Clair slips her sickle out of her belt notch, the blade shining a ghostly blue glow as it bathes in the moonlight. Her expression slightly tenses as the creature fully steps out of the dark. Black drips from its long once white nightgown with a sickly sweet stench of rotting flesh drifting off of it.
Never trained for combat, Clair places her feet into a phony stance, positioning her sickle for a swing. The creature steps forward, its feet stiff and blackened, Daniel nearly passes out trying to hold back the disgust of the revealed muscle in between its stretches of withered skin. It gives Clair a smile, mucus dripping from what’s left of its nose. Without any more hesitation, the sickle lashes out at the creature, passing through it as if it were air. It looks at Clair with an even wider smile, but it quickly fades when the line left in the spirit’s form begins to explode into a crackling blue-white flame. It screeches out in pain, Clair then moves her arm in for another strike.
Learning that the sickle is no ordinary weapon, the creature begins to move back, Clair's vicious slicing following it. After waiting for Clair's frenzy to over exasperate her, the creature glides with supernatural speed, curving around Clair's side and leaving deep claw marks in its wake. The excessive swinging stopped as she clutched the injury, feeling the cold absence of life stolen from her body.
Daniel watches the creature turn and dash towards Clair, blinking in and out of the rays of moonlight. He yells out to warn Clair of the charge, provoking her to take a swift one-hundred and eighty-degree turn towards her attacker. She uses all the stamina she could muster to move out of the charge while making a nicely placed swing with her sickle across the creature's throat. A scarf of flame lashes out of it, giving Clair enough time to fix her positioning as best she could.
Once she returned to her made-up stance she was no longer able to spot her enemy, neither could Daniel. He scans the room several times, guessing that it's once again hiding in the shadows. He suddenly stops his scanning when he hears a precarious noise in Clair's direction. She's grasping her neck. Daniel pieces it together when he notices her feet levitating a half-inch off the ground.
Finally obtaining enough courage, Daniel stands up with his blade beginning a charge towards the creature's approximate location. The pain in his leg worsens with each step, but he still trudges on trying to forget the injury. When he places his last step down, he uses all his rage and pain to slash down through the air in front of Clair, the creature reappearing as the slice continued. Daniel's eyes widen, no flame or damage came upon the creature. He tries to take a step back but is too late, the creature frees one of its hands to fling Daniel across the room into one of its bookshelves. He lands back in the spot he previously was bleeding out in, books falling upon him.
The distraction, though minor, was enough for Clair to regain enough energy to commit to her final stand. She dips her left middle finger into a bottle of oil tied to her belt, moving her arm towards the creature's face. It sensing the attack uses its free hand to stab her abdomen like a dagger. The pain caused Clair to act early, snapping her fingers together to create a massive abundance of light.
Daniel, now blinded, could hear the horrid screech of the creature and Clair's back thumping onto the floorboards. His vision returns once he gets into a standing position. He looks at Clair, seeing blood dripping down from her stomach and pooling on the floor around her. He also saw the creature slowly approaching him with a smile. Not the same smile it gave Clair, no, this smile was sweet and pitiful. She stops face to face with Daniel, placing her cold finger onto his lips, shushing him.
He's frozen in place, nothing he could do no matter how much he wanted to could free him of his mental constraints. She begins to caress Daniel's cheek, placing her hand on his shoulder in the same motion. She gradually moves down his arm, sending chills through his body. Then she placed her hand on his side. Time stopped as Daniel felt the pressure of her thumb on his stomach. He thought that it was the end, he thought he'd end up like Clair.
She moves closer. The thought can't leave his mind, how could this have been the woman he loved? The Mary who was loving, kind, head strong, the woman he loved? He looked back in his memory, the time they spent together walking around the manor. Daniel gave out a soft chuckle when remembering the terrible jokes they’d tell each other on their stroll. He missed those days dearly.
He missed Mary dearly.
He falls out of his mind and back into the reading room, Mary gone. The situation he's in is terrible and he knows it, but he couldn't help but feel some tension leave his conscious.
***