Worlds Apart

Chapter 7

S U S P I C I O N S • A R I S E

Sep. 09 2020 04:36 CET

Room #04, The Port Inn

Trees rustled in a faint breeze. Crickets chirped in the underbrush. The thick foliage formed an incomplete arch over her head, the cracks in the canopy just wide enough to see a night sky flecked with stars. Daisha could see a narrow, beaten path illuminated by pale moonlight winding through the woods, and disappearing in the distance, swallowed by the darkness.

The wind began to howl, the sound getting louder and sharper until it no longer felt like wind, but a creature crying into the night. More 'creatures' joined it, the melodious howl reverberating through her very being, the mournful sound somehow carrying joy.

And then it didn't. The howls grew aggressive and... closer? Daisha spun on her heel, facing the direction she swore the cries came from. They were no longer calling to the stars, but calling for blood. She could hear paws thudding against the leaf-strewn forest floor now. Twigs snapped, leaves crunched, growls filled the cold night air, and yet she didn't move a muscle.

"Hey!" A steady, deep voice hollered from behind her. An immediate sense of comfort flooded Daisha. She knew that voice, the one that reminded her of home, of comfort, of huddling under blankets in the middle of the night, their muffled snickers giving them away to their seemingly omnipresent mother, who was always ready with a terse scolding before dragging them off to bed by their ears.

"Daisha!" Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the worried face of Dakota, his eyes urging her to move, to run. Because they were here. The creatures broke through the treeline, moving with such great speed that they were mere blurs to her, their fur so dark it stood out even against the near-black backdrop of this once serene forest. Fear made her frozen limbs grow roots that dug deep into the ground, anchored in the soil for centuries to come. Daisha couldn't move a muscle but the creatures were still coming. She heard Dakota move — why wasn't he running? — and she clenched her eyes shut, bracing herself for her inevitable end. She felt their fur brush roughly against me, lean, muscular bodies bumping into her, and then they were gone.

'They didn't get me. I was alive,' she thought. Relief replaced her fear, the feeling returning to her legs. And then bloodcurdling screams tore through the night, snuffing it all out, and her blood ran cold.

They didn't get her, but they got Dakota.

Daisha turned to find a heap of dark, moving fur. She could barely see him beneath the creatures tearing and clawing at his flesh, flashes of pearly white teeth catching the pale moonlight. And she couldn't move again. She just watched, her insides turning to lead with growing horror. An excruciating eternity later, he stilled, the creatures growled with satisfaction, and her knees gave way to the unbearable terror and shock.

She never hit the ground.

Daisha could hear her own heavy breathing in the quiet room. Her eyes were still closed, her fists still curled into the sheets, her shirt drenched with sweat despite the cold. Somewhere on her left, water hit the tiled floor in a rhythmic thrum, the sound muffled by the time it reached her ears. A shower — Owen was already awake.

She cracked her eyes open to find that the room was still quite dark, the furniture only dim shapes in the soothing darkness. Daisha closed her eyes again in hopes of calming her pounding heart. It was just a dream, a dream she has had frequently. But never had she encountered her brother in it, and never was he so brutally attacked.

Those creatures, she had made them up (then why had they seemed so real?) when she was a child on that one windless night. It was engraved into her memories; she could still see it in her mind's eye: