November unleashed its sane coldness upon the 18th day.
Darkness enclosed the sunlight sooner than anyone’s foreseeing.
With the last ray of sunlight came the last step that Karl de Adieux made on the land of his new enemy, Marquis D’Urbervilles. He was getting in the carriage that would take him back at his chateau. The dripping fog of the night was not espied by de Adieux.
Notwithstanding the driver’s warning, he shut the door behind him.
Their journey began.
The deaf tumult of the night and the incessant patter of the horses were the only sounds he heard. They were enough to keep both his eyes open, but not his mind which was already torpid. The valley that surrounded their road disappeared as a dark forest swallowed their path. The fog was covering the trees as the leaves were waiting to be torn in the blooded horse feet. The driver could not see his horses in the deep mist. Suddenly, the harnesses that he was holding tightly in his hands fell loose. The moonlight revealed the disappearing of the horses.
As giving its last breath, the carriage stopped.
The driver jumped from his high seat on the frozen earth covered in dead leaves. The rustle of the leaves awoke de Adieux. Still caught in the claws of weariness he did not realize the carriage had stopped until a second rustle. He opened the door that he had shut with so much hate not long ago. He could not see anything in the fog lost between night’s darkness. Carefully, he set his foot on the ground making his first step on a land he had never walked before. He took a match and he lit it. Its light was fast swallowed by the darkness and its windy breath. The same thing happened to the second match. To the third. Finally, he relinquished to the darkness and the wind that was pervading through his clothes. He spread away the silence with a call for his driver. The name Charton burst once, twice. He ceased, cursing the driver, and his sons, and his sons’ sons for betraying him, and forsaking him, Karl de Adieux.
The silence and stillness of the night came back waiting to be disrupted one more time. The second rustle, the one that truly awaken de Adieux were the leaves screaming under the heavy body of Charton. When he touched the ground he was already dead. The deep haze proved to be a great hiding place for a thick wooden spike. It stabbed the falling body from feet to head, breaking under the heavy mass of flesh. Hot blood was dripping over the lifeless leaves. Warm steams were rising from the torn body that was now lying on the frozen ground. De Adieux almost slipped on cold boiling blood. As a last try, he lit another match. In his pale light, he found a lamp hanging under the driver’s seat. Fast and yet slowly, so that the match would not get blown off, he lit the lamp. He saw Charton’s face all covered in cold, and yet, steaming blood and realized the mistake, the sin, he had made moments ago. He closed the blue-blooded eyes saying a short prayer as soft as a mother’s “Good night” to her newborn child.
As if nothing had happened, he raised his head from the body, searching, in the lamp’s blind light, for his horses. The leaves rustled again. And again. The rustle was closer. It was closing. De Adieux was moving in circle looking for what was moving, what was closing on him. The rustle stopped. De Adieux cried awaking the entire dead forest. “Curse you d’Urbervilles! God will hold you responsible for Charton. You hear? You! Your thoughtless games are not enough to fright Karl de Adieux!” His scream re-brought to life the murmur. It was coming from everywhere. He felt surrounded. He was. They were all closing down on him. Behind the soulless trees suddenly, two crimson lights were lit. In the opposite direction two other. Ten feet forward from where he was standing, trembling, two more red candles burst in blooded flames. He had not seen the last two that were about to hit him from behind. He could hear the leaves lisping under something, something big, strong, that was raging towards him. He was too afraid to turn around and see what was about to hit him. The three pairs of sparks were starring at him. His eyes froze looking in three different directions at the same time. His blood froze in his veins as he could feel that one more step and, the attacking thing behind him, would have fulfilled its purpose; its obvious purpose which was to kill him, Karl de Adieux.
His eyes moved. They closed. He did not hear anything. He did not see anything. He could not. He thought that’s what death is: loosing all your senses. But he could feel. Horrid pain was being felt by every limb of his body. Cold was breathing down the warmth dripping on his face. He tried to say something. As someone, something have known he was about to speak, the swish re-began. He started crying. If that was the only thing he could hear, he wanted to cut off his ears. If the pairs of red fire were the only things he could see, he wanted to cut out his eyes. But he could not. He was hit. The thing failed its goal – it did not kill him. He began crying harder. He knew it was going to come back because he was still alive.
With all the power and life and breath he had left in him, he opened his eyes. The fire in the lamp was still burning. Weak, but still burning. Just as him. Hurt, but still alive. The sight of light gave him enough strength to reach for it and grab it. He looked for his carriage. Instead of the century old Lyon oak carriage he had received from the Marquis d’Urbervilles when they were still friends, he found a pile of broken wooden boards covered in blood; without any doubt, his own. He started crawling for a tree he saw nearby. “Where are my horses? God, bring me back at least one!” His prayer, anything but soft this time, was the spark that lit the crimson fires on the dark, hazy background.
“They’re eyes.” he said to himself.
A bearer of one of the four pairs was breaking what was left from the carriage. He thought that by quenching the fire in his lamp he would remain unseen. He put it out. The beast from the carriage caught sight of de Adieux’s undertaking and it began searching him in the darkness. De Adieux realized he had become invisible for them, but, given no chance to be happy for his action, the beast sensed the last smoke coming from the lamp. After tracing the smell it started going backwards on the smoke’s trail. The thread of smoke was enough to draw the beast to the tree. De Adieux was trying to pull his legs, himself from the rushing, animal, without a doubt. He was too weak.



Light.
Blue sky.
Bright sun burning the sky.
“My fair lady, you truly are the one next to whom I desire to spend my remaining days.”
Dark.
Dark blue sky.
Bright stars burning the sky.
“My fair lady, you are as beautiful as this warm July night under the burning candles of the sky and as soft as this breath of summer.”
Black.
Black sky.
Dark cold tears crying from the, once burned, sky.
“My fair lady, your true love is what I truly seek. If I could have it not, my life, it shall be stopped.”
The fair lady who’s sight was caught in the chaos of memories was the women who de Adieux had loved so much, who’s love he had never seen. Because of his boundless love for this woman, he did not choose to live a life next to someone he did not love. Loosing every hope, he turned to what will become his last love: loneliness. Every night, before he would fall asleep, he would cry. He would beg for an answer to his question: “Why? Why did she not love me?” Drowned in tears, wanting, thinking that he wants to die, he would be caught by sleep, only so that the day to come will end in the same way like the one before.
Marquis D’Urbervilles was the man he hated more than the beasts that were about to tear him apart. Why? What made de Adieux unleash this mad hate upon D’Urbervilles? Annabelle. The name that he buried deep into his heart swearing that he will not speak it again until his death. Until the very last day. November 18th.
Karl de Adieux revealed his true face, the one that denied him the love of Annabelle. A last beastly scream shuddered the empty forest one more time. “Curse you Annabelle! Curse your entire life! Curse my entire life!” He did not have the courage to look in the eye the animal that was about to cease his captious life. He nailed his eyes to the lisping leaves. Then, in the fiery look of the beast, he saw the lamp. The lamp that once burned with the fire of his life. He broke it by the old empty tree and, with a splinter of glass, he split his throat open. Blood began flowing covering the trembling body. The beast kneeled in front of him. It was the answer to his second prayer.



One that shall not believe fear until he has seen with his own eyes…is dead.