The Curse of St Louis

First Encounters

"Stop!" Wild and rasping, the sound repeated. "Stop. Stop. Stop!" But the target audience continued on, blissfully unaware that they were being addressed.

Exasperation overflowed with every syllable that danced around and around in thoughts that refused to stand still. Spinning. Weaving.

Before fear could take hold, there was a rush of fabric, a shuffling and then the door of number 23 flew open. The spring breeze lifted wild curls, scattering them in all directions as they were forced to follow their host and chase the two girls who must have taken a wrong turn. Must have.

"Stop." Still not loud enough. Still not close enough. A deep breath. "STOP!" That did it. Two sets of youthful eyes came to rest on their pursuer. Two sets of eyes widened in expressions of shock and terror. One opened her mouth to scream, but no sounds seemed to escape, the other tilted her head and forced herself to squint.

Softly, gently, the auburn haired girl took the hand of the other and almost tentatively mouthed the name, "Miss Dawes? Ellen Dawes?"

She knew her. Thoughts stopped whirring. Noises slowed.

"Yes." It didn't sound right. The word was there, but it was dry and gravelly, barely human.

"Oh my god, you gave me such a scare. I'm Danny. Danny Brant. Greg Brant's daughter."

It was the wild woman's turn to tilt her head. Recognition dawned on her. Warm red hair and eyes that gleamed like emeralds caught in sunlight. Of course she was Greg's daughter. A memory filtered back, a teenager, sitting on a crooked headstone lecturing her on folklore and superstition. A stupid boy. A stupid boy who produced equally stupid offspring.

Wild eyes bored into Danny, hard and angry.

"Well, that explains a lot," the sound was still off, but it was clearer now, "what on earth do you think you're doing hanging around on this end of the avenue? You're not to play up here. No one is."

Seeming to return from some sort of trance, the other girl finally assessed the situation that was unfolding before her. She looked first to her friend and then back at the dishevelled form of the woman.

"Oh god, Ellen Dawes, you mean the head case? s**t. I thought they'd locked you up in the looney bin."

At least the Brant girl had the common decency to look embarrassed at her friend's remarks. However, she hadn't noticed, and Ellen's wild eyed stare did nothing to abash her. In fact, quite the opposite, it seemed to embolden her further.

"Well, now you're here, I've got to know, did you kill him?"

Everything spun.

"What! Did I? No. No. You... Is that why you're up here? Have you come to taunt me about him? Do you think there's some magical mystery to solve? Is that where you're going?" The last question took on a frantic, desperate wail, as though the mere thought of having to walk through that memory threatened to drag her back into it. As though what was in there might scratch its way out of her mind and into the real world.

Kelly attempted to rebuke the statement and steer the conversation back onto a more even ground, Danny desperately tried to assist, but nothing either of them said could stem the sheer hysteria that erupted from Ellen. Her voice took on a fevered pitch, shrill and ear piercing.

"Because if that's what you're doing, you'll die. It was monstrous. It attacked. No time. Erupted from the fog, and the blood, the blood, it covered everything. My poor Joseph. Poor Joseph." Her eyes sharpened, a clarity returned to them, a clarity that hadn't been there in a long time. "You have to leave. Go back. Go home. Go anywhere but here."

Danny's voice took on a soothing, melodic tone, as she reached out and took Ellen by the elbow in an attempt to steer her back towards the open door across the street. She was surprisingly thin, even under the layers of fabric, Danny could feel every knobble of the bone beneath.

"It's ok Miss Dawes, it's ok. Let's get you back inside, Kelly is a dab hand with the kettle, we didn't mean to-"

"No. You didn't mean to get caught, did you. Stop it. Get off of me."

Ellen dodged around them, sliding around to bar their way and once again began to berate the two, repeating the dangers of the direction they were heading. Arms flailed in every direction and spittle showered the girls and left track lines on her chin as tirade after tirade of nonsensical rants about teeth and jaw and claws filled any potential silence. Repeatedly, both girls tried to calm the craze that had set in, but nothing worked, as soon as their mouths opened the woman would just flare up again.

After several minutes, Danny's temper began to flare, she normally kept a firm lid on the aggression that lurked under her calm, unflustered exterior, but she felt that even an anointed saint would be hard pressed to hold on here.

"Alright. Enough. I tried to be nice for my dad's sake, but f**k you. You have no right to stand here and scream at us, we've got places to be."

Moving as one, the girls separated and attempted to move around the blockade, but the loose grip that Ellen had on sanity tore completely, she made a grab at both girls. Kelly dodged her easily and gracefully, but Danny had no such luck. Her bony fingers clenched through the gauzy fabric of Danny's shirt and sunk into the skin beneath. Those bones were unforgiving as they tightened in a vice-like grip around her forearm and pulled Danny so that their faces were less than an inch apart.

"I'LL KEEP YOU OUT! I'LL KEEP YOU ALL OUT! FOR THE BEST... WITH ME NOW!"

