et in arcadia ego

Well, I had myself a successful day today. If anyone’s in need of any sort of potion, y’all know where to find me!

“Refrain from stepping into my house dripping wet. Better yet, refrain from stepping into my house, at all.” Although she never swept and mopped and waxed the house herself, Amelia valued cleanliness and orderliness. Any deviance that appeared in her vision had to be straightened and corrected. An irony, for she herself was a deviant creature. Aside from the mess the other girl was dragging with her, Amelia had little appreciation for her condensation.

He could barely hear the crunch of the gravel beneath the swaying of tall grass in the wind. The fresh rain made Augustine’s Cemetery feel calmer, even welcoming, despite the fact that he was walking through it in the dead of night. Every few steps, Claude tossed some fingers full of salt ahead of him, knowing that any wandering spirits wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and pass over any of it, no matter how little the amount was. 

Ten minutes later, he found himself more or less in the center of the graveyard, surrounded by headstones and darkness. He headed to his left and found one of the older grave markers, worn by weather and moss, and, faster than a heartbeat, pulled a small trowel from his back pocket and began to dig up some of the grave dirt.

A few minutes in, he heard a rustling from a few headstones over. Claude jumped to his feet, salt shaker in hand. “Whoever’s out there, I want you to know that I’ve got salt and a sharp gardening tool!”

She was wandering again, her velvet cloak providing her only physical security. The rest was left on her capable hands. “Better not gamble on your life too much, Miss Amelia. People might find out about you. There’s a large bounty on a powerful witch’s head,” Fez, her butler, had told her, before helping her slip into her cloak. He had half the mind to fashion her with a silver dagger, but Amelia refused to carry it with her. She was merely going for a walk, she explained. At the dead of the night? Walks were better taken when the moon was full and high on the black sky.

Her chosen playground: the graveyard. Souls chattered and woke at the glint of the moon’s silver light, providing her the kind of entertainment she wasn’t able to purchase anywhere else. She hopped from one grave to another, reading their names, their birthdate, their time of death, and the whispering thoughts that emanated from rotting bones. A soul had wandered with her, bemused, she supposed, by the living. But, as she looked back, the soul was gone. Back to the grave, dead one. Eyes darting back straight ahead, Amelia spotted an oddity: an elephant in the room, besides herself. She walked closer, and closer to him, trying to sense which he was. He wasn’t a creature, she found, he was like her.

“I’m behind you,” she said, softly, planting her feet a meter away from where he was trembling. “A sharp gardening tool? Even mortals wouldn’t quake in fear. And if a demon came for you?”

One Amelia? Isla thought. What did she mean? The girl she met looked smug now..like she was concentrating really hard. But what struck Isla was that she wasn’t looking at her, she felt as thought she was looking past her. “What are you doing?” She asked. “Lied about what..?” She could see the air around her now…it was getting as cold as it was dark. If she went to Amelia’s mansion she’d have to find a way to convince her to let her stay. She had no idea how easy that would be but it was worth a shot. “That would be amazing, thank you.” She looked around awkwardly, expecting Amelia to start walking in the direction to her home. “I don’t want to be rude.” She began. “But I’ve nowhere to stay tonight, I didn’t exactly come to Berwick with a plan. You don’t have a spare bed do you?” She regretted her decision straight away. She was going to think Isla was a stupid gutter rat or something. She flushed red with embarrassment.

Amelia chose to ignore all her questions, opting instead to walk opposite the direction she was previously headed. Inwardly, she felt a deep sigh; the mile she had traversed was wasted. Only partly, for in lieu of a new book to read, she had a new creature to amuse her. Ahead of her, finally leading the way back to the mansion, Amelia began to speak, selecting the questions she could be bothered to conjure a response for. “Nobody has ever told the truth when asked a question. You did. Which I think is exceptionally depressing.” She relinquished back the control of the wind and the trees and the animals to Mother Nature, walking in serenity along the path. The skirt of her white dress billowed, hair swaying to and fro, as the wind brushed furiously pass her. In comparison, walking through the tunnel of trees, Amelia looked more like a ghost than her counterpart. She looked back, to note that the other was following her. “I’ve about seven spare bedrooms. I think tonight we’re having lamb steak and chowder. Are you famished? Suddenly, I terribly am.”

