Madeline Finch exhaled for the first time in a year, her bones creaking and groaning not unsimilar to rusted pipes, as a colony of insects skittered their way up her trachea and out of her mouth. Cool drops of rain fell from the sky; thunderously greeting sallow skin and matted auburn hair. Deep within her small frame, buried beneath rotting sinew yet somehow left untouched by the last five years, beat Madeline’s heart. Each compression sounded in time with the storm- a symbiotic symphony of nature and death. Madeline knew, as she had always known that her clock was now counting down and that it was only a matter of time before the earth reclaimed her for another journey of the sun.
In order to make the most of her reprieve, she would need to will her body to move- to engage. To live. Yet every attempt at conscious effort felt leadened and futile. The floods the year before had caused more damage than anticipated, but even still, Madeline remained hopeful that no repair was too large. He always made her right again. A finger curled as an elbow jutted into the ground causing the woman to cry out in agony; the missing synapses in her brain still trying to piece together basic autonomous commands. Crows scattered over head, each flying away from the vibrations of the angered sky. The world always bellowed when Madeline first awoke; a vocal protest to the unnaturalness of her existence.
Eventually, there was cohesion and Madeline stood shivering as her eyes scoured the darkened landscape for someone who should have already been present.It is unlike him to be late. She thought, wondering if perhaps he had forgotten. The idea seeped in through her wounds and festered rapidly as she began walking towards a small stone cottage at the top of the hill in front of her. Smoke twirled from the chimney, the taste of flesh on the air taunting anyone who dared to be close enough nearby. No one ventured out this far, past the barriers, this time of year. It was unwise. It was dangerous.
Dangerous for others, but not for Madeline. This was more fact than assumption, and Madeline knew without doubt that no harm would befall her this week. Just as she knew there would be a place for her at the hearth, along with a bath and fresh clothes. As she trudged her way up the slickened hillside, the bones of her feet fracturing with each misstep, Madeline could not shake the feeling of dread growing in her womb. Lightning split the sky into three behind her and the sound of a tree crashing to the ground echoed not much further in the distance. Why isn’t he here?
The thought was another death in itself, a seedling of despair that Madeline’s isolation would nurture into a capable monster over the next year though Madeline would not know it. Before she had realized it, the weathered oak door of the cabin stood ajar before her, the dim light filtering out through the space and warming her feet. “Maddie, dear, if you stand there much longer the room will be more of an icebox than a house. Come in, sweet one.”
Madeline’s brain recognized the soothing voice with an acute clarity that seemed to shock her nervous system into a sense of safety. Autopilot carried her past the threshold and into the cottage, her hand gently shutting the door behind her. Everything was as it had been the year prior, as well as all the years before that.
“There you are, child. I was beginning to worry about you being out there in that storm all alone. Would you like a cup of tea?” The woman’s features seemed to be constantly shifting between maiden and crone; an ethereal otherworldly beauty that filled the room with a sort of glimmer. Her body was tall and slender; her womb ready to bring life into existence- yet it was somehow aging and frail, worn down by years of living. “Well?”
Madeline opened her mouth to thank the woman for her offer, but all that escaped were roaches and a centipede half the length of her small intestine. Immediately, her teeth crashed back together, embarrassment flushing her face. Her hands clasped over her mouth as she nodded, tears welling up without mercy.
“No need to fret. Your bath is ready over there,” the woman nodded towards the hearth, “I’ll put the kettle on”
Madeline began to strip down to nothing, shedding her tattered wedding dress as though it were a second skin that had grown too small, before stepping into the large basin of hot water that had been prepared in front of the hearth. As the young woman’s body slowly relaxed and rested against the sides of the metal tub, she became acutely aware of how exhausted she was. Every year, reawakening was difficult, but this was the first year Madeline had ever allowed herself to notice what a toll it had taken. Chunks of flesh peppered with maggots floated to the top of the now murky brown water turning what had been a bath into more of a stew. Madeline was disgusted with herself and wondered if the fear around what she may look like was why he had yet to arrive. Time was precious to them both, and it was foreboding that he was squandering it so mercilessly.
Sensing her confusion, the woman placed a gentle hand atop Madeline’s head, her other hand reaching out to offer an unglazed ceramic mug. “I wish I had good news for you, my dear. Peter will not be joining us.”
