What LURKS in the DARK

CHAPTER 5

"What?!" I am dumbfounded.

I close my eyes to listen more attentively and I still hear the faint giggling of children. It is a bit reassuring that this village is not deserted, and also a bit creepy, like everything in the village.

"I still hear the children," I say to Jeff, who replies, "And I still hear the dog."

Why are we hearing different things?

I turn a full 360 degrees to look around me. Even as I can still hear the faint giggling of children in the wind, and Jeff says he can hear a dog barking, this village feels ridiculously unalive.

"Keep knocking," I say to Jeff. He nods at me and proceeds to the next house.

I walk slowly along the street. The houses are small and old, but still sturdy looking. Some parts of the street are overgrown with weeds.

I spot some cobwebs on the doors of some houses. The doors have not been opened in a while. Something terrible happened in this village.

Every second I spend in this place further creeps me out. I take a left turn into an even tinier sidewalk. I can still hear Jeff pounding on doors.

I walk very slowly. Some long grasses brush against my knees and lower thighs. I notice the window of a house ahead of me slightly open.

I go over to the window and pry it open. It swings open without any hindrance and I peek in.

I am looking into a small square room. It must have been some kind of dining room because there is a large thick wooden table in the middle of the room, surrounded by some similar wooden chairs.

There are some small white plates on the table, but on the plates are remains of a decayed food. Most of it is just black char.

I can see all this so well because in the middle of the table is a lit candle, still burning consistently.

"What the hell?" I mutter to myself.

Suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck stand and I have a dreadful feeling that I am being watched. Just how I felt on the road when I closed the bus's hood.

Some thick clouds move and cover the moon and I am plunged into pitch darkness. So I don't see anything but I still feel the gaze of something or someone on my skin.

I look around slowly and see a figure standing about 6 feet away from me. I would not have seen it if it had not moved.

It is a small pale white shape in the dark.

I hear a giggling again and I realize that what I am looking at is the figure of a child. It moves again.

"Hey," I call out, running after it. "Wait up!'

The child moves very fast. It is weaving through trees easily.

I chase after it as fast as I can. But I am not the athletic person you would come across so run out of breath and after a short while, I am panting. I stop and lean against a tree to catch my breath, I notice that I have left the village, and now I am probably in the woods on the outskirts. This weird child is standing like it's waiting for me to continue the chase, but now, I am more interested in my surroundings.

I can no longer hear Jeff's knocking on doors. The moon is still hidden behind clouds.

The sound of children's laughter drifts to me in the breeze. It is clearer and louder this time.

"What is this place?" I ask myself. I hurry up to the child but it moves away, faster. My leg gets tangled up with some undergrowth and I find myself on the floor.

"Son of a bitch!" I groan as I stand up and brush away the dead leaves and humus that stuck to my trousers. I resign myself to walking slowly. I try to call Tristen, but just as I had expected, there is no signal. Not even for an emergency call.

I sigh, put on the torch, and shine it in front, where the child had been a second ago, but now it is not there.

"Hello?" I whisper.

I hear the giggling come from my side and whip the torch around. There is nothing there. Just shabby tall trees and small shrubs.

"Hello?" I whisper again, holding myself from screaming out.

I turn off the torch and see the pale figure of the child standing a few yards away, near a tree. I slowly turn on the torch, and it is gone.

"What?" I mutter under my breath.

The child moves away slowly, I tuck my phone into my bag and follow it. Anytime I try to catch up, it only moves away faster.

I vaguely wonder if Jeff has noticed my disappearance and gone back to alert the others.

That seems unlikely.

The clouds broke open and the moon was exposed again, lighting up everywhere. I sigh and look up at the blue sky. When I look back down, the child is gone.

"Oh shit!"

I turn around urgently. "Jeff!" I yell. I start to feel panic build up in me.

"Jeff!" I yell again. I turn on the torch on my phone and walk fast, trying to find a way out of this thick wood.

"Jeff!" I yell even louder. My throat is starting to itch and my breath constantly catches in my throat.

I hear a low growl. I feel like it is coming from all around me and I break out into a frantic run. "Jeff! Help!" I yell, leaping over shrubs and trying to get away from here.

It is like the sound of the laughing children is following me as I run, it follows me in the wind. "Jeefff!!" I close my eyes and shout at the top of my lungs.

I crash into a tree and stumble back. I feel my legs wrap around a thick shrub and I fall in a heap on the floor. My phone's torch immediately goes off and the moon goes behind the clouds, shrouding me in pitch darkness again.

"Oh shit! Oh shit!" I mutter under my breath as I untangle my legs from the shrubs and grovel around the dead leaves for my phone. I crawl around in the darkness. Trying to find the phone by touch, rather than sight. I shove dead leaves aside in case the phone is buried underneath and finally, I see it. The screen is shattered. It had hit a rock as I fell and the phone is pretty much destroyed.

"Fuck!" I curse under my breath and drop the phone in my bag as I stand up to look around to observe my environment.

I am in the middle of nowhere. No sound around me, no insect buzzing. Just eerie silence and darkness.

I take a 360 turn, pick a direction, and start walking. I walk for almost 30 minutes and then see a fallen tree trunk.

I sit down on the edge of the trunk and rest my head. I accept my fate that I am lost.

"Fuck!" I yell at the sky.

I stand up to continue my walk. The moon is out again. Its bright light cast everywhere in its glow. A shiny piece of half-buried metal catches my eyes as it reflects the moonlight.

I poke at it with the toe of my shoe, and I realize that I am not standing on soil or leaves, I am standing on a hardened substance.

I crouch and look closely. It must have been some kind of old cement, but years and harsh conditions have worn it out and weakened it, so they crumbled as I poked.

I wipe the dust away from the shiny metal and notice that only part is exposed. I use my fingers to dig around it to reveal the other parts of the metal still buried underneath the ground.

After digging for a couple of minutes, I stand back and look at it. It is like a metal net. Or a chain mail. The type that ancient Roman soldiers wore to war. And it extended deep under the ground so I just stopped.

It was a pretty amazing sight, as the chainmail reflected the light from the moon. It shines brighter than a normal metal and if I don't know better, I would say it was silver.

But why would anyone bury this large amount of silver underground?

No matter how old it is, I know silver has always been an expensive material. So what is this about?

I pry one end of the chain away and it breaks loose under my grip.

"Yeah," I mutter under my breath. "It's definitely not metal or steel," I inspect the object close to my face. "It looks like –"

There is a low growl. The type I was hearing before, but this time, it is louder. Closer. It reverberates everywhere. Like it is coming from underground.

Maybe it IS coming from underground. I notice that there is a gaping hole from the part of the chain I tore out. I crouch and peep inside, there is a pocket of space with a foul odor.

I start to reach into my bag to bring out my phone for light, but I remember what happened to it.

I go closer to the hole and squint my eyes. There is another low growl and two red eyes open in the darkness and turn to look at me.

"What the –" I stumble back and run as fast as I can without knowing what direction I am headed in.

To my surprise, I burst out of the woods and back into the village, but with my speed, panic, and darkness, I crash into someone. Or something.