Rebirth

The village had been in mourning since the loss of every child in the school bus disaster.

Every day every parent woke in tears at their loss.

They wanted their children back, but they knew that would never happen.

They had their photographs and memories, but they would never hug or touch their children again.

They would not see them grow, go to university, have careers and families, and the parents would not have the grandchildren they expected to eventually have.

There were no smiles in the village.

No one wanted to try for another child, they could never replace the ones that they lost.

The school was closed.

There had been no pre-school children, every child was gone.

Then the preacher found a grimoire.

He called the families to the church.

According to the grimoire, if every person in the village drained a little blood into the church chalice and then the chalice was placed in the stone circle on the local hill at midnight on the Summer Solstice the children would be allowed to return.

While everyone was dubious and did not expect anything to happen, they still lined up and drained a little of their blood into the chalice. It was a little to give if it could bring back their precious children.

The night of the solstice the preacher took the chalice up to the stone circle and they waited for the sun to go down and then rise.

As the sun rose, small figures appeared in the village.

They were moving, but their flesh was rotting, and their eyes blank. There were sounds that may have been attempts to say, mummy or daddy.

The parents came out and were horrified, but then they saw that the flesh of the children seemed to be regenerating, and that gave them hope.

They didn't notice at first, but it started to take hold with the regeneration of their lost children.

The adults who had given their blood noticed that their flesh was changing colour, it was rotting.

As the children became reborn, their parents were rotting and dying. This was like a scene from some horror film and the ones watching were young children.

The price of bringing back their children was to give their own lives in a horrific exchange.

The only one who had not given blood was the preacher and soon he was presiding over a village of dead and rotted adults and grieving crying children who had seen their parents rot and die as they watched.

Whether the preacher knew this was the price to be paid, no one asked. This was now a village of orphans.

Every adult had given their blood, even those with no children, but everyone had paid the price. The children became aware that their parents had died to give them renewed life, and there was no one there to explain what had happened or to comfort them.

Two months ago this was a village full of love, happiness and hope, today it was a village of the damned.