Heretic - The Life of a Witch Hunter by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 40

Day faded into evening. The cool autumn winds that pushed their way along the hills, through the valleys, winding around the trees of the English countryside had subsided as nightfall began to rise. Aiden had had enough. Enough of life. Enough of death. His body now hung from the very limb as Aelianna's had only hours earlier. His face swollen blackish blue. His tongue enlarged from within his mouth, a pale yellow. Eyes still and open. His weight left his neck bent with his face tipped up, as though looking toward the impending night sky. He had removed the lifeless infant from the ash of what once had been a raging fire and laid it in Aelianna's arms, the place where it would have been in life.

He had made a brief return to the hut, perhaps to salvage some small trinket of his life with Aelianna. Something to cherish. Something that might rekindle his fading will to live. But once he arrived, he found the hut burned to the ground. Everything had gone up in flames. Distraught beyond words, Aiden wandered back to Aelianna's body. He sat next to her in a deep state of emptiness, not knowing how to continue his life, or even if he wanted to continue at all. It was in this dark empty place that his hands found their way to the rope, still tied around Aelianna's wrists. Unable to stop, he watched himself as though from a distance as he fashioned it into a crude noose. Climbing the very tree he cut Aelianna down from, he knotted one end to a sturdy limb and looped the noose around his neck. His mind had gone black as he stared off into space, unaware that what he was doing would soon end his life. And letting his body fall, Aiden remained conscious long enough to feel and hear the crack of fracturing bone. For one brief moment, his face winced slightly as the rope tightened around his neck. Death arrived with both speed and mercy as Aiden's consciousness flickered and passed. With no one to cut him down, time would simply march on without him.

Minutes turned to hours as his face became a swollen bluish gray while his tongue pushed itself out through his open mouth. But, nature continued on her course and as weeks turned into months, Aiden's earthly remains had become fouled by time and eventually the poorly knotted noose frayed, sending what was left tumbling to the ground. The three of them. Father, mother, and son laid together, at the mercy of the elements. And over time, the young deceased family would be, at least partially consumed by the creatures of the woods, drawn by the smell of death. But, perhaps it could be said that the events that follow one's demise might mimic the prime of one's life when living had been brought to an art form. For Aiden, the time of his greatest contentment was with Aelianna. And hers, with him. And as in life, death would bring them together once again, in a life uninterrupted by the hand of fear and suspicion. Uninterrupted, even by time itself.