It was indeed strange.
He picked up the call and said a few strange words: "His hands were itching." Before the line went dead, she couldn't reach out to him until she left the library and returned home.
She was outside, draped in a black raincoat, on her knees and trying to pick up a ring that had fallen from her hands and gotten carried by the rain into the drainage. It might seem like a trivial thing to do, but when it was an ancestry jewel her mother had told her on her deathbed in the hospital to protect with her whole life… she was ready to fish it out even in the most unsanitary of places. Haley arrived from work some minutes after she did and also went to check on the nanny, seeing to baby Aurora's needs. However, before she came out in the rain to fetch the ring, Aurora had been put to sleep, but there was a high chance she was the one crying at the top of her voice from the house at the arrival of her mother.
"No, no, no…fuck–fuck–fuck!"
Wish angrily pulled her hands out in total frustration as she gazed at the flooded drainage not far from home. Her gloved hands were soaked and muddied, and she was a total mess from head to toe. She swore she felt the ring, only for the pressure of the water flooding the drainage to grow insane just when she was about to wrap at least three of her fingers around the ring to pull it out, and then she lost it.
What sort of day was this?
She rose to her feet and noticed how the sky was growing darker and colder, the rain growing merciless on her.
"It's either two ways, Wish. You keep looking for the ring out here and later die of pneumonia, or just return to your room, eat, and catch enough sleep for tomorrow's hassle."
She removed the soggy gloves from her hands and discarded them in a nearby trash can as option two seemed more favorable. She sighed at the thought of either telling Haley that she had seen and been able to hold less than a five-second phone call with the father of her child or just keeping to herself until the time was right.
But isn't this sounding like another excuse to stall from telling Haley the truth about who Ash really is, so she could easily move on and focus on taking care of baby Aurora?
Wish shrugged her shoulders in hopes of figuring it out eventually after resting and eating, because there was another high chance of her dying of starvation instead.
She began to move up the wet, slippery driveway that led to the main entrance of their home when she paused midway at the sight of a dark figure waiting a few distances from where she stood, paralyzed in shock. It only took one quick and fast flash of lightning for his face to be revealed in the dark, and she found herself taking a few cautionary steps away from him.
Ash stood in the middle of their driveway, blocking her way to the main entrance of the building behind him. He had a demonic and deranged, lifeless look strewn across his face, as a crowbar dangled lazily in his right hand. His legs were spread apart as if ready to take a leap, while his eyes fixed on her with a murderous glare.
Wish's heart sank deeper than a coin being thrown into a dark well at her situation. She looked confused as well as terrified by this.
"A–Ash…?" she questioned gingerly, to see if he had indeed lost his mind or why he was standing there hauntingly with a crowbar and giving her that scary look.
"Yes, sweetheart," he drawled in a voice that was unlikely his, as if he were being possessed by a bigger entity that sought her life.
"W–why—? Are… you holding that?"
He chuckled darkly as he took a small, staggering step toward her trembling form, a sick, eerie smirk drawn haphazardly on his pale face.
"I… am… no… Ash, sweetheart. I am just making use of his body to get to you."
The sky grumbled in response as a tear slipped down her face in realization of what that meant.
"I… am… Death. The entity attached to the card you foolishly pulled out with your bloodied wrist. You hoped for a rebirth, and I gave you one. A new chance to live again. But there was no one going to die in your stead. I tried to accept this sacrifice of the blood of this body I fed on for days, weeks, and months… but it wasn't close to satisfactory. It's either I take your life as a price for your rebirth and freedom from your curse, or I kill everyone in that house and let you bear the sin of it for the rest of your mortal existence."
Wish shook her head, convinced that it was a huge lie from the pit of hell. There were no demons or spirits as ridiculous as Death attached to her now-burnt cards. This was just a demon from the depths of hell trying to mess with her.
He continued to walk in that funny and crooked way toward her. Her mind couldn't even comprehend what this demon must have done to Ash, because the body bore multiple scars and injuries. It was also the same dress he had worn on the evening he angrily drove out from their house, which was still on him, but more bloodied and torn to nothing but rags.
The demon flashed her another excited grin when he noticed she was too smart to fall for his tricks.
"My hands are itchy, Wish." The real tone of his voice seeped through an imitation of Ash's voice, causing a dark shiver to tumble down her spine in terror at the sound. "I told you this on the phone and you couldn't even sympathize with me."
