True Love Lost Forever: A Dark Tale of Fantasy

  Chapter Four

  There Never is a Happy Ending

  Prospering the first year, married life seemed perfect and became a dream that could never end. Logan received work doing what he liked and Aideen became a school teacher. Teague and Nara kept the covenant, making sure they had all they needed. When approaching their second anniversary, Logan and Aideen began to worry. Although they wanted children, Aideen had not yet become pregnant. Time continued as it always does and a month after their second year together, Aideen finally became with child and for the first few months everything was good. But soon, as the child grew inside her, Aideen increasingly became sicker. Healers came, but none could help. Her mother and father did all they could. Logan's worry became all consuming.

  Near the time of her delivery, Aideen seemed to be getting better. She was able to get out of bed and walk around. Logan remembered believing the worse was over. But as the day came and went, Aideen fell sick again. When she finally went into labour, it was exceedingly difficult. The baby was the wrong way around and didn't want to come out. There was nothing anyone could do. The Mid-wives and doctors tried but they couldn't save mother and child. Logan watched helplessly as Aideen slowly bled to death with their unborn child still in her womb.

  Logan couldn't accept it. He couldn't believe she was gone. Was his True Love lost forever? His wife and child both dead. They were supposed to be together forever. His mind began to fray and depression dragged him down. Logan followed his father and started to drink excessively. Teague and Nara tried to help but couldn't reach him- they couldn't even handle their own sorrow. Logan quickly spiralled downward and lost everything.

  He spent his days drifting aimlessly, dwelling on the past and things that should have been. At night, Aideen would come and lie next to him, alleviating his pain. For over a year, Logan lived in a haze of loneliness and grief, until he realized she wasn't real. Aideen was dead and had been this whole time. Logan reluctantly said good-bye to his wife once again. Soon, the hallucinations ended and his vision of her left. But inside, Logan carried an obsessive need to see her again.

  Logan couldn't live without her. As he thought of her spirit, he reasoned, she must have continued into the next world. She couldn't have lived for a moment and then fallen into oblivion. She couldn't just be gone. He was always taught the soul continued after death. All the religions believed it, and everybody hoped for it. Logan remembered feeling hope for the first time since Aideen died. Hope that he would find a way to see her again.

  Logan began to search out, mediums, psychics and clairvoyants, anyone who claimed to have a connection to the afterlife. But they all turned out to be charlatans and deceivers. Beguiling people with what they wanted to hear, never offering real proof it was the loved one. Logan wondered how people could fall for such prevarication. There had to be another way to communicate with the other side.

  In secret, Logan began to read books on the occult. When ever he had any spare money, he would search for any old text on the subject. He studied everything and his knowledge grew. It all explained how the self-conscious continued after death and gave hints that it was possible for life to commune with the spirits of those who once lived. His compulsion grew as he began learning the secrets of necromancy. Logan searched and studied for over a year with no avail. But he was obsessed to find that elusive, secret of summoning Aideen's spirit. He ate what he could and slept where it was dry, life was miserable but he could think of nothing else- could do nothing else, only Aideen mattered.

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