible nightmare played out in her head. She sat up gasping and began to look around. She was sitting in a small underground room. It was dark, the only light source was a candelabra sitting on a table between two old worn coffins. “Where am I?” Adeline asked herself as she looked around. Suddenly a hand plastered itself to her mouth. “Your going to pay for what they did to us!” screamed the same boy Adeline had seen in her nightmare. She screamed behind his hand as a woman came up behind him, Carrying a large bowl. “Your ancestors murdered us! They threw us down in this stinking hole with no food, or water! Just those coffins and those candles! They thought we would remain resting! How stupid they were! They claimed we were witches! They tortured us till death! And they thought they could get away with it!” The woman angrily hissed. She gave Adeline a crooked smile as the boy simply looked at her his mouth the same stitched expressionless thing it was before. “But they’ll know who paid for their stupidity when there’s a new corpse in the bone yard!” The Woman said as she screamed with laughter.

The boy and girl tied Adeline to a large wooden cross sitting at the end of the room. They tied her the same way Christ was hung on the cross. Head tied to the base both arms bound and legs bound. Adeline cried as she desperately clawed at her restraints. It won’t do any good little girl, we’ve been waiting for this moment a long time” the Woman giggled as she moved away from Adeline. The boy slowly moved up to Adeline, carrying a large knife in his hands. He grabbed Adeline by the chin and held her face still. “No! No don’t do it please!” Adeline cried not sure what he was planning on doing. The boy dug his nails deep into Adeline’s skin causing her to whimper in pain. The boy thrust the knife straight into the corner of Adeline’s right eye. Adeline screamed as blood began to pour from the wound down her face. Adeline continued screaming as he did the same to the other side of her eye, and popped it out of her skull, severing the many arteries and veins connecting the eye to her head. The boy repeated the same process to Adeline’s other eye. Soon Adeline was hanging to the cross missing both eyes with streams of blood gushing down from each of the gaping wounds. Adeline screamed as the two left her hanging. “She hasn’t suffered enough” said the woman as the boy shook his head in agreement. The woman walked over to where she had left the bowl.

The contents of the bowl had steam rising from them and the woman gently stirred the contents, humming to herself. The boy was holding Adeline’s head at an angle as the woman walked closer. She gently removed the spoon from the bowl, dripping hot wax back into the bowl. She lifted the spoon and rammed it into Adeline’s eye socket. Adeline screamed as the wax coated the now bare muscles and tendons. The woman did the exact same thing to the other eye Adeline screaming the entire time. “She needs to learn to shut up don’t you agree?” the woman asked the boy and he shook his head in agreement. “Well lets make her” Said the woman as she scooped a rather large amount of wax out of the bowl and the boy forced Adeline’s mouth open. The woman poured the hot wax into Adeline’s mouth and down her throat. Adeline screamed as the searing hot liquid continued its move down her throat. The woman then forced her mouth shut as she prepared a needle and thread. She pressed the needle against Adeline’s lip and began to stitch her mouth closed. When the woman was done Adeline’s heart had finally given out.

The next morning Adeline’s body was discovered in an old cemetery. Her body was found on the grave of a man baring the same last name. The man in question had been one of Adeline’s great grandfathers. Who had persecuted those thought to be witch’s during the time period of the Salem witch trials. No one has explained what happened to poor Adeline but some say it took thousands of years for a couple corpse’s to get their revenge.