5 Breaths

The creaking of the battered barn door echoed through the dimly lit space. Breathe caught between his lungs, the moldy scent in the air lapping against his tongue. He’s been crouched between the wooden pillar and pile of hay for so long that his knees had started to harden into the position.

“Where… are you…” As if guided by the very words, the shadows creep deeper across the dirty floor, like broken fingers grasping for his flesh. The very air turned heavier with mold as her shuffling feet parted the shattered hay. The sound of her foot falls was wet, like murky water was sludge between cracked toes and molten flesh struggled to remain on their bones. He held the revolver closer to his chest, aware of the single bullet that remained in its chamber.

He took a breath as he dared lean around the pillar. She moved through the midnight moonlight that spilled through the open doorway, casting a forlorn shadow as she ran her hand over the stables. The horses had started screaming long before she’d entered into the barn, and as she reached a hand to their trembling forms, the massive beasts bucked away before dropping. He watched as one of them fell hard, its terror filled gaze remaining as its tongue lulled out of its mouth and its breathes turned still. Mold began creeping across its face, bringing a quick decay to its fur as she continued to move in search for him.

He looked out the barn door, eyeing the edge of the cart he’d ridden in on. The sounds from the horses had gone quiet. A ray of the moonlight fell across the decomposing face of the horse he’d brought with him.

“There you are, my dear.” Her once beautiful voice trailed down the back of his neck. He could hear her lips cracking around the words she spoke. Despite his better judgment, he turned to face her.

By all the gods, she’d once been the most beautiful women he’d even seen; like the angels had crafted her from the grounds of Eden. She was smiling, and those yellow teeth and ashen skin was an insult to the beauty she’d been. The only color that remained on her was the distressed skin around her throat, which retained the dark purple bruising and red burns from where the rope had snapped her neck. She continued to smile, as if nothing had gone sour between them.

She’d smiled at him the first time they’d meet; her blush-stained lips, rosy cheeks and daring grin inviting him to follow her that night. He’d been drunk, taking shots all that night to celebrate their success when she’d ran a finger across her exposed collar bone and pulled him into the bed she’d been renting. The inn had been loud and bustling, and no one would have noticed her intent to bed him, rob him and leave him tied to the headboard with nothing but his draws to his name. He’d been enamored with how skill she’d been in relieving him of his valuables, she’d been impressed when he’d hunted her down and threatened to slit her throat. They’d been a match made in Hell.

He took another breath, taking that feeling deep in his lungs. He’d found himself slipping out of the hangman’s noose quite a few times, and he’d learned to be thankful for every breath he still got to take. As the moldy air coated the back of his throat, he found himself less grateful.

She reached towards him. Dirt fell from under her fingernails. He couldn’t help but inch away as she leaned down. There were cracks running down her nails and mud caked at the webbing of her fingers; a remained of the unmarked grave she’d crawled her way out of.

“Come to bed, my love.”

She’d been clothed in a nightgown when the townsfolk had stormed their hideout and set fire to the barn, they’d been taking shelter in. She’d been hung in that dress and buried at the edge of the field just the same. The simple gray dress was now tattered and stained; its ripped edges swirled around her mud-stained toes as she clambered about. Mold ate away at the fabric and at her skin.

She hadn’t gone peacefully into the night. Instead, she’d stood in that field, spat and cursed at all that came to see her go. That night had been overcast, with heavy storm clouds looming through the sky. There were whispers that her neck had snapped with a roll of thunder through the night. He had been a full town over by time they’d lowered her body from that tree, yet the venom laced words she’d spat at him remained on his ears even after she stopped drawing breathe.

He should have hung that day with her, but damn if God hadn’t made him to be a coward.

A third breath was drawn from his lips as he tightened his grip on the trembling pistol. Despite the tension in his finger, he couldn’t get the trigger to pull. He’d felled many a man, women and even a child by a quick pull of that trigger. As her clammy flesh touched his, he dropped the pistol. It struck the floor, quickly being overtaken by the roaming mold.

A fourth breath passed from his lungs as she started to take his hand in hers. Her fingers were stained with blood. He hadn’t been the only one of their crew who’d taken a horse and fled as the vigilante party had come for their necks. It wasn’t long after that night that he’d heard the first whispers of the ghoul that was picking them off. He had known that she would one day be his reckoning; had known that since the first night she’d pilfered his pockets.

“Come now, darling.” Despite her ghastly appearance, she spoke with just as much silk to her voice as she always had.

He made to bolt, his feet desperate for purchase against the ground. The moonlight cast itself over his face for a mere moment before he was dragged back into the suffocating darkness. A fifth and final breath tore from his lungs as she embraced him fully. The chill from her skin drew the very life from his body. He felt the mold begin to eat away at his flesh. It passed through his lips, filling his lungs with such a heavy weight that he could no longer draw air from his chest.

He tried to scream, tried to breath even once, as she pressed her kisses along his neck. He had loved her. He had killed for her. He had promised her a life of riches and luxury where mining towns, brothels, and nights with little to nothing in their belly would be long behind them. And he had gotten on the back of that horse and rode through the darkness, as they had dragged her to the lynching noose as a barbaric form of justice for the child sized hole they had taken from the town.

The night wind danced through the barn, blowing flakes of dried skin from his ghastly face. Mold flew in rapid spirals as she drew him closer and closer into her bosom.

As the morning sun overtook the night, there would be a scene of pure terror to greet the day; of half a dozen horses laying slain in their stables and a set of mold-stained bones locked into a never-ending embrace.