The Stolen Rose

By Emma Russell

"I was blinded by whispered promises and I never realised how cruel a woman could be until it was too late.”

Jon treads between worlds, caught on the cusp of life and death. He is invisible among the living, a mere shadow in a landscape of loss and isolation. Blood has long since run through his veins, his body turned cold as stone.

Catterina is the beautiful and mysterious spirit who lures him to his death with the promise of seeing his mother again. But as her demands take dark and sinister turns, Jon begins to question the authenticity of Catterina’s promises.

Ensnared in a perverse web of events, and forced to take the life of Sophia Flynn – a young woman refusing to leave the world of the living – Jon faces a tough dilemma. He must learn to face his greatest fears and confront Catterina, but does he have the strength to break the spell she has over him? Death is never the end and, as Jon soon discovers, the battle has just begun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emma Russell
• Release date: Sep 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311100825

Emma Russell

Emma Russell is the author of The Stolen Rose, a paranormal novella. She lives on the east coast of Ireland and spends her days writing, walking her dog and YouTubing dog videos.

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The Stolen Rose

By Emma Russell

Copyright 2014 Emma Russell

Cover Design: Copyright Kate Marie Robbins @ Kate's Ye Olde Booke Cover Shoppe

Cover illustration: Copyright Sadhbh Quinn

Rose background: Copyright Dace Kiršpile

All Persons Fictitious Disclaimer:

This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.

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Prologue

The mournful howl of a dog is the last thing I remembered as I slipped from this life. The despairing wail reverberated through the night sky. I remember the desolation, but felt nothing.

Everything had become clear. The musty damp of my room, the yellow blush of the streetlamp, the twinge of cold as black air crept through the open crack of the window – it was January 5th and frost encrusted the barren concrete streets, making them sparkle.

But it’s that sound that I remember most clearly. It still swells within the cavities of my mind. I can almost hear the translation, the message that lone dog was trying to convey: You’re making a mistake.

And I did. But I ignored the premonition, as I have so often done in the course of my life. At twenty two, I knew best. Besides, I wasn’t one for listening to the whispers of the universe.

By the time I realised the error in my judgement I was already dead. No matter how much I wished it untrue, I was expelled from the world’s exclusivity, dangling on the outskirts, on the periphery of all things great; close enough to witness but always at too vast a distance to participate. The possibility of achieving my life’s goals – the ability to grow a beard, get a girlfriend, and a good job – had diminished and I was left with the remnants of broken ambition.

There was no sadness as I left the world, just the warm breath of relief, but little did I know that death held even worse surprises for me. I was blinded by whispered promises and I never realised how cruel a woman could be until it was too late.

Chapter 1

It doesn’t take much for a child to be regarded as unusual, and I fit the stereotype. I was different. The kids in school could smell it off me, the stench of a freak, seeping through my pores, filling their alert nostrils.

School was a torturous place, an inescapable prison with its tall, grey walls; lined with broken glass to keep the intruders out and the pupils in. I had a single friend – Greg, the Milkybar Kid look-a-like, who constantly sported a bleeding nose – but that was no great feat. Looking back, I think we were only friends because of his nose.

I often wished the others had similar spurting snouts, but I wasn’t so lucky, and in all my years of life and death I have never experienced anything more cruel or terrifying than a group of children whittled down in order of popularity. I was always the last, as I stood against the pebbled-dashed wall of the schoolyard, to be selected as a player for the football team.

‘Hmm. I pick . . . Jon!’ The kids’ faces would pucker in mock consideration, as though faced with a choice. Mrs. Nolan, our pink-faced, spittle-lipped teacher, would allow the charade as if the pretence of being chosen took the sting out of standing alone in the line-up. But I always thought she enjoyed the spectacle; the one-armed boy left for last. I suspected it gave her pleasure, witnessing the misery of others, as though it somehow diluted her own.

Even the fat kid, and the one that flinched every time the ball tumbled toward him, got picked before I did. But I always thought my classmates stupid. The fact that I had only one arm should have encouraged them to pick me – at least there was a fifty per cent lower chance of incurring a foul for handball.

*

I was told I ‘lost’ my arm in the crash. I never really lost it, I knew exactly where it was – in the city hospital incinerator, but I’ve learned you can’t say that to people, it makes them uncomfortable. Truth has an awful habit of making people twitch.

An arm is a small price to pay for life, that’s what I was told anyway, by the bent grey-haired night nurse. The bitch kept saying it, with a yellowed smile, as if pecking the words into my mind would make it true. But life as I knew it was forever changed.

Memories are a fleeting thing, and mine are no exception. On the rare, indulgent occasions I think of the accident little comes to mind but the colour red; the red of the car’s paint, the blood. Bright and nauseating. I smelt it, tasted it, red was everywhere.

And then I was engulfed in blackness.

My mother was crushed in a cocoon of steel; her flesh ripping, bones snapping like dry twigs. I often imagined her mouth and eyes opened wide in death, shocked that such a gruesome end was to be her fate. At night her pretty rounded face lingered behind my eyelids; her broad, gap-toothed smile and the scattering of wrinkles around her kind eyes haunted me. But my father forgot without hesitation; his memory of my mother disintegrating, it seemed, until merely a pile of dry bones. Roxanne was on the scene within weeks, as if the accident was planned; a scam so he could find himself a leggy hairdresser with a thick Dublin accent.

Catterina saved me from a life of misery and isolation. Just as things became unbearable, she breezed into my life and from the moment I laid eyes on her she had me enthralled. Her aura enveloped me, made me feel alive – almost whole again. Her energy sustained me, kept lethargy and hunger at bay. Only one urge remained, my need for a woman; impossible to quench when she was around.

***

It was a cold autumnal night, close enough to Halloween so that the smell of smouldering furniture drifted on the wind. A sprinkling of colour was offered to the sky as fireworks erupted from a nearby garden. Dazzling light which climaxed with a bang; fading into the night and forever lost to the darkness. The house stretched its brown-bricked body into the sky, as though to peer over the heads of buildings, past suburbia and into the city with its groaning traffic and hidden stars. A young woman was sleeping inside – Sophia, I was told – a project Catterina wanted me to work on.

Months had passed since Catterina had taken me, and now it was time for me to return the favour – to do for someone else what she had done for me. It is always important to help the less fortunate, she said with a glint in her eye. Of course, I agreed.

The sky was empty save for stray clouds, shaggy and translucent, which drifted past the full moon. I was always at unease when the moon was ripe and low in the sky, like an apple ready to drop from a branch. Those were the times my nightmares were at their most extreme. Nightmares should have been a thing of the past, a vague memory of midnight terrors and sweat-soaked sheets, but they still plagued me. The only difference was that the subject of my nightmares had changed. I was free of the visions of a happier version of myself I had been promised in death, because Catterina didn’t care what I thought.

Not now, when she already had me.

She stood beside me, close enough so that my skin tingled with anticipation, but leaving enough distance so that we weren’t quite touching. As ever, she held a cigarette tenderly between two slender fingers – the sole occasion Catterina can be described as tender is when nurturing a cigarette. She breathed out a cloud of smoke and I watched it twist and waltz playfully with the air. I was always curious as to where she got the cigarettes. It struck me as strange, a smoking ghost.

On this occasion I plucked up the courage to ask.

‘The dead, of course. What remains from their life is left for the taking. They’re hardly going to stop me now, are they?’ She gave the one she was currently tending to a gentle flick with her thumb. Flakes of ash tumbled to the ground. ‘Handy when you’re running low on fags.’

‘Did you ever take anything of mine?’ I had a suspicion that she had. There was little time for me to grab anything before she took me away from my house, away from everything – quite convenient if you’re partial to petty thievery.

She smiled impishly, finding apparent hilarity in the question. ‘That’s not for you to know, Jumpy Jon.’

The name stung. It was the nickname she used when she wanted to provoke a reaction. I swallowed down the anger that rose in my throat like bile. I had no grounds for accusations. But I couldn’t shake the suspicion, and when the streetlight hit the creamy skin of her neck, I could have sworn I saw the glint of a silver chain, somehow familiar. Perhaps it was the way it hung, that reminded me of something from another life. I thought back, could it have been possible for Catterina to grab something from my room that night? She would have had the time... Suddenly, I felt ashamed and I shook the thoughts from my mind. How could I think of Catterina as a thief after everything she'd done for me? I knew it was my own insecurity, the perfection of others had always made me want to poke holes.

I puffed breath into my cupped hand to revive my numbed fingers. We’d been waiting outside Sophia’s house for longer than I could remember and the cold was beginning to eat its way through my bones. ‘So, what now?’

Catterina didn’t bother answering. She must have been onto her twentieth fag and she took a deep hungry pull.

I pulled myself onto the wall lining Sophia’s garden to rest. It was not an easy task with one arm. ‘What now?’ I repeated it louder this time, irritated with being ignored.

The end of her cigarette glowed red and molten; its intensity mirrored in her eyes. ‘Now, Jon, you go in.’

The house stood still and dark,