Through the Gate and Beyond
This is a continuation of an ongoing story. It begins with Part One, so if you’re wanting to start out at the beginning , I recommend you go there. Or Part Two is the previous section.
Chapter 7: We Met Someone
The road seemed to go on forever. As the afternoon faded into evening, we kept looking for somewhere safe to hide for the night. Part of me thought hiding was pointless against supernatural shadow murder demons, but I wasn’t willing to risk if it we had any other options. We knew we didn’t want to be out in the open, just in case.
“There!” I said, pointing off towards where the creek should be. There was a man walking towards us. He hadn’t seen us yet. Brad started to call out, but then something made me shush him. I quickly pulled him down into the brush beside the road. The man staggered a bit, but that’s not what had me hiding. No, I think it was just that nothing we’d seen so far had been friendly. I was just scared.
He staggered up to the road and stopped at the edge. He carefully looked both ways, like he was worried about oncoming traffic. His pants were wet up to his knees, maybe from crossing the creek, I thought. Again, Brad started to call out. Again, I shushed him. The man staggered, almost falling. He stood there for a moment, then turned in a slow, unsteady circle. It was like he’d been drinking too much, maybe.
For a heartbeat, he just stood there, staring off down the road. He turned his head up to the sky, then spun around again. “Janet!” he yelled. His voice was slurred. “Where are you!? Where’d you go!?” Then in a quieter voice, I think he said something like, “Where’d I go?” He was still wobbly on his feet. It was almost more of a bad sketch comedy version of a drunk person at this point.
While we watched him struggle, something made the hair on my neck rise. I looked at Brad. He swallowed hard and stared back at me. Whatever it was, he felt it too. Then he pointed behind me. I reluctantly turned my head. Racing up the road from back the way we’d come was a fast-moving shadow-thing. It wasn’t moving quite as fast as the one from last night. It was maybe moving as fast as a kid racing on bicycle, though. Certainly far faster than I could ever run on my best day. As it passed where we hid in the brush, I distinctly saw it turn its head towards us. My blood ran cold.
It stopped in front of the man. “Oh-god-no” Brad whispered, all in one word. It put its hands together and brought up that damned skull we’d seen before. “No!” moaned Brad, putting a hand over his mouth. My breath caught in my throat. But then something we didn’t expect happened.
The man had frozen as the shadow-thing arrived. He opened his mouth. I thought he would say something, but instead he threw up all over the shadow-thing. If I’d seen it in a movie, I would have laughed out loud. The shadow-thing was not so amused, though. The skull disappeared instantly back into the shadows. The creature spat something white into the man’s face. It turned, stared for a second towards us, and raced back the way it came. Its speed was uncanny, even still.
The man screamed. I had never heard anything so chilling in my life. Brad ran towards him, then he skidded to a halt a few feet away. I ran up beside him. “Help me!” the man yelled. The pain positively oozed from his scream. He covered his face with his hands. “HELP ME!” he yelled, even louder. I stepped, hesitantly, toward him. Brad grabbed my shoulder.
“No. No, no, no, stay with me,” Brad implored. I looked at him. His face, he was terrified almost beyond words. “Please don’t. Please stay with me.”
I turned, almost against my will, back towards the man. He was laying on his back now. His hands were clawing desperately at his face. He was gurgling instead of yelling. It made my stomach lurch painfully. His body tensed up, arching his back, with his arms splayed out into an X shape. That’s when I finally saw it.
The demon’s spit on his face. It wasn’t spit after all. There was something wiggling where his left eye had been. “Oh. Oh god,” I moaned. Even as I watched, the wiggling thing got larger. The man started into some kind of convulsions as the thing kept growing and, God help me, chewing its way in. I could hear the chewing sounds. Over the next few seconds, the thing did terrible, painful, ultimately deadly things to the man.
Brad and I clutched each other, so we wouldn’t see that thing eat the man. After an eternity, the dreadful chewing and drumming of his legs and arms stopped. I turned, and saw for just a second the dead worm-like thing that had killed the man.
