Among the Fallen: Resurrection

by Ross Shortall

  “I’ve been searching for you… where have you been? I’ve missed you…” the creepy whisper in her head said over and over. All Alex could do was listen as the eerie whisper chanted in her mind, a familiar voice but strangely, it couldn’t be more of a stranger, tormenting her dreams it continued; until suddenly…

  “GAAAUGE!” Sarah suddenly screamed in panic. Alex’s eyes flashed open and she stood up desperately as she watched her sister run towards the unholy pair angrily. Alex ran after her trying to scream her name but no words came out, stolen by fear and silenced by terror as the larger stranger grabbed Sarah by the throat and plucked her from the ground like a doll. Alex froze and dropped to her knees instantly, her hands clasped into a prayer as Sarah struggled and whined, desperately trying to breathe as the man tightened his grip.

  .”Please don’t hurt her; please; please; please; please…” Alex pleaded and begged, her heart sinking with panic and stomach churning sickness. The giant glared down at her, his features a blur but his eyes glowing mysteriously in the beams from her faltering headlights. Alex trembled as the man looked away, dragging Sarah along as she whined and struggled, ruthlessly kicking the smaller man as he curled up in pain. “Please, let her go! You’re hurting her! I’ll do anything, just let my baby go!”

  Alex cried. The giant looked back at her silently, lifting Sarah’s tiny body as his hand tightened on her throat. The smaller figure suddenly rolled over, its features concealed, dirt and blood hiding its face callously as it groaned; blood pouring from its face and eyes, gushing to the ground as it was snatched away by the rain. Suddenly, with one swift motion there was a snapping sound and Alex gasped, covering her mouth as a swift nausea fell upon her heart, Sarah’s neck crunching and her lifeless dropped to the ground like trash.

  Alex screamed in heartbreak, scuttling along the floor begging, scooping up Sarah’s unmoving body into her arms; her world falling apart within an instant as she sobbed and broke down in tears, merely hugging her baby sister as the rain pelted down around her. She froze as her pain for Sarah swallowed her heart and rushed around her body, her limbs suddenly heavy and her tears and sobs washed away in the darkness. As she fell further and further into a pit of grief, the night fell over vision and her own safety now now pointless and unimportant. She just sobbed, hugging Sarah’s tiny warm body, clutching and cuddling her as if she were still alive. Time stood mercilessly still and life around her suddenly became distant; dark and pointless.

  The larger shadow suddenly ran off into the darkness as the smaller one clambered to its feet, its run stumbling into a fall, its wounds crippling him and its energy exhausted. Alex just rocked backwards and forwards, cradling Sarah’s body mumbling in shock, the strange men now meaning nothing to her; not even gracing them with a passing glance.

  “It’s okay, Baby, I’ll get you a Doctor, we’ll get you to Hospital” she sobbed heartbroken and beleaguered. “We’ll get you better, Baby, then we’ll go to the fair…” she mumbled insanely as the small man arose invisibly behind her, holding it’s blinded eyes and stumbling erratically. “you like the fair don’t you, we’ll get candy-floss and go on your favourite rides, hold on Baby, everything is going to be okay, you’re going to be fine” she cried as Sarah’s dead face glared up into her eyes blankly. “Please don’t leave me, Baby. Please don’t leave alone… Sarah?”

  Suddenly, Alex was knocked to the ground and Sarah’s body fell to the road twisted and pitiless as the strange and powerful, almost ghost like man grabbed Alex’s ankle and dragged her back to the wrecked car. Alex lashed out and screamed, calling out to her silent sister as she clawed at the tarmac frantically. Her nails and fingers broke and blood poured from her wounds as the unseen man dragged her through the muddy wet road, until suddenly, her head was smashed onto the side of the wrecked vehicle. As Alex fought against her failing consciousness and sobbed Sarah’s name, the ruthless shape grabbing her by the neck and all she could feel was the agonizing pain as crushing strikes rained down upon her. As her bones smashed, she felt her body heave and violently seize, her mouth filling with sick and blood as her vision slowly slipped away abandoning her in darkness.

