It’s not a plague. It’s not a virus. It’s an unquenchable thirst for blood, for the sins of its victims, it’s a demon. Since our fall from grace all of us have had demons within our bodies. They float like tiny seeds planted in our blood. Effortlessly, they reside in our plasma feeding only on our sins. Most people keep their demons under control but some do not. When a demon is fed a regular diet consisting of the most vile and heinous of sins it grows stronger, eventually it kills its host. Like the offspring of black widows it devours its mother, its protector. When a demon sets itself free it must hurry to find a new external guardian. This is the story of Emily Carrier.

Emily was born in the year of 1696. Although fifteen and of perfect marriage age Emily was still but a beautiful free spirited child. Her luminous blonde hair flowed in waves to the small of her back. Her skin was fair; it shone in the sun like the shimmer of freshly fallen snow. Her smile was a picture of perfection; her teeth sat straight and sparkled like the pearls she wore around her neck. She was small in stature, petite, but had over the past few years sprouted into womanhood something that didn’t go unnoticed by her potential suitors. But if any feature could describe the beauty of Emily it was her eyes. For her eyes were magnificent, two large beams twinkling of blue, a pair of encased aquamarine gems.

Emily lived with her parents in a small town called Widows Grove. Widows Grove was Christian based religious but not as strict as some of the neighboring towns. Young adults in Widows Grove were allowed to go on un-chaperoned dates with potential love interests although the topics of chastity and the maintenance of one’s virginity until marriage were still of the upmost importance. Sunday services were frequently marked by two or more hour pulpit sessions on the evils of lust and warnings that sex before marriage could led to eternal damnation in the fires of Satan’s fortress. Parishioners sat in silence preying that they wouldn’t fall asleep like their behinds did on the hard wooden pews. Heated preacher’s spewed scriptures of Lucifer’s desire to corrupt all through unchaste behavior. Marriages weren’t technically arranged but any male suitor did have to obtain prior parental consent to ask for a girl’s hand.

Emily’s grandparents Thomas and Anne Carrier were wealthy settlers and the founders of Widows Grove in 1661. Thomas and Ann sought out to build a beautiful community in Widow’s Grove and beautiful the town became indeed. The houses were all extravagant for the time and the Carrier Estate held beautiful balls and festivals throughout the year. The Carriers seemed to have everything, money, power, and the largest estate in the town. The only thing that their money couldn’t buy them was a family. Anne Carrier was plagued with countless miscarriages and she and Thomas had nearly given up on the thought of ever having a child to pass the family name to. Then in 1679, Anne was finally able to carry a baby full term and miracle baby boy was born. They named their perfect son Andrew and they spent the next sixteen years doting on his every whim. The Carriers now had a picture perfect life in the town they had created. The only blemish on the town’s perfection came in 1692 when word of witch trials in a nearby town arrived. It seemed that the town of Widow’s Grove got caught up the witch hunt madness as well and multiple women were accused of witchcraft and a few even died while attempting religious ordeals to test if they were in fact witches and others were burnt at the stake under the presumption of a witch positive result. The testing relied heavily on divine intervention to determine guilt or innocence. One trial by ordeal required a suspected witch to pluck a stone out of a pot of boiling water and then have her wound immediately wrapped in gauze. If after three days’ time the wound was miraculously healing she was presumed innocent. Unfortunately, of the women subjected to the ordeal by boiling water none were found innocent and often the wound was so irreversibly infected that their bandages were often fused to their dried oozing hands. This madness continued until the town was struck but an uncontrollable outbreak of small pox in January, 1695. Not only did the unexpected epidemic wipe out nearly half of Widows Grove’s population in a mere few months, when the dust settled Thomas and Anne had succumbed to the deadly virus as well.

Miraculously, their only son, Andrew survived and inherited the Carrier estate. He also inherited the rights to the devastated township which proved to be a huge responsibility for a sixteen year old. Never the less Andrew worked by day to help rebuild a sense of community in a town inflicted with lingering pain and loss. By night he found himself lonely, trapped by himself and in his large silent home. Seeking companionship he asked for the hand of a neighbor girl named Martha. Martha had lost her father in the outbreak and her mother who had been struggling to feed herself and her daughter in the few months past welcomed the opportunity to secure financial stability for Martha as well as herself. Andrew who had more money than he could probably ever spend offered to give his mother in law a substantial monthly allowance for life in exchange for her only daughter. Martha who was only fourteen at the time jumped at the chance to claim Widows Grove’s most eligible young bachelor and the pair were quickly married in May of 1695 and Emily was born a mere ten months later.

Emily was a quiet baby, never once were her parents awakened by her cries. Andrew and Martha were the envy of many of their neighbors. Eventually, Andrew and Martha had three more children Andrew Jr., Sarah, and their youngest son Richard. The family lived happily in their now cozy estate for nearly sixteen years until their beloved first born disappeared.