Montana wore a puzzled expression. “I’m not exactly what you would call vulnerable. I can snap a neck in, what? half a second?” she retorted matter-of-factly. “And humor me, what exactly is this experiment?” She crossed her arms and leaned up against a wall, waiting for an explanation.

She laughed, a three-note laugh, entertained by her confidence. Amelia new hunters that could take down thousand year old vampires. But, she reckoned, the other girl might have nothing to worry about. She didn’t seem terribly appeasing; nothing quite daunting in her airy demeanor, or tempting in the way she was careless. A few dead bodies, maybe, but nothing on a grand scale. “I’m writing a book. Hybrid Anatomy. I could use all the carcasses I can get. Fresh would be preferable.”

It was getting darker now. As they stood in the deserted road, the gas stations’ neon lights flickered on and off. Isla knew she had to find a place to stay, she couldn’t sleep in a doorway or a ditch another night longer. She was finally here, she needed a real bed. The girl told her her name, Amelia, a name she knew once before. “I once had a friend called Amelia, that’s a really pretty name.” She whispered. Perhaps this girl could be her saviour. “I came for a few reasons.” She began, but the questions still remained: should she trust again. “Loneliness mostly. There’s nothing left for me where I came from, I’m looking for a home, a new start…a family.”

“If you look it up on the internet, you’ll find the world knows only one Amelia. And they don’t usually find themselves alone on a desolate road. However, they did disappear.” She grinned, wide and bright, mimicking the rising moon behind her shoulders. “It seems,” she continued, her voice low as a whisper, “we, Amelias, almost all have the same fate.” She didn’t need to breathe, Amelia noted. She wasn’t choking. The air had travelled around the other girl but never near her, or into her; merely around her. And in response, she wasn’t dropping on all fours, clamoring for air. Something sinister for somewhere sinister, how incredibly H.P. Lovecraft. “That’s odd,” she remarked, rocking on her soles. She’s seen ghosts, met them, caused their miserable fates, but never one who drove. “Most people would have lied. But you aren’t most people are you?” She raised a perfectly arched brow, curious of her response. “Would you like to accompany me back to my mansion? I have a car there. And perhaps, the butler can be of some use to your…directions dilemma.”

“Ok maybe this wasn’t such a clever idea at all.” He had said looking up. “What do you have in mind?”

She was toying with the kitchen knife, making it twirl and twirl just above her hand, the blood slathered on it dripping on her palm. Goat’s blood was rancid, but she’d gotten used to it through the years. It smelt nothing like Chanel No. 5, but it was as familiar to her senses. “I told you,” she spoke in response to his query, though her eyes were still latched on the object hovering by her command. “Let’s summon a dormant demon.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Montana rose her brow, glancing at her freshly polished nails. “Am I offending anyone?”

It took great strength not to roll her eyes; strength she had no time nor patience to exercise. “The dead, the drunk, the dead drunk,” she responded, folding the book in her hand to a close and setting it on her lap. “You’re deliberately putting a target on your back. Do you want to die? Because if you do, you’d do much good if you donated your dead body to me. I’m doing an experiment.” She said with utmost seriousness, yet, belatedly, she realized her words were gilded with the intention to be ominous.

Isla heard a soft voice and turned to be see a dark haired young girl. She was the first real person she’d met in this strange new town and she wasn’t at all what she expected. She thought perhaps the change of scenery could be a source of optimism, but so far all she had been greeted with was silent roads and empty woods. She liked the calm, but she came to lose the loneliness; not to get lost in it. 

“Oh, that’s alright.” She sighed. “I’m Isla, I just arrived in town. And you are?” Isla was desperate to make a friend, finally she may have found a place to call home.