I turned my head, fighting against my stomach as it tried to heave up the last of the blackberries from that morning.
Grabbing Brad’s hand, I said, “Run.” We ran down the road, giving the man a wide berth. It hurt my feet something fierce to run. But the memory of that thing in his face hurt worse.
We didn’t run for long. As the afternoon stretched into evening, we continued walking, but could see no safe place to hide for the night. Finally, we realized we were going to be stuck out in the dark. Quietly, we left the road and headed back down to the creek. There, we found a hollow. Thankfully, we also found more blackberries. I figured I’d hate these things if we ever got home. But for now, I was still thankful they were so plentiful around here.
We settled in for the night, trying to get comfortable on the ground. Eventually, we drifted off to sleep. I’d often imagined sleeping in Brad’s arms. It was a happy daydream, one I’d let consume me more times than I’d ever admit to anyone. In those daydreams, it was far more romantic than this reality. But we huddled up together to stay warm. And to share the comfort of knowing we weren’t alone.
Despite the complete lack of lust involved (take that daydreams!), it was, in some ways, better than all the imagined versions. I guess because he was real. And maybe because we trusted each other. I don’t think normal dating would’ve given us that kind of trust.
I woke three times during the night. Once, when Brad pulled me closer to him. I’m not even sure if he was awake when he did so. Once when he started crying out in his sleep. I quieted him down by wrapping my arm around him, being the big spoon for him. And then once when I thought I heard something moving in the grass nearby. I froze, terrified, but whatever it was, it passed us by. Or it didn’t find us.
I awoke sometime after the sun came up but before the morning dew dried. For a few heartbeats, I lay there thinking about what a strange and terrible nightmare I’d had. Then I thought my room was way too bright and my bed was way too hard. Memory crashed through and I sat up with a start. My heart was pounding. I looked around, but Brad wasn’t there. I stood up, about to start screaming for him.
But then I saw him, walking back from the creek. “Everything okay?” I asked, rubbing sleep from my eyes.
“Yeah,” he looked at me sheepishly. “Sorry. I just, um, you know, had to go.”
“Oh. Oh!” I said, then raced off for the same reason.
We drank from the creek, then continued down the road. I still hadn’t gotten used to the dead silence of this place. There was almost no wind. There were no bugs. I hadn’t even seen a bird. The whole thing was still unsettling in a way that kept us on edge.
The road went up a slight hill. At the top, I saw a building in the distance. We looked at each other. Too much had happened for us to get our hopes up. With shared nods, we walked on. As we got closer, we could see that it was a house. The house was a pale gray or maybe white two story place with a small shed nearby. Smoke rose from one of the two chimneys.
The place looked old and worn. Like an old country farm house or something. Paint was peeling from the walls, showing a faded gray wood under the aging white paint. It looked like it had been built in stages by amateur carpenters. I guess maybe the owners had added new rooms onto the place at least a couple of times. There was a porch wrapping around the front and the one side we could see.
A gravel driveway led from the road to the shop, on the far side of the house. A long row of firewood was stacked at the back of the house. Closer, I could see that the yard had gone to seed and the bushes hadn’t been trimmed in ages. My dad would’ve fussed if a neighbor’s house looked like that. He always fussed when a neighbor was out of town and their grass got too high. God, I missed him and his stupid dad jokes and his griping about the neighbors!
An old, rusted pickup truck sat in the driveway, sitting on two flat tires that I could see from this side. Grass was growing up around the wheels and even in the bed of the truck. It didn’t look like it had been moved in decades. The truck looked antique, like the rusted hulks half-buried in the weeds of the back pasture at my great grandfather’s farm. This was a relic, not a means of transportation.
We walked through the grass up to the front porch. The steps were warping with age. They creaked alarmingly as we took them up to the porch. The handrail was loose in my hands and the nails were poking out and rusting. I was afraid I’d get splinters if I used the rail. Or maybe I’d get tetanus. “Let’s keep going; I don’t like this place,” I whispered halfway up the steps.
