Set the Scene 3

Posted on March 10, 2016

I gave my readers an opportunity to challenge me weekly.  I provide the picture, they provide the possibility.  The underlined words are from their postings.  I have to build the story around their words.  Happy reading.

The eastwardly winds blew across the moors waking the sleeping creatures for an evening feeding. Her awakening was accidental, but it was too late to run, to make any changes, to plead for a life only half lived. A silly bet by his new pals sent him into Her tomb holding the tablet. The full moon casting just enough light to illuminate the stones leading into the musty tomb.

“Go on Johnny!” Ralph yelled at him as his footing gave way cascading him down the brick stairwell which were slippery from years of moss and dampness. Some of the stones were now smooth from a century of pressure from soft trickles of water rolling over the smooth humps. Try as he might to catch himself, he was unable to upright his body nor catch his footing as the mass of him was thrown chest first into the encasement.

“You all right down there Johnny?” James called from the top of the stairwell. “It smells like dirty panties and death down that hole!”

The rays of moonlight danced across the tablet which cracked under the force of impact with the stone encasement, opening the top. Slivers of moonlight slid into the dark hole.  Unbeknownst to Johnny, who looked at the broken tablet, that he held it upside down.  The right passage of notes on the pad had been inverted and the left passage was upside down.  He read it anyway.

“So-doosh-kah, Kum-re-mah, al-te-ma-ruka!” He said as he pushed he two pieces together.  It was all or nothing for him at this point. “He-je-mah-nu-rah, ge-tek-par-nu-rah!”

He tapped the encasement three times, peering into the dark cavernous shrine where Her body rested. Here she has rested for nearly a century waiting to be awakened by the one, who promised to come for her. When the days turned to weeks, the weeks to months and the months to years, she rose only once to settle the score.

Her thirst blinded her to his innocence, but in Her eyes, no man was blameless when found in the bed of another woman.

“He’s mine,” were the words she screamed. Over and over the words came from Her lips while her nails sank into his skin. Tabitha fought feebly to stave off the attack from the creature she had tricked so that this man could be a husband and a father. He was her family. He belonged to them and she would not give up so easily. It was a futile fight. Her fury overpowered them all. A bloody body lay upon the bed when two small children entered the room yelling, “Daddy, Daddy!”

It was too late. Her anger had stolen him away from them but all she cared was that he’ll never go back to her. She may have his house, his money and his name but he is mine. In death, I shall have his soul. He shall always be mine.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way. The punishment for taking an unprepared soul cast her into obscurity to wait for an awakening. The thirst had nearly driven her mad until simple chanting of children above her tomb channeled her anger. If she inhaled, just enough, the essence of each child could be siphoned for her nourishment. A mild enchantment was placed over them to ensure each week they returned. Each week they came back.

Older now, far more mischievous, she knew the scent of each of them. Over the years, she had even learned their names, James, Ralph, Frederick, Brandon, Lisa, Livia and now Johnny. Johnny was new.

Johnny was fresh.

Johnny was not like them.

He had bedded many women.

Was he the one?

A siren song was emitted from her vocally, drew the man down the stairwell. The tablets in his hands were now broken. The full power of the pages was gone. Yet somehow, he had managed, to reverse it all.

Young again.

Beautiful once more, she rose. She called to him, beckoning him forward so that she could feed.

“Remove the clothing so that you may have me,” are Her words to him. Her appearance is deceiving. His lust is blinded by it. Johnny knows that it can’t be real, that She does not exist but it feels very real.

“This is all wrong,” he said as he removed his shirt. Her fingers pressing into the shoulder blades, urging him to connect their bodies.

So young.

So virile.

Eager to please the dark ingénue, he took her upon the damp floor. Unlike her last encounter, Johnny was a seasoned lover who understood how to give a woman pleasure. Her body reveled in the release. It was the first time she could really feel alive in so many years. In fact more alive would not have been possible.

How was that possible?

“Say the words to me Johnny, whisper the words in my ear,” Her voice called to his soul.

“En-ka-jur-rah-no-me-tep,” he began as she shrieked. “Tu-na-san-wich-u-ole-bee-ich,” he continued as she howled. Her skin withering under him as he found his release. He howled into the night air finishing the phrase he had practiced for nearly a century. “Ja-le-op-me-gee-ne, ple-ep-noe,” he screamed as Her legs turned to dust and her began to melt.

Her cries were halted by a blurry vision of him. Can this be the expected one? The only one able to quench her thirst? Who was he?

Before she faded into nothingness, he felt it only fair to tell her who he was. “A century I have waited to pay you back for robbing me of my life. Rot in hell you sour, spoiled hellion!”

The surprise on her face was evident while the cast of her shadow was pulled away into the underworld. It took him a century to be find her body and repay her for taking his soul. A soul she allowed to wander the earth until he found his new friends who wanted to be free of her spell. The children she bound to her to feed from were now old and waiting for his return above.

“You alright down there boy?” Brandon called out. “Don’t forget what you went in there for, okay?”

In the tomb, where she had lain was a small silver bottle. A receptacle of all the youth she had stolen and harvested. If released in the midst of the group, youth would return to their bodies.

“Ok, got it…lol…” he called out.

His shirt he removed from the floor while quickly redressing himself.   Not too bad for a day’s work and he even got laid.

“Be right there guys,” he called out as he made his way up the stairs with a precious gift in his hands

-Fin-