[Don Abandons Alice plays:]

Miasma dropped his shovel letting it clatter on the icy ground. “A willing Lamb for slaughter.” he whispered. He watched as despair for the wretchedness of the world sank Jim to his knees crying milky white tears, that glowed white like the snow around them, “If only they could have saved them from themselves.” Jim wept. 

Miasma watched as his vision swayed and all sound hollowed to a numbness like he felt on his body from the unusual coldness of the world. “I am nothing special to god, am I...” Miasma said softly.

Jim shook his head, rubbing at his stinging tears, “Intercessor, hear our prayer”. Jim Wept. 

And as Miasma watched on, Jim began to sob, saying the prayers of Last Rites, and the Apostles creed.

…As the dead around them at last began to rise…

“O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee,

Dust curled around them “ashes, ashes, we all fall, up?” Miasma sang softly to himself, a lilt, as the rising debris began to slope up, taking shape, bone and soot, ice and charred things that began to warm and fowl under the sudden humidity and heat that melted away the snow. the immediate Area encircled with Fire.

and I detest all my sins because of thy just punishments,

Miasma’s breath sucked into his chest, it was like being in the pits, all over again!

"No, no, no, no!" Miasma panicked, pacing like a wild thing, looking for escape.

but most of all because they offend Thee, my God,

who art all good and deserving of all my love.

“Father! Father Jim!” Miasma began shouting, his voice raggedly higher in his panicking call, trying to climb over the brick as a corpse groped for his blackened boots, the others approaching, rising, clawing, teeth gnashing. One even tore his crucifix off. 

Jim whirled and saw the hellish scene, his eyes watering, in a voice not his own, but that of the captain of that camp mourned, “Oh what have we done, what has the world done to us!”, lamenting and wailing.

Jim could feel it, like empathic fire searing his veins as he felt the dead in their personal hell that was this goddamned oven, boiling over with a cacophony of cries for absolution. Seeing Miasma on the ground as he tried to scurry away from the dead thing lurching forward, chasing after him, Jim grit his teeth.

He grabbed a shovel and swung, a nauseating squelching noise as the blade of the shovel bisected a purple and grey corpse… “Miasma, Miasma I’m coming!” Ice chipped, bones snapped and shattered, ashes swiftly swept away, charred remains crumbling, there were too many closing in, every single one of them blocking all hope of leaving this circle of hell alive.

As Jim swung the blade, he could see the exact moment each person had died, like a snap of an old timey photograph flashing in his mind, how they had died, the white smoke around him distorting his vision, seeing human faces in place of the skeletal, every stage of decay and remains, portraying the humanity of their souls; The human experience all share at that moment where life ends and death begins, the fading light, and not every time had the eyes gone dark. before their breaths drew their last .

Miasma saw it too, and said what Jim couldn’t say, or else it would mess up the narrative, Oh yes. not only cannibals... but *MURDERERS*

I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace

to sin no more

and to avoid the near occasion of sin. 

Amen.”

[The Walking Dead Theme plays:]

Jim grunted, kicking back another clawing corpse that kept re-rising, like everything else. The suffering just would not die. And the living wished it was over, but their night had only just barely just begun…

Miasma felt like he was unable, incapable, inconceivably broken, that Jim had to come to his rescue, him? A Ghoul born from the fiery scapes of hell, why was it so hard to move, to run, or rush to defend. He felt like he was a helpless thing, marooned on an island surrounded by the sulfuric seas, boiling and acidic, toxic air stinging his every pore, bleeding from every hair”

“Jim help me, please!" He cried, seeing these beings the way humanity surely saw him, a murderer, a consumer, a black wolf preying on the living. "I can’t I can't go back! Please Jimmy! Help- I” Miasma began to cry. He knew, if they were dragged under by the suffering souls fondling the earth to rear up and claw their way back down with the living, sinking more and more souls with them, they would surely be lost.

Jim gripped Miasma by the shoulders, “Shut the fuck up! I’m getting us out of here!”

“Jim if we get caught and we die-”, “Then suddenly this is not our problem anymore” Jim said, brows knitted in pain from the feeling he had, the empathy of feeling the suffering and fear of his friend. 

[The Last of Us plays:]

“Miasma, We came to fight, even though we didn’t ask to. We came to find a way to set things right, and we came to find that peace. Please,” He said standing, panting. The dead were closing in as well as the greenish hellfire that was now all around them, as if they were trapped in a circle at the heart of the darkness where the deepest pain and regret could go. “Take my hand Miasma” Jim said softly, as if the dance macabre all around them were but nothing.