Panicked, Danny reacted quickly, without thought, without remorse. She spun her arm and swept with her left foot, she took the lunatic off balance. Ellen wobbled awkwardly for a second before plummeting to the floor. Bones crunched as her fragile form slapped the concrete.

A stunned silence settled in. Without movement, Kelly met Danny's eyes and she understood implicitly. Time to move. Without a word, the two girls walked away from the crumpled heap lying face down on the cold tarmac of the avenue.

____________________________________

Breathing heavily, the girls made it to the crooked path chased by moans and muffled screams. Paying no heed to the undergrowth that snapped and snagged at their ankles, the girls picked up the pace, still not daring to speak. Still stunned by their own actions. It didn't matter that the woman was clearly not playing with a full deck, or that she had made the first move, what they had done didn't sit right with either of them.

Once the sounds escaping Ellen faded from earshot, they slowed their pace. A wise decision, given that the underbrush had crept onto the pathway and clutched at the heels as they passed. Once their breathing became steady, they began to digest their experience.

"s**t Kelly, what the hell just happened?"

"I know. What the f**k, right?"

"Did I just assault an old lady? And what if she's severely injured? Maybe we should go back?"

"Mate, she nearly ragged you back to her house. You didn't assault her, you escaped the gnarled grasp of a madwoman. If you hadn't gotten away, what do you think she might have done? Christ, the stories I've heard, she sliced and diced her boyfriend up over some minor disagreement. Who knows what she could have done to us. You did the right thing, and if I ever see that b***h again, it will be too soon."

In the distance, the cemetery began to take shape, large monolithic outlines were beginning to take form even in the murk of the early evening grey. Danny said little, her mind had wandered. She had heard the same stories that Kelly had, that 19 years earlier, Ellen and her fiance had been walking the opposite route to the one they now traced, and she had brutally butchered him before reaching the door of number 23. Dad didn't agree. He thought that they had been attacked, he had often talked about Ellen. They were old friends, and he claimed that she didn't have a hateful bone in her body. It didn't help that she had been covered in his blood when they found her, passed out in the dip between two graves. Leaving her thoughts behind, she returned to the moment at hand.

"You're right. She's definitely unhinged, but what does that make us for just leaving her there?"

"Sane and Safe."

There was no coming back from that. Once Kelly resorted to simple phrases, her mind had been made up and no matter how logical the argument, she would never budge. Rather than spending any more time dwelling on the incident, both girls turned their mind to the view ahead. Neither of them had ever broken the threshold of the church ground.

Kelly's face broke into a wide grin as she voiced the parties she imagined in the creepy, gothic grounds. The church itself was like a weeping sore on the landscape. Time had not been kind to the structure, its bones had broken and left scars that crisscrossed the ornate brickwork. In its day, it would have been a wonder to behold, now, it was a shell to be moulded by the cunning hands of the teenage party diva. Her initial plans for the graveyard included solar lights that would line the path, then perhaps some fairy lights to brighten up the scene. Unfortunately, everything took on a darker shade in the wake of the church itself. It's giant, decaying silhouette blocking out even the dimmest haze cast by the street lights. Kelly's imagination began to run wild with ideas and plans for the ancient place, her excitement was so palpable, Danny couldn't help but feel lighter as she walked alongside her.

"Okay, it's 6:30 pm, we need to pick out the best possible spot and get set up. I've got a spotify playlist to die for and Ginny is bringing her speakers. She'll be with us for quarter to."

Moving purposefully, Kelly navigated them around the outskirts and into the main graveyard, adjacent to the church itself. Large headstones dominated them, crookedly they loamed precariously as they found the perfect spot. Danny set up all the torches and battery powered lighting they had managed to accumulate, and utilised the tops of the monoliths for the best effect.

"Looking good! You know what, this is quite possibly the best idea you have ever had." Kelly punctuated this with a patronising pat on the head.

"Mmmm, thanks. What time are we on?"

"s**t, it's 5 to. Where is Ginny?"

"She'll be late. It's what she does. How loud does your phone go?"

"Not loud enough for this. We're going to need a beasty base. I'll call her."

Kelly moved back to the outskirts of the cemetery, leaving Danny alone, highlighted by the ring of torchlight that she had painstakingly arranged. The silence weighed heavy in the absence of her friend. A slight breeze catching her make-shift rig cast eerie shadows across the tombs, sinister figures appeared and disappeared under the scrutiny of her gaze. She shook her head, murmuring to herself about the tricks that light played, but the hair on the back of her neck raised all the same. As though an unseen watcher had eyes on her no matter where she turned. Time became irrelevant. Seconds, minutes, hours, she couldn't tell. Suddenly, a party in the most notoriously creepy space the village had to offer no longer felt like a good idea. Forcing the fear from her mind, Danny closed her eyes and began to count her breaths. It was a trick she had picked up as a child. Any time she felt a hint of anxiety she would force herself to simply breath and count, claiming her mind with the simplicity of soothing numbers.

By the count of 50 she had released most of her worries, only the unseen presence of eyes lingered at the back of her mind, another 10 seconds and it was less that uncomfortable itch. She kept her eyes closed a moment longer, a decision it would not take her long to regret.