What the-!?
Arin stumbled back, almost tripping over the threshold in his haste. His injured shoulder slammed hard against the doorframe, sending a jolt of pain shooting down his side. He hissed and doubled over where he stood.
Oh well. At least he now knew for sure he'd be the bumbling background character who falls over and gets eaten within the first five minutes of a zombie apocalypse flick. Awesome.
Speaking of…
As the pain subsided, Arin slowly realized that he was… fine. Besides his stupid, twinging shoulder, that is. He wasn't being attacked. There was no creepy upside-down crawling, no clawed hands swiping at his face, and no drooling mouth hungrily snarling for 'Brains!'
In utter defiance of c-grade zombie movie cliches, Alma apparently had no interest in harming him.
Was she even a zombie?
Arin straightened up uncertainly, squinting in the dark. Alma – whatever she was – had gone back to ignoring his presence. She remained slumped at the table where they'd shared dinner just a few hours ago, sobbing inconsolably into her skeletal arms.
'Alma…' He took one step, then another, slowly approaching the sobbing lady.
'What is going on, Alma? What… Can you tell me what happened?'
He stood next to her now. Slowly, he reached out a hand to touch her shoulder. She jolted, and his breath caught in his throat as she straightened to look up at him again with those withered, hollow sockets where her lovely eyes had once been.
A second passed in silence. Then another. And then, her shoulders heaved and she started sobbing again.
'I c-can't go… with y-you… Ugh. I can never… leave…'
'What happened to you? How did this happen to you!?' Arin asked urgently.
'I can… n-never leave…'
And no matter what he asked, or however many times he repeated a question, Alma never said anything else.
Arin finally stopped asking. He frowned, deep in thought.
The lizard was still asleep around his neck, which meant that the white-haired man was pretty much inaccessible at the moment. There were, however, other people in the village. People who knew Alma. People who could help.
He stepped over the threshold and left the house.
Alma had mentioned that her parents lived with her younger brother's family in a house nearby. Unfortunately, Arin didn't know which house it was. He did, however, recall someone else.
'Avno… no Alvona? Was that her name?' Arin muttered, striding out the open door.
He'd encountered a few villagers while walking around Lullwater with Alma, but their interactions had been limited to nods of acknowledgement and distant waves. Alvona – the woman who'd offered him lodging for the night with her sons, and the old men lounging near the entrance, were the few people besides Alma whom he'd actually spoken to. And Alvona was the only other person whose house he recognized.
Arin didn't care about how rude it might seem for him to be banging on her doors this late into the night, demanding to see her. What mattered was that she knew Alma. She might be able to help, somehow.
As he hurried down the dirt path, Arin knew that he wasn't exactly thinking straight. Unless that Alvona lady specialized in necromancy or possessed some godly revival abilities, there wasn't much she'd be able to do for Alma. Her withered body, and the old slash in her neck…
Arin shuddered, pulling Rin's stupid cloak tighter around himself as he walked.
'It's fine. It'll be fine,' he muttered to himself. Alma could still move. She could still speak. Surely, there was something that could be done for her.
Besides, there was no reason to assume that Alvona's abilities would fall short. After all, Alma herself had surprised him by casually summoning and controlling flames for the most mundane of tasks. Maybe middle-aged village ladies like Alvona were the true powerhouses of this world. He'd happily offer up Rin's hand in marriage to her unwed daughter if that was the case –
Thud.
Arin stopped in his tracks at the distant noise. It was faint, just enough to break through the silence of the night. Despite his haste, he paused to turn and look in the direction it had emerged from.
'What the –?'
In the distance, he could see a large black silhouette looming ominously in the moonlight. Its height was in stark contrast to everything else that surrounded it.
It was the village ceremonial hall, as Alma had called it.
There was movement at the base of the structure. There seemed to be a person – no, a few people – gathered there. They didn't seem to be doing anything in particular. From what he could see, their movements were slow and unurgent. It appeared as though they had simply assembled for a chat.
…In the dead of the night?
On a whim, Arin changed the direction of his footsteps. Screwing his eyes as he strode over to approach them, he could determine that there were three people in total. Two stood before what appeared to be the front door of the ceremonial hall, while one sat slumped against a post by the entrance.
As he got closer, he saw one of the figures raise a hand and, almost gently, knock on the door with a closed fist.
Thud.
Arin was only about thirty feet away now. Straining his eyes as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing, he slowed down. Something was… wrong… with the people who stood there.
'Hello?' he called out cautiously.
Almost immediately, he mentally registered that he had upgraded from zombie-flick McMeal to one of those horror-movie dumbasses that stumbled around calling out 'hello', apparently expecting a well-mannered response from whatever serial-killer/monster they were being stalked by.
Great.
Arin's footsteps stalled. He now stood only about twenty feet away from the people he'd seen. Close enough to see them as clearly as the moonlight allowed.
All three had withered, grey skin, cracked in places as it stretched over their hunched frames. Like Alma, their faces looked like those of corpses that should long since have been laid to rest.
The man who had been hitting the door with his dry, feeble-looking arm didn't have any visible injuries (besides the general miserable state of his appearance). The woman who stood next to him, however, had a dry, puckered hole in her chest, visible at the top of her low-cut blouse. Clearly, she had been stabbed by a large weapon at some point.
The man sitting slumped by the entrance was, somehow, even worse off.
He didn't have a head.
At the sound of Arin's voice, all three had stilled. After a moment's pause, they slowly, silently, turned to face him with their dark, empty eyes.
Well, the two by the door did, anyway. The man without his head had to tilt his shoulders to display his acknowledgement of Arin's presence.
How polite. Thanks, dude.
Arin swallowed.
'Uh, h-hi,' he stammered, his mind blanking. 'My friend… is in trouble, and I was looking for… some help.'
The three continued to face him in silence. The lady tilted her head slightly, dry clumps of straw-like hair falling over a shoulder.
Arin shut his eyes and shook his head. He felt like his brain had turned to flatbread. Spending too long in this world would probably drive him insane.
'Sorry,' he said finally. 'I'm so sorry.'
Gritting his teeth, he continued, 'Can you tell me what happened? To you, to Alma… Is the whole village like this?'
After a moment's silence, the standing man slowly turned back to face the door of the ceremonial hall. He raised a bony hand to hit it again.
Thud.
The woman beside him continued looking at Arin. Slowly, in a rasping voice, she spoke.
'We want… to die.'
'…Sorry, what?'
'We… trying to die. For so… so long…'
Arin frowned. Her response had left him even more confused. 'What do you mean?' he asked.
'We try, but we forget… Try… for so long, but every morning… we forget again.'
Her words made something click in Arin's mind. 'You can't die, but you already are… but not really? Something made you this way. Something is forcing you to remain like this. And you only remember at night.' He took a deep breath. 'Hold on, does that mean that everything… resets? Your village, Lullwater, resets every morning?'
Arin felt a little sick. 'How did this happen? What went wrong here? Who did this?'
The lady, like a broken record, repeated, 'We… want to die.'
'Yes, I get that! But why are your like this in the first place?!'
'We want to die...'
Arin sighed. Rubbing his forehead in frustration, he knew better than to keep trying for a different response.
'Never mind. I'll let you get back to it then.'
Numbly, he turned to leave. Arin didn't return to Alma's house. He didn't follow his original path to Alvona's residence either. In the late hours of the night, on a dirt path dimly lit by moonlight, he chose to simply walk away.