“We have to know if anyone is here. Maybe they can tell us where ‘here’ is?” Brad whispered back nervously.
Reluctantly, we crossed the porch to the front door. The porch also creaked and the boards sagged with age. The door was near the corner of the house along with a window. In that window was a rusty old sign that said, “Beware of well… Just beware.” This didn’t exactly boost my confidence.
There was no doorbell. Brad raised his hand to knock. He paused for a long time, then sighed and knocked softly. We didn’t hear anything. Brad knocked louder. Still no sound. I peered through the window. Inside, the house was dark. The window looked into a living room. There was a fireplace, but no fire. Some furniture was arranged around the fireplace, two old-fashioned arm chairs and one sofa. The sofa had a blanket over it, covered in a flower print of some kind. It kind of reminded me of visiting my great-grandparents when I was younger. They never let anyone sit directly on a sofa. They said the blanket protected the furniture.
Near each chair was a small table. On one of the tables, there was a hardback book. I couldn’t see a title, but I could see that the pages were edged in gold. We had a few books like that on our shelves, but no one actually read them; they were just for looks. This one had a bookmark stuck in the pages. There was also a pipe sitting in an ashtray. The other table had some kind of cross-stitch frame thing sitting on it. There was a mirror on the wall behind the furniture. Otherwise, the room was empty. It looked like a scene from some show set in the 1930s.
Brad knocked again. He looked at me. “Back door?” I suggested with a shrug.
We walked around the house. The porch wrapped around the front to both sides, but not to the back. There was a block of wood next to the wood pile with an ax embedded in it. The ax was rusty and looked old, almost as old as the truck. Brad knocked on the back door. Again, no one answered. I stood on my toes to peer into a window. I stepped back, quickly.
“Let’s go, Brad. Nothing here,” I said, trying not to throw up.
“What is it?” he asked, brow furrowed.
“Death. Let’s go, please.” I pulled at his arm, but he just gave me a puzzled look and turned to the window.
Brad stood on his toes to peek through the window, just as I had. He gasped. I knew what he was seeing. The window was a kitchen window. Across from it, there was a china hutch stacked with dishes. In between that and the window was a kitchen table. There were two place settings at the table. Food sat in plates on the table. Or at least, what had been food, once, long ago. To the right was a kitchen counter and an ancient-looking wood stove. A fire smoldered in the stove, glowing red through the stove’s vent slats.
On the floor near the stove was most of a dead body. The head was missing. Dried blood was coating the floor, the walls, and the china hutch. Even just thinking about it while Brad looked through the window made me gag.
He stepped back. “What?” he started to ask, but then he stopped. I could tell he was working on not throwing up. I grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the house and towards the road. We hurried away from that place, as fast as our sore feet would carry us.
“It didn’t make sense,” I said, once we’d gotten far enough away that I wasn’t constantly looking over my shoulder.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“There was food on the table. But it had been there so long, it was mostly gone. Like it had been left sealed in that room for years. And the body. It looked like it had been dead for a really long time, too.”
“Yeah. I mean, the blood was brown, not red. And there was no smell or anything. It kind of reminded me of that white guy at the pond.”
“Right.”
“So what doesn’t make sense? I mean, beyond the… the murder itself.”
“Why was the wood stove still burning, Brad?” I asked. His face went pale. I guess he hadn’t noticed that. “Who’s been stoking that fire?”
Chapter 8: Exploring the Idyllic Fields
A few miles further down the road from the murder house, the grassy surroundings gave way to some kind of hellish thorn field. Soon after, all the bushes looked brown and dead, with thorns an inch or more long stood out in clusters. I shuddered, fearing what would happen to us if we had to run through that mess.
“I’ve never seen thorns like that. You?” Brad asked as he stopped to inspect a thorn bush.