Green flames looked like blades of green grass soft in the sun like silk through the fingers.

“Though I walk through the valley….” Miasma thought as he looked up.

“Miasma, please. What is higher power than what we are inspired to follow as a light in times of darkness.” Jim said, his tone soft and yet gracious, begging his friend to heed his words.

“Pray with me Miasma” Jim said, lifting Miasma up. “This is  the lord’s fight…and we are on a mission from God” he said, a defiant tone as he faced the crowding undead. He held Miasmas hand in his, turning to dig his heels, a shovel in hand, ready to cut down whatever stood in their path.

“I never thought I'd fight beside a hell-spawn against hell.” Jim chuckled as they circled back to back, eying the massing wall of bodies, the weight of their work, heavy. Miasma looked down and saw his shovel, ready, calling out to him like one crying from the dust, ‘get to work’.

“What about dying beside a friend?” Miasma said, feeling a renewed strength in him as he brandished the broken shovel where blood was already painting it like a splattered crown.

Jim chuckled, “Well hell, guess I'd call a man pretty lucky if’n you can count him amongst your friends."

As shovel blades thwacked and spun, slicing as they ducked to move away from the grapples of the corpses haunting their every footstep, as they danced around, trying to clear a path with the force of their wills, but finding the action wasted, the dead were rising as soon as they were brought down, unending. Unyielding. and all around them...

"You'd call me your friend?" Miasma huffed, dodging around a small group.

"Friend, follower, whatever the fuck you call someone like you!" Jim shouted with a crooked grin, taking a large bloated corps down at the knees, trying to avoid its grasp as it crawled towards him.

"SINNER! how 'bout that!" Miasma said angrily, roaring as he cut a corpse down, black blood spewing from it's gut and flying to fleck his face. He bared his fangs as he faced off another skeleton, this one more agile than the last.

Jim frowned, "You act like ain't no sinner has a chance at seeing heaven's light! Don't be a doubting Thomas when you are so close!"

"Close?! Hah!" Miasma swung, bashing the skull into pieces and watching it mend over, but for being momentarily disabled, he moved to his next target, trying to force his way out of their circle of suffering.

"You know what I mean, I'll tell you every story under the sun if it will help you see the light! Even if I have to drag you over them pearly gates myself!" Jim winced, a shattered rotten ulna cutting him deep as he pivoted to break free of another hands grasp. "If'n we make it out alive! But I'll keep fighting till I'm dead!" He almost laughed.

“Yeah well, what the fuck about Judas then! If I’m gonna fucking die, I want to hear you preach to me about that story!” Miasma shouted as he was hauled backwards towards the ground. Jim bounded over to the offending body, bringing the blade to sever the head from the neck, the corpse clattering to the ground, the icicles of it’s skin shattering, peppering the white and black snow with meaty shards of putrid chunks.

“Ya know, if that ain't THE most perfect story for this” Jim said, an idea touching his brain like the light of god, burning in a bushel behind his eyes. “Miasma, corale them!” “The fuck you mean *coral them!” 

“Just shut up and gather your flock, look at them, going after you like you’re going to give them what they want, round them up!” “Like a fucking sheep dog?!” “Exactly!” Jim said, a gleam in his eye, as he made his way towards the dilapidated chimney, the flames closing in. “Use the time you have, and it ain't much, look!” Jim pointed at the gathering corpses, as he scrambled on the dirt, ripping up icy clods that stung his fingers with the freezing cold bricks.

[Earth plays:]

Miasma managed to peek behind his shoulder, shovel up in two hands as he used it to try and push the herd of corpses back, his tail flicking back and forth to avoid being singed by the hellfire.

No. he didn’t envy the dead. That wasn’t his purpose. It wasn't what his dreams and yearnings meant. It was a hunger for something more, something beyond the toxic sludge of desecrated flesh. His consumption wasn't of bodies, or people, he wasn't trying to quench something in him over humanity and its hopes and dreams. No…. He craved what came of something higher, that which is granted from above...

*purpose*.

And now, now he had it. It didn’t matter how. What mattered was that it was. And with a great heavy groan, he pushed the group back, inch by inch as the fire closed in, circling them, getting them to move in hopeless circles, for their own good, he knew. You can only break curses when you set the offending souls to rest. They rest only when they can be reached. be understood. finding peace in compassion.