On the warm July morning of Emily’s disappearance, Martha entered the room of her daughters. Sarah was sleeping peacefully in her bed but Emily was nowhere to be found. A morning draft of wind was filtering into the room through a large open window. Martha found it strange the window being opened as Emily constantly complained of spiders and the like entering her room. Martha shut it and went quickly to check her sons’ room. Andrew Jr. and little Richard still clung to deep sleep drooling into their pillows.

Martha rushed to her bedroom and roused her husband. Martha loudly proclaimed “Emily is gone”. Still captured by his desire to continue sleeping, Andrew complacently dismissed his wife’s enthusiasm and reassured her that Emily was probably just riding her horse with the neighbor boy John. Emily who was not short on hopeful partners was very fond of John as he was of her. John was a kind boy and it wasn’t uncommon for he and Emily to take long horse rides to watch the sunrise. Emily didn’t know yet but John had asked her parents for her hand in marriage and they had agreed.

Martha felt slightly comforted but her motherly intuition was still nagging at her. So she walked outside and down the small stone path to the stable. Upon opening the doors, she discovered that the stall that held Emily’s black stallion Midnight was indeed empty and her fears were temporarily dismissed, that was until that afternoon. Martha and Andrew heard uncontrollable screaming from John’s house next door. Andrew left Martha with the children and ran to see what the commotion was about. Emily’s soon to be fiancée John had been found dead in his barn his horse still tethered in his stable.

Emily’s father looked in horror at a barn engulfed in crimson. A crowd was gathering outside. Inside John’s mother was collapsed, screaming incoherently, at her side was John’s father and the town preacher. Andrew walked in consciously but initially only saw blood. It wasn’t until John’s father pointed upward and yelled “Damn it everybody stops staring and somebody help me get my child down from there”, that Andrew discovered the body. John’s tattered corpse was barely recognizable, he was naked, and hanging in the rafters by a length of his own intestines, wrapped tightly around his broken neck. You could see light right through his body which was ripped open from his lower back to the base of his neck. John’s spinal column dangled from his body like a porch wind chime. His entrails were strewn about, half devoured, sitting in the red dampened hay as bloody testimonies to his horrible death.

Now, Widows Grove children had been going missing for several years. After a few days their bodies would be found sexually abused and mutilated in the woods. John’s death however seemed different it was right in the heart of town and committed by a killer who must have had superhuman strength. In an effort to explain the grisly murder, the death was labeled an act of witchcraft, possibly a satanic sacrifice.

John’s painted horse cowered in the corner, frozen her eyes transfixed forward in a terrified gaze. Andrew feared that his beautiful Emily must have rode Midnight to John’s house to go on a ride and when they went to the barn to get John’s horse they were attacked by an awaiting assailant. The scene posed a most unsettling question, if an attack had occurred then where were Emily and her pedigree stallion Midnight? Was Emily kidnapped or would her body also be found.

In the darkened, woods lived an evil man. The wicked man hid himself from the villagers under the protection of the forests thick mossy boughs. The man was unknown to the villagers for he had arrived in Widows Grove many years before them. He had to flee his prior home many years ago to escape being hanged. He made a small hidden cave in the woods his home. He figured he would die alone in his makeshift habitat feeding on rats, bugs, and an occasional possum but then villagers began to arrive and the man could no longer control his thirst for evil, his twisted desire for children.

This man was hardly a man at all, more like a vicious monster always anticipating his next kill. His many years of sins, preying on the innocence of children had changed him, evolved him into a beast. His dark hair grew in thick dirty brown tangles. His skin was rough like sandpaper. His soulless eyes black as coal had no definition between iris and pupil and they were eternally blood shot, deep red they shown like the blood of his young victims. But if anything could describe the vileness of this man, the sickness that lived within him it was his teeth a collection of rotten incisors a putrid pile of evil decomposing in blackened gums. His large chapped lips wrapped around greenish blue pebbles, the remnants of a once crooked smile. His smile was the last thing his victims ever saw and his breath which reeked with the ferocity of a stream of communal sewage was the last thing they ever smelt.

Now this man lived in the woods, he hid in the woods; he carried out his evil conquests in the woods. It was in these woods, that he got his first glimpse of what would be his final conquest. It was a beautiful day, the air was calm and as a copper sun rose, the man awoke to an odd rustling. His eyes were still, they lay imprisoned by the lingering effects of a good sleep. The man struggled to open his dark eyes and his nostrils flared from the damp wooded smell of a midnight shower. The man suddenly felt alive, as the bustling of leaves grew closer. Thrilled but cautious he departed from his hideaway cavern.

Peeking from behind the decrepit skeleton of a withered tree, he spied a young couple on a pair of horses. The man gazed past the young boy and beheld the most beautiful child his dirty eyes had ever seen. His was transfixed on the girl and quietly moved through the trees to watch her as she sat perched on her dark black stallion. He had never seen a child with such radiant hair; it was perfect and it seemed to go on for miles. His mind fluttered with vile thoughts of the child, thoughts of what he could behold under her elegantly fitted summer dress and as the thoughts rushed into his mind blood rushed even faster to small of his pants. The onset of such arousal just encouraged the mirage of explicit scenes in his head.

