🐦‍⬛Haunted Reflections

December, 1860

Scotland

Tap tap tap - the wooden cane clicked along the dark hallway. Yellow sconce lights flickered as if a draught of wind passed over them. 

Johnathon stood at the end, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows. Cold seeped through the 100-year old panes of glass. He pulled his gray cardigan closer around his broad frame and gazed out at the English hills bathed in an unforgiving light from the full moon. 

Sheep dotted the dark landscape, and snow clouds scudded across the moon casting the sheep in shadow and light giving them the appearance of moving along the hillside. 

Johnathon pretended not to hear the tap tap tap of his wife's cane, hoping her rheumy eyes wouldn't see him at the window. He stood, frozen, wishing a cloud would douse the moonlight and she would turn right into their bedroom, which lay in the middle of the hallway.

No such luck. Tap tap tap - she came. He turned to look at Mrs. Johnathon Webster - Abigail to him. 

A silent scream started in his lungs as he saw two dark, blank eye sockets and a bloody gash where her mouth should be. White hands reached for him, the skin bloated and her fingers scabbed over with green, oozing sores. He stumbled away from her as a sharp fingernail raked down his cheek and his back bumped into a tree trunk.

Confused, he looked around with a start. He was outside - a lone sheep standing next to him. Johnathon felt his chest and arms to wake himself up from the dream. 

He had been a sleepwalker as a child and had only begun sleepwalking again after the death of his wife. It was always a variation of the same nightmare. Sometimes she came after him - other times her dark, black sockets stared silently at him, a feeling of accusation permeating the air.

Johnathan stumbled back to the house as the snow started to fall. He turned the night latch and entered the dim entryway. A sudden gust of icy wind banged the old door against the wall, a menacing crack coming from the frame.

Shaking, he pulled the door towards him and gingerly closed it, making a mental note to finally get it fixed. On her last breath, Abigail begged him to get it repaired.

"The spirits will get in if you don't." 

He shivered involuntarily and felt something wet trickling down his cheek. The smell of iron filled his nostrils, and he touched his face where she had scratched him. His hand came away wet.

Rushing to the hall mirror, he peered at his reflection, his heart leaping to his throat when he saw blood oozing out of a long red line trailing from his right eye to the corner of his mouth.

"Must have caught it on that tree branch," he muttered. He thought a strong cup of tea would do him some good and looked up as something caught his eye in the mirror. 

"It wasn't the tree, Johnathan," Abigail said, one scabby hand hanging limply at her side, the other on her cane tap tap tapping closer.

The silent scream roared through his head as Johnathan fell back against the side table, cracking his head on the way down, Abigail's hand reaching for his throat. 

Dec. 4, 2020