“No. Just another thing they didn’t put on the brochure for this dump.” I was trying to make a joke, but it fell flat, even to me. Brad sighed, and we kept walking. His shoulders were slumped and he was barely even glancing around. As we walked, I tried to tell a few jokes, to take his mind off things. Rather than laugh, he would just sigh. I soon gave up and fell into silence.
What looked like some kind of wire ran ten or fifteen feet above the ground. It wasn’t a power line, I don’t think. It was a single strand, and it was attached to tree stumps, not to power poles. The wire stopped at a stump, going down into a big gray box at the stump’s base. We could hear the box humming. The sound set me on edge. Brad didn’t do more than glance at the box. He just kept walking.
“Storms might be coming.” I said, after the silence began to get to me. Small talk was never my specialty.
“Huh?” Brad answered, looking up for the first time in a while.
“See?” I pointed off to the north. Sure enough, there was a dark cloud wall. I really wasn’t excited about the prospect of rain out here in the open. Brad glanced up at the clouds, grunted, and kept walking. I was worried that this place had finally gotten to him.
That’s when a wolf howled somewhere off to our left. “What the fuck?” I mumbled under my breath. It was broad daylight. I thought they only howled at night? Another wolf howled in answer, further ahead somewhere. The first wolf (or a third?) howled again. Was it closer this time? The one up ahead answered. The first one howled again. It was definitely closer now. Brad and I stopped walking. I took Brad’s hand as my heart started pounding.
I heard something crashing through the thorn bushes somewhere to the left. That first wolf howled again. But the howl was cut off abruptly with a yelp. The hairs on my neck stood out. From somewhere out towards that wolf, I heard… I don’t know if it was a screech or a scream or what. But it was almost exactly what fingernails on chalkboards sound like, only worse. Brad and I both cringed at the sound.
As that screech drew out, something stood up out in the field. At first, I thought it was another shadow-thing. But once it had reached full height, I realized that this was something else. Something worse. It was vaguely human-shaped, but somewhere near twenty feet tall. It was covered in shaggy, brown, fur that blended in with the dead thorn bushes around us. It held something in its mouth.
Brad and I scrambled to the far side of the road and crouched down, hoping it wouldn’t notice us. The creature looked up at the sky, and I saw it was swallowing a wolf, whole. I’d seen a nature show once, where a snake was eating a mouse. Watching this thing eat that wolf reminded me of that snake. Its head just kind of opened up in a way that looked unnatural, and began choking the wolf down. It was looking up so the mouth and neck would be in alignment, I think. The wolf was fighting to escape, but stood no chance. The creature took only a few seconds to choke down the wolf, but my adrenaline-fueled brain was stuck, watching in slow motion, for what seemed like an eternity.
Brad was squeezing my hand tight. I squeezed his right back. I glanced at him. His face was contorted by terror. He was panting with fear. I think I was, too. The giant screeched again and I turned back to look at it. The wolf was gone. The monster’s head was turning back and forth. That second wolf howled again, from somewhere up ahead. The monster’s head turned towards that sound. It began moving towards the second wolf with long, lumbering strides. The thing was somehow faster and more graceful than anything that big should have been.
Brad began to shiver. I was coated in a cold sweat. The monster was gaining speed as it cut a diagonal that would take it across the road somewhere up ahead of us. Or it would have, if it hadn’t run into that weird wire. The wire caught it somewhere around its shoulders or maybe the neck. I’d never seen anything get electrocuted before, except in movies or TV. On screen, electrocution involves big, flashy, sparks. The monster didn’t throw sparks. Lightning didn’t flare out.
Instead, the monster hit the wire, and just started violently convulsing. But it didn’t drop from the wire. It made that awful screeching sound, but much higher pitched. Even though I knew nothing about this thing, I could tell from the sounds that it was in pain. Smoke rose from where the wire touched it. Finally, with a loud pop, the thing fell away from the wire.
