chapter one

Kerri arrives in the Land of Eire and things don't go exactly as planned...

chapter one:

 

 

“Kerri, wake up! We’ll be late for the first tour!”

 

            Kerri groaned in protest as someone --- she had a feeling it was her mother --- yanked the sheet off of her.

 

            “Let’s go, Kerri!”

 

            “But Mom---,” she whined back, groping around blindly for the sheet. Sunlight was pouring in from the windows, making it impossible to see. Finally her eyes adjusted enough so that she could see her mom pull clothes from her suitcase and throw them at her.

 

            “Not another word.” Nancy stood up to her full height, a long-legged five-foot-nine, and gave Kerri the Look. “Richard and Josh are waiting outside. Now hurry up!” And she left.

 

            Kerri groaned and fell back against her pillow. How could this be a vacation if she had to wake up at the crack of dawn? And for what? A pile of rubble that would be there all day, if not well into the next century. It wasn’t like it could just get up and walk away. But she got out of bed despite it all, mumbling about how this was supposed to be her time away from learning and waking up at an ungodly hour. Grabbing her clothes, she went into the bathroom to get dressed, and then headed out the door.

 

            The tour of the day was a walk around some old keeps. Everything was linked together by a single trail that went around a massive oldwood forest. The guide, a balding Irishman in his late forties, seemed intent on staying as far away from the trees as possible, so Kerri, out of sheet curiosity, asked why. She hadn’t been expecting the dirty look he would give her in response. Josh began to laugh at the surprised look on Kerri’s face; she flipped him off with a sneer.

 

            But it was a permanent question in her mind now: why didn’t they just go through the forest when it was obviously the quicker route? She fell back from the group, staring into the trees. They were old and gnarled, twisting their way towards the sun. It was like looking into twilight, a dark, green sort of twilight. But wasn’t that how all forests were? Kerri couldn’t see anything wrong with it. It was dark, maybe even a little menacing, but other than that, completely fine.

 

            Kerri looked back at the path and felt her heart stop. It was empty. Had the guide been that anxious to get away from the trees?

 

            She started to walk a little faster. Being lost in a foreign country didn’t really sound like a great way to start her vacation. She rounded a bend in the path, but the tour group was nowhere to be seen. No one was there. Panic started to set in, or at least it tried. Kerri was too stubborn to get that scared. But it was enough to make her heartbeat quicken. She glanced into the trees, goosebumps appearing on her skin. Everything suddenly seemed too still, too quiet, like someone had hit the pause button.

 

            “Mom?” she said, her voice cracking. “Where’d you go?”

 

            No one answered.

 

            Kerri took off at a run down the path. Scenery sped past, but she never seemed to get anywhere. Her ears pounded with the sound of her own heartbeat.

 

            She rounded another bend in the path and stopped dead. It wasn’t the group; instead, a white cat was sitting in the middle of the path. It wasn’t a normal cat, either, for this one was quite large and had an air about it that was so utterly unnatural that it wouldn’t have passed for a common house cat anywhere. Possibly its most unnatural characteristic was its eyes. They were such a pure shade of green one would think they were staring into liquid emeralds.

 

            The cat stared at her, blinked once or twice, then began licking its paws. Kerri frowned. What was she doing? There she was, in the middle of Irish nowhere, staring at a cat. She shook her head and took a step forward, to go around it. The cat ceased its cleaning long enough to c**k its head up at her and blink. Then it bolted into the woods.

 

            Time revved back up again. Kerri blinked, her eyes refocusing.

 

            “What the---?”

 

            “Kerri!”

 

            She looked up from where the cat had disappeared to see her mom waving at her.

 

            “Come on!” she yelled. “Let’s go! The whole group is waiting for you!”

 

            Kerri shook her head; it felt like she had cotton balls in her ears. She jogged up to her mom anyway, trying to get rid of the heavy feeling in her limbs. Nancy smiled at her. “Having fun?” she asked, and she had such a desperate look in her eye that Kerri had to nod and smile back.

 

            “Yeah, mom. It’s great.”

 

            Nancy smiled wider and put her arm around her daughter. “That’s good.”

 

            They found the group further down the path, waiting at a fork. The guide was standing at the front, his arms crossed, tapping his foot impatiently. He, along with numerous others, including her stepfather, cast her a dirty look. Josh, on the other hand, snickered rather loudly, and Kerri knew he was thinking something evil.

 

            I’ll deal with you later, she thought, narrowing her eyes.

 

            “If we may continue,” said the guide. “Everyone to the right…”

 

            Instinctively Kerri looked down the left path as she followed her family. Of course, it could hardly be called a path. It was completely grown over with weeds and small trees that struggled up toward the sunlight. The older trees on the sides made light all but disappear. Kerri stopped and stared down it, her ears beginning to ring. A slight breeze picked up, blowing her hair across her face and disrupting her stare. She shook her head. What had she been looking for? The cat?

 

            “Kerri, c’mon!” Josh yelled from ahead. “Or Mom says we’ll leave you behind!”

 

            “Coming!” she yelled back, no really understanding what her brother had been saying. She gave the overgrown path one last glance, in case she had missed something…

 

            Missed what? She didn’t even know she was looking for something…

 

            “Jet lag,” she told herself. “You’re tired, seeing things…”

 

            “Kerri!”

 

            “I’m coming!” Shaking her head again, she jogged back to the group. Richard drew his brows together in a frown.

 

            “You know, the whole point of this trip was to spend time together.”

 

            “Sorry, I’m just…” She shrugged. Nancy stepped in.

 

            “She’s just tired, that’s all.” She smiled at Kerri. “You can go to bed when we get back to the inn.”