The heart that had survived five years of instability and decay skipped a beat. Madeline let out a guttural wail; the sound an animal might create when dying an agonizing death. The woman’s heart hurt for Madeline, but she knew nothing could be done. This was not the first time a man such as Peter had forgotten his promise and, unfortunately for Madeline, it would not be the last. Men were fickle, like the seasons and the stars, a fact the woman had warned Madeline of from the start. Just as she had warned every child that came before her. As unfortunate as it were true, eventually the decay and stench becomes too much.
“Just relax for now, my child. The tea will heal you up nicely, and then we can chat.” Madeline merely nodded as she dutifully sipped the tea that tasted of blood and earth and worms. Nothing mattered, just as nothing should matter to the dead.
*******
No one understood how time passed below the grass; beneath the ground. For the living it is hard to conceptualize that everything is circular and their lives have already happened; that they have already been birthed and they have already returned to the soil from which everyone came. No one understood how dismal the ground can be when you can taste the sun yet not feel it. No one but Madeline, that is. Madeline knew all too well what an earthworm feels like as it makes its home within your once occupied ocular cavity. Or how the ground vibrates and shifts with every birth and death, though most are too busy to notice. She also knew how it felt to wait an entire year entirely aware that she was buried undead only to experience a week above ground, all while it remained entirely someone else’s decision.
Yet most of all, Madeline knew how to forgive. She knew how to love.
And she loved Peter McCull more than she had ever loved anyone. It was why she had agreed to marry him, afterall. It was also why she agreed to the contract designed for her by the Old One and he, the one that kept her spirit and carcass bound to this plane despite desperately wanting rest.
Peter was the reason she conversed with spiders and tree roots for all but a week of the year. He was the reason she had smiled, laughed, cried. She had been his favorite possession, and on their wedding day once their union was cemented before the Gods, he made sure she could never escape. She would forever be his, and despite the initial feelings of betrayal, Madeline had learned to be okay with this. After all, if his love for her was so deep and unwavering that he would cement her soul even in death, then obviously she must love him in return. So love him she did.
She loved him as the poison spread through her body and fog impeded the edges of her thoughts. She loved him as he left her body in a wooden casket below frozen ground in the cemetery, the priest echoing sentiments for those family members lost in grief. Madeline loved him as she was torn from a field full of doors right as her hand rotated the handle of a door meant just for her, the world falling beneath her feet into nothingness. Madeline had screamed his name when her soul entered her freshly cold carcass, every existing cell within her aching and confused.
“Don’t try to speak, Maddie. Give your body some time to adjust.” He had explained to her in hushed excitement, green eyes wide with astonishment. The Old One had kept their promise, yet Peter still fought back disbelief that his formerly dead bride was alive before him. Although her skin was now a pale canvas haphazardly painted with rouge, and her once oceanic eyes dulled over, she was alive. Tears streamed down Madeline’s face as her body trembled with a concoction laced with fear and unyielding pain. Pain caused by startled nerve endings and dry-rotted flesh that too easily tore. “I have missed you so much.”
His words sounded foreign and threatening as Madeline backed away, eyes searching the unfamiliar cottage for anything that might explain what was going on. That was the first time Madeline had laid eyes on Cate, the shimmer between old and new apparent even then. Cate kneeled down to Madeline, her golden-gray hair pooling on the floor at her feet, and smiled. “I am sorry, Child. I know this hurts, as it will always hurt. I can give you seven days, but you must give nature her due. That, I cannot alter.”
Peter looked at Cate, his mouth pursed in a thin line. “What do you mean seven days? You promised me you could bring her back.”
“And bring her back, I did. Yet even my power has limits, and I cannot deny the earth of what she is due. She will be enraged at what I have done already, pushing her further would not be wise. You shall have seven days every rotation of the sun, but that is the most I can do.”
“That wasn’t the deal, Hag.”
Suddenly, the woman’s face lost any trace of kindness as she pulled Madeline closer to her, who watched the interaction between the two with incoherence. “Watch your words, Peter McCull. I have done as you asked before payment was rendered, I would be careful of how I choose my favor if I were you.”
This seemed to quiet Peter down despite the fact that inside Madeline was still dying; her voice internally wailing in torment.
Just as it would every year for the next four years, each year presenting more decomposition than the last.