  The world was just a blur as her head was thrown one way and then smashed to the next, deafening sounds of battering and smashing against metal plagued her ears until eventually all her senses started to slip away mercifully. As the shadows and night swallowed everything around her, so too did a silence that was almost sleep like, but strangely, she felt awake and alert.

  “Mum?” she heard herself say as the stepped into a conscious dream, her emotions slipping away one by one, fear; anxiety; pain, all slowly falling away from her, dropping into a void of memories.

  Her cold and wet body suddenly turned warm, comfortable and peaceful, her mind starting to shut down as her soul floated over an abyss, waiting to fall, waiting for something to happen. Alex screamed a soundless scream, begging for someone to hear her, someone to help her, someone to pull her from the darkness, but the world was gone. As the last of her memories seemingly slipped away, she screams one final time as she is plunged into a realm of cold silence and embittered darkness, her physical body suddenly falling away from her soul.

  Chapter Five: Unseen

  What’s it like?

  Being dead I mean?

  It’s like being asleep, but being awake. It’s like being awake but being asleep. All I hear are my thoughts; all I see is darkness, the odd light, the random vision maybe. My thoughts come and go; I have no sense of being, no sense of time. It’s like I have been put away, in storage, or saved in an abyss; waiting to be collected.

  I have no body, none that I can see nor feel. Imagine floating, with no air around you, no ground below your feet, no sky above your head; that’s what it feels like to be dead.

  I see my life every now and then, I see grainy movies of my experiences, my moments; moments that I chose to forget or ignore. Moments that I took for granted in the faith that tomorrow, they would be replaced by more moments, but I was wrong.

  Every now and then, I see my room; I walk the corridors of my home. I see the staff walking around doing their daily chores, their sad faces almost as sad as mine. I have tried saying something to them, pleading and telling them I am okay; but they just shudder, they don’t see me. To them I am just a creepy moment, a sudden chill down their spine; that feeling I used to get; when someone walks over my grave, when the hairs on the neck all stand up, that’s what I now do to the people around me.

  I walk the halls of my father’s mansion without feet; I hear the mute conversations of the staff without ears. They feel me around them, some even call out to me, but I can’t understand their words, their moving lips are silent.

  I watch them as they sleep at night; I watch their sad faces as they drift off into a dream world where they are the centre of their life, where their world is perfect, snuggled up in their sheets and quilts, cosy and warm, free of the worries of life. I watch as they dream, as they fly in the sky above the city, as they meet their perfect partners and fulfil fantasies they can only dream of. I reach out and touch their warm faces as they sleep, they jump suddenly, as if startled by something, and then they drift off, back into their perfect worlds.

  My room has no colour, the floor boards no longer creak. My furniture is wrapped in plastic, covered in dust sheets, waiting for the day I might return; but everyone knows I never will.

  What’s it like?

  Being dead I mean?

  Imagine being a spectator to your own past and dying present, a life where the future is no more. A life where every day your name is spoken less and less, a life where you one day see yourself as a two year old, then another you might be seven, or eight. You re-live the forgotten moments over and over, simple and the most mundane of moments again and again; but this time, as you observe from the darkness; you would give anything to be bored, to be sad, and to even cry; even the simplest and most negative of emotions you yearn to feel once more.


  What do I see?

  I see myself playing with Rosetta, a happy three year old, messing around with dolls and invisible food and drink. She looks at me as if I am her daughter, her eyes glowing with joy, her laughs are contagious chuckles that keep my younger self happy and entertained.

  I see my first day of High School, nervous and excited; my expectations of the future high in the rafters and beyond the moon. Back then I remember I wanted to work at the Sea-Life Centre, I remember knowing that I needn’t work, I didn’t have to; but that’s all I wanted to do. I watch as I leave the first time, off to a school with a new adventure, a life changing event. I try to follow, but the door is locked, I can’t leave my house.

  I try to open a window, but they too are locked, imprisoned in a twenty-one year timeline that continues to haunt me. I have watched thousands of past events as a spectator, viewed thousands of present ones as an overlooked intruder.