Jim climbed the highest mound he could, he could feel the green flames surrounding them like a sphere closing in. and it was his purpose to fight, by pushing back.

Holding out his arms to the green light at the end of what would be his mortal life, his voice rang out, catching the ears of all who could hear, and the eyes of those who got turned around by the likes of Miasma to see. Beginning his sermon on the mound of detritus and dust of self destruction. Feet wedged in the brick, rooted unmoving, and yet bowing in and around as the dead tried to drag him down but failed in their graspings, he began to preach...

“SINNERS!” Jim shouted above the chaos, “Even Ye are worthy of redemption, an absolution…an end to SUFFERING! I call on you to listen! Suffering is but a means to a grateful end. And for what considerations do ye call yourselves devils!” he said, the wretched word pulled like toxic ooze from his mouth, tongue lolling out as the black bile in his stomach rose, and vomited out of his stomach. It felt like it was tearing at everything on its way up, but there was a relief in the regurgitation, of finally letting the words he should have said before, at last coming out to reach the sinners in his current care. Truly, Jim really was speaking to those that called themselves damned for their actions. 

“If ye believe in God, as whatever you call divine, that grants swift justice that now gnashes your teeth, then you must also believe that as exists justice, so too does there exist MERCY beyond!"

Miasma shouldered several corpses causing them to crumble and hiss, but as Jim’s voice rang out clear and true, his conviction became theirs, and spellbound like rats to the piper, they slowly turned, and gathered around him. Heeding his words.

One by one, brainless, heartless, things turned toward the voice that was preaching about the possibility of redemption. And Even Miasma was listening...

As the ghoul swiped and prodded the masses of corpses stumbling to face Jim , they swayed and stuttered in their cries, as if halted in their footsteps… looking almost human, in the clarity behind their once cloudy eyes. Blinking even. The dead and things forming from the earth, wove in and around the ones who listened, and their features began to change. Taut leathery skin slacked and sagged but lay more supple upon their gaunt features.

Shattered bones and cracked fissures separating one bone from another healed and came together, bones and flesh began to mend, and even as Miasma still had to fight hard, ever on his toes, there was a rhythm to the movements he made. He found a sure footedness he could confidently maintain. And the unexpected shove and grappling attempts made, he would handle one foe at a time.

Funny how in the moment he realized the noble way of fighting for himself, was what nobly fought for the people stumbling around, lashing out and being turned to words of comfort, and repentance.

*you can't pour from an empty cup*

Miasma thought...

Jim continued, “If you believe in miracles, in the divine, then believe in me when I say, if god so rests on the seventh day, then surely, in god’s image, you must also have your end, and at an end is there not rest?!”

Miasma could feel the shifting crowd as he continued his circling, trying to keep the group's edges from fraying. The hell fire was still closing around them but it was slowing, as if it too, was listening.

“I beseech you, right here, right now, look beyond the guilt, the blame, Your God knows of them and has clearly made you suffer for it. But there is more to God than just, justice. There is also MERCY. Deliverance, Salvation. Forgiveness. Absolution. 

[Bonnie Choses to Stay plays:]

Jim felt the white smoke and mist around him settle, as one by one the faces as he saw them at the time of their deaths began to appear. And he recognized each one, and because someone had the talent to preserve it, knew them by name. 

And as Jim recited the words of psalms from memory, every syllable uttered gained in power and conviction. As he spoke, a great tree sprung from the earth behind the congregation, and Miasma jumped, the hellfire that had been around them shoot past and into the tree, whirling and and brimming with the green light that no longer burned around them with heat infernal, but rather swayed and danced like the leaves of summer tresses, a weeping willow sighing in the breeze...

“If you would find your God now, would his cleansing fire scorch you, or warm you of the coldness settled in your hearts.” He could see the fullness of their faces, where in their eyes a prayer of hope had remained in each one. 

Jim’s voice that had been booming now took on a softer tone, gesturing to the ground he stood on, “Can a monument to the cruelties of time not also be the ebenezer  raised, the miracle that comes at the end of all  suffering?

The animated remains yearned for hope. To Miasma and his sight, all he saw were hellish beings, poor devils, in rapt attention to the sound of Jim’s voice, hanging onto every word.

