I awoke to the uncanny sound of crows that I could not see. When I cracked open my puffy eyes, I saw through my sticky lashes and the orange nylon fabric of the tent covering my face that the night sky had lightened. Sun-up was close somewhere out there in the dismal gloom.
I fished my folding knife out of my jeans and cut myself
free of the damp tent. I was so sore that I could barely move, and I was trying
to be as quiet as possible. It took nearly a quarter of an hour to cut myself
loose, but it seemed much longer.
My head ached from where I’d hit my head against a rock, and
I dry-heaved painfully several times. When I touched the side of my head, my stiff
fingers encountered dried, flakey blood. I learned later that my skull was
fractured. I was lucky to be alive.
I got to a stiff crouch, and only then did I dare peek over
the side of the shallow trench. Our campfire had burned down to smoking coals
in the night, but the smell of woodsmoke was still strong. I saw no one else in
the camp.
Confused, I crawled out of the ancient trench, stood and looked
around for signs of my friends. The misty forest was covered in a thick low fog,
and the top of Kill Devil Hill was an island in a dense sea of gray clouds. The
ghostly whistle of a train rumbling over the river bridge at Claiborne came to
my ears from the north.
A few seconds later, I came across the headless corpses of Brooks. He’d fallen over and bled out on the ground. His right arm was flung out before him, his blood-caked fingers splayed across the loathsome Ouija board that had started this all.
To this day, I don’t know why, but I kneeled for a closer look at his hand. The reflection of tiny swirls of fog moved across the garnet stone of his class ring. I slid the ring off his finger and dropped it in my pocket.
I stood and looked away as a damp chill shook my body. I searched around the lonesome hilltop for my other friends but saw no trace of them. My empty stomach rumbled. I felt so alone.
Were all of my friends dead? Had they fled into the woods? Were they trying to make their way back to the road?
In the fog, it was hard to find the dim trail that leads down from the top of the cyclopean hill. Even in the best conditions, the trail is hard to see. You have to stand in the right place and look in the right direction to catch a glimpse of it.
I eventually found it, picked my way down the steep hill and slipped only twice while the fog grew thicker as I descended into the somber woods. Eventually, after an interminable time of walking in the direction that I thought was north, I was completely lost in the fog. I could see only about 20 yards in any direction.
Brush slapped and dragged against my filthy clothes, and dry limbs snapped under my feet. Suddenly and without warning, I sensed that I was being watched. I stopped and looked around. My breath quickened at the thought of the creature rushing out of the fog.
I heard a singular sound that didn’t belong and instinctively spun to my right. An ominous motion caught my eye, and it took me a second to realize what I was looking at. It was a boy in a camo jacket and orange cap.
He stood in front of a large pine tree. A second later he ran to his right. He carrying a hunting bow. I made a move in the same direction, but my legs would not work.
I fell to my knees and looked down. It was then that I saw the metal shaft of an arrow sticking from my chest. I fell into the dirt and wondered absently if there were any ant beds nearby. For the second time in the span of only a few hours, I passed out.
(All rights reserved. This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.)
No comments:
Post a Comment