Blackthorne, Sweetbrier

Chapter 1 - In the Tall Grass pt 1

I'm splitting this chapter into two (2) parts as to not have 20 pages of writing in one place :') second part will be directly after this one, of course.

In the tall grass is where her body laid, dormant. Her weeping sister was on her knees next to the girl, pleading to the gods.

"Please, please! Charlotte, I can't lose you!"

A viscous, shimmering gold liquid poured from the young child's right eye. It was as bright as the rising sun in the east. The sister pulled Charlotte into her lap, allowing a slurred version of an old incantation to slip from her lips:

Out from the weeds under the sky,
I break the reeds that held you under.
Raising the dead under the moonlight,
Together we fled from the distant thunder.

May your body rise, take flight.
May we, together, hide within the light.
Hear my pleading cry, O Gods of the Divine!
Nevermore shall you be tangled 'neath the gourd's vine.

Once the old saying was completed, she clenched her eyes shut. Forehead to forehead she whispered, "Please, please, please. She's just a chi—" The girl whipped her head away, hacking up blood. The knife wound on her arm, thankfully, wasn't bleeding as horribly as before, but the one in her abdomen seemed to be doing more damage.

"Evelyn!" Another teenager appeared from the thickets of the nearby woods. Despite her limp she kept a fast pace.

"Tonnie— I... I don't know what to do!" Evelyn began to sob.

Antoinette dropped down onto the ground next to the sisters, heaving. "We go back, get a change of clothes, and then we get on the train heading northeast."

"We're going to...?"

"I know your history there, but that's all we've got. The townspeople won't know a thing about us and as far as the rest of the Barlowe's are aware the cottage burned to the ground with you two inside." Tonnie then scooped up Charlotte and the pair went back to the scene of the incident; the Barlowe home.

It was a modest place, a little cottage on the outskirts of a bustling city in Virginia. Nothing too special, especially now with the kitchen on fire and blood covering the floors. Evelyn couldn't help but cry from the chaos and at the sight of her mother, who laid at the bottom of the stairs. She stared in remorseful contempt at the shriveled old woman for not more than a minute.

"I'm so sorry, Eve..." Antoinette said as she set Charlotte down beside the front door. 

"You did what you had to. She was practically rabid," Evelyn replied. Her heavy stare never left her mother's hands, which still grasped the bloodied dinner fork and a steak knife.

Tonnie sighed and looked away for a moment. "Come on, we need to hurry before someone catches a whiff of the smoke."

Evelyn nodded. "Right... right." And she turned away from the carnage without looking back. She went past the body and up the stairs, towards her and Charlotte's room. Although the kitchen was ablaze just a floor below, only minimal damage had fallen upon the second floor at that time. The girl packed as many clothes and keepsakes she could find, yet one evaded her: Charlotte's stuffed animal, a jackalope. She knew no matter what, Charlotte would need her friend. The rising sense of panic grew exponentially as she could feel the heat rising and the smoke leaking through the floorboards, yet no jackalope showed.