The Threads of Fate, 1

When a sad turn of fate takes Josephine Blair to the small town of Bridgeport, West Virginia, she meets and falls for the devious and cunning Caius Duke. Her life blooms in both wonderful and terrifying ways.

Together, Josephine and Caius discover they have something deeper and more intense than true love. While theirs is a love spanning centuries, what they don’t realize is the stronger their relationship becomes, the more some unknown evil is trying to tear them apart.

A captivating tale of eternal love, vengeful curses, and a power that can make or break them all, The Hanging Night will pull you in, making you wonder how we are all tied together, and if the ties that bind are truly meant to last.

14+ due to adult situations

Excerpt:

“Shh. Don’t cry. I’m going to tell you a story,” the young man, dirty and disheveled, said as he laid the girl, covered in the same dirt and filth as he, across his lap as though she were more precious than any gem. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen-years-old, and he, maybe a year or two older.

She looked into his eyes, waiting.

“Once, there was a young boy who, given to his own devices, was a small-time thief for no particular reason other than he enjoyed the exhilaration that swiping a trinket from street vendors gave him. ‘What does it matter to them, after all,’ the boy always thought. ‘They have enough. What’s a single trinket?’ But, as we know, a single trinket turns to two, which turns to three and four and five, a never-ending number of trinkets.” 

The girl in his arms listened with eager attention. Her ice blue eyes focused on him as if nothing else existed, and nothing else ever had, and nothing else ever would.

With his thumb, he wiped a tear on her cheek, streaking grime across her barely visible golden skin. “At one market, on a particularly hot summer day, just as the boy swiped a red apple from a vendor's table, an old man shouted at him, and fear, like lightning, shot through the boy. For surely he thought he’d been caught and was about to lose his hand for thievery. ‘Boy!’ shouted the old man. ‘Hey, boy!’ The boy tried to ignore the shouts of the old man and will himself to run, but the terror of a machete across his wrist, just at the joint, cleanly severing hand from arm, kept his feet glued to the ground.

‘Come here, boy. I’ve got a story. Wouldn’t you like to share an apple with an old man and hear a story? I’ve got a tale worth more than gold,’ the old man taunted. Realizing the old man was nothing more than a hungry vagrant, the boy turned to him with a sigh of relief.

‘Come, boy. Sit by me for a while. Have a rest. Share your treat.’ The boy’s head cocked as he considered the man’s offer, and just as he’d decided no, the apple was his and his alone, something not entirely born of his own free will reeled him close to the old man.

“The old man stank of sour breath and stale body odor, and the boy could see sweat pooling in the cracks of the man’s face. In stark contrast with his dark skin, his beard was white but stained by pipe smoke, and his words whistled through the empty spaces where teeth should have been. By the sight and smell of him, the boy reckoned he couldn’t have been a day less than one hundred and ten years old. ‘Sit,’ said the man. And the boy sat. The man snatched the red apple, wiped it on his shirt, then cut it in half, handing one to the boy. ‘Close your eyes, boy.’ The boy did as instructed. ‘Now imagine your body fading–first your clothes, then your color, then your skin. Let it all fade until your body is glass, and you can see your insides. Can you see the complex web of arteries and vessels, flowing blood like rivers, giving life to every part of you?’ The boy furrowed his brow, receiving the image the old man was feeding into his brain. ‘Now, boy, focus on your little finger. This one,’ the old man said as he grabbed the boy’s pinky and gave it a shake. The boy did as he was told, as the man kept hold of his finger. Behind closed eyes, the boy saw a light radiating where the man was touching him. The light glowed and flowed from his pinky finger straight to his heart. ‘What you’re seeing, boy, is a very special passageway. This channel I show you that glows makes your little finger a direct representative of your heart, and it doesn’t stop there! From your little finger, it continues in the form of a red string, visible only to those who truly wish to see, and that red string connects you to the other half of your soul—your one true love.”

