Perpetual Punishment

Jason Phelps was tired and feeling more and more afraid as he is walking toward the gates of an old fortress. Storm clouds were gathering and he could hear the thunder getting closer and closer. He was hoping that someone would be there so he could get something to eat and have a warm place to lay down for awhile.
Jason didn’t know how long he’d been walking. In fact, he doesn’t remember anything before he woke up in the woods alone. And he couldn’t remember when that was. He felt so alone. He did have a faint recollection of playing hide and go seek, but that too seemed ages ago.
Jason did remember that he hadn’t seen anyone on the path or in the countryside, not even an animal. He was not familiar with any of the landscape. Nothing looked familiar to him. It was as if he was just born.

Nellie James is sitting alone near a fireplace holding a charcoal drawing. It was the last day of October; and the weather had been unusually warm all month. So much so, she still hadn’t gotten all her tomatoes yet. Tears are streaming down her face.
“I saw him again today,” Nellie said as her husband Jack walked through the door.

Jack was stumped by the sudden change in his wife ever since she found a book of drawings while cleaning out the attic last week.
“Those drawings are at least a hundred years old,” he said. “Why are you carrying on like this?”
“I don’t know,” Nellie said. “I just know I saw him and I wasn’t dreaming this time. He was standing in the back yard while I was picking tomatoes. I called to him, but he just ran away.”
“I just don’t understand why you are so upset,” he said.
“I don’t know why I feel this way, he’s just so familiar. I just know that I feel so very sad whenever I look through them. This one especially,” she said as she held the drawing up for Jack to see.
Jack stepped a little closer, squinted his eyes and shrugged his shoulders.
“Why, that looks like a child’s drawing for goodness sake woman,” he said completely perplexed as he turned to go outside to finish chopping wood.
“He’s my child,” Nellie whispered to herself as her eyes filled with fresh tears.

She and Jack never had children but she knew that the boy in the picture she was holding was her child. She just knew it. She didn’t understand it yet as it was like a faint memory, but she knew it all the same.

As Jason walked through the gate, the path within the fortress seemed to change. It was getting longer and it was moving. He looked around but couldn’t see anyone, but he sensed someone was there. He walked to a small building to the right. He thought he saw someone move.

Jason stood very still.
“Is anyone here,” he said.
Just then a big thunder clap echoed throughout the fortress and sheets of lightning enveloped the buildings in an eerie light.
“He’s here,” someone said in a low whisper. Then other voices chimed in. “He’s here.”
A tattered old man walked out of the door and took Jason’s hand.
We’ve been expecting you,” the man said.
The cold wind, rain, and exhaustion were just too much for Jason so he followed the man to one of the buildings.

“What is this place?” he asked.
“Oh, this is a special place for people like you,” the man said.
Jason started to pull away but the man held his hand in a vice like grip.
“Come on,” the man said.
The man pulled Jason into the building. It had a fire but that was the only thing that was warm about the place. Though a few candles were lit, the place was dank and dark and had the smell of decay.
Jason could hear the faint screams of many people but couldn’t tell where they were coming from.
“Welcome to Farthington Prison,” the man said. “Well, it used to be about a hundred years ago anyway.” The prison was built on haunted land, where murdered people go so they can get even with their murderer every hundred years on ole hollow’s eve,” he explained. “On this night, at one stroke after midnight, you’re ‘it. You will confront your murderer.”
“Come on boy, don’t you remember your death?”
There was a glint of recognition in Jason’s eyes.
“Mom,” he said with a smile.

The man smiled and nodded in the affirmative.
“Soon, the dead murderess will possess a human and the confrontation shall commence, yet again,” the man said.

Jack was busy chopping wood late into the night, (he just heard the church bell toll the eleventh hour.) With just the faint light of the old lantern to light the way, Jack thought he saw a shadow of a woman run past the old well on the farm. He put the ax down and peered through the thick darkness. Suddenly, he saw it again. It appeared to be beckoning to him.
Curious, he picked up the lantern and went to investigate. The shadow led him to the older part of the farm to an old stone gate. He looked at the faint engraved writing on an old plaque teetering carelessly to the side. He could just make out the word ‘prison’. He started to pass through when he tripped over something. Jack bent down and with some struggle, edged something out of the dirt and dusted it off.

At first glance, Jack thought they were animal bones. Then as he inspected it further, he saw the skull of a child. He bent down again and found a leg bone.
“I wonder who this is.” Jack said. “I hope this farm wasn’t built on top of a cemetery,” he said looking around as if expecting to see ghosts.
He knew the old farm was nearly a century old but didn’t know much about the history of the place.
He took the bones and walked toward the house. The lantern shone on two doors leading to the cellar. Jack opened the doors and went to the old sink, putting the bones in the sink and picking up a cloth, wetted it and started wiping the dirt from the skull.
“It’s small,” he thought. “It must be the skull of a child.” A chill went up his spine as he thought of his wife’s obsession with a drawing of a boy.
As Jack continued to clean, he could see a deep crevice at the top of the skull. Just then, Jack heard the church clock strike 12.

At the clock striking, Nellie decided to see if she could find more drawings in the attic. She opened an old battered wooden trunk. As she opened the trunk, she felt a cold wind that seemed to go right through her and she thought she heard a woman’s laugh.
“Ah, I’m just spooked is all?” It is Halloween,” she thought.
She reached into the trunk and pulled out a notebook of sorts.
“It’s a diary,” she said.
She carefully dusted off the cover. Nellie could just make out the gold etched name on the bottom right side of the cover.
Katherine Phelps.
She carefully turned the pages and suddenly stopped to read the page for January 3rd, 1799.
“I will surely burn in hell for what I have done. I have killed my son,” was all she could read. The rest of the page looked as if they were stained by tears.
“And so you shall,” came a voice behind her.
She turned to face the boy she kept thinking about.
“Mommy,” he said.

Jack rushed up the stairs after hearing his wife screams and found her dead on the floor. She was so pale and her face was twisted in a horrible mixture of fright and surprise.
“She’s here,” the voices said.