She trapped the living in time, disturbed by the rustling of the trees, by the crack of dead leaves, and by the song of the grasshoppers lulling on the tall grass. With the silence that swept the deserted location, the other girl’s voice sounded louder, like a shout to the void. If Amelia was who she was years ago, when she hadn’t done what she had done, Amelia would have never spoken to this girl, would have dismissed her as an air-headed pedestrian. But she was no one now. The name Roth had no bearing in the poor suburbia, carried by a basically disowned former heiress. Wither and die. So she spoke again, “Amelia.” That name, a name passed on from generation to generation, was all she had left. “I’ve been here for a long time, but I’ve never had the need to educate myself with navigation,” she lied. She spent a considerable amount, in her seclusion, studying the map of the town, even the secret locations they didn’t label on official maps. “Why did you come?” That was the imperative question. It seemed, as the days got longer and she got to know the town better, people came for the oddest of reasons. Something sinister buried deep into the ground allured the equally sinister.

“Miss me, sweetie?”

She pursed her lips, quite unamused. “Is there any reason why I should?”

Oh– Shit !! I damn near drove into my fucking apartment building. I guess the farther up the country I go, the closer I am to Hell.

“Indeed,” she replied, sarcastic. She was annoyed at the disturbance, at the uninhibited sharing of a trivia she didn’t care about. She could have died while at it and resurrected as a ghost or a zombie, she couldn’t be bothered to pay it any mind. “You’ll find Washington to be quite the fiery pit of death and decay. Living or dead, no one survives.”

“New surroundings, new people. I’m pumped.”

A cold breeze came again, catching the dead leaves into a temporary whirlpool. “There’s nothing here to be excited about,” she responded, before licking on the dripping ice cream on her ice cream cone, kicking her feet against the ground to make the swing move, and creak eerily.

The bottom of Jolene’s jeans were filthy from walking down the road from the spot her car had broken down. Less than twenty-four hours in town and things were already going wrong. Hesitantly, she made her way up to a stranger’s house and knocked on the door. From what she had seen in movies, southern hospitality was a big thing, so perhaps asking a perfect stranger for help (and trespassing while doing so) wouldn’t end so badly. “H-hello?”

Three knocks echoed from the front door, climbing up the grand staircase, and creeping into her perpetually shut room. She had a butler, Fez, who was nearing ninety, if her estimations were correct, and moved as slow as a hundred year old snail. Of course, that was an exaggeration, snails didn’t usually live to be a hundred. Hello. The voice had come right behind her, making her turn in astonishment and anxiousness. But there was nothing but the sad swaying of the dying tree on her graveyard of a lawn. It made Amelia scramble from her bed and out onto the hall, down the stairs, and in front of the main doors, before Fez could even get out of his quarters. “Miss Amelia,” Fez called behind her, lagging as he usually did. “I’ve got it,” Amelia responded, reaching for the cold golden knob, and twisting it open. Seeing her face made Amelia blink. There’s was something odd about this one, she thought. She felt empty and weightless—like a black hole. “Who are you?”

If I was asked what’s the best part of being immortal, I would absolutely have to say no hangovers.

Her head snapped towards the other, alerted by the mention of immortality, slightly by hangovers and the lack of it. Amelia didn’t drink, but she made a mental note to discover a spell or a potion to rid one of hangovers—if they didn’t have immortality to depend on. “You seem terribly confident of waving that fact around,” she remarked, pointedly.

“Hello? Is anyone here?” Isla called as she waited at the gas station checkout. “I need some directions.”

Amelia had decided to walk to the town library by foot. It was the first time she graced outside the large and looming mansion, where she was cast to spend her remaining living days to rot and whither, since she arrived. During the first days of her occupancy, the darkness that consumed the haunted halls and rooms had unnerved, struck her with an alarming and sudden feeling of sadness and betrayal. But, as the days dragged on, she’d gotten used to the darkness, befriended it, and made it her ally. She wouldn’t have left its supervision and company, but Amelia needed a new book.

Hello. She turned, stopped dead on her tracks. She hasn’t heard another human’s voice in a long time, and it sounded distant and ethereal. She was never one for conversations or human interaction, but her curiosity had bested her, and now it was too late to continue pretending like she hadn’t heard the other. “There is,” she said softly. “But she cannot help you with directions.”