Where the Souls Go

Where the Souls Go

Between the bridge of life and death, do you ever wonder what lies on the other side? Do you ever wonder where your soul goes? The town of Lunar is best known for their forest, the Forest of Souls. It is said, that when a full moon hangs in the night sky, lost souls rise above to walk the Earth. Most have said they have heard sorrowful cries for help at night. Legend has it that the last soul to walk the earth belonged to a maiden named Lucy. Lucy had lived in the town of Lunar all her life. When Lucy was a child, her mother warned her not to go near the forest on a full moon. Lucy never stepped foot within the forest since then.

One evening, Lucy was walking home from the Lunar Cathedral. A young man, no older than the age of twenty stopped her in her tracks. Lucy thought this man was absolutely divine. His eyes were captivatingly beautiful; one eye was sapphire and the other was hazel.

“Pardon me miss, but I could not help but to notice your beautiful eyes,” said the man.

“Thank you dearly, Sir.” Lucy’s cheeks began to flourish a bright red.

“Please, call me Reficul, and your name, Madam?”

“My name is Lucy, Lucy Sanctus,” Lucy said with a toothy smile.

“Ah, you are of the Sanctus Family? The family, they call ‘Pure.”

Lucy and Reficul began walking together through town. Reficul offered to walk Lucy home, and she accepted with no hesitation. When Reficul and Lucy arrived at her quarters, Reficul paused momentarily before speaking.

“If I may, I would like to present you with a gift.” Reficul lifted the side of his coat revealing a satchel. There, he slowly opened the top and pulled out a mysterious object, one Lucy had never seen before.

“What is that strange object, Reficul?” Lucy’s eyes were wide with curiosity.

“This is no, 'strange object,' for this is the Web of Dreams Miss Sanctus.”

The Web of Dreams held Lucy’s gaze with amazement. There he held a black ring with a web woven on the inside, and beautiful feathers tied to the bottom. The web had various shades of blue and purple. Intertwined in the center of the web, was a dark, ruby colored stone. At the bottom of the ring, there were six feathers, all black and white.

“The Web of Dreams keeps gruesome visions at bay while you slumber through the night. Some say the Web of Dreams even protects those against the Devil himself.” Reficul said, matter-of-factly.

“I accept your gift, Reficul. Thank you.”

Lucy left Reficul at her doorstep with a kiss on the cheek and walked inside. Lucy suddenly became very lethargic and crawled onto her cot as she slowly faded to sleep. The next morning, Lucy felt inconceivably numb. She induced herself to stand up and walk over to her wash bin. Lucy instantly became apprehensive, as she could not see herself in the reflection of the water. Lucy’s mother rushed into her room at the sound of her cries. She immediately called upon the town reverend.

The moment he walked into her room and peered at Lucy’s face, he severely scorned her. The priest averted out of the house as fast as his feet would carry him. Soon after, Lucy experienced torpor and resided in her room for many days. Lucy stopped sleeping, stopped eating, and stopped speaking. Lucy’s mother noticed how pale Lucy was becoming and how she always felt cold. Lucy also became very thin and her mother thought she was possessed. One night, Lucy’s mother tried to pour holy water a top of Lucy’s head while she was sleeping. But Lucy sprang up in an instance before the water touched her skin.

Lucy hissed and snarled at her mother and hopped out of her window into the nightly wilderness. Lucy never came back. A search party was set out to find Lucy, but there was nothing to be found of her whereabouts. One day, a fisherman found a skeleton upon the shore of Lunar Lake. The townsfolk became imperceptible and quite apprehensive as they gathered to the scene. “Could this be the body of poor Lucy?” thought the townsfolk.

“Look! The body has been burned and here lie the remains, what foul character has done this?” shouted a man with different color eyes.

“Someone, get the reverend! He will know what to do!” shouted a townswoman.

Soon after, the reverend came rushing forth, anger in his eyes. The reverend’s face became flushed and his jaw dropped at the site of the skeleton. The reverend spotted a man sprinting down the shore. Suspicion arose in the reverend and the townsfolk as he shouted “Stop that man at once! Do not let him escape!”

When the townsmen caught up to the mysterious man, they were surprised to see that he had witch eyes. The man hissed and snapped as the men carried the man to the Lunar Cathedral grounds. When the man saw Lucy’s skeleton set up in a coffin inside the Lunar Cathedral, he obsequiously stopped fighting and walked calmly. The man would twitch occasionally and give a spine-tingling chuckle. The reverend brought forth a large vile of holy water and pulled out the cork. There, the reverend poured the holy water onto the man and he burst into flames, screaming and shouting wickedly. The man’s hair grew longer and her features became more feminine. The man had turned into a woman with long, grey, wiry, hair.

“Lucy’s soul is already with Lucifer! She will never be with the White Dominion.” The witch began to cackle loudly as all the townsfolk gasped in horror.

“May the Web of Souls take each and every one of you!” The witch’s voice screeched and cackled with anger.

The reverend poured more holy water on the witch as he chanted the witch back to Hell. The townsfolk soon followed and began to chant as the witch sizzled and burned all throughout the night. When the witch was fully burned, the townsfolk picked up the bones and displayed it upon their town scaffold. To this very day, the people of Lunar will never forget about poor little Lucy and how it was that she died. The adults of Lunar head their children to stay away from the forest and to stay away from those who have a variation in their eyes. The children of Lunar who do not know the story of Lucy, often ask,

“Mommy, where do the souls go?”