Blood of a Traitor

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. A restless wind moaned around the small shelter, and the outer darkness pressed hard against the cabin, crowding up to the glow of the candle as if angry it dared to break the darkness with its light.

I had seen it so many times in my nightmares.

It was a skulking old building that crouched sullenly in its place, just close enough to be seen but far enough away to evoke a sense of unease. It seemed to glower from its smudged windows as if to say, Stay away from here.

How I wanted to. I would have given anything to turn around and run far, far away from this place in Tappan, New York.

But I couldn't. Not if I wanted to try and break the curse.

For hundreds of years, people in our family have been seeing ghosts and visions, and having crazy nightmares, way beyond your ordinary nightmares. Arnold men who fought in wars starting with the American Revolution suffered from what was thought to be extreme PTSD. They thought their guilt from killing men in battle or the horrors of war was triggering these visions and sightings of spirits.

But it wasn’t all in their head. It was the curse. The curse on the Arnold family. It had affected my ancestors, and already it was affecting me.

The nightmares were growing so bad I didn't want to sleep anymore. I wondered if it was the terror of the dreams that really drove my family members to madness and stopped their hearts. Just last night I'd had my most vivid dream yet, and it made me sick just to try and grasp after the tendrils of memory, forcing myself to remember.

The dream might contain important information I could use later.

I had been standing on a battlefield. The stench of acrid gunpowder filled my nostrils, and a burning sensation spread over my tongue. Coughing, I squinted through the cloud of smoke. Cannon fire and musket shots blasted and whizzed through the air. I dropped to the ground, hands splayed out on the uneven earth. Then I realized I was lying in something wet and thick. Stomach rolling, I dared to look down and almost wretched.

I was lying, face almost touching it, in a pool of blood. And it wasn't my own.

I couldn't say what frightened me more about the dream...being unable to see where I was, being all alone amid gunfire, or being covered in blood.

I shivered. Definitely the blood. And even though it was a nightmare, it was part of the curse that only meant my time was coming. And if my time was coming, there was only one thing I could do, and that was to put an end to the evil plaguing my family for the past two hundred years.

The dreams hadn’t always been this vivid. They started out as small flashes, glimmers and pieces of a picture scattered throughout her sleep at night. My thirteenth birthday marked the first time the dream became strong and continuous. It didn’t happen every night, but it happened enough that I noticed it. And each time, the details became sharper and stuck in my memory longer after I woke up. I started writing them down, and my entries in the little book I kept locked in my desk gradually grew longer as time went by.

The blood was unusual, though. It was the newest detail of my dream, and the most frightening. I couldn’t remember any blood showing up in previous dreams. It seemed like some kind of ominous omen.

But considering my heritage and all the bad blood flowing for hundreds of years, a nightmare coated in gore made sense.

I tried not let my mind dwell on it often. It wasn’t my fault that my ancestor was a traitor to his country, sold out his commander-in-chief and command point, and left the man he had negotiated with to die in his place.

Yes, Benedict Arnold hadn't only betrayed his country. The man my ancestor had betrayed, Major John Andre of the British army, had not been forgiving toward Benedict Arnold. He had invoked a curse on the Arnold bloodline.

The oldest family member of every Arnold generation that followed the war met their imminent death by 29 years of age.

The same age as the major the day he was hung as a spy in 1780.

My 28th birthday was six months ago.

For more than half my life I had been frantically searching and researching, contacting and praying. Now, at last, I had maybe put my finger on the pulse of a clue that could lead to my salvation.

I was the last Arnold. There was no one else left to stop the curse.

The light still glowed faintly in the window, and my heart skipped when a shadow moved behind it.

This is your last chance, I thought. You do this, or you die.

I took a deep breath and felt my hands shaking. A tremor of heat rushed through me as I approached the cabin and laid my hand against the old wooden door.

In the distance of the night, an owl cried out. The wind pulled my hair back from as though begging me to leave.

