Entwined
The cycle of life and death cannot be stopped, they twine together like lovers in the dark.
Written By: Sierra Cassity
He wore a smile in death, hair brushed smooth across the pillow. The mortician had done amazing work. He looked peaceful.
He would have hated it.
Francis had never seen Van smile like that in all of the fifteen years they’d known one another. Closed mouthed, tight-lipped, and tame hair.
Before he could stop himself, Francis’ arm shot out, reached across the space of the casket, dipped in as fast as a snake strike and ruffled his bangs.
That’s more like it.
He didn’t dare mess with the rest f his hair, scared it would reveal the attempt at piecing his skull back together.
He’d seen the articles, all of them still sat on his desk. From the large, ‘MISSING’ headline to the tragic ending, ‘TEEN FOUND DEAD’ with all of the graphic and mysterious details.
Now Francis stood next to his friend, for the last time, in silence. He didn’t know what to say-couldn’t muster the words. He’d never imagined a last conversation let alone a goodbye.
They were supposed to go off into the world together in just a few months. Now Francis would have to face it alone.
I’m sorry you’re dead, that sucks man.
I wish I had been with you, maybe you’d still be here.
I should be the one laid out, not you, you didn’t deserve this.
Anything would have been better than the silence as he choked back his tears. Irritated when they blurred his vision, he didn’t want to take his eyes off Van. Silently, he begged for his friend to open his eyes, to come back to him.
But he didn’t open his eyes, instead someone tapped Francis on his shoulder and asked for their own moment with Van.
So, Francis shuffled out of the way, and past the other people filling the church. Brushed shoulders with Van’s dad and teary mom. But all he could see was his dead friend, laying in his coffin.
Grief seized him then and he ran from the church.
The Texan heat overtook him as his throat welled with a sob. He ran across the grass, scanned the area with blurred vision trying to find a place to hide. He skid to a stop behind some bushes and fell to his knees, the small white-washed pebbled dug into him.
The small shocks of pain ground him. But the ability to breathe had abandoned him as sobs wracked his body. He swayed on the ground, vision blackened around the edges.
When his hearing returned from its muted state a shuffle on the rocks ahead caused Francis to freeze. The potential embarrassment of being caught bawling like a kid by a classmate was too much.
They moved again and Francis looked up. Curly, teased-to-hell dark hair over a jean jacked and the heel of a pair of familiar scuffed sneakers was rounding the back corner of the church a few feet away.
His dress-shoes slipped on the rocks as he scrambled up to follow.
It’s not possible.
The brick corner of the church bit into his palm as he propelled himself around it. His body came to a halt as it registered distantly in his mind. The empty grass los was just that, empty.
No one was there.
There’s no way for anyone to travel to the bordering edge of the forested space behind the church in the seconds it took Francis to get up.
As he looked around, Francis couldn’t shake the unease that had settled deep in his gut.
He had to be entering some sort of grief induced psychosis. It was the only explanation he could think of and he grasped onto it tight. He wasn’t willing to lose his sense of sanity.
He wiped his face on his sleeve, took a deep breath and returned to the service not long after deciding he couldn’t have seen what he had.
He did not see the shadowed figures that watched from just beyond the tree-line.
Later that night after the benefit dinner, Francis sat in his room. Fresh out of the shower, with the suit hung back up in his closet he sat rigid on his bed. Face away from the door he watched the window.
In his peripheral he could see the set of wilting carnations, red and white, that sat on his desk. They’d sit there for months untouched before his mom would come in and put them in a leftover container as a keepsake.
He was supposed to put them into the coffin, but couldn’t bring himself to part with all of them. he’d tucked one white one in Van’s hand along with a letter and hoped his friend got his message, wherever he was now.
He hadn’t turned on the light, his room darkened as night came. When the streetlight turned on he was bathed in a soft yellow.
That’s how his mom found him. “Sweetheart, it’s time to go to sleep.” Her voice was distant in his mind.
He nodded, but didn’t move. She went in, maneuvered him with gentle, guiding hands and tucked him in like when he was a baby.
She pressed a kiss to his forehead with a whispered apology before she was gone. Left for her own bed, she had work in the morning, they would’t let her take any time off for him.
He doesn’t remember falling asleep but he jolts away at some point with a gasp.
