I never thought I would see this city again. When I fled this town to escape the torment and scourge that ravaged this place and my soul I never thought I would return. But here I am, once again, standing in front of the gates of hell.

* * *

The gate creaked open. It was an old gate, ornately crafted and rusted at the hinges. It creaked loudly. A couple crows called in response. The man who opened the gate was tall, around twenty, blond and blue-eyed. He carried himself with an air of one far advanced in age despite his youth, cane in hand, walking slowly in a hunched over way towards a woman crouching over the earth. She had once been very beautiful. The vibrancy and vigor that had lent light to her bright eyes and gentle features had been weathered away by unkind times, replaced with a weariness and sadness that clouded her face. Her fingers moved through the dirt, tracing and retracing a pictograph of two fish, head to head, tails intertwined. The shape of the alpha – the first, the beginning, the life.

“Sister…” The young man called gently. The woman didn't respond. Her gaze was fixated on the dying flowers sitting in a cracked vase that adorned the lopsided tombstone. The words Marie Lefèvre were etched in small, neat characters on the stone. After a while, she looked up. Catching sight of her brother, she turned toward him, standing up and nervously smoothing out the wrinkles that kneeling by the grave had put in her black dress. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it and looked away. Her eyes wandered over the rows and rows of headstones before once again, finding their way back to the dying flowers. A petal floated onto the mound of fresh earth.

“There is something I must say, something I have kept secret for oh too long.” She was looking at him now. The wind blew softly. Another petal fell and settled next to the first. “Remember this?” she began, crouching down once more and retracing the intertwining fish in the dirt. “Remember how much this used to mean to us – Marie and myself? It was everything to us. Everything. When she was angry with me this would be the mark of her forgiveness, when she cried I would trace it onto the palm of her hand and slowly her childish tears would fade and a smile would light up her face! Remember that? It was a symbol of our twinship, our sisterhood.”

The man nodded solemnly. “I remember.”

The woman’s gaze looked skyward. A single tear fell, leaving a dark blotch in the earth. “Remember…” The tears began to fall, one after another. “Remember him? Eugène Lefèvre? The man she loved…” Her gaze fell back to the earth and she glanced toward a second tombstone that slept beside the lopsided one. “I killed him,” she breathed, barely audible. She looked toward her brother. “No…” she said louder. “Four. I killed four that day.”

“Sister?” The young man was startled. “You… You must be out of your mind… The grief has made you mad! You did not kill anyone, least of all Eug – ! “

“Hush!” She lashed out. A fistful of dirt flew across the second headstone. “Don't speak! Please. Please… Listen…” She began to wail, huge sobs racking her tiny frame. “I loved him too… I was only fifteen! Only two years ago! Marie and I… we had the same face did we not? The same smile… the same laugh… the same mouth that spoke the same sweet words… The child I was then could not understand the difference between us, why she was loved by him and I was not… And when they were engaged – when they were to be married! I couldn't stand it… I began to hate them both.

“Remember the day before their wedding? Marie embroidering the final touches on her wedding gown while he and the rest of the men took out the bottles of wine that had lain dormant in the cellar for so long… Remember that? When he drank himself into a senseless stupor and could barely walk? Much less think! For heaven’s sake, he thought I was Marie that night!

“ ‘Oh take him out for a walk, the fresh air will do him some good! He thinks you’re Marie anyways – it would hurt him so for you to leave his side.’ Remember that? Oh sweet Ellie, poor fool of a maid who spoke those cursed words.

“I walked him to the bridge, the special place between him and Marie. When we approached their usual loving spot, he clasped my hands and suddenly brought his face close to mine. Taken aback, I was suddenly repulsed! I jerked my hands out of his and suddenly sense dawned on his drunken face.

“ ‘You are not Marie! Who are you? What ghost or evil reincarnation has clothed itself in her skin, what devil has come to toy with my soul using the face of my love? You are not Marie…’ It angered me so! In a fit of rage I struck him… He reeled back. When he continued to babble about Marie, I struck him once more and then grabbed the nearest rock lying on the roadside and struck him again and again until he bled profusely from the head, chest, and neck – until he tumbled over the edge, falling like a dead fish into the river, drowning in a mixture of his own blood and water. Oh, wretch, little wretch I am! The fire of rage that had consumed me then chilled my blood and I ran back to the house as fast as my legs could carry me!

“Remember the story I told? That awful, awful lie?” The man didn't answer this time. He stood next to her, dumbstruck, his hands slowly curling into a clenched fist. More petals had fallen onto the earth.

“A man had attacked us… A large man, swine-like and brutish, bearded – all I could make of his features in the darkness and shadows of the night! Oh wretched lies! Oh cruel fate!” Her sobs had subsided. Her face glistened with tears and more welled up in her eyes, overflowing and running down her face in tiny rivulets.

“I killed four that day,” she repeated. “I killed four… Eugène… The butcher who was convicted of my crime simply because he was large, bearded, surly and ill-liked! He committed suicide weeks afterward… I remember that. The wolf who was shot the next day after it had dragged Eugène’s bloated body out of the river and onto the banks and was found tearing into the bloody carcass! And…” She paused, her eyes looking back to the lopsided tombstone. “Marie… Oh my sweet little sister!”

“She died after that.” The man cut in. “Eugène’s death broke her.” His voice was cold, his eyes stern. He had indeed remembered it all. The smile and joyous happiness that had filled Marie’s life and the household when Eugène walked into both. The happy life they would have had together! How marvelous it would have been! Never once had he noticed the shadows of jealousy that had crept over the face of the slighted elder sister at the sight of their boisterous gaiety.

Judgment fell on the woman crouched in front of the grave. Her fingers once again gently traced the symbol of the intertwined fish in the earth, the alpha, the life. “Forgive me, Marie, Eugène… Forgive me – I beg of you!” she cried. But the two graves remained silent. No breeze rustled through the cemetery, no crows gently called to each other in their loving pairs. The last of the flower petals had fallen to the earth. All that was left were the bare heads and dried, withered remains of the stalks. The dead slept on.

* * *

As night fell and the stars in the heavens emerged and shone their twinkling light over the sleeping world, the wind picked up. It began in a corner of the earth. Caressing the tormented ground, it moved across the rows with a gentle touch. It passed the fated pair – the lopsided gravestone and the other – and brushed against the cracked vase filled with flowers that had now begun to rot away and the wind rustled on, to the other ends of the earth. The intertwined fish etched in the dirt faded into the rising dust.