Pausing a moment to attempt to wet his lips with a tongue that would not produce saliva, the dirty old man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before he began talking again. Growing tired of the old man’s words and ready to eat his half of the apple, the boy opened his eyes, yanked his hand from the old man, and spat at him. Stunned, the old man retaliated, ‘Young, foolish, stupid boy, too narcissistic to want his soul whole and complete.’ He wiped the spittle from his face. ‘Your mate is there.’ The man pointed a long finger, crooked and gnarled, toward a girl with light eyes and dark hair.

Angry at having been both insulted and tricked out of half his apple by a vile vagrant, the boy shouted, ‘Shut up, you filthy old tramp!’ And with that, the boy picked a rock up from the ground, threw it in the direction the old man had pointed, toward the girl, and took off running from the market. Behind him, he could hear the old man hurling hateful, vengeful words.”

Already knowing the rest of the story, the tired and dirty girl began to cry harder, more freely. The young man placed his parched, cracked lips to her temple, “Be calm, love, for the story has a happy ending.” Dehydrated lips pressed into her, and she closed her eyes, pushing tears from her lids. The young man kissed them as they spilled down her face, wetting his lips enough to continue. “When the boy grew into a man, he came upon a woman who fascinated him. She wore a veil covering her face and was a mystery to all who looked upon her, for she would not reveal her face to anyone. The young man, however, was persistent, and his persistence finally ended in reward, because one day, the woman conceded and allowed him to lift her veil. When he did, he saw she wore an adornment on her eyebrow, and lurking at the corner of the intricate golden hoop was a thin scar, lighter in color than the rest of her skin.”

The young woman’s body began to quiver and heave, for it was too dry to cry more, and she moved her face into the man holding her, dirty hair falling across her forehead. “When he asked her about her brow, she told him when she was young, a boy threw a rock, scarring her.”

“Hush now, don’t shake.” The young man lifted the matted hair out and away from her temple, revealing an obscure, faded white line near the girl’s eyebrow. He brushed his lips against the small scar, whispering, almost confessing, his story into it. “To this boy, now man, scar or no scar, there could never be a more beautiful woman in all the world, and he thanked the universe for forgiving him for his earlier sin against his soulmate.” He kissed the scar and lifted his head.

She smiled in spite of herself. “I love you with something that is more than love.” She pushed a hand into her pocket, and when her fist emerged, it was clenched, holding tightly to something not visible to the eye. “I have so little time left to touch you. The universe is cold and cruel,” she whispered, reaching her other hand up to touch his beard, caressing the two areas at the corners of his chin that their time in a cell had specked with gray.

“No, no, my love,” he whispered against her ear. “You are wrong. The red thread of fate may tangle, may stretch, but it will never break. Regardless of time, place, or circumstance, we will always be bound together. I will always find you.”

Footsteps, heavy and foreboding, carrying with them the doom of two lovers crossed in fate, approached the cell and then stopped. Iron clinked as the door slid open, and the lovers knew their time for this story had ended. “I will always love you, even in death.” This served as the end of the young man’s story. The prison guard ordered him quiet as he yanked the young girl from his arms, forced them both to stand, and led them down a dank, moss cloaked hallway to a wide, wooden door with white light seeping through its cracks. Its hinges grated against each other as the guard heaved it open, and the lovers squinted against the first light they’d seen, in what felt to them like a lifetime, as they were pushed out onto a platform above a raucous, cheering crowd.

Silent seconds stretched infinitely between them as a scarlet noose was cinched against both their necks, tying them together. The young woman looked to her love, eyes wild, searching, refusing to believe love could have led them to this horrible fate. In return, his eyes looked deeply into hers, and his gaze—a gaze meant only for her because nothing else could ever matter to him—conveyed strength, comfort, and encouragement that once their souls departed their current vessels, their essences would still be connected, through all time and all space, drifting apart only briefly before finding their way back to each other.

That was their curse. 

And then it was over.

The lovers were thrown over the edge, necks snapping in sync, bodies limp, swaying ever so slightly right to left, left to right, right to left—together, a pendulum marking time as they dangled from the red rope connecting them—until they stilled. In death, the grip of the girl’s hand loosened, slender fingers relaxing, revealing a small rock, and just as a stone skipped across water ripples, the rock falling against the ground created a wrinkle in the universe that stretched outward, outward, outward.

But it did not break.