CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 6

He stood up now, glanced at it but it vanished into a thin layer of smoke. A horrible scene he has never seen. He took off his skin clothe and threw it in the corner with his backpack. His body pulsed with this unfettered freedom. For the first time in his life, he was happy to note that the figure didn't see him. He must have stood there for what felt like hours, his skin growing taut with the cold. He drank in every image that nature had to offer.

As ecstatic as he was, he was growing exhausted. Crasher had told him that the whipping wind would suck the life out of him. He now fully believed him. He carefully moved to the corner again with his backpack. He drank heavily from the jug and put his skin court on. He closed his eyes and fell asleep immediately.

The positivity of his experience while he was awake hadn’t translated to his slumber. His dreams were plagued by all the horrors he had he had encountered in that Igodo forest, toothless men with jaundiced eyes veered at him through the jungles on the side of the trees, stalking him every move. Indescribable creatures hiding behind trees, moving here and there without seeing him.

He remembered how some creepy creatures inform of men, he remembered how some held knives to his neck as they tried to pull him inside the dark bush, only to be rescued by Matendechere's magic. A times a woman with stringy hair howled at him as she lunged at his body, trying to bite him.

He woke up in a cold sweat. He thrashed as he looked around the house. Night had fallen by this point, but Crasher was nowhere to be seen, he has vanished. He hadn’t made any move since the disappearance of Crasher. He pulled the sword and the magic knife given to him by Matendechere. He had limited time to get the prescribed food for the ogrism. Nothing was seen again, nothing, no spirit.

No one but him. He took a deep breath and finished the contents of his jug. He would have to get more water, it gave him strength and a sigh of relief. A couple more hours went by. He had shaken off his terrible dreams, dismissing them as his subconscious response to stress. He studied about the ogrism in the cage exhaustively.

All he want is the tail, the issue of soothing them with specific food was stealing breath from him. Crasher was to lead him to where the prescribed food is, he did not know the kind of food it was. So he felt sorry about this dissipated. Matendechere had told him to get hold of the calabash whenever he was attacked, with that confidence he set out, he went ahead and saw some marks on the ground, he knell down took a closer look.

'Crasher hasn't left you,' it read. He had earlier on heard Matendechere telling them to look out for a huge tower with a blinking red light near the edge of the forest, he saw it in the distance. This was going to be the most challenging moment for Abednego. He could either get off at this place, leave the challenging mission, go back home, get his family and find somewhere to stay, or he could wait, risk his life and save his village. He sat behind the back of those thoughts, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do.

His heart was throbbing between his chest, he took the sword and the knife, slowly he put them back into my backpack and made sure his skin coat was well tied. He slowly entered in a certain area, stayed in the corner as he felt the need to go back to Matendechere. He was thrown forward, so he was glad that he had at least held tight to the walls. He grabbed all of his things and peeked out the open door of the place. He needed to stretch his legs desperately, but he didn’t want to encounter the bull. All he saw were some spirits of some looking men coming from far, they were meandering in between the trees, staggering here and there.

Abednego's horrible adventures and meeting that old woman Matendechere, made him learn much more about spirits in the unseen world of evil forest. He hid under a place where there was total shadow, he slowly, made his way there without making any noise. He positioned himself in a place where he could take a clear view of this kind of creatures. One of them was biting something, Abednego couldn't make up what it could have been.

As they almost near, not far away from where he was, he could see vividly. The one eating something was having blood on the mouth. In the hand it was holding a hand of what looked like a hand of a little child. Abednego was really frightened. He looked behind to check if something or if anything was watching him, there was nothing, when he looked back the spirits were nowhere to be seen, they have vanished. He hopped off and breathed in the air. Thunder rumbled overhead, and dark clouds obscured the velvety, dark blue sky. Fat raindrops hit the top of his head, startling him. He didn’t feel comfortable walking in the rain in a place he didn’t know. Back in the same house he found.

The rain was so heavy, it has started raining so heavily, thunderstorms could be heard, followed by lightning. There was really a heavy downpour, him alone in the deserted room. He propped his backpack in the corner. He was worried about not being able to get any water. Maybe he could hold the jug outside of the house and catch water that way, risky as it was. For the time being, he felt fine. He was relaxed, warm, and he felt safe, somehow disturbed. He snarled up in a corner and waited patiently. Feeling dizzy, he opted to sleep.

