• Prologue

    A cemetery is no place to be when the moon is full. Spirits of old wander in search of love, answers, or maybe revenge on nights such as this. No matter what it is they seek, meeting one is never a pleasant experience.
    But on this night in this cemetery there were two very alive bodies walking quickly through. The lost spirits watched as the dark figure of a tall man dragged the dark figure of a thin woman. The man was deranged and cursed at the woman whenever she stumbled over a root or broken tombstone. His dark, beady eyes scanned the ground franticly as they walked and occasionally he would pause and kneel to examine a headstone.
    Finally, in the heart of the cemetery he came to an old tree. He stopped and gazed. It was an oak tree covered in dead moss and in the glow of the moon it looked like a skeleton hand reaching to grasp the sky. With slight hesitation, the man knocked on the bark six times. Everything went deathly silent and the woman began to whimper.
    “Please,” she whispered “please don’t do this…”
    The man simply ignored her as he took a folded scrap of paper from his pocket. He unfolded it and softly began to read it aloud. It was a mysterious language and the more he read the louder his voice grew the more it sounded like a chant. The woman fell to her knees with her face in her hands and sobbed in fear. Soon the man’s voice echoed in the still night. And then he suddenly ceased and looked up at the sky. The moon had turned crimson and it bathed the cemetery in a sickly glow. The night became redder and redder and the man began to laugh a twisted, satanic laugh. The woman’s sobs became louder.
    With a tremendous crack, a single bolt of lightning struck the tree straight down the center. It caught fire and the blaze of the flames made the night even redder. The man stopped laughing and stared at the crevice created by the lightning.
    And as the man stopped laughing a new laughter filled the night. A laughter so frightening it upset even the spirits of the cemetery.
    The woman turned and scrambled to run. But the devil’s hand shot from the slit in the tree and grabbed her ankle. She stared in frozen horror. The man grinned widely. The devil slowly began to pull himself out of the tree, still cackling to himself. His smile was a gash in his appalling face; his teeth were like a shark’s; and his eyes, his eyes could make even the bravest of souls wail like a newborn. His hands were more claws than hands and he was so slender every bone in his body could be seen. When he stood he towered above the man, grinning his awful grin. The man grinned back at him; he was too disturbed to feel any real fear.
    “You know why I am here and what I desire.” He said to the devil. The devil only nodded, turning his gaze to the woman, who was still petrified with fear.
    “Alright,” he said “eternal life for the woman’s soul.” His voice was like the screams of millions of people in anguish, and even the man in his madness flinched at the sound of it.
    “Please…” the woman tried again to plead. “Please don’t do this to me.” She looked at the man with begging eyes. The devil laughed his maddening laugh.
    “Oh come, it won’t be so bad, it’s only eternal hell,” he chuckled sarcastically. “And you get to spend it with me!” The woman looked at him in utter terror. He snapped and her eyes lost their light. Her body and her mind were alive, but her soul belonged to him. He laughed again, shook the man’s hand, and made his way back down the tree to his kingdom of suffering, with yet another soul to his collection. The man was left grinning broadly with his empty wife sitting on the ground next to him, staring vacantly into nothing.