I watched, but saw no more movement from the creature. I turned to look at Brad. His eyes were squeezed shut and he was still shivering. With my other hand, I reached out and touched his cheek. He jumped back and stared at me.
“It’s over, Brad. It’s gone. We’re okay.” I brushed his cheek again. He closed his eyes, less fearfully this time, and crawled up to embrace me. He was crying. I was too, now that I stopped to think about it. We stayed there, holding each other so tight it hurt, for a long time. But finally, we got up and continued on our way.
“Who set up that wire?” Brad asked, once he’d gotten himself back under control.
“I have no idea. I didn’t see anything electrical in that house. Did you?” I responded. He’d looked in through the window longer than me.
“No. No lights in the living room up front, no electrical appliances in that kitchen.”
“I don’t like it.” I said.
He stopped me with a touch on the elbow. I looked at him. He looked back, holding my gaze, then hugged me again. “Me neither,” he said, his voice muffled against my neck.
Somewhere off in the distance, further away than before, that second wolf howled again. This time, I was kind of glad to hear it. Enjoy your freedom, buddy, I thought, and held no fear of the wolf.
We kept walking. Brad was standing up straight again, and watching around us more carefully. I held his hand as we carried on.
The electric fence only enclosed a small area, maybe half a mile, if I had to guess. It troubled me that we had no idea who built the fence, or how they’d done it. But I was thankful the fence was there, despite my worries.
I feared we would be stuck out in the thorn bushes when night fell. Thankfully, they only went on for perhaps a mile or two before fading back into the high grass like we first emerged in. This grassland was beginning to feel like home now. That bothered me, too. Almost as much as it bothered me that I’d gotten used to the lack of insects or birds. That thought sent me tumbling down into a pretty dark pit of homesickness and self-pity.
Brad and I kept walking, but now it was me with my head down, consumed by grief and sadness. Somewhere along the road, Brad stopped. Since we were stilling holding hands, he pulled me to a stop too, a step ahead of him. I looked up, for the first time in at least an hour or more. There, to our left, was yet another farm house. This one also looked old. No smoke rose from the chimney though. In fact, the house felt abandoned.
Far more cautiously than we had been before, we walked up to this house. Again, there was no sign of people. Brad and I circled the place. “Look!” I whispered, pointing up at the corner gutter. There, I saw a huge paper wasp nest. There were no wasps, though.
“What the hell?” Brad whispered back.
I walked up to get a closer look. My shoes crunched in something. Looking down, I saw a tiny little mound of dead wasps below the nest. I hated wasps. This was the first time I felt no remorse at the sight of death. Still, it was yet another sign that this place wasn’t right.
Brad just shook his head and went around the corner of the house. I followed, almost running into him. He was staring off behind the place. I turned my head to see where he was staring. There, in a corral behind the house, was a beautiful brown horse! It was turned at an angle, away from us, eating grass.
Staring in awe, Brad took a step towards the horse. I heard the animal crunching on grass, even from here. It whinnied and shook its mane. Water splashed from its mouth as it did so. Only…
I grabbed Brad’s shoulder and pulled him back. “What?” he said, surprised, looking back at me.
The horse crunched some more, then lifted its head, staring off into the field, away from us. More water splashed out from its mouth. But the water was all wrong. “Brad…” I said, my voice rough with fresh adrenaline. The tone of my voice surprised him and he turned back to look at the horse. I shifted my hand so I was holding him just above the elbow. I’d seen that the “water” was red. But I hadn’t put it all together, not as fast as I should have.
The horse crunched loudly, again. Then its head jerked up and it looked off towards the road, but not back at us. For the first time, we could see its head in profile. The horse’s mouth was bright red. It was chewing on what looked like a gray-furred dog’s leg. As we watched, it bit down. We both heard the sickening sound of bone shattering. The horse chewed contentedly, then stopped. The horse’s head turned towards us and it dropped the leg. I could see it sniffing the air.