Each year, Peter’s eyes growing more disgusted and horrified until he could barely look at her all. Eventually, he abandoned her altogether.
*******
The fresh clothes and warm tea had made Madeline feel more whole which was partially, as Madeline had learned early on in her afterlife, due to Cate’s magic brew. While Cate was unable to entirely halt Madeline’s inevitable decay, while Madeline was awake the tea would at least pause the process and render it painless. The brew, along with the bewitched clothes, helped keep the girl mostly together. The woman tried her best to be grateful for all that Cate did for her, but the gravity of Peter’s abandonment was equivalent to a missing limb or organ. It was impossible to not notice. “Why isn’t he coming?” They were the first words Madeline had spoken since the ground spit her out half digested, the fraying of her vocal chords forcing every syllable to sound feral. “He promised.”
The Old One sat across from Madeline in a well-loved rocking chair decorated with sprigs of herbs and dried flowers, the rhythmic creaking lulling Madeline into calmer breathing. “I did warn him, child, that nature would take her due. I tried to explain the consequences of his actions prior to your resurrection, you see, but he could not see. To men, all actions are harmless except those that directly hurt them. As the years pass, however, it has become harder for him to deny that your beauty has faded and it is his fault. He selfishly imprisoned you here so that you may never leave, and just as cruelly he has left you here alone.”
Madeline wanted to be surprised by the witch’s words, to be so shocked that she felt moved to defend Peter, but she wasn’t. In truth, Madeline had known the year before, perhaps even the one before that, that her usefulness to Peter was fading. Fevered kisses transformed into gently held hands until finally diminishing to side glances from the other side of the cemetery bench. Yet despite his obvious disgust with her disintegration, Peter had always remained for the entire week. It was only a matter of time, thought Madeline as she stared at the bottom of her mug. He was always bound to tire of me. It was just a matter of time.
“I cannot reverse what he and I have done, Maddie. Your life is forfeit, as is your body, and there is nothing I can do to alter that. The best I can offer you is an exchange.”
“Exchange?”
Cate nodded as she stood, her body gracefully moving towards a shelf teetering to the brim with bottles and books. She searched for a moment before finding a small black bottle with a green stopper and then handing it to Madeline. “Down in the village, past the church and the fields, you will find a small farm with a broken gate. This is now the farm where Peter resides with his wife and daughter.” Cate continued, without acknowledgement of the sob that escaped Madeline. “The wife was sick before the child, but birthing took its toll. She will not live to see the girl reach a year. It is tragic, and completely unrelated to the illness that took you, he assures me. Tell her your name; explain who she is to you. If she agrees to drink the bottle, it will grant you access to her body. When she passes, her soul will stay here with me while her corpse rests below ground. She will see her daughter grow old, and she will not age, but her body will be yours.”
Madeline considered what was being suggested, wondering what Peter might do if he were forced to watch his family endure the same sort of torture he had so willingly allowed Madeline to suffer. Would he even notice that his second wife no longer seemed like herself, or would he immediately notice the tiny idiosyncrasies that made up Maddie’s personality and unyielding love for him? Could Madeline allow her soul to descend that far from God’s grace that she could take someone else’s life, even if that life was destined to fade to embers and smoke? “The daughter?” The words hurt, and no matter how slowly Madeline attempted to form them, the strain was still hellish and excruciating. Cate’s hands encircled the dead woman’s throat as though a human noose,her thin smile faltering for but a moment. The pain began to fade slowly at first; an insidious tearing that shifted into a dull ache.
“Try to save your words, dear. The daughter is yours to handle as you see fit, Madeline. You can raise her as your own, if you prefer, or you can bring her to me. This house could use more life in it.”
A clock chimed somewhere upstairs, it’s metallic ringing signalling the beginning of the witching hour. The entire house respected the time with silence, as crows outside began to sing in unison with an entity older than the sky itself. Madeline had foolishly allowed for two days to pass, and she knew that if she hesitated much longer, there would be nothing left of her by next fall. Despite the repercussions, Cate’s exchange was the only salvation Madeline had been offered.
As her feet floated above the gravel road, the moon full and filtering through her like moth-devoured curtains, Madeline’s mind went blank for the first time since her death. She felt nothing.