Instead, I pushed the door open, fear flooding my veins.

The stale air swirled out and caught in my throat, making me cough. I dared to stand on the threshold as I peered into the room.

A single-room structure. A dingy cot against the adjacent wall. The floor had no, well, floor, but consisted of packed earth. There was a chill in the air that bit my skin. The only light in the room came from a single candle burning on the windowsill, of which there was only one.

I focused on the candle. Already it was halfway burned through, reminding me that my time was running out.

A scratching sound grabbed my hearing and I turned to see a small table near the middle of the room. Licking my dry lips, I slowly walked toward it. Out of my line of vision, the candle's flame flickered and danced, taunting me.

I opened my mouth but I couldn't find a voice for several seconds, dreading the foreign sound. The scratching continued, growing louder as I came to a stop beside the table.

"Are you here?"

The scratching stopped. I held my breath.

No response. The stillness now was unbearable, heavy and suffocating as murky water.

I raised the book in my hand and swallowed hard. "Please, if you're here, you have to listen to me. I'm here about the curse."

A low, rushing sound sound began, and I whirled around just in time to see the candle go out with a puff, engulfing me in darkness.

Adrenaline spiked my veins, but I couldn't move. Fear froze my feet in stone.

A voice to my right said quietly, "So. The heir of the Traitor has come at last."

I didn't know whether to scream or remain silent. I barely remembered to breathe. The cold in the room dropped even lower. I couldn't see a thing.

"You have come to my last place of confinement, in my final hours of life, upon the eve of my death." The floating voice continued with seething bitterness. Their words washed over me like freezing rain. I felt the hatred burning into my bones.

"I...It's not my fault my ancestor let you die," I finally said, my voice small and trembling. "And it's not fair that the rest of us should suffer because of what happened between you two a long time ago."

Icy breath whooshed against my ear and the disembodied voice crackled close to my face, "He left me to die. His blood runs in your veins. I can feel it. I can smell it."

I yelped and stumbled backward in the dark, flailing my arms. Sweat poured down my back, and my heart was pounding so hard my chest hurt.

"I'm here to break the hold you've had over my family, once and for all," I gasped.

The voice did not reply. Then I heard footseps, for the first time besides my own since I entered the cabin.

There was a hissing sound, and the candle flared to life once more.

The dirty walls and meager furnishings of the cabin drifted into dim view once more. But now there was something else in the room.

Someone was standing by the window.

I jumped back, a scream trapped in my raw throat.

He stood with hunched shoulders, wearing what looked like a filthy red uniform worn to scarlet rags. His hands were curled into claws at his sides, rising and lowering with each heaving breath.

It was the face that chilled my blood.

It wasn't a real face.

Under impossible clumps of hair, a fleshless human skull. Twined through the empty eye sockets, nose hole, and gaping jaw were bloodstained roots of some sort.

"You see what I've become," the monster snarled, taking a step toward me. I backed away. "The Arnold line all deserve just punishment for my demise. My spirit will not rest until the last of that traitor's descendants endures the same torments I did to the end!"

Its voice rose to a gravelly shriek, and it rushed at me. I turned to run, but a sharp pain struck me across the back and I fell to the ground, hitting my head on the dirt with a hard thud.

The horrific creature drifted toward me as I scrambled over onto my back and scooted back along the ground, whimpering. The skull opened its mouth and hissed:

"May they meet Death’s stare and not look away.

May they see His unfinished work every day.

For as I depart from this life’s grasp,

Let the Traitor’s blood be Cursed by his past.

Leave this Mortal Clay

To return to dust so fine.

Those of yours who read these words

Taste unforgiving life eternal,

Descendants of Traitor thine."

The curse. I was going to die.

"Please..." I whispered tremblingly.

"Do you see that flame?" The creature extended its claw of a hand toward the burning candle. "Your life will not extend beyond its expiration. The spirit of John Andre will finally be at peace, for the bloodline of Benedict Arnold ends tonight."