In Dire Need of Cessation

Twenty-Three

Like hanging cobwebs, the women swung limply from the branches, acting like the pendulum that was measuring the time I had left with Bella. Their lose hair, varying in shades, but all the same color, brown, was hiding their faces as it drooped down, certifying that it was dehumanizing the women by not exposing their identities. All seventeen women, strung in a circle, facing inward like the ghosts were executing a ritual, were similar to the dead flowers that wilted around us, their inert heads nodding in the quickening wind, and their feet, flimsy with roughly fifteen foot between them and the terrain.

The smell of death, a sickening, pungent, stench that would make anyone, even me, want to scour their skin off in the shower after this discovery, crazed with the images and odor of this experience, wanting nothing more to forget. Guiltily, I was familiar with this smell, as was my family, but not for many years had we personally stumbled across the issue of corpses.

"Have you notified Emmett and Rosalie, in case they were to discover anymore on their way to Port Angeles?" I asked Jasper as he was beside me, while both Bella and Alice were together on the other side of the swaying bodies, whispering away. Rose and Em had decided, after some searching on the internet, that driving to Port Angeles, which housed eight churches, was one of the best ideas, especially because the city beside it, Sequim, had an additional seven churches, while a town close by, slightly west of Port Angeles, named Clallam Bay, had two.

It had been Alice and Jasper's job to visit the nine churches in Forks, and discreetly require some holy water. Most Roman Catholic churches typically had a stoup out front for holy water, but that was hardly enough. In addition, priests did not usually bless gallons of water at a time- which was extremely burdening. Therefore, my siblings had to collect, what I presumed, a cup full at a time- hence why, when Bella had confided in me, telling me her local pastor had kindly and generously donated barrels of holy water to protect her from any revengeful spirits of the slaves, I was rather surprised.

"Yes, I told them while you were on your way over here," Jasper answered, hands in his pockets and eyes on the dead. "I couldn't get through to Carlisle and Esme, though." I nodded solemnly, biting the inner skin of my mouth in thought.

"I think we should take them down now," I said. "Out of respect, and assess the injuries. Surely, with the killers being dead, they couldn't touch the women?" I questioned, remembering how Bella's hand fell through my hand.

"I don't know, brother. The ghosts are not akin to Bella, though, are they? They're different, less permanent and more animalistic." I agreed, stepping forward and scaling up the trees with Alice and Jasper to untie the ropes. Respectfully, we didn't simply drop the ropes, hearing the cringe-worthy plump as the bodies collided with the ground. No, we carefully lowered each woman. Bella, surprising me, floated to where we were, at least thirty feet above ground, helping us as we began the depressing job.

Flags were lowered as the bodies lied on the earth, their array of clothes, from a suit to a hoodie to a nightgown, making them more...innocent. They had expected to be in bed tonight, and this morning they would have awakened in their homes, ready to start the next day of work...or school. The blameless in front of me had been thinking last night was like any other night before their visitors, they would have predicted their nightly routine, and believed they would be seeing daylight in the morning, most beside their partner and to the tedious sound- always tedious- of their morning alarm.

Yet none of them did.

None of them woke up to the gray morning light.

A line of seventeen women, all eyes open and revealing their white eyes (like a devil's sick of sin) and abused necks, made Bella slam her eyes shut, attempting to stop the flowing tears. From Bella's own eyes weren't tears of pain, loss, or anger, but instead tears of guilt. One of life's strongest emotions.