“The memory of your suffering will not define you, but the hope and promise of renewal, FAITH, is your salvation…Even the likes of Judas can find their way to heaven... You are but on the long road to Damascus, and struck blind to see... for without suffering how can one know peace. I call on you, for it is time now, to know of that peace...”

Miasma stood his ground, panting, his purpose, stood before him, the herd of corpses corralled around Jim, who spoke to them with such grace and compassion, reaching a hand out for their humanity to reach back.

While Miasma was breathless, a sense of pride and accomplishment at being an author of such a bizarre and touching scene, made him almost chuckle. As Jim preached, the words he had heard so often said at the rituals and from the pulpit, came swimming to him, floating, haunting his thoughts as time moved onwards, and yet seemed to also stand still.

1 LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens.

*From the pinnacle to the pit*

2 Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

*Her acts of cruelty and her lust for blood

Makes her one of us*

3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

*You shine like the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky*

4 What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

*Holy Mother, you washeth the sin from our feet*

5 You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.

*Under a monolith, her likeness

Marble white*

6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet:

7 all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,

*An' piercing eyes emotionless

A heart so black and cold*

8 the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

*Winds come on strong so help you, God

Come unleashed,*

9 LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! 

 *you're set free*

And suddenly Miasma realized why the number of the flock was off. Why there was a presence in and around every story told. There had been one last member of this flock that needed finding. That needed saving.

*Himself* the thought burned.

Miasma prayed, pleading for the green fire in the tree to call out to the lost soul he knew was missing from here,earnest and trembling, and as he backed away from the congregation gathered at Jim's feet he heard the soft bleating sounds of the lost. The one’s whose stories were never told…

Coming forward, drifting towards the tree line where Miasma was running to meet, was a spectre of a young woman, the wind song carrying off the sound of her weeping. The opaque figure was heavy with child. Even as Jim held the attention of the crowd he too saw the visage in the shadows. The implications not lost on him. 

[He's back/ Let Him In plays:]

He motioned, gently parting the sea of faces as he too made his way to where the woman went no further. Miasma looked at Jim. “We have no choice, if we want to break this curse, all the troubled souls must be put to rest. Even this one..." his tone almost tender, as he saw himself in her- eyes moistened.

*Jim always came back for him. Couldn't he do the same for her?*

Jim looked at his friend, a verse in his head that repeated over and over…

*Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me*

Jim nodded, and gently clapped his hands together, snapping the white smoke and mist away, the congregation paused, no longer animated, still as statues of mist. The mist swirled ahead as they watched the woman drift off into the trees the mist following her, like a guide-rope to her every step. While they followed her, they reverently pondered on her presence in these woods...

"She... couldn't move on I guess.."

"Can't know peace without hope of salvation my friend."

"Salvation" Miasma murmured.

The horrors, the hunger, the haunting, maladies of the mind and soul, all driving their steps forward as it once had for the spectral woman, who had both saved and damned everyone by keeping a record. It had almost been lost. Like she had been...

“Of course… her name would never be in the ledger, or the photograph. Most women weren't so acknowledged at the time, and certainly not a preacher's wife. It was seen as vain." Jim muttered, shaking his head. "Such a shame it is that such stories were often left so unknown, trapped in time. Stories want to be heard, and if it curses something to achieve it then so be it...even if the story was not a happy one, it deserves to see the light..." Jim turned, putting a hand on Miasma's shoulder, stopping a moment. Miasma laid his own on top. The two companions sharing a quiet look, one filled with understanding and the other with compassion. It was a moment that even if lost to the known world in those woods, would forever stand the test of time, in the peace it gave to each of those beating hearts.

* Lady Vonhassel considered herself damned though, at the moment of her death, since she was harboring the life in her belly… there was a restlessness in the tense air around them..  Stemming not only from that burden she carried, but also, that they, had never been known at all.*

“Were you the one who kept the ledger” Jim called out, walking over a perilous craig. He had noticed the crucifix on her visage as being the same as  the one Miasma had worn and subsequently lost.

*The very same...*

The woman sobbed softly in response, her mournful cries echoing around the trees unnerving and heartbreakingly hollow.

*... at its heart, that bloodstone…they had found it. They had found Her. At last...*

Miasma thought aloud, “It makes sense doesn't it… Father Evight Vanhassel, and his wife, the  civilizing influence together as they tended the flock of sinners that worked in these woods. When the camp lost them, they lost their reason to hold on to their humanity, The Captain, The Doctor, Father Evight, and the Missing, Lady Van Hassel...such a tragedy...such a loss...But if she, her remains, I mean, are not with the other bones then-” 

“What happened to her?” Jim finished. They took a breath of the cold pre-dawn air, and strode to follow the spectre into the dark wood.

