Young Writers Society

*This is part ten of my series “Zombies of Mariesville” and the final part. This story is underneath my folder titled “Zombies of Mariesville” and Gacha Club character designs are under my forum titled “My character designs <33”. Enjoy!*

Luisa was in her Grandparents’ living room, with the pictures of much younger versions of Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, and Uncle Fisher. There were glass vases of different colors, and the box TV over the black nightstand.

Only, there was a little girl sitting cross-legged on the floor, in front of the box TV. She was in a 1980s pink nightgown, watching cartoons. The TV was the only light in the room.

Even from just looking at the back of her, Luisa could tell that it was a younger version of her Mom from how her brown hair curled. There was a specific technique that Grandma did to make Mom’s hair especially curly, it was seen in family photos and talked about in stories of nostalgia.

Mom seemed to be enjoying the cartoons, not paying attention to the hulking silhouette of a woman with long, stringy hair, reaching out with her claws, prepared to snatch her away, just like she did with Oliver. Because the only ominous woman’s silhouette that Luisa had come to know and dread was that of Helena, and the eldritch, bony claws were all too recognizable in the dim TV glow.

Only, that wasn’t what was going to happen, because that was her Mom, and her Mom lived long enough to start a family, so why would a demon take her?

But then…how would she defeat the likes of Helena? Was there something else that Luisa didn’t know?

The child version of Mom abruptly turned away from the TV and let white and pink sparks flow from her hands, encircle her, all while the child version of Mom chanted:

“Rot back into your pit of Hell

All of your energy will dispel

Never again will you come for me

Down into the flames

You’ll never be free”

Luisa was sucked back into the house, the fight with Helena still going on, the memory of her Mom as a child still very strong.

So all she had to do was let her magic flow from her hands and say a little chant? Her Mom was a witch from what Luisa had seen, and her Mom must have learned the chant somewhere, but it didn’t work for long, because Helena was thriving well into the present.

Speaking of which, both she and Jackson were using immense amounts of their magic to keep Luisa down, Jackson’s magic coming out as green flurries while Helena’s magic came out in black flurries. It felt like she was being pressed down by a titanium bar. Any attempt at trying to get up, she was pushed back down.

Next to her, Luisa heard Marie chant:

“Your presence I trap in the walls

Your presence I forbid from my halls

Your evil will leak out no more

Your heart, it lies cold on the floor”

Helena slightly flinched, but regained her stoic pose. Jackson smirked, as though none of them had a fighting chance.

“It…it worked before! Why isn’t it working now?!” Marie cried out, her voice strangled with tears and pain. Luisa couldn’t turn her head around to see Marie’s face, but she could tell that Marie’s eyes were in the same wide-eyed, wild state they were in when she, Luisa, and Josette found the field of vivus plants completely destroyed.

“She’s grown stronger since the last time you trapped her. There’s so much that your cute poem won’t do.” Jackson said with a grin.

A thought struck in Luisa’s mind. There was Marie’s chant, and Mom’s chant. Both were awfully short, and none kept Helena locked away for too long. It was like they were painkillers. They could calm down the problem for a bit, but the problem itself would never completely go away.

Luisa’s plan may not have worked, but she decided to give it a try anyway. From her shaking lips, she let the song flow out:

“Your presence I trap in the walls

Your presence I forbid from my halls

Your evil will leak out no more

Your heart, it lies cold on the floor

Rot back into your pit of Hell

All of your energy will dispel

Never again will you come for me

Down into the flames

You’ll never be free”

From Luisa’s body there flowed an indigo-blue light, which at first was not much, like a calm river. Helena and Jackson stayed with keeping their imprisoning magic on Luisa, and Luisa was still trapped.

But then, her magic began to swell, to break away the bonds that were breaking her down, and right in front of her, Helena began to bleed.

Helena bled black blood, her screams were more like deep, bellowing roars, and when she had finished disintegrating, Ava and Oliver whooped and hollered in joy.

Jackson’s green eyes were tainted with tears, he seemed like he was on the verge of breaking down. He staggered away from them all, not looking behind him, but then, the very man that was all strung up from the plastic tubes of blood in the room that Luisa, Ava, and Oliver saw earlier, only, the man wasn’t tied up, but free.

He caught Jackson in his arms and brought him down to the ground, brushing away his tears. Luisa didn’t hear much of what he was saying to Jackson, but she heard enough to decipher the truth:

“It wouldn’t have helped me live long at all. Killing them would have only made them miserable, and using them to keep me alive would have made me a zombie as well. Jackson, don’t cry. It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.”

Jackson seemed to calm down a bit after the man-Elvis-spoke to him. Elvis’ form faded to what he truly was: A thirteen year old boy. Jackson had to hold him as they both began to chip away from reality, his green eyes holding many regrets.

Marie stood still for a moment, a thoughtful expression on her eyes.

Then, she walked out of the room and gestured for the others to follow her.

………………………………………………….

Before they had left the abandoned palace, Marie took a vivius plant with her outside and crushed it into bits. She then placed her hand over the crushed bits, and in the decaying roots of old trees, it flowed out in gold. Nobody understood what she was doing until they all went back to Mariesville and saw that everything was back to normal, and then Marie said that her magic in letting the vivus plant bits travel to Mariesville helped the town become human.

Oliver, in his curious, childlike manner, asked Marie why the town was named after her, for before Marie teleported them all back to home, Luisa told him the names of everybody that he did not spend much time with.

Marie responded gently that she trapped Helena in the walls of her home years ago after what happened with Jackson and Elvis that the citizens regarded her as a hero and named the town after her. Marie then commented on the fact that she was “lucky” to have someone “smart like Luisa” around to figure out that the two chants were intertwined, or else they would have all died, because Marie did not know that there was a missing part of her chant.

Luisa asked Marie if Helena was really gone, if she really wouldn’t come back, and if Jackson and Elvis were finally resting in peace.

Marie said that she felt it inside her that Helena disappeared for good, that the last time she trapped Helena there was a distinct feeling inside of her like a feather brushing by her innards that lasted for a few minutes, but that the feeling was not present at all when Luisa sent Helena to Hell. Marie took it as Helena being gone forever.

As for Jackson and Elvis, Marie wasn’t sure, but that she hoped so. She said that she would only be able to know after she died.

Ava’s red eyes became their original brown color, and her spirit passed on to Heaven to be with her father. However, she sometimes went down to Earth to pay her old friends a visit.

Oliver recognized his mother and father somewhere in town and embraced him, for while he was trapped in the house, his parents had turned into zombies.

Luisa, Josette, Braden, and Charles went back to their families, Marie disappeared into a lavender orb, and then, even the orb was gone. She had vanished from their lives just how she appeared in their lives.

Time went on, and the zombie incident was rarely ever talked about. The four of them became adults, with minds that were slightly changed as the years went by. Josette and Braden married each other, Charles and Luisa married each other. Later on, Luisa gave birth to a girl she named “Lola”, and vowed that she lived a life free of the troubles Luisa and her friends faced as teenagers.

One can promise all the things that they want for their child. It doesn’t mean that it will be true. Demons will come out to hurt the vulnerable just because they can, people will become rotting husks, barely recognizable from previous years, and sometimes, that sweet, desired path to freedom isn’t so clear.

But the best thing anybody could ever do is keep going and hope for the best, because if they resign to their fate, then they’re destined to die.