Chapter 26: Hunting

I missed Jared’s blanket. It had been lost in the cottage that I was convinced was a portal to hell. I missed my mom and my dad. I missed sleep, and I missed my sanity.

Like so many times before this past week or so, I asked myself how I had ended up here. Why did I get flashbacks of being trapped? It had happened before, hadn’t it?

I vaguely remembered a small cabin, similar to the size of the one the ghost girl had led me to, only that one didn’t change shape.

However, I honestly didn’t know which one of those two places was the most dangerous. I only knew that my life was threatened in both places.

I was curled up against a rock when the darkness began to fade. The stars were barely visible now, and the moon was about to hide behind the mountain that was my landmark.

Would I manage to get there today? Yeah, probably. But not all the way to the river if it was as far as Jared had said. And I trusted him.

I sighed and squeezed my eyes shut for a long time and tried to keep the thundering headache and the fatigue from overpowering me. When I opened them again, I saw the first beams of the most stunning sunrise ever.

The fog was now completely gone, and it was like all the beauty of nature had gathered right before my eyes.

It colored everything in pink, yellow, orange, and red until the sun itself greeted the day and me as if it was my last day on Earth. Hopefully it wasn’t.

Because even though I hadn’t reached that river, I had still been walking for four days by the time the sun set that night.

Well, I couldn’t really count the day before, when I wandered around in circles, so in reality it was three days. But I should be safe from whatever Jared had tried to warn me about. Of course I would. I had to be optimistic.

With somewhat renewed energy, I got up and forced my body to work again. Lying several hours on stony, uneven ground, shivering from cold and without any sleep, wasn’t exactly the best start to the day.

It didn’t help that I’d barely eaten anything the past few days. Luckily, I was hydrated enough since there were lakes and small creeks here and there, so it kept me going one slow step at a time.

I managed to get down from the mountain without too much of a struggle, although I wasn’t aware it was so steep when I climbed up.

It was probably the adrenaline that had kept me going, and I kind of wished I still was pumped full of that. That was, until I remembered the reason.

Then I felt paranoid and started looking around to see if I was being followed. I couldn’t see anyone, but it still felt like someone was watching me from afar, only that was probably just my imagination.

I struggled to tell whether things were real or just hallucinations, and in broad daylight I almost believed yesterday was the latter. It was way too surreal to be true.

As soon as I was down on the ground, I started searching for food, and for once I was lucky. I found lots and lots of blueberries and a bush with cranberries, and I devoured it all like I’d never seen food before.

When I found a handful of raspberries a little later, I actually felt quite good.

Humming a song, I put a couple of miles behind me before I took a short break. I sat down on a flat rock next to a tiny pond and studied the millions of insects that still held on to the last fragments of summer.

There were even a couple of dragonflies that danced around in the air, sometimes alone and sometimes with each other. I wanted to be like them, so light and free, and without a care in the world.

For a moment I actually thought I ~was~ one of them, until my body abruptly jerked awake, and I found out that I had been dozing off while sitting. I got to my feet and rubbed my cheeks to wake up.

I didn’t have the time to sleep now. I had to get as far as I could before the darkness arrived again.

By the time the sun was about to go down between distant mountains, I had probably walked as much as twenty miles. Hopefully.

The sun had been pretty warm today, so it wasn’t that difficult to find dry firewood. I gathered a pile, plus some bark and dry grass, and found a round stick similar to the one Jared used to make fire.

Then I stared at it for a while and thought about my useless attempts the first night without Jared before I decided to give it a try and started rolling it between my hands.

I cursed after a while when nothing happened, nothing but making my hands sore. So eventually, I threw the stick away and yelled at it, as if that would help.

Then I felt stupid and looked around to see if anyone saw me before I picked it up and tried again.

And after more cursing and sorer palms, I finally got a spark that was big enough to make the dry grass and the bark start burning.

“YES! I’m the fucking fire queen!” I shouted, threw my hands up in the air, and did a little victory dance.

Then I felt awkward and sat down, still giggling like a madwoman, while I made sure the weak blaze grew into a proper bonfire.

But the more the darkness suffocated the daylight, the more uneasy I felt, despite the vigorously dancing flames.

I caught myself staring at the outlines of the forest way too many times, knowing fully well that it could hide all kinds of danger that might attack me when I fell asleep.

In an attempt to control my growing paranoia, I started humming again and tried to focus on making figures and animals from pine needles and cones.

It was fun for a couple of minutes until I heard an animal call out somewhere in the distance.

“It’s just a fox, Skylar,” I whispered to myself, and tried to shrug it off. But the darker it got, the more my imagination ran away with me.

After what had happened the night of the rain, I knew that not even my wildest nightmares could compare to the dangers in this place.

“It’s just a fox, and he’s probably more scared of you than you are of him.”

Still, I couldn’t stop the feeling of being watched. Was it the little girl? Please, God…Please don’t let her find me again. I’d rather kill myself than go back to that horrible house.

