Siren of the Dead
Chapter 1
Bare feet walked silently across the autumn leaves and broken cobblestones that masqueraded as pathways. Pale fingertips caressed the rough headstones that protruded from the earth, tracing the dates that marked the lives of those beneath the ground she tread upon. Her tongue darted out to lick her lips as she came upon her favorite statue. One that guarded the rotting body of a young woman nary eighteen who had died upon giving birth to her son. It was a hunched angel, its wings curved about its body to hide the grief that flooded from its serene eyes. Green eyes regarded the elegant structure with sadness, her hands now touching the wings that would never fly.
"Siren."
The woman child shuddered at the creature addressing her. She turned to face him, realizing the wind had stopped at the presence of the reaper. She gripped the sides of her cream taffeta gown and curtsied politely. Her red curls fell about her heart-shaped face and she stood slowly, regarding the hooded figure with respect.
A bony finger pointed towards her breast and she fought to recoil from it. The reaper's brittle voice clung to her, his words forcing her to drop her head in pity for the mortals left behind.
"You will receive a new arrival Siren. You will sing."
"Yes, Sir Reaper." She curtsied again and he only faded away, the glimmer of his sickle dissipating from her peripheral vision. The maiden shuddered again, rubbing her upper arms frantically. She abruptly turned from the angel and walked down the slope before her.
Her graveyard was vast and lush. Many headstones decorated the premises beneath withered trees that had seen better days. A few large mausoleums had been built by the wealthy to house their fallen kin and some statues were also spread across the landscape. Scattered wooden crosses littered the hillsides for those too poor to afford even a stone marking for their loved one. Out in the distance she could see a funeral procession going towards a newly dug grave. The siren frowned and floated up to a tree beside the area.
The carriage that carried the casket was battered and worn, the horse too thin and the rider sickly and angry at his state of life. A morose woman walked beside the horse, holding the hand of a tiny boy with tears falling unbidden down his cherub cheeks. The siren felt a pang of regret for the small boy as his even smaller sisters stumbled along behind them, sobbing and wailing the loss of their father to the cloudy skies.
The son looked no older than ten years and his youngest sister looked to be only two. Her eyes counted five children to one stern mother, her face worn and emotionless. Perhaps the man had been dying for quite some time and the event of his demise had been inevitable.
They stopped at the open hole beneath the tree she sat in and she watched as the carriage rider and his partner began to tug the casket out and lay it into the grave. They stood at the trunk of her tree and began to smoke a pipe between them. The scent of cheap tobacco rose to her nostrils and the siren frowned in disgust.
A priest walked up and whispered condolences to the woman. The mother only nodded in response as all of her children gripped her skirts and sobbed into them, whining and complaining of the unfair events that had stolen their other guardian from their grasp.
"We are gathered here today..." The priest's voice was commanding and deep; the siren felt no need to listen to his rites. She'd heard them often enough to recite them herself. Instead she slid to the earth and stood beside the son, staring sadly into the expanse that their father was to lie in and rot for eternity.
As the man of the cloth recited from the bible, the two men finished smoking and began to cover the grave with dirt. It was then that the siren felt a grip of sorrow take hold and she swallowed. A soft song escaped her lips. It spoke of the large family he left behind, the woman who had loved him so dearly and was now desolate in the wake of his passing, the guilt and regret he felt at leaving them all to fend for themselves with nary a penny to their name. A breeze began to blow as she sung, caressing and tugging the clothes of the mortals that surrounded her with its cool fingers and broken words.
The mother readjusted her thin wool shawl about her knobby shoulders. Her brown brows furrowed against the wind as it picked up and grew colder; it almost seemed to whisper to her. The woman shuddered and gripped her shawl all the tighter in response. Her quartet of girls cried at the cold and the way the air seemed to frighten them with it's dejected moans and cries.
When the priest finished so did she. The breeze died away and the grave was covered in dirt. The mother and holy man exchanged small talk and more condolences before she began to walk away from the grave. The little girls released their hold on their mother's skirts and traipsed off after her. However the siren continued humming, now kneeling beside the grave and running her fingers through the fresh dirt.
"LUKE!" It was the first phrase she'd heard the woman speak. At the sound of her crisp voice, the siren looked up and started. The small boy was still standing at the grave, staring directly at her with the most puzzled and awed expression upon his features.
"Are you an angel?" He whispered through his chapped lips, never breaking eye contact with the transparent maiden at his feet.
The siren didn't answer instead smiling weakly and dissipating back to the confines of her immaculate tomb. She heard the mother berate her son for not coming when called with a quick thwack to the head. The sound of the hooves from the carriage and footsteps of the family faded but the fact that a live human being seeing her had not.
A mortal, a child by the name of Luke, had seen her. The siren shivered, having forgotten what it was like to have someone actually acknowledge her presence. His question echoed in her mind and her mouth curved into a frown.
"An angel I am not." The female slid off her stone bed and she leaned against the wall. "An angel has wings. An angel is blessed and full of holy light." Her bangs covered her eyes as she slid to the dusty floor. " I am a siren of the dead, chained to the corpses that rot here and deemed unjust for the heavens for being so drenched in sin." She pulled her knees to her chest and rested her cheek upon them. "If I were an angel, I would have flown away from here long ago. Alas I have no wings, only a voice that no one hears."
End Chapter 1
