She had not gone far. Once again, she heard the sound. She stopped.
“Who is it?” she shouted.
There was no answer. Just the sound of the leaves rustling, of the branches swaying.
The wind howled faster. Gray flashes of light streaked across the sky everywhere.
She had to get home. Something was definitely out and she did not like this storm. Why did she ever come out of the house? She should have stayed behind. She cursed and spat.
She should have known. The day was cloudy and dark. She should have anticipated a heavy rain at least. What a fool she had been? And now she had fallen into a deadly trap. She knew it. Someone was following her and she did not know who.
Perhaps it was one of the forest folk. Some little kid trying to scare her. She was not going to be. She had not known fear.
“Run” she said in her mind. The clouds looked like it was going to burst. “Not far, not far” she muttered under her breath.
She could see the outline of the village not far away. Her face turned to joy as she first saw the roof of a house. It was not so near yet it was not so far. Her eyes were keen as a night-owl. She could see far and not mistake anything.
“Emily” a voice whispered from behind.
She stopped startled. How did her follower know her name? And the whisper, it was unlike anything she had heard. The voice was so cold; it sent white mists around her. She looked back the way she had come. Still nothing. No one.
“Who is it?” she shouted again.
No answer.
She looked about her. For the first time in her life, she began to believe in the tales her grandmother used to tell; the tales about the terrors of the night. Now that the truths were in front of her, she began to feel scared. The weather grew chilly and goose bumps raced across her fair skin.
“Who is it?” she shouted again.
“Emily” the voice whispered again, the white mists growing stronger.
A loud thunder she heard and she shuddered. Her feet felt weak and tired and her chest heaved. She could not believe it. She was scared. Nothing ever had happened to her like this before.
“It cannot be. It is just the storm. My senses are playing tricks upon me. I am hallucinating.” She whispered to herself.
“Emily.” This time the voice sounded from afar.
The mists dropped down and she felt a strange vigor in her body. Her heart was fighting.
And then she ran as fast as she could.
A cold wind smote her from behind, her hair pulled by an unseen force. She tripped over and was thrown across a small clearing. “Ouch” she said loudly as she landed upon the cool grassy ground.
Her head felt dizzy and she looked with fluttering eyelids at her surroundings. She had reached the clearing, the place where she came usually. It was not that far now. If only she could reach her house!
She tried to stand but instead felt a searing pain. A sharp stone had skimmed through the skin under her left thigh and a wound had opened up. Her blood flowed profusely. She screamed in agony, her hands holding tightly to her knees. She crawled slowly and felt her left leg tickle. She felt as if something with legs was running up on her leg. She tried to shove it off but her fingers oft crossed her wound making her scream again.
A black eel raced across her left leg avoiding attempts to be thrown back onto the ground. After much slithering and pacing, it finally reached her open wound and disappeared into her flesh. She screamed again but this time her head jerked upwards, her eyes bulged, her forehead creased in pain but her eyeballs shone with a strange orange light which looked like hellfire. She screamed for a few minutes before her head fell with a thud onto the ground, her eyelids closing and her lips joining together, now turned blackish at the edges. Sleep overcame her as the pain eclipsed all her thoughts.
-$$$$-
She felt a searing pain in her legs. A glass shard had ripped open a small portion of her skin under her left thigh. She felt the warm blood trickle down her skin. She winced in pain and moved her hand over the bleeding wound. As she kept waving her hands over the wound, the blood stopped oozing out and the skin was sewn back anew. The wound had healed and she felt the pain abate.
She stood and looked at the ladder at whose top she had been standing examining the outer wall of her house. Her husband had mentioned that their walls may be losing their sheen and cracks had already appeared on the inside. The crack on the outer wall was too high to examine and she had brought a huge steel ladder which they possessed.
Ten minutes after she had climbed and started examining the wall, she had slipped and fell onto the ground. Thankfully, nothing had happened to her except for the glass shard which was there upon the ground from nowhere and she could not place where it came from.
The way she fell from the stairs reminded her of the way she had fallen on the ground in that small clearing, a little distance away from her home in her birthplace. That was thirty years before but this incident brought back her memories. She had fallen the same way. She had experienced the same brutal force.
As she went towards the door, she began to remember. There was a time she felt weak and there came a time she felt above herself, powerful and menacing.
¬-$$$$-
She woke up three hours later. Her head felt dizzy but the feeling passed in a few minutes. She remembered running from something which was calling out her name and then she was thrown onto the clearing. What force had made her trip over so badly she did not know! She had never tripped so badly. Never.
She placed her fingers over her thigh which was still giving her a ticklish sensation. There was no wound. There was no blood. She smiled and stood on the ground. She felt powerful as if something had gotten into her. Her eyes were lit with a golden fire and her nose constantly sniffed at the air. Something was changing her, controlling her actions. Even though she felt powerful, she knew it was because of some other entity inside her but she cared not. She felt she could do anything and that was the freedom she largely craved.
Voices came from the direction where she was supposed to go. Voices of people. Voices crying out loud her name, Emily.
She saw torches not far away. For how long she had lain on the grassy ground, she did not know. But her parents had raised an alarm having found out she was gone. The storms had given her away. She did not want to guess what time of the night it was but it sure was darker.