Or most likely, I wouldn’t have to, because I would die in terror on my way there. You simply don’t survive something like that twice.

“There’s no one there. Nothing else but deer, foxes, hedgehogs, and mice. You can deal with those. Especially hedgehogs. They’re cute.”

I threw another couple of sticks into the fire, and heard it hiss and crackle when the flames consumed it. And after studying how it gradually turned into a pile of ash, I felt my eyelids get heavier and heavier.

While the moon climbed up from behind the mountains, I drifted off to sleep, lying on my side with my legs curled up against my stomach inside Jared’s sweater.

I dreamed I was being chased. It was the girl again, and she wasn’t alone. It was her and the cat. And the cat hissed because she was holding it by its tail, and it sounded like a big snake.

Wait…It ~was~ a snake. No, it was several snakes. Four or five at least, and they were wrapped around the little girl in a grotesque way.

A couple of them pierced right through her, and I could see the tail hanging over her shoulder while the head was sticking out of her stomach. Another snake had crawled through her eye socket and into her skull.

But she kept chasing me like it didn’t hurt at all, while she called my name with a voice that sounded like the soft one you use when you’re telling a bedtime story to a child.

It was no use to shout for help because I knew no one would hear me. Somebody told me that once. I just couldn’t remember who.

And just like then, it was difficult to stay on my feet, and no matter how fast I ran, the girl kept coming closer until I suddenly fell into black nothingness like falling off a cliff.

I screamed myself awake and jolted up as if I’d been electrocuted.

“It was just a dream!” I exclaimed while I tried to keep my voice down. I was panting like crazy and was far from cold anymore, but as soon as I realized where I was, I forced myself to calm down.

Then I rubbed my eyes so I could see clearer. I had to be quiet. Really quiet. “Just a dream.”

The fire was still burning, so I knew I hadn’t slept long. However, I didn’t think I would be able to sleep anymore that night, because now I started hearing things.

“Stop it!” I whisper-yelled to no one. “You’re hallucinating because of the lack of sleep, and what happened that night was your imagination too. Yes, of course! Pure fantasy. It had to be.

“And now you’re talking to yourself…You’ve lost your goddamn mind, Skylar. You’re going cr…”

I stopped talking when I heard the sound of howling from far away.

“That…,” I whispered but didn’t finish that sentence either. The thought of wolves scared me senseless.

I kept squinting around me while I walked a bit farther from the fire, and I found that the full moon actually helped to make out the contours of the landscape. However, the forest was still like a threatening black wall.

“Why didn’t I go farther up?”

I knew why. There wasn’t anything to make a bonfire up in the mountains, much less to make it burn through a whole night.

And now it was too late to go anywhere, so all I could do was to try and convince myself that they were too far away to find me.

“Why would they go after me, when there are billions of acres with delicious deer and tasty moose?”

~Because it’s just your luck~, my subconscious retorted, and when I heard the sound again, I knew it wasn’t just my imagination. Instantly I started to think of ways to escape if they really ~were~ heading my way.

One option was to run into the forest and climb as far up a tree as possible, but the thought of all the other dangerous things that might be in there was enough to trash that idea immediately.

The second idea was to continue in the direction I was headed, but even the insane version of myself knew I wouldn’t be able to outrun a pack of wolves.

There was only one option left: The closest mountain. I only hoped the moonlight was enough to guide me to a place that would keep me safe.

I hesitated for a few moments, until I heard another drawn-out howl. I could tell for certain that there were at least two, probably more, and they were getting closer. Fast.

I grabbed a stick from the bonfire and tried to use it as a torch. Unfortunately, it took a long time until I managed to make it burn well enough to give any light at all.

When I finally did, I found that I was blinded by it, and that I actually saw less than before with just the light from the moon. Therefore, I threw it away and kind of hoped it would start a wildfire and scare the wolves away.

But knowing how hard I’d worked to make fire in the first place, I figured it was highly unlikely. Not fast enough, at least.

I heard the howling again, and it sounded closer than ever. I ran. As long as it was uphill, I kept going as fast as I could, and I didn’t dare to look back.

I didn’t want to see them when they attacked me. It could just be a macabre surprise, and then I would get killed two seconds after. That was my only plan now.

I ran until my lungs felt like they were going to explode, and I climbed until my hands and legs burned.

But even if I felt dizzy and close to fainting both from panic and exhaustion, my ears couldn’t unhear the random barks and howls behind me.

Now there were growling and snarling too. I gave up. After hoisting myself up onto a little cliff, I knew I’d lost. There was no way I was getting out of this alive.

I backed up until I had the mountain wall against my back as support and prepared to watch them surround me, waiting for the right moment to tear me apart.

But what I saw was a lot more disturbing than a pack of wolves. There were only two. However, these wolves were walking on two legs and were larger than a bear standing up.

How was this possible? Could this be real? They were werewolves.