It took three weeks for Sam and Ash to leave her house. Three weeks avoiding the outside world, of coming to terms with their scars, physical and emotional. The monster took more from them than just their blood. The wounds in their flesh healed, leaving a handful of scars the size of pinpricks.

  But that wasn’t the worst.

  When they finally woke two days later, it was only to discover that everyone who had been in a coma was still unconscious.

  The doctors called it a pandemic. They didn’t know what caused it, but calling it a pandemic allowed them to fit the deaths into a nice little box that they didn’t have to think much about.

  Judy. Three of their classmates. Four of their teachers. Their parents.

  They were stable but unresponsive. The doctors weren’t optimistic about a recovery and gave Sam and Ash information about end-of-life options. They'd lost so much that even thinking about letting go of their parents felt impossible, like giving up on the last tether to their old lives. The doctors spoke calmly, clinically, about end-of-life options, but to Sam and Ash, the words were an unbearable weight they couldn't yet lift.

  Luckily, MU Sanitarium, the research hospital over in Arkham, offered to take in all the patients, the researchers there confident about a positive outcome. Sam and Ash agreed to the offer, relieved they didn’t have to consider the alternative and for MU’s generous grants and discounts for local patients.

  All they had left was each other. It would have been easy after everything had happened to run away from each other, to run away from intimacy and love, but on the third night after they woke, Ash went to the guest bedroom where Sam slept. Ash had taken up in her dad’s room, not able to return to her own.

  She slipped into the bed without a word. She didn’t have to say anything, but after a long silence, Sam whispered, “We’re still here.”

  Ash nodded, tears stinging her eyes. “Yeah... we are,” she replied, her voice barely a breath.

  It was enough. They lived through something horrific together, losing everyone important to them and a part of themselves in the process. They took solace in each other’s company. They wouldn’t let the mysterious gentleman take that from them, too. Most nights they just held each other and talked. Sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, but always in each other’s arms.

  They still ached from their wounds. Whatever the monster had done to them had only accelerated their healing, so when they finally did make love, their motions were slow and gentle, more hesitant than they were even that first time. Afterwards, they lay in each other’s arms and wept.

  At some point, the bed in the guest room stopped being Sam’s and became theirs. A few weeks later, they packed Ash’s clothes and those mementos she couldn’t bear to leave and moved into his mom’s house—now, his house. Though their parents were still alive, the court gave them control of their parents’ assets. They weren’t sure if they’d keep Ash’s house or sell it, but she wasn’t ready to make that decision.

  On their last night in the Williams’ house, Sam pulled down the ladder that led to the small attic. Ash’s room took up most of the top floor, so the attic was more of a broom closet, filled with holiday decorations and some of her mom’s old stuff that somehow survived the purge. He opened an old box, dislodging seven years’ worth of dust. He had to remove some old photo albums and what looked like a wedding dress, yellowed with age like a hunk of old ivory, in order to fit the painting in the box.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Like the house itself, the painting was heavy with the pain and darkness that had happened. The weight of its curse seemed to seep from the canvas. She wanted to destroy it, but fear held her back. What if destroying it made things worse? What if they needed it one day? They talked about it but couldn’t decide between researching its history or destroying it. One thing was for sure: they weren’t going to pass it on to anyone else. Whatever they did in the interim, they vowed they’d be the curse’s final victims.

  The stairs rattled and ascended back into the ceiling. Sam dusted himself off and returned to helping Ash pack up her things.

  They weren’t ready to talk about the painting or what happened with the mysterious gentleman. The last they said on the matter was to agree not to tell anyone what really happened that night. No one would believe them anyway.

  They moved across town into Sam’s house, a place once filled with the warmth of his mother’s laughter, now silent and hollow. They tried to put their lives back together, but each packed box, each empty room, reminded them of everything they'd lost. Senior year was almost over. After that… who knew what else. College? Careers? Marriage? The future held too many uncertainties, and they weren’t ready to talk about it. For now, they were focused on healing.

  It was hard to think about the future when they knew something dark was out there. Something powerful. Something with eyes with vertical slits that watched them from the darkness—unblinking, always there. Something evil, biding its time. And whatever it was, they had unleashed it.

  But they weren’t ready to talk about that.

  ***

  The world was a new and dazzling place. It was livelier and bursting with energy. Cars. Aeroplanes. He could feel the hum of power running along the black lines overhead.

  Electricity. That was the word. The primates had it the last time he was on this plane, but now it saturated everything, humming beneath his feet, buzzing through the air like an unseen swarm. The entire world pulsed with it, and as he stood on the girl’s porch, he could feel the weight of it pressing against his senses. This age was fueled by excess. No matter. It was a bounteous harvest that awaited his reaping.

  A motorcar passed, spewing both noxious fumes and a clamorous racket. Once it passed, the air settled back into uneasy stillness, allowing him to hear the incessant weeping coming from the girl and her lover—a pitiful, human sound, muffled and raw, in stark contrast to the gentleman's indifference. The desperation and grief tasted sweet, yet distant, like a memory of an emotion he could never fully grasp. He could taste the saltiness of the blood and tears that covered their naked bodies.

  A stirring kindled deep within him, a hunger so intense it was equal parts titillation and revulsion. It gnawed at the fragile confines of his human form, urging him to consume, to gorge on the suffering that seeped from the house.

  The disadvantages of being confined to the human form.

  For a moment, the sensation overwhelmed even the stifling presence of his master. He experienced his master’s incessant ire with a sense beyond that which his fragile human suit could decipher. It was more than feel, more than touch or taste. It beat against his very being from across the unfathomable cosmos. Driving him forward to his glorious purpose.

  The breeze wafted through the abode, bringing with it another briny scent redolent with pain and lust and terror. His internal organs grumbled again.

  Perhaps there is time for one meal…

  Lanterns from a motorcar crawled across the lawn and something caught his eye. Beside the boy’s own motorcar, the gentleman bent and picked up a rumpled pile of cloth. The vulgar chemise the girl wore to seduce her erstwhile paramour, now abandoned much like her carnal intentions toward that jackanape. As much as the delay it caused stymied him, the gentleman couldn't help but think the boy received apt recompense for his pathetic reliance on narcotics to force a taste of Ms. Williams' tender flesh.

  The gentleman’s gaze turned eastward, toward the grand estates of the town’s gentry lay. His lips lifted, the rictus resembling something like a smile.

  Yes, perhaps there is time to indulge in one meal.

  THE END

  The Accursed, book 1 of the Eldritch Affair. I appreciate you taking the time to read it.

  leaving a review on Goodreads.

  available at all major retailers.

  sign up for my newsletter.

  The Herald, and it continues the gentleman's story. If you want to catch up with Ash and Sam, they make an appearance at the end of book 2.