~~
Talia
~~
“I know that you two must be scared. And that there is a lot that you do not understand at the moment. But please, talk to me and explain to me what has happened to you. I am here to listen to you and to be your voice now that no one else can hear it. I promise you, that with your help and the help of the others, I will not stop searching for the people that killed you.”
I thought that a little bit of an introduction would be best at the moment. If I was able to tell them that I was here for them and that I was going to help them, then maybe they would be a little more open when talking with me. The fact that they were here at all though, meant that they wanted to talk to me. That they wanted me to help them.
“I do not know what to do.” Niclas spoke first. I could hear in his voice how much pain he had been through and how frightened he had been. “I never knew that someone who was dead could still feel pain.” His eyes were wavering, and if he had been capable of it still, I knew that he would have been crying. “Even when they weren't cutting me open anymore, it was nonstop pain.”
“We didn't sleep. Now that we're dead we don't sleep. So, that means that we never had a break from the pain. It was constant. It was horrible. I..I have never been a weak man. I was not a brute, but I was never weak. This, though, has broken me. I..if I were to have to do this again, i..if I were alive and had to do it all over again, I would not be able to. I just couldn't.” Llewellyn's voice was filled with choking sobs, but his eyes were dry. He was not able to cry now since he had no physical substance.
.....
“I am sorry for what you have gone through. Please, have a seat and tell me about what happened.” I looked longingly at the snacks that Telyn brought me, but I decided against eating any of them now. It would not be fair to these men. They would not be able to partake. They most likely didn't feel hunger or anything like that, but they would likely feel the desire to eat.
“Before I do that, tell me how you're able to see us? How can you hear us when no one else can?” Niclas seemed like he was the more rational of the two men that were here. In truth, I would have expected him to have lost more of his mind than Llewellyn had.
“Well, Niclas, I am a wolf like you, but that is not all that I am. My mother is Trinity Grey, the Goddess Queen that you all have heard of. Because of my mother, I was born with some abilities that were not normal.”
“And those abilities include communing with the dead?” He was still skeptical. I didn't know why.
“Well, as you can already see, yes it does. I have been hearing the dead since I was four. And I started to see them when I was five. For over a decade now I have been able to communicate with the dead. I have been getting trained by the current leaders of the underworld and will eventually take over. I will rule there. And when I do, I plan to make it a better place than it has been. The current practices are not up to my standards.”
“You will help the dead? All of them?” Llewellyn asked with wide eyes.
“Those that deserve it, yes. I would not reward the people that have done this to you. They will be reserved for the truest dark pits of Hell. The stories that you know about hell will have nothing on what these people will experience.” I could feel my anger boiling inside of me. This had never truly happened to me before. It was new. It was intense. And it was scary, even for me.
“Thank you, Princess Talia. We need someone like you to help us.” Niclas nodded at me and finally sat down. I silently reminded myself to never sit on those cushions, or the ones in the car that Uncle David drove me over here in. These men may be dead and didn't actually have bodies, but I didn't like the idea of sitting where naked people had been.
The three of us were sitting and facing each other. The two dead men, who appeared to have once known each other, were sitting side by side as I sat across from them. I knew this was going to be hard, on them and me. I needed to keep going though. I wasn't the type to quit, and I couldn't do that to them anyway.
“Niclas, since you were the first to pass, can you start? Tell me about the night that you were murdered. Tell me who did this and what happened to you.”
“W..well, I just felt like going out for a walk. It was around canol nos, and I knew that I should have stayed in, but something was calling me out. I felt compelled to go out for a walk.”
“I am sorry, but what is canol nos?” I was confused by his words.
“It is Welsh for midnight.” He looked like he had almost forgotten that I would be unfamiliar with it. In truth, I shouldn't have had an issue. I should have been able to use the translation power that everyone I knew seemed to have. Maybe it was not usable until my mother gave it to me. I would need that soon.
“Thank you.” I offered a smile. “Please continue.”
“Well, as I said, I went for a walk. I felt that something was off, but I didn't pay attention to it. I just kept going. I ended up near the forest and the wishing stones.”
“Those are some sort of boulders, right?” I remember reading about something like that before.
“Yes. They are just an old urban legend in the village, but they have meaning for a lot of people.” He tried to force himself to continue, but I could tell that he was having a hard time. “A..anyway, when I found myself at the stones, that was when someone ambushed me. They leapt onto me and held me down. They were strong. And even though they smelled human, there was something off about them. They were too strong to just be human. I fought them. I really did, but they managed to get their knife against my throat and pulled it hard. I felt the blood start to pour out of me almost instantly.”
Niclas took a deep breath and hid his eyes. I knew that he was trying to steady himself before he continued. After that breath, he did sound like there was a little more strength to his voice.
“The man that was attacking me moved my body so that I was bleeding into a giant tub. It wasn't a bucket or anything, but a giant metal tub. He was collecting my blood and there was nothing that I could do about it. My body had lost too much blood. I was immobilized while my body tried to heal myself, but it just wasn't working. And even though I could tell that my body was not healing, I was still fully awake. I don't know what it was about the knife that he used, but it was keeping the wound open. It did something to me.”
“Did you see the blade? Did it look different?”
“No, I didn't see it. Just a faint glow when the moon reflected off of it.” He shook his head.
“What happened next?” I prompted him to continue.
“That was when the man that was attacking me had flipped me over. I was still bleeding, but not as much. It was just sort of seeping out of me at that point. I saw his face then. He wasn't wearing a mask, but that didn't mean that I knew him. His face was pale and almost glowing in the moonlight. His eyes were black. And his hair was just as dark as his eyes. He was wearing some strange robes. The sleeves were long and they were some shimmering silver color. I don't know how I didn't notice this man glowing before he had attacked me, but somehow, he had managed to go undetected.”
“Did he say anything? Did he have an accent?” I needed to probe for more.
“Y..yes. He did. He called me a monster. He said I was an abomination. And he did have an accent, but I couldn't pinpoint it.” He was shaking his head.
“We will find him, Niclas, don't worry. I will see to it that he pays.”
“That wasn't all that he did.” Niclas looked so sad now. “He carved these runes into my body. He made it so that I couldn't get out. I didn't know what the runes were, not really, but I felt like he was calling me a beast of the night when he carved them into me. And after that, he used his knife to slice open my chest and pulled out my heart. I thought that would be the end of it. I thought that it would be over then. But it wasn't. I could tell that my body was dead, but I was still in there.”
Niclas sobbed just a little as he recounted this part of the story. I felt horrible for him. This never should have happened to him or any of them.
“A..after I knew that I had died, after that man knew that I had died, he got close to my face and whispered to me. He said, 'How does it feel to be dead? How do you like being trapped in your body? I have sealed you in there forever. You will never be able to reincarnate and infect this world ever again'. That was when I knew that he had targeted me and that he had tried to destroy me personally. I didn't know at the time that there were others. It wasn't until Llewellyn came into the coroner's office and I could hear his soul screaming beside me. You want to know what the worst part of it all was?” Niclas looked up at me and I could see that he wanted to cry so bad. “We could hear everything that was happening around us. We could hear the people talking when we were not in the storage drawers. And when we were in them, it was silent aside from our screaming. I could hear Llewellyn screaming, and he could hear me. And I thought that my own autopsy had been horrible, feeling it and being aware of it, but it wasn't as bad as hearing someone else go through it. That right there, that truly had to be like hell on earth.”