The void continued to filter into her soul through her veins as she passed the house her grief-stricken parents had resided in. She glided past without as much as a glance at the crumbling church where she had agreed to love Peter in life as well as in death. It was more than likely the same church where Madeline’s replacement had surrendered to the same agreement, a thought that caused the pit of fury in Madeline’s stomach to swell with intensity. Thoughts echoed around inside the girl’s mind with a melancholic panic; each imagined scenario worse than the last. Had he planned to abandon her all along? Did he plan to abandon the girl who wasn’t her?
Then, Madeline’s entire body halted in place as her eyes flooded and her breathing became shallow. She could feel him through the walls, his body a magnet that she couldn’t escape nor could she be close to. Memories of the last five years pieced together a patchwork quilt in her mind, momentarily subduing Madeline’s rage.
Maybe his absence this year had been a misunderstanding, or Cate had lied.
Peter loved her. He loved Madeline so much that he had bound her soul to this earth knowing that while her mind would remain her body would decay, eventually returning to ash and dirt. His love for her had been so possessive and infinite that he had paired his soul to hers simply so that no one else could have her. He wouldn’t abandon someone he fought so hard to keep, surely.
The reassurance was momentary as the air went still; the world unsure of how to breathe a girl who was somehow both alive as well as dead. Peter’s silhouette walked past a window, followed by the shadow of someone else, and what little flicker of hope that had resided extinguished into a wisp of nothing.
It had been true; all of it.
Peter McCull had replaced her as if she were a vase of wilted flowers, despite the fact that he had been the one to pick them, and now here he was parading around with a new arrangement in a fancier vase. It was unacceptable.
No. It was unforgivable.
Madeline allowed the betrayal to invigorate her as her decrepit fist slammed repeatedly against the front door of the McCull’s residence, each contact fracturing the delicate bones in her hand a little bit more. The wind began to scream around them, the elements enraged for her as Madeline could not muster a voice of her own, and the sky became deprived of all light. Footsteps skittered around inside like frightened mice, a meek voice asking Peter what was going on. A muffled “I don’t know” was uttered, yet that too was a lie, as Peter knew what week it was. He was simply a coward, just as he had always been.
More skittering; more panic. Then silence before the sliding of rusted metal as the deadbolt was undone. Even now, as the door slowly creaked open, Peter hid behind his wife. A contagion of limp brown hair and sunken eyes stood before Madeline, horror escaping her mouth as she stepped back from the corpse with a scream. Madeline didn’t fault her for being terrified but she also did not hesitate as she reached out and grasped the woman’s wrist, splinters of bone embedding themselves in someone who had done nothing wrong aside from answering the door.
“Hello, Peter.” The wife’s voice sounded mechanical and cold; a vocal reflection of the hurt in Madeleine's eyes. “Was I really that easy to replace? It didn’t even take you an entire year to insert a new family into the life we planned.” Madeline released the replacement wife’s wrist, the girl’s eyes remaining terrified as her body served as a vessel for Madeline’s rage.
“Maddie, I can explain.” The words stuttered out of his mouth, insincere and panicked, as Peter backed up against a pale yellow wall decorated with age. “I’m sorry. I never should have asked the witch to do what she did. It was selfish of me.”
The wife laughed as Madeline stepped closer to Peter, her left eye fogged over and bulging. “That’s what you’re sorry for?” Madeline thought of their first kiss under the willow tree left of Corkroad bridge, and how he had promised she was his forever. Peter’s wife began to cry the tears Madeline had exhausted. “You’re sorry for binding me here? To this existence? To you? Or are you sorry that you didn’t take Cate seriously when she warned you the ground would dissolve me piece by piece every time you lowered me back into it? Is that what you’re apologizing for, Peter?”
“Yes. I’m sorry for all of it.” Peter’s eyes darted from Madeline to the sickly vessel, a pained look carved into his face like a scar. “I’m sorry, Maddie, but Alice has nothing to do with this. Let her go.”
Alice. Her replacement had a name. A cry broke the silence from a room upstairs, and Madeline was reminded of what Cate had said about a daughter. The child’s voice sounded strong; angry even, as her wails filled the small home causing her parents to panic further. Madeline could feel her connection to Alice begin to fade and knew she was running out of time. She turned to the wife, her face softening as best it could, as she spoke directly to her.
Your daughter is safe, that I can promise you. You are dizzy and tired, your blood thin and weak. Did the illness start on your wedding day?