 

 

But Kerri couldn’t sleep. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the white cat. In her dreams it turned into something akin to the Cheshire Cat, speaking to her and grinning like it knew something she didn’t. Follow me, it would say, flashing sharp teeth. Follow me to your darkest desires made reality. I can show you things that put fairy tales to shame… And Kerri would follow it, through the woods, until they reached a circle of stones, and the cat would dance around her legs and grin. Its green eyes would flash and the cat would laugh at her startled reaction.

 

            Come to me, it would say, prancing into the stones, and Kerri would take a step to follow, but the dream would always end there. And after waking from it for the third time that night, Kerri had had enough.

 

            She threw the sheet off of herself and got dressed. It was still fairly early and she knew that no one else was up, except for the innkeeper and possibly the cook. So Kerri headed downstairs to the little sitting room and sat down in a chair near a window. The innkeeper’s wife, a short, round woman with graying red hair and kind eyes, came over to her with a smile on her face.

 

            “Can I get you anything, dear? The post? Some tea or coffee?”

 

            Kerri looked up, startled. “Oh, um, coffee, please.”

 

            The woman nodded and went back into the kitchen, bringing back a pot of coffee, a cup, and sugar and cream on a tray a few minutes later. Kerri thanked her absently and poured herself a cup. After dumping liberal amounts of cream into it, she took a sip and looked out the window. The sun was just coming up over the hills, turning the moors a brilliant purple. Kerri sighed into her cup. She hated that she was up this early, and on her vacation, no less, but she couldn’t stop thinking about that cat.

 

            I could go back, she thought, but then scratched the idea just as quickly as it had appeared. There was no point. She’d never be able to find the place she had run into it before. It was stupid to think about it anymore.

 

            Only she couldn’t stop. Damning her curiosity, she finished her coffee and set everything back on the tray and stood. Walking over to the door, she nodded at the innkeeper’s wife, and then went outside. The cobblestone street was completely deserted except for a cart being pulled a pony. The driver was an old man who looked half asleep at the reigns. Kerri waited until he passed before heading in the direction he’d come from. The cobblestones were replaced soon by dirt, and it wasn’t long before she was in the woods.

 

            The trees blocked out the sun entirely this early in the morning. The air was dark and thick and closed in on her.

 

            Why am I out here? she thought. This is stupid. I should just go back to the inn…

 

            A branch cracked behind her and she jumped, spinning at the same time. Nothing was there, though; not on the path, at least. She scanned the trees. Nothing there, either. She shook her head. She was being paranoid. It could’ve been a bird or a squirrel or something.

 

            Kerri started walking down the path, glancing left and right over her shoulder. Her footsteps seemed to echo off the trees; a broken twig or snapped branch sounded like thunder to her ears. It felt like someone was watching, like she was trespassing. She was beginning to think that going out there was a bad idea.

 

            But like it was on cue, the white cat trotted out of the woods and stopped in front of her. She sucked in her breath and stopped. The cat looked up at her, blinking its big green eyes. Kerri got that feeling in her ears again, like someone had shoved cotton balls in them. The cat kept staring at her, its eyes mesmerizing. She had the sudden urge to just let herself fall into those eyes, to just let the world disappear and drown in those seas of green…

 

            Without knowing she did so, Kerri took a step forward. The cat jumped up and turned away, its tail twitching. Then it circled back and said down again, blinking at her. She held out her hand and crouched down, hoping to touch it, wanting to make sure that it was real and not some crazy hallucination. Her fingertips were centimeters away before it bolted into the woods. And without thinking, Kerri ran after it.

 

            It was like a bolt of lightening against the green of the forest. Between the lack of light and how close together the trees were, it was a miracle she didn’t trip. The cat was further ahead, jumping over and around every block in its path while she stumbled behind it.

 

            And then it just vanished. Kerri kept running, hoping she would see it again, but her eyes picked up nothing except green and brown. No white, no cat. She stopped, breathing heavily, and turned on the spot to look around. She was surrounded by endless forest. She sighed, swallowing her panic. All she had to do was go in the direction she had come from. The only problem was that she didn’t remember what direction the path was in.

 

            Something moved in the corner of her eye and she spun. Nothing was there.

 

            Calm down, Kerri.

 

            She took a deep breath and turned in the direction she thought would take her back to the trail and started walking. She was fine at first. She was taking deep breaths and slow, even steps. Then she started seeing things out of the corner of her eyes again. Flickers of light, flashes of yellow and red. She ignored it at first, trying to keep calm. But in the silence of the trees she began to hear things, too. Giggles, footsteps other than her own. Eventually she noticed that she was running, that green was flying past her again, but she was getting desperate. Truth be told, she was scared.

 

            I should have never come out here…

 

            Something giggled right next to her ear, and Kerri swatted at it, giving a panicked yelp when her hand actually connected with something solid. Seeing this as an incentive to really get away, she began running at a blind sprint. No longer able to see where she was going, she tripped and stumbled, branches slapping her in the face. She had no idea where she was; she just wanted an escape.

 

            Tears streamed down her face as the giggles turned to whispers. Her heart nearly beating out of her chest from panic, Kerri knew they were getting closer. The footsteps were getting louder, heavier. Her legs were screaming at her, but she kept running. They were catching up. She was going to be caught, tortured. They would do horrid things to her…

 

            Blood pounded in her ears. Tears and sweat dripped down her face. Her lungs were threatening to burst. Someone was shouting…

 

            A pair of strong arms suddenly grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides. Kerri screamed for what seemed like an eternity before the world went black.

 

Author's Note

teehee, cliffhanger. So, was it good? It isn't moving too quickly?

Reviews

[the crying cup]

the POV changed from what it was in the prologue. that puts a bump in the story. maybe the POV should stay in first-person the whole time. otherwise it's great :)