The Canal Path Murders

von M. Dunschen

She could hear the sounds of heavy footsteps as she hurried down the lonely canal path after dark. A mańs hand grabbed roughly at her sleeve and she spun round, her legs weak with fear. He, was holding a gun and stared stupidly at her. “You dropped this“, he said. He smiled at her creepily. She felt anxious as she could not move. The man came uncomfortably close to her insisting, that the gun was hers. She was so confused as she looked in his very dead appearing face. His look was quite unsettling. He had very pale looking skin and his eyes were filled with small red blood vessels. His face looked kind of bloated. As she looked the man down, she noticed that his clothes were very distressed and had a wet look to them. She was pulled out of her thoughts when he came closer to her face, tightening his grip on her wrist. Oh, this man was not asking if the gun was hers, she knew that now. As he was now so close to her and talked directly in her face, he revealed a very disgusting looking line of rotten teeth behind his unsettling smirk. The smell that came from the cold, dead air, he was breathing her way, was almost unbearable and it had almost a sweet touch to it. He looked directly in her big dark eyes for a second and saw the fear that tore her soul apart right that second. Suddenly he bursted into laughter and loosened the grip on her wrists. She fell back into the darkness, confused about what was about to happen. The man changed his expression into something dark, that she had never seen before. “Darling you really don’t remember me, do you?“ A cold, stab like feeling gushed through her body, making her heart feel like it was about to stop. The man continued: “Once every year…on All Hallows‘ eve…you can’t run from what you have done darling. I tried to find you for 10 years now. I believe it has been ten years now. If I am correct, then it must be 1912 right now, right? I would have never thought that you would get away with what you did for so long. This year however it is my turn t show you, how much i love you darling.“ She realized that the gun was in fact hers. It was the gun she had shot her husband with ten years ago. She really tried pushing the memories, of her dragging his dead body into the river, away. It now all came back to her. Maybe this was all a bad dream that she was about to wake up from. She realized that it was over, when the man came up to her again and looked at her intensely. The last thing she can remember of her life as a human was the feeling of an intense pull on her body and darkness that encapsulated every inch of her being. She knew that one day she had to pay for what she had done, but she never expected it to be in the way of being with what she had turned her husband into for eternity. As she vanished into whatever comes after death, the morning began to rise and the fog took everything that happened that night with it. People began going to work as usual and the city began to breathe. Everything seemed normal. What she did was forgotten. Who he was was forgotten. Just remember to never walk into the shadows that appear on All Hallows‘ Eve…

About the author:

M. Dunschen kommt aus dem beschaulichen Städchen Paderborn und hatte schon immer eine Vorliebe für Fantasy und für das Skurrile. In ihrer Freizeit widmet sie sich nicht nur der Literatur, sondern liebt es auch auch zu malen. Auf Instagram findet man sie unter @my_cozy_book_page und @maddi_arts.