It's indeed an X.

Extra sparkly, shimmering, and shiny X glowing like Ziggy Stardust under a million fluorescent lights. I've found it in the middle of an abandoned Montgomery Ward parking lot calling me by nothing but flashy white and teal bodies of the cosmos.

I stand at the foot of the mark, waiting for a person to jump from the lines of crepe myrtle trees and scream how silly old Ivy fell for a prank or wake up to a alarm telling me it's time for my antidepressants.

Neither happens and I'm back with a glowing X and empty retail store. I look to overturned shopping carts, broken or dull long neck lights and two ghost chuckling at a dead dog chasing it's tail.

Everything's normal but the X.

I step on X, closing my eyes to let whatever the grey haired woman saw as my fate sweep me away to something better because I'm sure nothing can be worst than my current reality.

The universe explodes behinds my eyelids, surrounding me in a pool of colors I've never seen in my entire life. They sparkle and collide, flipping and interacting with each other until they fade into a greater scene of black. I don't fall or fade.

I don't die or change.

As if every sense in my body heightens, the air turns hot and heavy. The gravel under foot shifts to uneven ground and the yellow, unnatural light of the parking lot fades to a calm darkness so ferocious that I swear I'm back in the depths of the Canadian wilderness.

But here it lacks the sweet scent of pine needles and the soft saltiness that hangs over Thunder bay on rainy spring days. No, I'm back at the gates of Sampson manor. I'm back at the slaughter of the dogs, the smell of death and decay rising from thousands of canine carcasses thrown about as sacrifices to piss off fake gods.

On top of the horrible odor is another that smells like a straightening comb has burned out someone's hair to the scalp leaving nothing but scorched skin.

I open my eyes, throwing my hoodie hat over my nose after wiping tears that fall from the memory. Rows of little wooden houses line up around my vision, sitting in lumps of wild grass so tall that I could hide in it if I wanted. The dirt road where I stand winds up through them, lit by low hanging lanterns and the moon.

Even the sky above rages with anger, churning up thick grey mounds of clouds like a bull raging towards the earth horns first with nothing but death as it's conquest.

I wanna feel terror, fall to the ground and summon spirits by the thousands until they tear the souls from whatever haunts this town but even they're scared. They float around like fog, so thick that it's hard to tell that they're even spirits.

It's too many and they don't even notice me. They float around me, keeping their eyes diverted as if they can't feel the reaper's soul in me. I don't even feel it in me as if the soft hum of the reaper faded as soon as came to this world. Maybe it has. If that's so how will I even be able to protect myself in unknown land?

The smell only gets worse and drives me more into my mind but I keep breathing. I keep on and I'm sure if I do I'll only find a way out. I clutch the scroll parchment hanging from my pocket and head farther through the empty and ancient looking village.

A church hangs in the background of everything, overlooking the rundown village like God himself couldn't even do anything to save the abandoned place of death. I trudge on, one converse in front of the other.

Step. Breathe.

Breathe. Step.

More wood homes, some carrying a heavy smell of vinegar or a burning. I keep moving, hoping to find something new beyond the same replicas of cabins without a sign of life anywhere.

Step. Breathe.

Breathe. Step.

Light. A sign of life that isn't a spirit unless it's a angel of pity coming to round up the souls tallying up to the hundreds. The light flickers a deep orange and yellow, dancing in a glass lantern in pure black hands. A shift of movement flanks the bobbing lantern on the path.

A person.

Tall, slender and with a protruding face that curves down like the beak of a menacing bird of prey. Their robe falls to the top of their ankles, revealing shoes finalizing them in pure midnight from Sunday hat to shoes.

A long staff extends from his right hand, flicking from side to side. They move with purpose, leaving me no time to place a finger on who they could be. Their mask strikes me hard, clawing at a memory that I can't seem to place.

Twilight Zone?

A Halloween party?

I take a step forward and a branch slaps me dead in the face. The figure snaps around, staff extended towards me with wide eyes magnified in the little glass holes of the beaked mask. Tiny lavender flowers poke slightly from holes on either side of the mask and I catch a whiff of herbs off the figure.

I stumble backwards. Keeping my eyes on both the stick and the mysterious figure, I shove my hands at the air to conjure a ghost that doesn't appear.

"Eh, who are you?" The figure calls out through a muffled voice. I can't place the accent.

"Where am I?" I call back from the shadows.

"You must know this is Eyam." Grim, he turns his beak face to me. "You must also have a death wish to wonder here unless the devil has already claimed you."

"Eyam." I whisper the word in his accent, flipping it inside out. "Eyam."

The man deepens his voice and pulls together his robes against the chill. "Has our name not been tarred with the title "Black Plague" from sea to land?"

I straighten up, pushing down anxiety that comes with the crushing weight of his words. It was something worse behind the X.

"Is it still time for me to escape?"