  What’s it like?

  Being dead I mean?

  It’s like being ignored, not existing, being trapped as a figment of someone’s dying memory; being banished into someone’s past, so your death can’t upset them no more. People remember you, talk about you when reminiscing. But eventually they talk about other things, your name starts to dwindle, the sad faces start to smile again, and you become lost, just a wanderer of other people’s lives, other people’s events. You become a part of people’s private memory, a name rarely mentioned, and all you can do is watch and observe; watch your family and friends make the same mistakes you did.

  I never guessed, nor even considered dying the way I did, it had never crossed my mind or anyone else’s. I think about Sarah all the time, how much I miss her pretty smiling face, her funny chuckle when I pulled faces. Her cuddles I never had to ask for when I was down or feeling ill, her silly face when she was forced to eat vegetables; I remember her as if it’s carved into my soul.

  I try to think about my death, I know I was murdered by a man, we both were; I see Sarah’s twisted body every time I start to think. But I know I saw more than I remember, my memories are gone, censored maybe; or even stolen.

  That’s how it feels being dead, it’s a life of loneliness, an existence of solitude; forever ignored and eternally blind. I await the bright light, so that I can enter and be free, but it never comes. I feel like I am being held against the rules, bound in a prison with an untold purpose, I don’t want to be dead any more, I don’t want to be alive either; I just want to pass on.

  What I feel right now though, right this second, it all feels completely different. For ages now, there has been a light, a glowing beautiful light that shines around me. It feels warm, feels pleasant and the memories and visions have stopped, I do not understand, I don’t know what to expect, but my house is gone and the people have vanished. It is all gradually changing, I see colours and I see shapes, no movement or signs of life, but I feel heavy, yet I still float, I don’t understand.

  Is this it?

  Am I finally passing on to the other side?

  The blur around me is starting to focus, objects are becoming clearer and I can make out the daylight above me. Below me is green, it creeps closer to me, as does the blue above me. The light is dimming and traveling away, the world around me turning into something that I have been praying for. I close my eyes, pleading for it to be true, my numbed emotions returning again, my skin suddenly bombarded with a chill. I’m almost too scared to open my eyes, but I do.

  What do I see?

  I see a graveyard, a cemetery, laden with headstones and flourishing trees that sway in the wind. I see grey tombs that crawl with ivy and moss, flowers growing and arrangements of reminders left by those that haven’t been forgotten. I see stone angels with sad and weeping faces, playful cherubs that mischievously smile at me at me from monuments all around. I see dolls and teddy bears, their fibres blowing in the winds and braving the elements. I see the white sky stretching over the horizon, with blue fighting its way through the clouds, the sun over in the distance, shining bright and blurred in the distance.

  I have a body, my body, I can feel the warmth and a random chilly breeze as it blows past me. The hairs on my arms stand up suddenly, my hair waving in the wind behind me. My hands are white, almost glowing in the daylight, my nails are white too, almost perfectly coloured and shaped. I can feel the wet dew soaked grass between my toes, my soles on soft ground and that floating feeling has at last gone.

  I walk through the graveyard, taking in the feel of each step, the wind on my skin and the light around me, it feels almost heavenly as I pass through this new and beautiful world. I can feel a warming sensation travel my body from my heart, I feel taken aback by it, overwhelmed by emotion and a happiness I have never felt before. I see a pool of water on a monument, rainwater that has been collected on its surface. I see it quiver as the wind teases it, rippling as I gently put my finger in it, my reflection almost startling me. My skin is white, as are my white painted lips; my hair flows like water and my eyes are a glowing brown, glowing with life and with thoughts that dwell behind them.

  Am I a ghost?

  Am I an Angel?

