[felcin]: 577.The Old Lady

“I’m tormented by the spirits. They haunt me everywhere I go. I see them out of the corner of my eye and in the shadows that surround me.
“And I can’t get rid of them. There seems to be nothing I can do.
“The spirits are behind me even now, listening to every word that I say to you here, today. I can feel them bristling behind me, with anger of what they think is going to be a hate-filled speech against them.
“I pause. Desperately wanting to turn around and face these spirits, but I know I can’t. Their shapes dissolve and leave no trace of their presence.
“I’m not crazy.
“They do exist.
“Even if they are in my mind, then they are still there.
“Oh and how wonderful is that? The daemons are walking around you. They are mingling with you! Standing next to you!
“… What you can’t see them? … But they’re right there!
“Maybe they are in my head ass well. I can’t even tell anymore.”
The old lady stopped and looked around at her audience. They stared at her in disbelief. Most walked off muttering under their breath and wondering about where the men in white coats were.
“They are here,” she proclaimed and she stood, her arms spread wide, as if embracing everyone who had stayed. “They are here to kill us and offer us to their masters. But we won’t let them!” she shouted
Someone to the back of the little group clustered around the mad woman shouted back: “Yeah, and maybe they’ll kill you first!” and stalked off, back to work.
“Yes, they will, they will,” she shouted after the man, “I am the bringer of their news, they will surely kill me first, if nothing else but to prove a point.” She lowered her voice and returned to her seat. She suddenly leant forward to the nearest child and clasped her young hands inside of her own old and wrinkled hands, “You believe me don’t you?” she pleaded with her.
The child nodded mutely and hurried away to her mothers’ warm embrace.
“Well, since I shall see none of you again, I hope you are able to beat these daemons and spirits, for you don’t want to die their way!” she shouted again. The rest of the little children ran in terror back to their parents and the old woman slumped in her seat. As she was picking up her walking stick, a young child cautiously walked up to her.
“Why are you not going to see us again?” she asked, her voice full of innocence and wonder.
“Because, dear child, I will die tonight.” Before the old lady could say anything more, the mother walked over and grabbed her child by the wrist and shot the old lady a look that could kill and marched off with her daughter in tow.
By the next morning, what the old lady had told the child had been spread about the village. And now everyone was expecting her to turn up, saying that she defeated the ‘daemons’.
“They’re probably just the things in her head that she thinks up.” One man said confidently.
Another just said: “She’s plain crazy, there’s nothing more to it.”

But she didn’t turn up. Out of curiosity one of the young men of the village walked up to her house. Her front door was unlocked, he cautiously peered in. her body was slumped in a chair to the far right. The fireplace had been cold for at least 4 hours the man noticed and moved to inspect the body. At first he had thought that she was sleeping, and that she had overslept. But he noticed her chest wasn’t moving. He would have taken her pulse, but there wasn’t one.
Her chest was torn open, and her heart was missing. The ripped tendons showed that it had not been a pleasurable death. At least not for her. He returned to the village to tell the people the news, but as he got closer to the village he noticed people laying on the floor and he couldn’t think why they would be doing that. Until he got closer. All their chests were ripped open and none contained a heart.
He walked the length of the village.
There was no one else alive. He was the last.
A sudden movement caught his eye, and he turned to face the movement. All he saw before his chest was ripped open and his heart stolen was an un-human face and sharp canines.