Carmen walked to the old road at the end of the village. Everybody in the village avoided the old road like the plague, but not Carmen, she simply didn’t care.
Old Harrison said to her grandmother that the old road is haunted, that it has a gateway to hell, and that walking on it was a direct invitation to the devil.
Well, Carmen didn’t believe all the nonsense the old folk in the village spread about the old road, after all, it was just a road. Plus, old folk usually had their own boundaries and taboos that she didn’t think applied to her.
She just finished the high school some weeks back, and she planned to go one of the big cities to try her luck there, she knew that the village, its folk and even the haunted old road, couldn’t keep her, she wanted more.
She suddenly laughed, remembering the expression on her grandmother’s face when she told her that she only uses the old the road to go the cultural center at the center of the village, and that she didn’t even hear or listen to a single whisper as she did every single day.
Her poor grandmother almost had a heart attack, and Carmen fought not to laugh as her grandmother made swear not to step again on the road.
She finally did that, but it was under duress, and this should let her off the hook of keeping a false promise.
She was already one third of the way through the old road, right in the middle of the abandoned cemetery that brought all the bad reputation to the old road.
Carmen usually felt calm and relaxed walking through that cemetery, great oaks on both sides of the road, wild flowers growing amidst the mostly broken gravestones, and the smell of lilacs always in the air.
The only part Carmen feared, but only a bit, was the huge gothic like building at the end of the cemetery, after which the road had one third left, a third that was void of any features except the small bushes on both sides of it.
She usually hastened when she went by that ominous building, not that it scared her, but the place was all black and had these towers with gables and gargoyles that made look like the castle of Count Dracula or something along these lines from the movies.
Add to this the fact that something stirred inside her every time she passed by that building at the second third of the old road. It was anger, like another presence was lending her its frustration and disappointment, as if she wanted to kill the entire world.
She loathed that sensation, by all her being, and this was what caused to run every time she neared the ominous building.
But something was different this time, perhaps the fact that it was six A.M and the cool air relaxed her as she walked, or it could be that today a conjunction was supposed to happen.
Her grandmother was too much into the astrology and sign, she occupied most of her time with a worn book for that craft, and she prattled for the last month about the interplanetary conjunction about to happen this very day.
Carmen didn’t believe in any of that, she remembered what her late father used to tell her, “You are the only master of your own destiny, and don’t let anybody to tell you otherwise.”
She sighed, her parents and her single sibling, all perished in a car accident five years ago, and this was the reason she was in this village in the first place.
“Hey, you!” A voice shouted at her from the direction of the gothic building.
Carmen stood frozen for a moment, did she imagine that?
“Hey, young miss, come over here.” The voice insisted. “I am inside the walls of the black church.”
Church? That building didn’t look like a church, not at all.
“Please, come, I am in dire need of your help.” The voice continued to call for her.
“Who-Who are you?” Carmen swallowed hard.
“A poor soul in need of your help.” The voice rattled and cried. “Quick, we only have a single day. You have to help me get out of here.”
If you liked this story, check these stories then: Small Monster, Not your usual crime, and Stay Home.
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