Chapter One: The Angel Of Death

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June 2nd, 2014
Oaksbury, Pennsylvania

In June, the light breeze smelled of sweet grass and newly-blooming flowers. The nights were still cool enough to sleep with the windows open. The first streaks of dawn lighting the sky as the thin curtains fluttered were something Rosalie Andrews never failed to appreciate.

These are precious days, Rosalie thought to herself, her face moving into a genuine smile. Who would want to miss the pink lights crossing the sky?

She stretched and pulled herself out of her bed, feet not minding the slight chill of the old hardwood floor. Her life began with the rising of the sun. There were places in the world where businesses open their doors at 9 AM after three cups of coffee and as many hours in traffic.

Oaksbury wasn't one of those places. The crow of a rooster was still a functional alarm clock for some.

Rosalie stopped to examine her face in the mirror before turning on the shower. Rosalie was forty-six years old and relatively happy. The girl who once wanted nothing more than to fly away and escape the nowhere town faded. She grew into a woman who loved the simplicity of life in a town time forgot.

Rosalie took a moment to remember the little boy who disappeared that fateful Halloween, thirty years before. His disappearance changed the course of Rosalie's life.

After the disappearance, Rosalie quit her apprenticeship with Miss Ada, not able to imagine teaching. The sounds of children playing still sent chills through her.

Rosalie could never forget the mischievous young vampire who'd vanished into the night. The pair of plastic fangs she'd taken from him still sat among her collection of treasured items on her dresser.

She understood how a simple plastic toy meant the world to the rebellious, high-spirited Alexander. They symbolised freedom.

Rosalie often looked at them with tears in her eyes.

I'm sorry I tried to take your dreams away, she thought, hoping Alex could hear her. I only did what everyone did to me. They all told me it was right.

Alexander Sedona was only six when four young boys went into the old schoolhouse, slipping into the shadows under the watchful eyes of the entire town. Only three came out.

The panic that followed destroyed the idyllic Oaksbury, a place that clung to its own reality.

Sixteen-year-old Rosalie was lectured, whipped, and made to do enough penance that one would think she'd murdered the young boy herself. Initially, that was what some of the local police thought. She was a girl with too much responsibility, one who finally snapped. Everyone forgot Rosalie was still a child herself.

The police absolved Rosalie of guilt, but her reputation never recovered.

In a small town, when something terrible happened, the slightest misstep cast a gloomy pallor over everything. As the days passed with no sign of Alexander Sedona and no clue as to what happened, people chose to move away.

Some thought the town was cursed. It had people living in it who practised the work of the Devil. Something horrible like a young boy vanishing had to be brought upon by Satan himself.

Others thought Oaksbury was too obsessed with things like religion and order. It was a relic from another era. The residents of the small town were sheltered, making them the perfect victims.

An old-fashioned need to preach morality and keep innocence intact was what made it so fragile.

The world isn't like that anymore; people whispered as they packed up their belongings and headed toward more modern places.

The thriving metropolis of Philadelphia and its pretty tree-lined suburbs were less than ninety minutes from Oaksbury. Those who made the change quickly discovered a different world.

Some flourished after leaving Oaksbury. Others fled back to the relative safety of small rural towns as quickly as possible.

No one returned to Oaksbury. Once purity was defiled, the stain was visible for eternity.

***

Eventually, Rosalie grabbed her coffee and headed to work. While the population of Oaksbury was a third of what it used to be, it was not enough of a ghost town to get by without a general store. Some chose to stay, not frightened by an isolated incident.

No one was more surprised than Rosalie that she was one of them. After all that had happened, the town assumed she'd leave the way Alex's young friends had. Rosalie was shy of her thirtieth birthday when her parents died, peacefully and prematurely. She still had time for a second chance at life.

Tragedy followed Rosalie. There was no other way to explain what happened to the honest and hard-working young couple that owned the town's general store. The residents whispered in sad tones of pity, not for Rosalie, but for the couple who'd died for their daughter's sins.

They were like angels.

The cause of death was an accident, a carbon monoxide leak from a faulty furnace. They lived in a world where wood stoves and oil still heated even the most modern of homes.

Rosalie never packed her bags. The flighty dreamer instead inherited her parents' store. She treated it like their legacy and her home, a dutiful daughter despite herself. She'd stayed inside her cage even after she no longer wore her chains. Any other choice felt wrong.

Every morning, Rosalie's face was the first many would see, and she had a smile for everyone.

Over time, Rosalie had modernised the store, much to the dismay of members of the old-fashioned community who thought certain things had no business being on a store shelf.

The store even had a small pharmacy. Those living out in the middle of nowhere started to realise it was hard to get their asthma inhalers and anti-depressants from a wrinkled old man who'd hand over a mystery bottle or pour a shot of brandy for the nerves.

"That'll do ya." was no longer sound medical advice. Oaksbury had come a long way.

Behind the counter, Rosalie sold contraband. Cigars and cigarettes, alcohol, cosmetics, lottery scratchers, condoms, incense, and two dusty pairs of glow-in-the-dark vampire fangs all pointed to the evil that had invaded the woman's soul over the years. Still, the lighters had the angelic countenance of the Virgin Mary on the outside.

Rosalie pretended she didn't hear the old ladies huddle together to whisper as they departed the store. "It's a wonder that one is still in town. They call her the Angel Of Death."

"She's no angel. The Lord knows that. Did you see how she painted her lips?

Rosalie always felt like bursting into laughter. Instead, she examined her nails, painted a bright purple colour.

"At least the men here were brought up with sense. Not a single one of them will have her."

It was hard for Rosalie not to retort that she got the better end of that deal.

Rosalie lived in a town where no one liked her. Something was freeing about that. She was oddly happy. Rosalie no longer had to care. The freedom to live life for herself was all she'd ever wanted. 

She didn't have to move to find that peace.

Every day, Rosalie walked from her small row home to the store just as the sun fully lit the sky. It was a short, five-minute walk that boosted her energy and let her bathe in the fresh air. It took her years to adjust to strolling by the long-abandoned red schoolhouse. Since it was near the church and the cemetery, Rosalie it was impossible to avoid.

That day, she was slightly irritated when her enjoyment of the bright pink azaleas and sweet grass was interrupted by a small black cat that almost ran under her feet. 

Rosalie jumped. A black cat was a bad omen. "Watch it, little guy. Shoes aren't your friends."

She felt better as she noticed the cat's two white paws, and the way he made a concerned meow.

Superstitions were powerful things. 

"You're very cute, but I can't adopt a cat." Rosalie's heart went out to the poor thing. He was barely larger than a kitten, full of energy and sporting a red collar.

He meowed incessantly, leading Rosalie toward a large patch of azaleas in what was once the yard of the old red school-house.

It was the closest thing they had to a community garden. Flowers and trees marked the space in remembrance.

Rosalie saw that the cat's paws left little imprints of blood as he hopped toward the azaleas the woman so admired.

"Slow down, little guy. I think you hurt your foot." Rosalie was going to end up taking him to the store with her anyway. She'd bandage his wounds. Before she knew it, she'd have a cat.

She stops in her tracks as her eyes find a middle ground between the injured cat and the beautiful pink azaleas.

As the chilling scream left her red lips, only one phrase moved through Rosalie's mind.

The Angel Of Death has returned.

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