Stacy was still terrified, even as she ran away from the Deep Lake, the Fisherman, and the Darkness that lurked beyond the town’s borders…

She was obviously scared. Anyone would be when confronted with things that didn’t make sense, monstrous things… though Stacy could also feel her mind changing as she moved further into Sanguine…

Alien concepts required an alien mind… and a mind that changes too much from its base is no longer the same.

It was like the woodcutter’s axe that Stacy had read about.

A man became a woodcutter, and had a son, passing his axe to his son… then the son became a woodcutter but the blade had been damaged, and so the son replaced the axe head and had a son of his own, the grandson of the original man.

Then the grandson became a woodcutter was given the axe, and then the handle snapped, leaving the grandson to replace the axe handle.

Now that all the parts of the axe have been replaced, is it still the original axe?

Maybe spiritually, but practically no, it was not.

Stacy had no idea why that story came to mind so suddenly, but she felt that it was important, and that was when Stacy realized something was wrong.

She had been in a slightly wooded area, the shadows invoking primal feelings of fear, as if she had to stay away from them, keeping her on the path heading back into Sanguine…

But now all of a sudden she found herself on concrete flooring, breathing heavily as she looked up to the sky, noticing the unchanged position of the sun, despite having ran for what felt like hours…

“Maybe it’s the adrenaline… yeah, that’s it.” Stacy’s lies felt hollow on her ears as she looked at her new surroundings, concerned with how she had seemed to appear in this place the moment her concentration waned even slightly…

And with a bit of apprehension, Stacy felt her eyes drift upwards, and her blood felt cold as she read the words on the arch.

Sanguine Cemetery.

In a place with horrors and monsters, shadows that felt vile and eyes that saw tOo MUCH-

A place such as this was terrifying when she wasn’t in danger… now with the added incentive of staying away from terrifying monsters and people capable of killing her easily, Stacy felt her legs almost give out on her.

She was scared. It was simple, it was normal to be afraid in such a situation…

But they said courage was overcoming fear?

Stacy wanted to punch the person who said that as she turned to try and walk away…

There was a moment where a wind blew, and Stacy felt dust sting her eyes, for a moment she shut her eyes, rubbed at them in irritation, and opened them.

And once more she found herself at the entrance of the cemetery.

It reminded Stacy of the sign as her family left the town… or at least tried to leave.

“You will stay huh?” Stacy muttered as she took a quivering step forward, her words strong, but her actions weak as she trembled in fear of the unknown.

Stacy wished she hadn’t learnt of Lovecraft, and his most famous of sayings.

Fear is the oldest human emotion. And the greatest of fears is the fear of the unknown.

Stacy had no idea what she’d find in this place, but the moment she crossed the threshold into the cemetery, the air changed…

It was a chill that pervaded into your bones, a shiver reminiscent of a claw being dragged down your spine, the cold sweat of a terrible dream, and vaguely Stacy noted that the glare of the sun had been replaced with the soft caress of moonlight…

So why did Stacy feel that said caress was just the noose being slipped around her neck?

Stacy had tried to leave… and she couldn’t, only returning here to this graveyard…

She could only venture forth into the unknown, the choice ripped from her hands far too easily for her liking…

But she was only mortal.

Stacy could feel her mind accept this as fact the moment she had seen the Fisherman pulp the brain of a massive creature from the most creative of nightmares, her mind further broke under the strain of accepting that a being such as the Darkness could exist…

And compared to these things, Stacy was only mortal. She had no way of fighting back, no tools, no ideas, and she wasn’t the most athletic of people.

Stacy had walked into the cemetery expecting to die.

She had not expected to hear sobbing.

With a raised eyebrow, but still worried, Stacy tried to keep away from the sobbing… but no matter which direction she moved in, she only found the sobbing getting louder…

Either the source of the noise was approaching, or the same effect that was keeping her in the graveyard was activating to guide her to the source…

Whatever the case, Stacy kept her face painfully passive, even as the blood seemed to drain from said face once she came across the source of the crying…

And once more Stacy felt her mind shattering, trying to comprehend the being she was seeing… but the human mind was a versatile thing, and soon she had managed to make some kind of sense of the being.

For one, it had seemed small at first, a lady a bit smaller than Stacy herself crying at a grave, her black dress in tatters and her feet bare, caked with dirt that had a muted red tint to it…

A terrifying implication…

But after seeing the Darkness, Stacy saw more than she should have been capable of… seeing the lady from the back, Stacy was incapable of seeing the name on the grave, but she saw slight changes.

The woman’s straight black hair became frayed, longer and almost touching the floor, her feet digging further into the ground as her dress seemed to have tufts of hair sewn across the back, unable to be hidden even by the mane of hair the woman now had…

Stacy had the faint idea that the lady was actually not a lady, but Stacy couldn’t SEE any more than what she was currently seeing…

Stacy had been drawn to this being, and knowing that she could likely not leave without interacting with this being, Stacy walked slowly forward.

She had no doubt that the ‘lady’ sitting at the tombstone had already felt Stacy’s presence, but it was the thought that counted, right?