Alice nodded slowly as the cries grew louder. Madeline remembered the lavender tea Peter had brought her every night, including their wedding day. If she forced herself to remember, she could still taste the bitterness it left in her mouth just before the coughing fits would resume.
It is the tea, Alice. Lavender laced with arsenic. When you are gone, he will intern you for but a week a year, as he did to me. The earth will eat away at you and he will lose interest. He will abandon you. He will replace you.
“No. That’s not true.” Alice’s voice broke through, wavering in its certainty.
“What’s not true? Alice, whatever she is telling you is a lie.”
Ask him, Alice. Ask him who I am; who I was. If not for me or for yourself, for your daughter. You and I are beyond saving, yet she is not.
Alice looked from Madeline to Peter, knowing the answer before she asked. Down in the pit of her stomach, Alice had always known why she was sick. She had even attempted to escape once despite her love for Peter keeping her chained to him. “Who is she, Peter?”
“She is no one. Not anymore.”
Lightning struck a tree outside, the echoes of it crashing to the ground shaking the house. More lies. Ask him again.
“Who is she, Peter?”
“My first wife. She died on our wedding night.”
Madeline saw crimson as lunged for Peter’s throat, her mind feral as it compartmentalized what little sanity she had left. Ask him how. The floor caught their bodies as they struggled, Alice watching from her post near the still open door. The baby’s cries had dulled to abandoned whimpers while the house inhaled the violence. The trees outside urged Madeline on as her grip around Peter’s trachea grew tighter and her knees dug into his chest.
“How did I die, darling? Tell your precious new wife what you did to me. Tell her what you promised.” The words devoured the remaining integrity of her vocal chords, the strands snapping as all the hurt bubbled out of Madeline as though an over-boiled kettle. She needed him to say it, to admit what he had done.She needed him to admit he had used her, manipulated her and then murdered her. Alice and her daughter deserved to know what hell would await them when they died. Peter deserved to pay for his sins before he could ever hurt someone else.
“Stop.” Madeline looked up at Alice, as Peter’s eyes began to roll towards the back of his skull. “Killing him won’t give you your life back. It won’t change what he’s done. All revenge will do is make you more like him than you would ever want to be.”
He married me and then put me in the ground. He loved me for a week out of the year and then when the consequences of his actions became too disgusting to face, he left me to the worms. He watched my skin start to fall from my bones and maggots crawl from my mouth and he decided to move on. He killed me, like he’s killing you, and then he abandoned me.
“I’m sorry, Ma-” Madeline released one of her hands from around Peter’s neck and slammed it into the side of his jaw sending a tooth spiralling across the room. Alice moved to stop her but was held back by an aged hand on her shoulder.
“My child, this is not your fight nor is it your place to tell the scales which way they should tip.” Cate held out a small bottle to Alice, as she turned the woman away from the primal tempest of blood and pleas for mercy. “I cannot reverse what he has done to you, but I can offer you the chance to see your daughter grow old.”
Alice examined the bottle gently in her hands, turning it over in her hand like a smooth stone. “What do you mean?”
She means the damage is done. You will be dead before the year is over, unless you become like me.
“No, not like her.” Cate corrected, as she began to lead Alice up the stairs to where her daughter awaited her. “Dear Maddie was already rotting when she was brought to me; the gods already knew what they were owed. This will bind you to me before your death, so once your life is over you will belong to no one. You will not age, you will not rot. Consider it a gift of immortality, if you must.”
Madeline’s body had begun to crumble during her assault as organs and flesh fell like ash from what remained of her skeleton. Although she still had five day remaining, the shell of a girl knew that she would finally sleep before then. Both her eyes had gone black, but she could feel the sticky metal-scented fluid all over her face and hands.
Just as she could feel the stillness of Peter’s chest as she collapsed against it, her mind both heartbroken and relieved. Upstairs, she could hear Cate singing to the baby as Alice paced back and forth, debating the life she wanted for her child while dissociating from the idea that she was now a widow. The storm and the trees had begun to quiet outside as the sun started to rise over the horizon, the warmth welcome on what little flesh remained on Madeline’s hunched over back.
I loved you, but I never wanted this.
The void heard yet refused to answer as the final beat of the ghost’s heart sounded.
The world went quiet, and finally, Madeline Finch allowed herself to rest.