Beating hearts

Chapter 20

Wrinkled wrinkled little witch,
Growing old is such a bitch,
Down below the world so far,
Her soul swims in evil tar,
The blazing fire in her eyes,
Holds her victim's ghostly cries,
Wrinkled wrinkled little witch,
Grabs your heart with a wrench,
Down her throat it goes,
Then her beauty starts to grow.
But as it fades, her hunt begins,
And when she  picks you,
You will not win.

~

Zac shakes his head. "Ara, it wasn't a woman we called over, it was a man, his name was William Arlum. He was about 70 years old," Zac says with a calm, but confused voice.

He knew she had gone through so much that week, he thought it was her mind messing with her. Her eyes played tricks with her. She had just come out of a crazy dream state.

"The person I saw, was a woman." She states.

" no, we called him there, we spoke with him. I'm not sure what you thought you seen, but it was a man that came to the house."

She shakes her head. She remembers her, because of the feeling she got, the moment she saw the odd woman standing a few feet from her, in the middle of Morgan's living room.
She felt the strange, dark and gloomy feeling of death, not just grieving her sister feeling of death, but pure cringing internal death. She felt it deep in her gut, but also in that moment she remembered her sister and how she died practically in her arms.

She forgot about the lady that terrified her, she got consumed in grief, and hadn't thought about that day, until Zac asked her.

She stood up from the couch and arched her eyebrows in a downward frown.
"I know what I saw Zac. It was a woman. She had dark skin and curly hair, she was somewhat tall, her eyes were dark brown and she had this weird scar on the side of her face and.." she paused.

Her eyes widened. "A scar," she whispered to herself.

"What?" Zac asked.

She remembered the night she talked to the waitress at the diner, about the witch. Sarah said she had a jagged scared on the side of her face. Her description of the witch matched perfectly to  the appearance of the woman  Ara had seen. Her eyes widened.

"Do you still have it?" Ara asked him.

"Have what?"

"The number, of the person you called," she said while going around the apartment and digging through papers. "I want to talk to her."

Zac sighs, he wished he had never brought it up, Ara was fine, she was happy, why did he haft to go and open old wounds. Wounds that were in the midst of healing. He got up off the couch and went to her, he put his hand on her shoulders.

"Who cares who saw what, that's all in the past now, I'm sorry I even mentioned it. Let's just forget about it," he said hoping she would agree, but knowing she wouldn't.

"Do you still have the number?"

Zac licked his dry lips. "Yeah, Morgan gave it to me, just in case you..., in case it happened again."

"I want to call it," she said staring deeply into his blue eyes.
He nods his head and goes into the kitchen, grabs his wallet and digs through it until he found the little slip of paper with the number.
He really didn't want her to make that call, he knew she would feel crazy when it would be, Mr. William frank Arlum, that picked up the phone, and not a woman. But he gives her the paper anyway.

She stares at the ten-digit number, takes out her cell phone and starts dialing.

She waits for it to start ringing. But instead, she hears the voice of a machine saying, "Sorry, but the number you are trying to reach has been disconnected."

Zac hears as well. He didn't think anything strange of it, but Ara did, she knew something was up, and she was determined to find out. But she wasn't going to tell Zac that. It would just worry him.

She smiles. "You're probably right, it was just my mind making me think I saw something different. I'm sorry I've been crazy about this whole thing." She says leaning in and giving him a hug. The warmth of his body actually did make her calm down, and want to forget about it all, at least for the time being.

~

The next morning Ara and Zac decided to divide and concur, while Zac was out looking for a job, Ara was out looking for a well needed mattress.
The two had to spoon on the small couch all night, occasionally Ara would fall off onto the wooden floor when Zac decided to turn around and face the other way.

2 hours of mind-numbing, bed shopping later, she finally found one that was in their price range, she stepped out of the mattress store, took out her phone and called Zac, but there was no answer, it rang for a long time, then went to voice mail, which was strange because he usually always answered his phone.

"He must be in a job interview right now." She thought to herself.

Without realizing it, she had walked quite a distance from the store she came out of.
She was about to turn around and head back, wait for Zac to return her call. But that's when she heard it, the familiar sound of murmuring and sad gasps, she looked straight ahead of her and saw a small group of people gathered around a little shop, it was swarmed with ambulances and cop cars, she walked faster toward the group of strangers, tears were already in her eyes as she remembered the night of her sister's death, it was all too familiar and was almost impossible to take in.
But she continued to head straight, toward the little doomed shop, she was yet again curious to see what the people had gathered to see.
But this time it wouldn't be her sister lying there, it wouldn't be someone she loved. It couldn't be.

As she approached closer, she wasn't been able to get a glimpse of what they have grouped up to watch.
Because she had stopped walking, she stood there on the frosty sidewalk, staring at her reflection in the window of an old ford truck. Zacs truck.

It was Parked right there on the curb, along with many other cars.
His vehicle was parked so close to the little gift store, that was now swarmed with ambulances and all kinds of strangers gathered around, standing there like they were watching some kind of show.

She broke into a run, it couldn't be Zac, it just couldn't, she kept thinking, as she ran on the iced over sidewalk, somehow managing not to slip and fall.

She reached the store right as the paramedics were bringing out a gurney, it held a body covered up in a sheet.

Daja vu hit her like semi-truck. She felt like she could throw up all of her intestines, if that was Zac under that sheet she would die, right then and there, and would have to be wheeled away on the gurney with him.
She was shaking uncontrollably.

"Wh..wha..what happened?" She asks the man standing next to her.

The tall scruffy looking man, shook his head and crossed his arms.
"The store owner, was helping out some customers, when he just collapsed, I guess it was a heart attack." He says in a sad voice.

Her hot breath fogged up the cold winter air as she breathed heavily, and relief washed over her. She ran back to Zacs truck, looking all around for him.

She began to cry hysterically when she finally saw Zac come out of the hardware store across the street. She ran across the road not even caring to see if a car was coming. She slammed into Zacs chest and rapped her scrawny arms around his neck. She couldn't even try to control her emotions, they overwhelmed her.

"Hey, what happened?" He said wiping away the continuously falling tears from her face.

"There was an accident over there, Someone died, I saw your truck, and I thought,"

he didn't give her time to finish he pulled her back into his warm arms, and combed the back of her head with his fingers.

"Everything's okay." He says.

She buried her blubbery face into his chest. There was no way she could ever live without him. He was her whole world now, her everything. And she was his.