A Haunting Season (2 chapters)

Prologue
Humidity's stifling blanket is gone and each breath comes easier. Squirrels scurry to gather a harvest before the snows of winter shroud a frozen landscape in pristine whiteness. Awakened is the smoke, exhaled from chimneys not used since March and families get cozy in the midst of the shadows cast by dancing flames; the warmth wrapped around them.
While most celebrate this transformation of the seasons, I do not. Overwhelmed with feelings of anxiety, fall's vivid colors seen on the trees, is a dreadful reminder that they will soon seek me out. As though I will be the one to unburden them and move them beyond the interim - between here and now and heaven or hell.
Like life that has been sucked from the lushness of summer, autumn falls dead. The daylight slips away and darkness steals its splendor. Only shades in gray are left behind the closed shutters. I will no longer hear the peep frogs or crickets that lulled me to sleep only a few short weeks ago. Instead, I will be subject to the purging of what keeps them in the doldrums until they meet their maker – be it God or the devil, or, at the least, until spring.
The windows will be shut to the melody of a lingering songbird that is sure to fly south soon. I am foolish to think this will keep them from me.
I wander in my house, in the silence, waiting for the first to arrive. Confessions cry out to be unveiled but no priest is present and Catholics don't believe that the dead still walk praying for absolution. Most days I wince and shoulder the weight that my mind and body have to endure without forgiveness.

They will reach for me, as I cower in darkness. For this gift given to me is my curse and I curse those who don't believe.

I am Tessa McCloude, a believer that those who die come back.
Chapter Break
Summer is now at its end and the leaves that painted the landscape in brilliant hues of warmth are now brown, crumbled, and spat to the ground in anger by the winds and rains. I should breathe easier but my space is limited and the heavy weight pressing on my chest will not let me.
My mind is free but my body trapped, confined in this box meant to hold the dead and keep them there. So now, my mind will wander, to where my body cannot go, to the places I shut out so long ago.
I will walk the winter paths covered in snow, listen to its silence, and know the quiet has freed me from my curse.
It is cold and often dark, for I cannot feel the summer's sun, but I no longer hear them, and they no longer call to me. I will not see a spring, where a brook offers its nourishment to the land and this makes me thirst for its water. I will not hear a bird or its melody.
However, I will smell the smoke from fires that keep families warm and cast once again shadows on distant walls, dancing to their own songs. Those shadows will call to me, and I in turn will call to you.
I am Tessa McCloude, still a believer that those who die come back…I did.
Epilogue
A lone songbird perched in silence upon a tombstone. Its head raised to the naked branches of the Oak that shadowed the prison I was sentenced to.
My body cold lay flat against the dirt. The wound no longer bled from where my fingers touched the handle. The only motion was a shadow across my cheek as the last ray of sunlight reflected off the blade. His hand upon my own in the final thrust of rage.
The brook now frozen was a bitter reminder that I, too, was held in death's icy grip. I just never knew it.
A single tear of joy from his vacant eye cascaded to the ground and anointed my fate.
I exhaled my final breath in a puff of gray vapor while I watched the sun disappear behind October's storm clouds.