He was sitting again, like his mom had never come in. The only evidence of his moving was the messed up sheets and bundled blanket at the bottom of his bed.
Francis looked around in confusion. Why was he sitting?
Something outside the window caught his attention then. A figure, under the streetlight. Their wild hair, old jacket, ripped and patched pants combo with nearly worn-out sneakers couldn't belong to anyone else.
It was Van.
He stood there, with big shades covering his eyes, but Francis could tell. He was staring up at him. The same feeling he always got when Van stared at him tingled up his spine. Until something caught his eye. In Van’s hand was a white carnation.
A new sensation ran along his back then. A chill as dread settled in his bones.
Van, who knew he had his attention, pointed at him before motioning with his finger for Francis to come to him.
And just like that, he was alive and Francis couldn’t stop himself. He went downstairs, tossed on his sneakers and jacket before he opened the door and went out to meet his once-dead friend.
But when he arrived under the yellow light, there wasn’t anyone there.
Francis sighed before he turned to go back inside, to wake up his mom. He had to face whatever was happening to him, he was scared for himself. And she would help, just like she always did when something was wrong.
As he turned to head back inside, his foot slid on something. Francis looked down, stared in shock, there on the uneven concrete was the white carnation Van had been holding. The one Francis had given him hours ago.
Francis bent down to pick the smashed flower up when he heard a shuffle.
Van stood a ways away, he was peeking out from behind one of the neighbors tall fences. He grinned behind the wood panelling before he disappeared behind it completely.
Francis wasn’t sure if he should follow at this point. He might have considered himself a delinquent but that was only when daylight was involved. Francis didn’t like the dark and tried to avoid going out in it at all costs.
But it was Van. And he had to follow.
So, he followed the potential specter through the neighborhood. Every corner he was directed further with flashes of hair, the tail of his jacked, his smile. Francis followed for so long, he wasn’t sure where he ended up when his tunnel vision had widened again.
He stood in a wooded area.
Maybe the trees in the park. He thought to himself as he looked for more signs of Van.
“Van!” He called as he grew desperate.
He felt lost and alone without his friend and he wanted to go back home. But it was dark, and he was lost. There was no noise, the night had taken with it the lively nature of animals. If there were any around, they hid in the dark, kept quiet from their other sense, that innate ability to know when something wasn’t right. When a predator was prowling.
Francis couldn’t see past the second set of trees and dark underbrush. He knew there had to be tracks, he’d frequented the park enough to know that the wooded area wasn’t big. And that kids ran through it all of the time without a care in the world.
But Francis had never been one of those kids. He’d preferred the safety of the swing set and slide. The trees had remained a shadowed, unknown area he avoided at all costs.
So, he didn’t know to look down, to find the broken branches and trampled grass. Instead he looked up, tried to spot the lights of the street through the canopy of darkened branches and leaves.
He did not see the shadowed figures that watched from the trees.
Francis sat down as his breathing went out of his control. He could not breathe, his vision narrowed, his hands went numb.
The phrase ‘panic attack’ whispered through his mind. But without anyone to help guide him, he couldn’t bring himself to calm down.
He had thought, hoped, prayed that Van had somehow escaped deaths’ grasp. That he was there, he hadn’t dreamt him up. But Van would never have lead him here and left him alone. Whatever had guided him to the woods wasn’t his friend.
That startling realization had nearly knocked him out of his panicked state, only to double it.
Then a branch broke. The sound was distant to his overwhelmed senses. But he heard it, and spun on his knees. Ready to beg for help, for someone to take him home or call the cops.
But there was Van. And just behind him stood a figure. Something dark, like a shadow, impossibly tall with no discernible features.
Van himself was pale, and his sunglasses were gone revealing milky white eyes.
Van didn’t look like Van; he looked like someone else entirely.
His skin was stretched, his once rounded, youthful cheeks were angled and gaunt. He stood about a foot taller than Francis which was about a foot and a half taller than where he should have been.
“What the fuck?” Francis yelped as he scooted backward.
The dark figure behind Van moved then, with quick motions until lit was rounding around Francis. Francis had to make a decision then: to keep Van in front of him or move so the figure stayed in his line of sight.
