Sacrificing Virgins Read Online Free
Author: John Everson
Tags: horror;stories;erotic;supernatural;Jonathan Maberry
to the night that Emma had died. On a hunch, he looked up his calendar on the computer to see when his business trip had been the year before, when heâd seen her walk towards him as he shoveled snow from the drive. Heâd left on the Monday, and been shoveling snow Sunday at duskâ¦March 21st.
He couldnât narrow down the previous sighting to a date, but he knew it had been an unseasonably warm day in Marchâ¦
Eric marked March 21st on his calendar so he would remember, and set it to repeat on the same day every year. The entry simply read Emma Hodgson .
Over the next few weeks, Eric researched the history of his house, and found that it had been built in the early â50s. Its first owners had been a young couple named Jerry and Emma Hodgson. Four years after purchasing, both had disappeared, and when the mortgage was six months in arrears, the bank had reclaimed the property and sold it to another couple who owned it for the next thirty-one years, while a subdivision grew up all around them. Two more owners had held the property before Eric bought it. In all his searches, he never could come up with an answer to where Jerry had gone.
Eric finally researched the mythology behind willow trees too, and found them closely identified with the feminine aspect and intuition and deep emotions, as well as with dreaming, enchantment, rebirth and spring.
Fitting , he thought.
That summer, Eric didnât plant his vegetable garden. Instead, he cleared the topsoil off the area heâd been planting. Not far from the willow tree, at the edge of his garden plot, he found a large round boulder buried a couple feet below the soil. He dug carefully around it, focusing on the area pointing away from the boulderâ¦he guessed that stone would likely be a poor manâs headstone.
The clay didnât get any easier to turn over the deeper he went, and Ericâs shoulders were aching when he scraped away another thin layer of orange clay to reveal a ragged edge of some kind of material. He chipped away at the ground until more of the fragment was revealed. It appeared to some kind of white silk.
He worked more carefully then, and little by little, he freed the material from the soilâ¦and then his shovel scraped ever so slightly against something that wasnât dirt. It could have been white rock, but Eric knew better. He climbed out of the hole and got a small garden hand shovel, and carefully carved the earth until the vertebrae and jaw were revealed. A half hour later, he sat back in the hole, and stared into the black pits that remained of Emmaâs eyes.
Her skull stared back at him, sightless in the cool earth. Beneath the sweat streaming from every pore, Eric shivered. âIâm sorry, Emma,â he whispered at the skull beneath his garden. âBut I had to know for sure. I wonât bother you again.â
Gently he pressed the dirt back over her face, and then climbed out of the hole. He cut a branch of lilac from the bush nearby, and tossed the fragrant purple flowers into the hole in offering. Then he filled the grave back in, and lifted the boulder out of its pit so that it visibly marked her resting place clearly once more.
Eric replaced his garden plot with a stand of liliesâ¦
Eric read Emmaâs diary cover to cover that summer, walking the yard to try to find places and views she described. Everything was different now, with houses now all around. But the willow remained, and just as she described doing more than fifty years before, he frequently rested there, content in the summer shade beneath its rain of branches. Somehow, in his focus to plant a proper memorial on her grave, his own personal ennui and exhaustion disappeared. How could he feel empty inside when others had experienced so much worse? He still had his life, and his warm house and the comforts of a million things that Emma and Jerry had never even imagined.
In the fall, he filled the entire area with
He couldnât narrow down the previous sighting to a date, but he knew it had been an unseasonably warm day in Marchâ¦
Eric marked March 21st on his calendar so he would remember, and set it to repeat on the same day every year. The entry simply read Emma Hodgson .
Over the next few weeks, Eric researched the history of his house, and found that it had been built in the early â50s. Its first owners had been a young couple named Jerry and Emma Hodgson. Four years after purchasing, both had disappeared, and when the mortgage was six months in arrears, the bank had reclaimed the property and sold it to another couple who owned it for the next thirty-one years, while a subdivision grew up all around them. Two more owners had held the property before Eric bought it. In all his searches, he never could come up with an answer to where Jerry had gone.
Eric finally researched the mythology behind willow trees too, and found them closely identified with the feminine aspect and intuition and deep emotions, as well as with dreaming, enchantment, rebirth and spring.
Fitting , he thought.
That summer, Eric didnât plant his vegetable garden. Instead, he cleared the topsoil off the area heâd been planting. Not far from the willow tree, at the edge of his garden plot, he found a large round boulder buried a couple feet below the soil. He dug carefully around it, focusing on the area pointing away from the boulderâ¦he guessed that stone would likely be a poor manâs headstone.
The clay didnât get any easier to turn over the deeper he went, and Ericâs shoulders were aching when he scraped away another thin layer of orange clay to reveal a ragged edge of some kind of material. He chipped away at the ground until more of the fragment was revealed. It appeared to some kind of white silk.
He worked more carefully then, and little by little, he freed the material from the soilâ¦and then his shovel scraped ever so slightly against something that wasnât dirt. It could have been white rock, but Eric knew better. He climbed out of the hole and got a small garden hand shovel, and carefully carved the earth until the vertebrae and jaw were revealed. A half hour later, he sat back in the hole, and stared into the black pits that remained of Emmaâs eyes.
Her skull stared back at him, sightless in the cool earth. Beneath the sweat streaming from every pore, Eric shivered. âIâm sorry, Emma,â he whispered at the skull beneath his garden. âBut I had to know for sure. I wonât bother you again.â
Gently he pressed the dirt back over her face, and then climbed out of the hole. He cut a branch of lilac from the bush nearby, and tossed the fragrant purple flowers into the hole in offering. Then he filled the grave back in, and lifted the boulder out of its pit so that it visibly marked her resting place clearly once more.
Eric replaced his garden plot with a stand of liliesâ¦
Eric read Emmaâs diary cover to cover that summer, walking the yard to try to find places and views she described. Everything was different now, with houses now all around. But the willow remained, and just as she described doing more than fifty years before, he frequently rested there, content in the summer shade beneath its rain of branches. Somehow, in his focus to plant a proper memorial on her grave, his own personal ennui and exhaustion disappeared. How could he feel empty inside when others had experienced so much worse? He still had his life, and his warm house and the comforts of a million things that Emma and Jerry had never even imagined.
In the fall, he filled the entire area with
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