We backed, slowly, away from the pen. I stepped on a twig that snapped loudly. The horse’s head snapped up and it craned its neck to see us. It grinned. I could see sharp teeth, unlike any horse I’d ever seen before. Then it went back to eating the dog. I wondered if this was that second wolf we’d heard earlier. That thought almost made me sick. The horse was still staring at us. Then it whinnied again and went back to its dinner.
We went back to the back of the house and peeked in. No sign of modern appliances here, either. And no sign of people. At the front door, we peeked in again. Here, the house seemed of about the same era as the first. But the room was blackened and the furniture was burned beyond recognition. The interior of the home had been torched, but the flames had somehow been stopped before the whole house burned.
We got back on the road and kept going. This whole world was getting stranger and stranger. It was getting dark. We would need to find a place to sleep soon. But nowhere near that horse!
Some trees loomed ahead, down the road from us. I was hopeful that we could maybe sleep there with some hope of safety. Maybe.
Chapter 9: Under the Tree
We walked until the trees edged out the field, casting the road into shadow. We left the road and headed into the woods. Trees edged all the way up to the creek, where we drank our fill, then tried to find more berries. But there were none to be found. Under some oak trees, we found acorns, though. They were bitter, something I’d never have eaten before. But we ate them anyway. Slowly, in case they made us sick. They didn’t. I was glad of that. I guess if you’re hungry enough, you can make yourself eat almost anything.
As the sun began to set, we found a clearing in the trees. I would’ve liked a more sheltered place to sleep. But it would have to do. In the center of the clearing was a single tree standing alone. Unlike the rest of the woods, this tree’s leaves had just begun to turn a beautiful reddish orange. It looked like fall rather than the summery colors of the rest of the woods.
Under that tree, we settled in for the night. I wrapped my arm around Brad, spooning him. Once again, I thought about how different this would have felt back at home, where safety was so easily taken for granted. Still, he was warm in my arms and I appreciated that. He kissed my hand and soon fell asleep.
I fell asleep not long after. I remember that I dreamed of riding the Gravitron again, and stepping out to see the world had turned to ash. Nothing lived, just ash and smoke and haze everywhere. In the dream, I was alone. I turned and tried to get back into the carnival ride, but it was gone. It was gone and I was alone and I — I woke up, stifling a scream before it escaped my lips. I spooned Brad tighter, glad of his presence. He murmured something in his sleep, but didn’t wake up. I lay there for a few minutes, listening to him breath.
Just as I was drifting off again, he started talking in his sleep. The words were mumbled and I couldn’t understand them. But the tone was fearful. As I lay there, the fear in his voice edged up. I squeezed him tight from behind as he started mumbling, “No!” over and over again. I just kept holding him. He was shaking his head, and trying to fight off something in his dream. I clutched him tight to my chest as the dream took him. Finally, I heard him moan and he tensed up from head to feet. He was panting. He grabbed my arm and held onto it like he was drowning. His hands were clammy with sweat. I kissed his neck from behind and just softly whispered, “Shh, just a dream” in his ear a few times, trying to calm him down.
His heartbeat slowed back to normal, then he rolled over to face me. In the darkness, I couldn’t really see his face clearly. “Don’t leave me. Please, don’t,” he said, with so much fear that it made my chest hurt for him.
“I’m here. I’m right here, Brad. I’m not…” he stopped my whispered words with a kiss. It was awkward and clumsy, and damn near bloodied my lip against my teeth. But it was perfect, nonetheless. I closed my eyes and enjoyed that moment. But just as I began to forget about where we were, shit went sideways.
One second, I was touching his lips with my tongue. The next, I was jerked, hard, straight up and away from him. My eyes flew open and I saw his look of shock as I shot up into the air. His arms reached for me, fingers outstretched. I screamed. Something had me. It was gripping my shoulders with a painfully tight grip. With fearful desperation, I tried to grab onto the thing holding me. My hand sank into something cold and hard and fuzzy. I realized it was an arm. I clawed at it, and heard a high-pitched scream. A thousand old teachers with their fingernails on chalkboards would have sounded better. I doubled my efforts, trying to claw and scratch and pull at the thing holding my left shoulder. I felt something in the fuzz pop. My right hand was wet. The screeching, somehow, got worse.