  Suddenly I turn my head, I feel drawn to a part of the cemetery I am yet to discover. I slowly walk through the light air, my eyes closed as my body feels and appreciates the life around me. I open my eyes and I know where I am, I am in my family plot, where all my ancestors sleep, generations of Beaumont’s before me, all resting in their eternal beds. I walk through the grounds as sculptures of my dead family stare down at me, their stone surfaces crawling with moss and streaked in green. All the men are powerful and stern looking, their eyes gazing down upon me proudly, a powerful and enigmatic bloodline of guardians at both sides. The women are elegant and beautiful, immortalized in cold stone; they stand proudly at their partners sides as their vows are carried into the afterlife with them.

  Suddenly, I see a crowd, gathered at the far end, all dressed in black, crying into tissues but frozen in time, as still as the monuments that surround them. I approach the funeral briskly, aching to see who it is they mourn; is it Sarah?

  I approach the weeping crowd, their expressions frozen in grief and pain. Helicopters float in the air, soundless and as still as stone, the police and news crews spread out in the distance, holding their guns and cameras as clear as day; their faces blank and thoughts wayward.

  I approach the crowd; my father is at the front, surrounded by his bodyguards, his hair dyed black, his face etched in experience and lines. His almost expressionless face gazing at the ground, his cold eyes hidden behind dark glasses.

  The coffin is sat at the front, surrounded in flowers and words of respect. I approach it and run my hand over its cold surface, its photo baring my happy picture. I aint surprised, not as surprised as I should be, I aint deluded nor stupid; I know what I am. But it still feels strange; it haunts me as I stare at its smooth white expensive shell.

  I stare at my monument, a statue of me that seems to look different than those of my ancestors. I look at it queerly as I try to make out the strange sight, its chiselled and almost macabre features eluding me. It looks like me as it stands defiant, carved wearing a jacket, chains wrapped around the arms, no pupils in the eyes and my hair tied back; I never wear my hair tied back, it makes me look too serious, but it stands before me, looking angry and evil, almost sinister as it glares down at me.

  Nowhere near as elegant or as stunning as the others.

  Suddenly I panic; I can’t stop myself, blinded by hope as I search for Sarah amongst the crowd, searching their legs and feet for my baby sister. I don’t know why, I know she’s dead; but something within me hopes she was saved, hopes that she was got to in time. I suddenly calm, in shock maybe, but I desperately wanted her to be alive, even if I wasn’t. I look upon the faces again; Collette is missing too. I struggle to think as the realization of the two people I cherish the most, are missing from my own funeral.

  I stand among the crowd as my mind gradually comes ba
ck to me, a moment of madness suddenly gone; most of these people I do not even know. I recognize a few, the chief of police, deputy mayor and a few others that visited my father at home. Some of the staff are here, Gerry made it, I knew he would. He is staring at my father with a face of disgust, almost fitting and not surprising. I stand here, looking upon my coffin, and yet, I see these people looking at my father as the victim; which is about right.

  I approach my coffin once more, lifting the lid and staring at the angel as my physical body sleeps.

  As weird as it is, it feels peaceful, I look serene, but I still feel cheated, like I have had something stolen from me. I turn to look on the mourners, but they are gone, I’m alone with the casket, surrounded by my mute ancestors.

  Suddenly I feel a sickness in my stomach, I feel bad, like a strong guilt, yet I have no idea why. The trees wilt, the leaves all suddenly fall and the grass crumbles under my feet. The sky turns dark and is lit up with lightening and scorched by thunder. I look around feeling sick, disgusted, I can’t shake the sickness I feel. I look into the casket and stare at my sleeping face. I watch as the skin cracks and turns rotten, the eyes sink back into the head, the hair wilting and thinning out. It suddenly leaps up, grabbing me by my throat, it’s disgusting smell making my stomach heave.

  “Wake up you dumb bitch!” it screams at me, clawing at my neck and face. I fall to the ground and the body shatters, its bones scattering in the dead grass. I struggle to get my breath back, I feel like I am suffocating. I stand up, clutching my throat in agony, the blood squeezing through my fingers, but then, it stops. I look at my bloody palm, its deep red suddenly turning black, crumbling and flaking as I close my hand. I feel my throat frantically, my wounds have gone, I can’t express what’s going through my mind, it avoids even me at the moment.