She was now very close to the gates of the house as the monster kept twisting and crackling his bones like he was doing some abominable breakdance performance toward her. How flexible this monster was was enough to traumatize her for life and induce a lot of nightmares.
"I hate insensitive humans, and I have come to draw blood with the same hands to ease the itchy feeling. And don't be shameless, Wish, and try to run from me," he growled out, fueling her dizziness.
The moment the gates opened wide enough for her to slip through, she took to her heels and ran for her dear, good life.
☆
She ran as fast as her breath could take her down the slippery, quiet private road, as if she were auditioning for a role in the movie Fast and Furious. The loud cries and growls of the monster, running headlessly behind her, were enough to make the trees on her left and right shiver and her heart pitter-patter.
She ran like she was high on adrenaline, her eyes wide in fear on the lookout for anywhere she could run and hide. The monster ran like a moving train behind her, and it wouldn't take long before she was done for.
Wish screamed each time she stared over her shoulder; the monster's jagged set of teeth would flash before her in a wild, deranged smile. Her cries were heavier than the monster's frantic pants of hunger and the taste of her flesh and blood.
It wasn't long until he was close enough to knock her down hard with the crowbar. But Wish slipped and fell before she could take the hit of the heavy metal.
She cried so loudly when she felt a sharp twist in her ankle, and getting to her feet was proving to be a difficult challenge. The monster roared loudly in victory, drowning her cries of pain and fear. It rained harder, and she felt as if she were being drenched by a whole river, the rain mercilessly falling on her as she fought for her life.
She gasped when sharp, clawed digits wrapped themselves tightly around her ankles, and she was being dragged off the road to what resembled a path between the tall, scary overgrown trees by her side. Wish screamed, cried, and pleaded to be freed from its grip. The floor was too slippery to hold onto, but she tried anyway, and the monster growled heavily at her resistance.
What in the world was this?
Blood drained from her face when she looked over her shoulder as she was being dragged, but the monster was no longer in the likeness of Ash, but a fucking, freaking, damned-hell wendigo!!!!
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…" she tried again to get a hold of something, and she begged deeply in her heart that this should be a nightmare. If she ever survived this, who would fucking believe she was attacked by a wendigo?
Not a mountain deer or a coyote.
A made-believe wendigo. A mythological creature known to be a cannibal with an insatiable thirst and hunger for flesh and blood.
She would give her entire savings to anyone that might believe her story. But only a rare few people have survived enough to tell the tale of what they went through.
"Stupid, fucking, cunt!" it said in Haley's high-pitched voice behind her as she struggled against him. "Not wanting to pay the bills and take care of the baby. I wished I'd thrown her out of the house when I wanted to!"
"Oh god…" Wish cried out in exhaustion and at the strain and pressure the monster was putting on her legs.
"Wish is no good for witchcraft. You should have aborted the baby when I told you to do so, Sarah. She will only just be a liability to us. Now that you are dying and leaving us all alone to deal with your mistake, you should feel ashamed."
Wish lowered her head in defeat as it took on the voice of her nona. The monster noticed how it was getting to her head and decided to push further.
"Wish, help me, help me, Wish. Help me to see if there is a future for me after I expose my father for abuse."
"You are such a loser, Wish."
"A creep."
"Whore!"
It began to say in multiple familiar voices to taunt her more before it took on the most familiar and the most hurtful:
"I wished God would dislike me enough to end my existence." It said before roaring in laughter and in amusement at the cry of pain that broke through her lips at the mimic of her own voice against her. It released its hold on her leg and watched her crawl pathetically away, making the creature drool heavily at the imagination of what her heart might taste like once he devoured her completely.
The monster's laughter was cut short and replaced with an earth-breaking cry of pain. Wish paused from her crawling, turned around to look. There was a gaping hole in the heart of the monster as an acidic, blackish semi-solid substance gushed out of its chest like a broken pipe and stained the ground beneath its feet. It didn't take close to a second before the monster swayed off its feet, laying face down flat in the mud, dead just like that so close to where she sat.
Wish stared up at the cause of the monster's predicament.
And there he stood, in all his unearthly glory and form, the monster's still-pulsating heart laying in the palm of his hands before it withered away like magic into nothing but dark soot and was carried away by rainwater.
The first thing he did was to observe every bit of her for any signs of discomfort, pain, or injuries. Not finding any major or life-threatening ones was enough to have him bend on his knees and sigh multiple times, deeply in relief.