Between stars and children

"You call it...hurt"

The slender figure of Dean Kalder manoeuvred through the delivery boys of Grots lane. His body moved with the precision of a dust storm, his long coat swept through the empty air with effortless grace. His legs long and lean with the work from his childhood, seemed weary in their journey, but eager in their movement. A worn leather medical bag hung at his side, which gave him an oddly eerie expression that caused people to avoid brushing against him. His face once delicate with boyish beauty, now looked meek and tired-not with age but stress. Walking through the busy arrivals of potatoes and bread his direction took to the moors. His breath pattered into quick almost panic stricken intakes, his chest expanded quickly, trying to find enough air to cool his blundering heart. The wind began to pick up in ferocious moments of storms of their own starting, the sound of troubled mothers walking their children to school skated on it like a distant bell, chiming on Sunday. Once out of the awoken market district, Dean broke out into a soft sprint. There was nobody around to question him to where he would be going, the chemist had yet to open and his wife rarely left the house anymore. He missed Margaret the way a dog has to gnaw off their own leg once caught in a trap, but he planted the trap himself. He knew she would have to be killed. He knew she would disappear, just as Thomas Yates had to disappear and so would the next children after him. At the top of the steep hill where the church sat, the village could be seen bellow. Dean remembered Hound and how fascinated he was with the structure of Ectem. He noted how everything led inwards, circling each other from the wilderness of the moors, but only the church stood separate.

the church had not been open as frequently as it used to, not now that vicar Paul had been resting in some distant hide away, people had expected some form of hidden sour disposition from him, as his wife dyeing became quite news at the time of her passing, with everyone whispering of small Persephone and what was to come of her. No one had expected him to fall away from the lord, it had been all too sudden and some thought of it to be untrue. Hound in his hungry need for the truth pushed him as the villain. He had torn apart a community who relied on the word of God, it wasn't that he was wrong, it was that he looked wrong. His face looked like a butchers window, his towering stature, his isolation. He was just different. He became someone to blame. The killer had yet to be caught and tensions were beginning to run high with the fear of parents trying to protect their children. The streets no longer seemed what they used to be, the sound of chain link fences echoed with the voices of lost children, rats crawled the streets with pride and houses began sinking into the ground. The clean whiteness of the building now appeared dusted, from its lack of use.

knocking on the grand wooden door, Dean awaited a response from the person inside. A small slip of crumpled paper and a charcoal pencil was pushed from the other side, through the crack underneath of the door. Dean knew the procedure, he knew what to write, how to hold the pencil, who he was writing to. One small circle was drawn with four smaller circles radiating from each direction, for the next circle to overlap, leaning slightly to the right in a wavering fluidity, finally the last smallest circle sitting in the middle. Once the symbol was drawn Dean looked behind his shoulder before pushing it back under the door. After a moment of recognition the door opened slowly to reveal a dark church with no one in sight. Stepping inside, Dean welcomed the darkness, feeling the cold dampness seep into his bones. He felt the claw like hand cup under chin, pulling his head back against a male shoulder.

"he shall be here soon"

"I hope before the winds change" The man's faced dropped into Deans hair

the man behind Dean appeared hunched, his sickle skin stretched over his bones, making them puncture through his back like he was wearing an old bed sheet. His eyes drooped with an almost sonic beauty that told stories and drew people into them, their deep richness of blue often drifted into a milky white, reflected what could be seen as the face of the moon. His hands were now mainly bone that without skin could feel little of what his heart desired, he moved his hollowed finger tip across Deans cheekbone hoping to feel his blush, but quickly retreated further into the darkness when he could not feel the warmth he dreamed of.