She was oddly portioned for her age, the body of a women but the innocent face of a child. His gaze followed her body from her golden crown to her pouty rose kissed lips, passed a slender neck decorated with a band of small glistening saltwater pearls, and on to her chest. He stopped here for a moment, imagining passing his grimy sun cracked hands over a pair of pale supple breasts. Oh yes, his mind fluttered at the thought of kissing around the girls nipples. Again, his eyes wandered down, down towards her waist, pausing here he thought of what color her under garments would be if he could only remove them. He finished his autopsy of her living flesh, by traveling down her long legs which she held tightly to her horse. He watched her ride through the trees and seeing her bounce up and down in the saddle, he grew more hot and bothered.

At one point the young couple perched by a small river and had an early picnic, it was during this meal that the man, hiding in nearby brush decided it was time to relieve himself of the pent up arousal incurred over the mornings activities. Sitting behind the cover of the dense bushes the man masturbated and watched the child as she enjoyed her sandwich. She was ravishing, truly a drug, and he was instantaneously addicted. She was all he wanted, all he had ever dreamed of. The man had to have her, had to steal her away, had to touch her, had to taste her, he had to kill her. Wicked thoughts of conquering her body and nesting inside her raced through his mind and became a twisted infatuation.

As the couple finished their banquet and returned to their horses, the evil man grew angry realizing that they were running their horses back to the village too quickly for him to follow and even if he could keep up the villagers wouldn’t take lightly to the man’s wretched appearance. The man knew his foul rendezvous with the child would have to wait until he could better control the situation. Desire for the girl, filled every ounce of his being, he wanted her passionately but what he didn’t know was that something that resided within him wanted her even more.

As the evil man’s addiction for Emily grew something that lived within his vile blood also grew impatient. The man had something incubating in his body, developing, gaining strength, and after seeing Emily, its search for new real estate had ended. It wanted to live in Emily, to devour her innocence and take over her perfect body as its own. It’s not a plague. It’s not a virus. It’s an unquenchable thirst for blood, for the sins of its victims, it’s a demon. Since our fall from grace all of us have had demons within our bodies. They float like tiny seeds planted in our blood. Effortlessly, they reside in our plasma feeding only on our sins. Most people keep their demons under control but some do not. When a demon is fed a regular diet consisting of the most vile and heinous of sins it grows stronger, eventually it kills its host. Like the offspring of black widow spiders it devours its mother, its protector. When a demon sets itself free it must hurry to find a new external protector. The evil man sat in the woods and something within him ached to see the delectable young maiden.

A loud noise cracked and released the man’s possessed mind from slumber. Struggling to adjust his eyes with the evening darkness the man tried to peer into his surroundings. His ears quickly compensated for his temporary blindness and acknowledged the sound of large tumbling beads of rain and the rumble of distant thunder. He squirmed deeper into his covers and cursed the heavens for inclement weather. He was filled with anger, infuriated that something had ripped him away from his dreams. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the dream he so longed for. Rapidly, he slipped back into his sleep and the dream returned.

It came to him as it had for so many recent nights. His body was suddenly filled with comforting winter fire warmth. He was in his dream world, a peaceful place filled with pure sunlight. He was always nude and years were erased from his tattered flesh. He was young again and his bare skin collapsed around the softness of an angora cocoon. His mind quickly became absorbed with a sweet aroma. Suddenly aroused, the man strived to perceive the surrounding sweetness in the air. He was intoxicated, as he breathed in the sugar candy coated air deeper he savored its butterscotch taste as it flowed past his overgrown nose hairs and decanted down his chilled esophagus, it tingled as it free fell deeper, until at last it coated his lungs. He knew what was coming next it was everything he longed for, she was there, his maiden had arrived. As he sank further into the dream, the child moved toward his embrace and just as he was about to satisfy his appetite for her, something within him burst.

The man awoke screaming; even the orchestra of the magnificent thunderstorm surrounding him couldn’t begin to muffle the cries of pain radiating from his shaking lips. Sharp pain pierced his body and his cells felt like they were being pinpricked with an army of needles. His limbs began shaking, his fists clenched and his toes curled. His eyes darted around in his head like ping pong balls and the magnified sensation of heartburn incapacitated his body. He felt something moving rapidly inside him, paralyzed he laid in his skin as he felt his intruder move about beneath his epidermal surface. Thoughts of entrapment filtered through the man’s brain. Painfully he acknowledged a small percentage of the mountainous multitude of sorrow he had inflicted upon his countless victims.

The demon dwelling within the man’s stiffening torso worked quickly and carried out his escape with a persistent fervor, moving about, the creature wreaked havoc on the evil man’s interior. As swiftly as the man’s pain started it came to a halt as his body internally combusted, millions of microscopic bombs exploded and demolished the evil man’s insides. He was alit and fire raged through his veins, torched his organs and burned so hot it turned all it past into ash wastelands, when the demon finished his internal act of arson the man had been reduced to an pair a scorched partial limbs and a burnt lifeless head, eyeballs melted down to nothing but a black pile of goo. The demon had finally grown strong enough to set himself free.