“Uh… hi there… are you…” Stacy felt fear, she was terrified, she wanted to run away and never come back…

But despite that, she looked at this lady, crying, in emotional pain, and Stacy did not think to ask ‘why am I here’ or ‘can I leave’ or ‘what are you’… instead…

“Are you okay… dumb question, sorry, um… do you need help?” Stacy asked, mentally slapping herself for asking the thing that could kill her at almost any moment if it needed any help.

The sobbing stopped, the sudden halt jarring, and only emphasizing the silence in the graveyard, there were no noises…

No crickets, no wind, no birds, nothing. Silence, bar the crying woman who no longer cried…

The loudest sound is silence, Stacy learnt at this moment.

In this silence, which Stacy belatedly realized also included her own lack of breathing, the woman finally moved, and Stacy’s heart beat rang, and with a shudder she breathed, looking at the woman who raised her head…

She was no longer smaller than Stacy, now larger as the woman turned…

Stacy bit back the scream she felt, unwilling to show weakness to the terrifying visage staring at her.

For the woman before her had no face. No, that was incorrect… she had eyes, she had teeth, oh so many teeth, and those two holes might be where her nose should be…

But this ‘woman’ lacked skin, the clear musculature of her face shown for Stacy to stare at, no lips, and no eyelids meaning that the toothy ‘grin’ and wide eyed stare of too red eyes shown at her.

“You… help me?” the woman spoke, and Stacy shivered, noting that the mouth didn’t move…

Instead, the muscles on the sides of her face, where the ‘cheeks’ were, flapped open and closed in a sideways movement, the voice echoing from those two places…

It was strange, and disgusting, and yet, Stacy just shivered for a moment before looking at those terrifying eyes, and nodded.

“Ah.” There was a blur and Stacy was reminded of her mortality when she realized her head was being held, her skull between two suddenly massive palms, the claws gently scratching the back of her hair…

Stacy had no doubt that with just a small application of force Stacy’s head would be doing a good imitation of a watermelon hit by a sledgehammer.

“You… fear me. You… are alive.” The thing spoke, it’s teeth still in a macabre grin as its cheeks flapped to allow its voice to be heard…

“Y-y-yes… I am alive… and yes… I-I fear you…” Stacy stared, forced to look into the eyes of this thing in front of her as she steeled her resolve.

“But… I don’t know… I can fear you, and want to help you at the same time. If that makes sense.” Stacy admitted, finally glancing away from the red eyes, the palms slowly coming away from her skull, letting Stacy stumble back a bit.

“You don’t really want to help me… but you feel that you must… that’s… kind of you. I like you.” The being spoke, still looming over Stacy as it leaned back, straightening out.

Now that it was doing that, facing Stacy, Stacy noticed that it was probably something like three metres tall, thin, fur covering everywhere except for its face which was still without skin…

There was its clawed hands, the sharp teeth on full display, and bits of metal clinking all over her black dress, the metal all holding tiny tufts of hair.

“I… am an Old One. I… am the Mourner. I govern hair.” Stacy blinked at that, confused by the statement… hair?

This thing was pretty hairy in a way, but… it didn’t exactly invoke images of ‘in charge of hair’.

“You are confused. I can erase that feeling. Spiritually, hair is a conduit for your spirit, a sign of connections, a thread tying you to another being or place.” There was a blur, and a sharp pain on her scalp, and Stacy looked at the long dark brown hair in the claws of the Mourner… and recognized it as her own.

“It is the reason why things like voodoo dolls would work. Hair connects things… let me show you your connections.” Stacy felt some wetness on her head, and became worried once she realized that her head was probably bleeding now…

Made sense, those claws didn’t really look precise… but the pain wasn’t that bad, but the wetness was worrying… then again, Stacy read somewhere that head wounds looked worse than they usually were, she was probably fine… probably.

The Mourner raised the strand of hair, and it lengthened in the hands of the Mourner, stretching out away from the terrifying being as the hair began to float in air, a glowing brown trail.

“Follow. It will take you to where you need to be… thank you for caring.” The Mourner then turned back to the tombstone, kneeling once more as Stacy finally managed to see the tombstone.

It lacked a name, faded by time itself, but she caught the words ‘caring husband’ on the stone, giving Stacy a good idea of who it was that died in the Mourner’s life.

“You’re welcome… goodbye.” Stacy said, touching to her head wound and wincing at the small patch of missing hair, before walking away to follow the hair.

In a moment Stacy was gone, and the Mourner held a small tuft of brown hair in her hand, a metallic holder for the hair forming and clipping itself onto her dress, to join the rest.

“Watcher… she’s a unique one… between you, me, and Origin… three of us want her.” The Mourner spoke into the air, her wolfish ears above her head twitching as she heard a soft whisper on the wind.

“Why I didn’t claim her? I want her… but she isn’t mine to have… you will see.” The Mourner let out a growling chuckle at the end of her words, knowing the dig would irritate her fellow Old One.

“Such kindness… oh my love… you would have liked to meet her…” The Mourner went back to her vigil over her grave, doing the same thing she did since as far as she can remember…

She cried. She sobbed… she mourned.