Found Again

A Chapter by Katy Knight

The prologue. The introduction.

He looked around. Darkness was enclosing its bitter fingers around his frail body. He was so sure he’d come this way. The forked tree was undoubtedly familiar, and yet so strange. His untimed panting permeated the ghastly silence. Light was dissipating by the second. But which direction was the sun setting? The wind whipped his face. It was talking to him; whispering, telling him to run, to fear it. A demon inside him suddenly bore into his gut with one swift blow, forcing him back against a tree. Its peeling bark pierced him like blades. But it felt so soothing in its own bizarre way. A dim red light erupted through the trees. Its beam burnt his eyes like cold iron. Then it came. A snap. A tree branch snapped. The blood-curdling screech that followed caused his tired, bloodshot eyes to widen. His heart restricted as he realised what was truly happening. It was back. It was following him. He glued his eyes on the blurry light pouring out through all of the trees. It was no animal, human or anything else ever dreamed to have existed. It was something else. Something unearthly was following him; watching his every move as though waiting for the exact same time to strike. He tried to pull away from to trees, to sprint for his life. But the tree was holding him, forbidding him from leaving. He groaned as he attempted, but once again failed, in his endeavour to release himself. It was pointless; it would only catch him anyway. It always did.

“Desmond,” it uttered in a hollow voice.

He shivered from the very top of his spine down to the bottom. His eyes closed with such a force that he thought they might be crushed. Then he realised…

“M-my name’s n-not Desmond,” he stuttered, the sound barely escaping through his parched lips.

A chuckle greeted him, telling him that it knew perfectly well who he was. He had heard the laugh before, but in the lifeless trance he had fallen into, he couldn’t tell.

He looked forward, scanning the light for some sort of shadowy figure. Anything that could hint him as to who his merciless stalker was. But only a burning light reached him. Then it went out; gone in a flash. He tried to adjust his eyes to the renewed darkness, but it was too late.

It lashed at him, slicing his cheek. He fell away from the tree, withering with pain on the dirty floor, his tears causing the dead leaves to stick to his face. It struck again, this time cleaving into his leg. Blood gushed out of each wound, staining his face and clothes.

“STOP!” he whined through his tears as loudly as he could.

It was gone. As soon as it had come it left. Next thing he let out a cry of pain so loud anyone close enough of him would have heard it as clearly as if he had been right next to them. A cry so painful it would haunt them for as long as they could remember its gut-wrenching horror.

The boy that lay there, pale, whimpering on the floor begged for death to find him. To escape the horror that discovered him first. His hands balled into fists as he tried to swallow the pain. It didn’t work. At eleven years old, he lay there. Begging for death, and meaning it from the very pit of his heart. No boy should ever experience such a pain. Go through what he just had. But there was no escape from the pain. It would find him again… It always did.

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