Instead of picking, his body made the decision for him. Francis scrambled up, running into the darkened forest. He had decided whatever fate awaited him in the dark was better than whatever had happened to his friend.
Francis ducked and dodged tree branches as best he could. The ones he didn’t see in time smacked him and scratched his skin. He didn’t feel any pain, he knew the forested area would open up soon, it had to.
But the trees thickened. Francis climbed over a fallen log and risked a glance behind him. He gasped at the sight of pale bodies closing in on him.
He could recognize a few of them from their own ‘MISSING’ adverts in the newspaper. They were all found dead from wounds to their heads.
When one got too close, he grabbed a good-sized rock and spun, bashing them across the face. They didn’t bleed or make a sound as their skin split.
Instead of white skull and bloody sinew there was blackness under the skin.
Francis swore he saw that mass of black under the gap he’d made wriggle around before it began to leak out, like a living fog.
Francis was running again, terrified of whatever it was that was chasing him. There was something so unearthly about what was happening.
In that moment he cried out for his mom.
When he looked back again Van was leading the chase. Then, as Francis was really beginning to believe he was going to die, the trees began to thin.
He sprinted into an open field. He wasn’t where he had thought at all. The building in the distance was the reassurance he needed, to know where he was.
He was in the field behind the church. A breathless laugh escaped him as he began to think he was safe I the open.
Until he turned around and almost bumped noses with Van.
He could see into the depth of his eyes, passed the mile white of death and deep into his pupil. When the black of Vans eyes moved like a serpent under the surface of lake water.
Francis yelped and swung his arms to push away. While doing so he grabbed a fistful of Vans’ long hair and took it with him as he backed away.
The hair pulled too easy form his scalp. Francis was struck then by the realization that while his friend was standing before him, whatever had taken over his body had done just that. Taken over his body. Van was still decaying, there was no blood or organs keeping his body together.
That knowledge gave Francis an energy boost, he scratched and clawed, hit and kicked the thing. But still it advanced. It didn’t stop until Francis grabbed onto the stapled wound at the backside of Vans head.
Francis’ fingers found purchase in the space between the staples, he gripped and tore them apart. He didn’t stop pulling until Vans face was split down the center of his right eye to mid-cheek.
Francis gagged at he feeling as the ripping vibrated up his arms. While he was fighting his reaction to tearing apart his best friend, the creature inside Van became visible.
All dark shadow and incorporeal form. Vans body stopped moving, it stood at still as a statue. Arms limp at his side before his skin began to ripple. The creature underneath the surface was moving.
It unfurled from Van, shoved out of the hole in his head, running along the edge of the gaping wound like fog over rock before emerging. The creature gripped and pulled, then the skin lost its elasticity of life and tore completely.
Vomit rose in Francis’ throat as his tears fell free. He didn’t know what to do. In that moment all he knew was that he wanted to go home. To cuddle between his parents where he would be safe.
He thought for a moment that if he could reach the church then this creature couldn’t get him. His feet moved without command, a step back toward the building of faith.
He didn’t make it more than a few frightened shuffles before the creature leapt.
It grabbed his head with long and strong shadowed hands as he screamed and cried.
With a fast move and a loud crack, it was over. The boy fell limp into the arms of another shadow as it manipulated itself to fit while it slurped simultaneously.
When the shell was cleared and the scene was set. The creatures laid together in the grass. Waiting to be noticed by security doing their rounds.
They stared at one another, smiling and unblinking. Soon their brood would be finished. They would be dressed for the daylight once more.
The others kept watch from the shade of the trees, hundreds of corpses and a few shadows.
They would wait patiently for their own turn to feed. Then the brood would rule the town until the skins sloughed off again.
When the police eventually found the pair another funeral was planned. The mortician did their work diligently. Black eyes stitching the entry point with rigid movements.
The newspaper reported the death of Francis as a cruel accident. The security guard had caught him trying to take the body of his friend out of the church and shot the grieving and erratic boy when he tried to fight the guard for the body.
Hey Readers,
This was a fun story to write. With a large focus on the build up and less on the actual monsters.
If you like this you will be able to read more horror in my anthology ‘Small Town Nobody’ as soon as I can get it released.
Entwined was my take on a vampire story as well as unrequited love.
Thanks for reading!
Sierra Cassity