But that shoulder was free. I was dangling now, by my right shoulder. It hurt like hell. The panic inside was rising. I couldn’t breathe. My left hand started clawing at my right shoulder. Suddenly, I was falling. It had dropped me. I fell to the ground. Pain shot up my legs, and I screamed again, in pain as well as fear. The screeching sound rose into the night and raced off. Even as it fled, Brad scrambled to me, and grabbed me up in a tight embrace. Tears were streaming down his panic-filled face. I stopped screaming, but couldn’t get my heart to slow down.
We sat there, awkwardly clutching at each other and crying like babies, for a long, long time. Long enough that my hands started to cramp. Finally, our crying faded into sniffling and hiccups. We eased up on our grip, but only just barely. I don’t know how long we sat there like that. But finally, he let me go and I let him go. I rubbed my ankles and carefully, slowly, stood up. I could stand. They hurt like hell, but I didn’t think the fall had broken anything.
“What was that?” I whispered to Brad.
“I don’t know… At first I thought it was one of those shadow-things. But… it wasn’t furry,” I whispered back with a shudder. “It was horrible.”
“I thought you were gone. I… I thought I was alone.” Brad whispered mournfully.
I looked at my hand. It was covered in something dark. “I’m still here. But I have to wash my hands.” I started limping towards the water. Brad stood up and wrapped my arm around his shoulder. Together, we made it to the creek. There, I washed that thing’s blood off my hands. And damn near fell in the creek for my troubles.
As we walked back up from the water’s edge, I said, “They bleed, Brad. They bleed and they hurt. And by god, I’ll kill ever last fucking one of them if I can.” I forced myself to sound tough, more confident than I felt. Brad smiled at me. It was a weak, tentative smile and it faded quickly. But it was the first I’d seen from him since his dad’s death. It felt good.
With Brad’s help, I hobbled back. I sat down at the edge of the clearing. Neither of us was willing to go back out to that tree. Brad sat with his back to some old tree just inside the edge of the clearing. I carefully sat down, then scooted back until I was resting with my back against his chest. He wrapped both of his arms around my shoulders. I lay my head against his chest and tried to sleep. I could feel his heartbeat. I could feel other things, too. But I pretended not to notice. There would be other nights, hopefully. Less fearful nights.
I didn’t think either of us would be able to sleep after getting attacked. But somehow, eventually, we drifted off. I awoke when the early morning sunlight broke through the trees. I lay there a moment, remembering where we were and why my ankles hurt. It was day four of our hellish time here, I thought to myself.
How had we survived four days in this shit? My eyes opened. I looked around and gasped. Brad jumped awake, “What?” he said, his heart hammering against my back.
“Look!” I said, pointing at the tree where that thing grabbed me. Yesterday, it had been covered in leaves just beginning to turn fall colors. Now it was white and bare. It was dead. The thing had somehow killed the tree instead of me. I stared at the tree for a long moment, but couldn’t make any sense of it.
We stayed in the woods long enough to eat an acorn breakfast. They made my stomach turn a little, but I forced them down anyway. There was no telling where our next meal would be. My shoulders hurt, too. I took off my jacket and saw fresh-formed bruises from where the thing had grabbed me the night before.
We were both exhausted and my sprained ankle hurt, so we left the woods slowly. It was nearly mid-morning by the time we got back to the road. We walked on, slowly and without much hope. The night had stolen that from us. But we still had each other. This place had, so far, not taken that from us at least. After a while, Brad put my arm over his shoulder and with his support, we almost made it up to a walking pace. I was glad to have his help. And to have his arm around my waist.
The story continues in Part Four.