Despite his long sleep just a few minutes before, he had the urge to doze off again. The rain was falling heavily at this point, hitting the top of the of the house and the tree,branches outside like little torpedoes. The thunder would boom at random intervals, making him jump out of his skin every time it did so. He hadn’t seen any lightning yet though. As if his recent connection with nature had grown to be psychic, a burst of white light due lightening illuminated the place he was. That’s when he saw it.

There was someone in the opposite corner from him. He had roughly been able to make out a body with a face. No, no, there couldn’t be someone in here with me. He had only been out of the that house for a few seconds to tap some water, and he hadn’t left it. He would have seen someone get in the house, or felt their presence near. If someone had gotten in, they had to have been fast. And quiet.

"Had I hallucinated? I… didn’t feel like I had," he pondered.

The rain pelted the top of the house with a frightening intensity, and the wind howled. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see that he hadn’t just imagined something. A dark shape was huddled in the corner. He could see its head shaking as if it were having a seizure. He heard gurgling noises coming from it as its body quaked. It made this sound for a while – until it started laughing. It was a breathy laugh, the laugh of someone who was trying to conceal a joke. The laughter gradually became louder, morphing into a cackle, with the choked gurgles coming up in intervals.

Abednego felt like his bones had separated from his muscles. He was paralyzed as he watched the thing heave up and down, and his throat had run dry. His mind raced as he tried to figure out what he could do. If he jumped out of this house, he would die for wasn't aware of what could befall him. He was scared to even move, fearing that this thing would attack him. The person in the corner stopped laughing. It inched its head forward, as if it were trying to look at him. One arm extended in front of it, bones cracking as it did. A long, skeletal hand splayed on the floor in front of it.

The thing’s shoulders were hunched like it was about to pounce. His fight or flight response kicked in, and he shoved his arm behind him to grab the sword out of his skin bag. He managed to pull it out and point it at the thing that loomed just a few feet away. Shoving the sword, tightly fixing his eyes on it. He shook even as his fingers were shoving the sword, panting like a panther. However, the figure never moved away. Instead, it cocked its head as if it were amused by his action. In his hurry to grab the sword, the flashlight from the lightening flashed. The calabash had fallen out of his backpack. He saw it out of the corner of his eye.

He don’t know why, but he felt he had to see what was crouched in front of him. It was prepared to kill this person, but he guess the human side of him had to fully recognize it before a sword penetrated through its head. He grabbed the sword tightly and shove swiftly at the thing. This was an action that he will regret for as long as he lives.

Pale, translucent skin stretched across its skull, and greasy, stringy brown hair hung off of it in patches. One of its eyes was a pale corpse-colored blue, its pupil merely a quivering pinprick. The opposite eyelid was plastered into a deformed crevice, revealing the cavernous insides where an eye had once made its home. It growled through a clenched mouth, revealing jagged yellow and black teeth, some of them looking like they had been sharpened down to a point. Its body was grimy and severely emaciated, the outlines of bones looking like they had been carved into its flesh. Red, raised scars covered this thing from its arms to it skeletal face.

It appeared to be covered in oily brown rags, one small, wrinkled breast exposed. This was the woman in his dream. This was the demon living invisibly among the drifter, the death goddess willing his destruction. Tears welled in Abednego's eyes as he heaved and growled. When the light hit her face, she let out a shrill, high-pitched wail.

Before he could shove and strike, she lunged at him, pinning him into the corner of the house. Her long, jagged fingernails ripped into his face as inhuman screams emanated from her mouth. Abednego fought her, kicking and flailing, trying to push her off of himself.

She was stronger than he thought. She was able to wrestle him to the ground, her long fingers grasping around his neck. Her face was millimeters from Abednego. Her one eye, the hue of decomposition, bored a hole into his. Her sour breath felt hot on Abednego's face, and her cracked lips spread into a wide leer. In a low, gravelly voice, she spoke to him.

“Eeeeeat you… send you to hell… make my house with your bones,” she screamed.