Braving the unknown, to seek the truth…

The specter led them on, floating, as if walking, stepping on stone long since worn smooth, over dips that no longer existed, through thick trees that had been thinner when she had once wandered the paths of these woods, her mournful cries and trembling voice bouncing all around them.

Their stomachs felt uneasy, like something sad and horrible awaited them. So very much like the dreams they had been having except this time, someone was leading them to the pit in which the lost had fallen…except, even the horror they knew they would face, was as valid and important to know. If it meant giving the young woman peace, who were they to deny her story to be known...

Yet, step by step, the eerie stillness surrounding them abated, giving way to the common sounds of a sleepy winter wood. The spectre appeared almost tangible now, and though the air was growing colder as she lead them farther into the wood, towards a deep fissure in the earth where a frozen creek lay still now, where the truth lay buried, and scattered, the companions felt an ease in the tension. A lift of their burdens, in carrying them together.

As if perhaps the broken things inside them would mend, they knew. The pieces would fall into place. And soon, both Miasma and Jim stood at the edge of their triumph, facing a chasm where a ravine gaped at their approach, nearly at the end...

The pre dawn light was clear and the air rushed around them as time all at once stood still. They found themselves surrounded  in the events that lead to the curse of that wretched blood stone…

Why Lady Vonhassel was at the bottom of the ravine.

Carefully they descended into the ravine and trotted together through it's shallow waters that and been lost to the passage of time, following the bend until they arrived to their destination...

Lady Vonhassel's weeping had quieted on the stillness, before the reeze resumed, almost seemed to sigh in relief, as they approached the place where lay her lovely bones, and learned of her demise. For at last her story would be told. And all that had been lost, every last sheep of that flock, would be found again... and none would ever be left behind again...

Daylight was breaking, and as they gazed upon a conspicuous spot where she had fallen so long ago, they had tears in their eyes. The sun was once again rising in that lonely valley, dappling through the trees over this spot where the scene almost felt Holy.

A sapling had sprouted so long ago in that very place, and as the mysterious passage of time faded from view and Jim's eyes lost their powerful sight, they stood before a magnificent Willow tree now, miraculously untouched by the surrounding white snow, green spring grass under it's umbrella of care. The remains no more.

This is what they were meant to see. A corner of the world where goodness and love remained untouched by that which corrupts it. A Holy place in the heart where faith in those one loves, and in those whom one cares, lives on forever.

Jim felt tears flowing as he pulled a crucifix from his pocket.

"I, thought it was lost" Miasma said softly, admiring how it shined in the dappling dawn light, claws gentle around the chain.

"Oh ye of little faith" Jim chuckled softly, his voice thick with emotion, "Despise not the small things..."

The pendant looked, normal as ever. But it meant something new now, didn't it.

Miasma felt the voices so plaguing him still moment. He sighed softly, thankful that in the journey, his friend had knelt with him. Fought beside him. And had managed to keep hold of the one comfort that he knew Miasma needed to see this dark nigh through.

A grateful tear slid down the Ghouls face. Jim, hands in his pockets, smiled back.

Miasma clutched the Crucifix. Just a moment longer. Then, bestowing a blessing from his lips to the metal warming in his palm, he lay the cross at the foot of the tree, and a gust of wind blew through, that sigh of relief washing over them like a warm blanket, enveloping them in a grateful embrace.

"Do you think we did it? Do you think we did the right thing?"

Miasma asked, taking Jim's Hand, they stood back and watched the willow shiver and shake gently, swaying in the breeze like any other ol' tree.

Jim removed his shoes. Miasma did the same.

Feet on the hallowed earth they stood, hand in hand.

"Yes," Jim replied, giving the ghoul's hand a squeeze. He turned to see his friend, face upturned to the rising sunlight, eyes closed, a soft smile playing on his features as he basked in the feeling all around them.

*The right thing, and still so much ahead beyond this moment, yet the moment was as holy just the same, a small liftening of burdens... no matter the creed, a blessing it is to have such hope, and such friends*

"Yes, Angel," Jim said once more, "I, I suppose we did."

"Hm." Miasma smiled, feeling as if in the glow of the morning, he had wings.

*... he was free...*