Free Blackened Spiral Down by Pete Altieri Page B

covered her in was mostly gone, and some of the rope I tied her up with remained.  The dress she had been wearing was falling off her in places, exposing a sickly, molded grey flesh that was stretched tightly to her frame.  Her eyes bore gaping holes into me, as I could not take my glance away from them.  Those once gorgeous blue eyes were now black pools of hate.  She let out another one of her high-pitched laughs, exposing a mouth full of rotten teeth and black tongue, and a whiff of that rancid breath brought tears to my eyes.
    She told me that I was cursed for what I had done.  Her voice was different than I remembered it.  It was inhuman.  It was rough with a gravelly texture, as if she had been gargling with broken glass for the past year.  As she stood before me, uttering her hate-filled words about what I had done, she told me that my life would now be plagued with horrible cursed events.  I tried to respond, but I was frozen.  I found myself unable to retort, and it was probably best, because the sooner she would go back to her watery grave, the better.  The image of her rotten face and cackling laugh haunted my dreams every night since that one year anniversary of her murder.  From that night forward, as soon as I closed my eyes, I would see her.  I could not escape her clutches to me in the dream world.  Some nights I would wake up screaming, covered in sweat and praying for the sun to come up.
     
     
     
     
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    It was almost a month after Rosemarie’s return in 1925 when the curse began to show itself.  A strange parasite attacked the apple orchard at the farm, and we lost an entire crop of apples.  This was strange, since that had never happened since my father started the orchard part of our business.  Since this was approximately 15% of our business income, it did hurt us financially and did cause me to have to let go eight employees who I hired to pick apples and tend to the trees.  Then in September, we experienced a series of strange occurrences at the farm. We had a majority of our cows, hogs, and chickens die from some inexplicable disease that no one was able to diagnose.  I knew what it was, though.  I knew it was Rosemarie and the curse she told me about on the 4 th of July.  With all of these uncanny events happening, the farm was in real danger unless things improved in the spring.  I could only hope that the curse would not continue, but I could not have been more wrong.
    As if the bad things we had experienced were not enough, then we had several bad accidents that resulted in deaths of our staff.  One of our long term employees, Sammy Ray, who ran the hog farm, died from a fall when repairing one of the hog confinement roofs.  Another employee who worked in the dairy was killed by lightning just before Thanksgiving, and one of our housekeepers was found hanging in the back yard for no apparent reason.  A series of strange things happened around the house too – such as electricity going on and off, water pipes bursting for no reason, and doors that would lock on their own.  Amanda was convinced the house was haunted.  I knew she wasn’t far off with that assessment.
    In January 1926, the curse ratcheted up even more.  Amanda had been feeling tired all the time and finally decided to go to the doctor.  Our local family doctor set her up with some tests in New York City, where they had the best technology available.  She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  She got bad quickly and was bedridden in less than three months.  Elijah and Christopher took it hard, not understanding why their mother was not able to play with them, read to them, or do much of anything as the cancer took hold and refused to let go.  Her constant crying and moaning in pain was maddening, and I did my best to keep my composure, despite the overwhelming guilt, knowing that it was because of my terrible sin that she was looking death in the face.  Amanda died in May of that year in a