Cursed // Jake Kiszka

Chapter Two

Heed the drip drip drip of the leaking tap. The tick tick tick of the Grandfather clock. I wasn't where I was supposed to be. I wasn't anywhere at all. Bodiless and void of myself. Weightless as I felt the passing of time run through me like the striking of lightening through a tree.

Jacob was standing in the room. No longer decaying, the walls unburdened of peeling paint and cracks in the foundations. I could see him. He was waiting for me. His anticipation drawing me closer.

Had I died?

"You're not dead."

He said it so sanguinely. As if death had no place here. I turned my head to the side and found myself standing precisely where I had been standing only a moment before. Back within the confines of my bones. Except, I wasn't. Not really.

"Where am I?" I asked, taking note of the cast iron bed that was freshly made and without a hint of mould or mildew.

"Here. There. Nowhere." He replied, that voice now rooted firmly within his flesh that stood before me.

"I must be dreaming." I surmised, frantically trying to ascertain my wakefulness.

He was perfect. Dressed in the same clothes that I had seen in that grainy old image from the newspaper. His scarf sitting snugly at his throat, his shirt open to his chest. That wild hair untamed as he stood there, in a room that should have been rotting away.

"Why must you be dreaming?" He asked, immediately drawing my attention to the flutter in my heart as I listened to him.

The way the light hit his face from the window, the way the furniture looked polished and new. How could any of it be seeped in reality? I could see every pore on his face, every scar.

"Because you're dead, Jacob." I whispered, "I don't understand."

Every shred of his humanity was laid bare. I could feel his sadness. His regret. The fear in those fathomless brown eyes. The moment he had expelled his very last breath was a memory I could feel so tangibly. It wasn't a Grandfather clock ticking away, it was the final beats of his heart coming to an eternal rest.

"But here, I am alive." He replied, taking a step forward. "See..."

He felt solid. His hand coming to rest upon my cheek. No longer the icy touch I had known, in it's place was a soft warmth that made my breath cease. I could feel the tears begin to surge up from my throat. Welling at the corners of my eyes as they dripped onto the back of his hand. It wasn't a leaking tap at all, it was the sound of my inevitable sobs.

"How can this be?" I whimpered, "What is this magic?"

"You opened the door." He crooned, pulling me closer. "That was all you had to do..."

His body was unrelenting in the way that it felt so mortal. I could feel the fibres of his shirt. The softness of his chest. The warmth of his breath as he cast me into the circle of his arms.

"What do you want with me?" I asked, not daring to look up into his face.

He would not have it, though. He had brought me here for a reason. Breaking my resolve as he lifted my chin in delicate hands. And there in his eyes was the ghost of a memory I'd yet to grasp.

"Help me, Emily..." He whispered, "Help me break the curse..."

When I was a child, I heard voices. Some would sing and some would scream. You soon find you have few choices. I learned the voices died with me.

When I was a child, I'd sit for hours. Staring into open flame. Something in it had a power. Could barely tear my eyes away.

"How?!" I cried, the bitterness of knowing he was dead coursing through my veins. "Tell me how... I beg you..."