G H O S T T O W N
Darkness had just begun to take over the evening sky, consuming the light of day as the sun was forced to retreat beneath the barren horizon. Storm clouds the color of charcoal loomed overhead. Having almost enveloped three quarters of the sky, they continued to march westward at a steady pace, absorbing every ray of escaping sunlight until all was grey, with blurry cracks of deep purple emanating from the foggy gaps between the clouds. Every now and then the world that lay under this ominous blanket would be lit up, several times brighter than the sun by jagged trails of sizzling electricity, making the atmosphere glow with a violet hue. However, this light show lasted no longer than a jiffy. Soon after every strike, the high pitched howling of the banshee wind was silenced by the deafening and fearful growl of the thunder that followed every single time, like clockwork.
Unfazed by the unforgiving elements, a crude wooden structure, just over a story tall, stood boldly on the outskirts of Fásach- an abandoned ghost town in the middle of nowhere. The sinister church- the devil's church -lay stranded, lost in the vast lugubrious plains of Bás Fuar. The settlement had been built by a mismatched bunch of rebels and outcasts who were shunned and exiled from the villages up in the mystical Draíochta Forest that blanketed the Duaircis Hills. The town now lay in ruins as an example of the grizzly aftermath of the satanic riots that tore the town apart. Every street, every curb and every ally was littered with rotting corpses of the residents of that town. What were once the clay and wood houses where families thrived, now lay in piles of rubble, mixed with bloodstained weapons and dismembered bodies. Those that escaped the killings, did not get far before they perished at the mercy of mother nature. Those that survived were very few, but they too were forced to kill within their clan due to the differences among themselves. Eventually, only one remained, she called herself Seirbhíseach Don Diabhal.
Seventeen years after the killings, she stood inside a pentagram carved into the floor of the church outside the border of the town. Before her lay a heap of broken wooden dolls and the skeletal remains of innocent children who were given up or kidnapped during the riots to be used as sacrifice to please the Devil. With long silver hair, glistening with cold sweat, tucked into the hood of her ebony cloak, the old dame stood with her head held low, mumbling a verse from the book she held in her right hand. Her frail legs trembled and shivered with every gust of wind that blew into the rickety building through the broken windows near the roof.
Suddenly, her raspy voice turned into a loud desperate cry as she spoke faster and with more determination than ever. She tightened her grip around the hilt of a dagger which she held in her left hand. As if on her command, the strong gale swirled around the church, picking up dust and dried grass from the surrounding fields. The lightning grew more concentrated overhead until the burning beams of electricity clustered into a thick pillar, reaching down from the clouds which were spiralling around it. The atmosphere had a hellish purple tinge spilling out of the blinding white column which began to resemble a hand with long hellish fingers, reaching out, down upon the earth. The tornado whirling about the church had grown so strong that the wind itself was ripping apart the walls of the rotting structure, sending wooden debri flying out. The powerful gust destroyed the roofing panels and the ceiling came crashing down, only to be sucked outward and around into the formidable vortex. The four walls didn't last much longer and soon it was only the satanic priestess that remained, unharmed and unaffected by the supernatural storm. She hovered just a few feet over the pentagram, her cloak flapping wildly, dagger pointing skyward and the book still held firmly in her right hand as she continued to chant verses from it. The tornado swirled around her, stronger than ever and the index finger of the electric hand, reached down from the thunder clouds, sparking and sizzling, burning brighter than a thousand suns, as it grew closer and closer to the dagger the priestess was holding. A long, thin tendril of purple energy stretched out from the tip of the fingernail of the massive hand and made contact with the tip of the blade and all of a sudden, everything froze in its place for a fraction of a second before it all disappeared. As if an invisible black hole had sucked everything away at light speed. There was not a single cloud in the clear midnight sky and a million stars twinkled with brilliant colors overhead. The air was still as still could be and no trace was left of the devil's church that once stood on that very patch of land which now merged flawlessly into the desolate landscape of the Bás Fuar plains, and once again, the deafening silence returned to absorb the forgotten ghost town.
