The Madness Within ✓

XII.

I got out of the car and inspected the tires. None of the tires on the car were flat and all four seemed to be working just fine.
I tried everything I could think of to get the car working again, but unfortunately, nothing I did worked.
Now what? I sighed and took off my coat, then put it back in the car. I closed the front door and pushed the vehicle to the side of the road from the back, making sure that it wouldn't get in the way for other people who would use this road - if anyone ever even goes here. But it was still better to leave it on the side just in case.
I inspected my surroundings, then turned my attention back to the car. I could try getting it back to the house, but it would take a long time and I'm not strong enough. And I also don't know how far away I am from the house.
„Can I really just leave it here?” I mumbled to myself, thinking about all the possible things I could do in this situation. Leaving my car here is quite sad, but there was also nothing else I could do.

I returned to the car and took all my things from the car, then locked it afterwards. After that, I double-checked if I had all my belongings with me and began walking back to the house. I could call for help I guess, but I highly doubt that anyone from the village or from around here would come and help me. There was the repairman who was the only normal person so far, that's true. But the chances of meeting someone like that here again are pretty low. So calling for help would be useless. But I could at least call mom back and tell her that everything's alright. She must be so worried after I hung up like that without an explanation.

I grabbed my phone from the pocket of my coat and searched for my mom's phone number in my contacts, then called her.

The phone rang once, then it let out three beeps and automatically hung up. No signal.

„What?” I mumbled to myself and checked the signal on the phone. I had no signal.
That makes no sense. I was on the phone with my mom a while ago and everything was fine. I had no problems with the signal and I could hear her clearly, while she could hear me well too. And the radio also worked! Nothing in this forest ever makes sense.

I cursed under my breath and continued walking, thinking of other things to do. But in the end, the only thing I could do was walk back home. I followed the road back towards my house and made sure to not get sidetracked, as I tend to get distracted very easily. By literally anything. Could be a sound, a squirrel, any other animal and I could quickly forget what I was doing a while ago. But this time I had a certain goal to reach. And that was to get home. As soon as possible.
The forest was silent, the only thing that filled in the silence in the air was the chirping of birds and light wind. Some of the grass was still white because of snow, though there was not as much of it as before, since some of it had melted already or got absorbed by the rain during the smaller storm. Some of the snow that was still on the road crunched under my boots as I walked. It was a mixture of cold, white snow and dirty, wet mud, which made the crunching sometimes turn into a disgusting squishing sound. Yet the somewhat unpleasant sound for some reason made me feel more relaxed and brought a light smile to my face as I listened to it.

I continued walking, when I noticed that the birds were becoming more and more quiet each second, almost as if they were disappearing somewhere one by one. Suddenly, I noticed a crowd of birds flying through the sky. All went in the same direction, back towards my car, while I was going where they left from. Something about this seemed.. off.
The wind has picked up after some time. I still didn't see my home from where I was, which was a bit worrying. I started to wonder if I was really going the right way. But there's no way I was lost, I went this way as I was driving away. I never took any turns or anything and the road didn't split apart into multiple roads either. It was just a straight, long road. I can't be lost.

Even though I was confused and worried that I might've gotten lost, I still kept walking. After a while of walking on the same, long road, the crunching of the snow suddenly multiplied. At first I didn't realize what that meant and paid no attention to it, but once I finally found out, I froze in place. One of the sounds stopped, but the other continued. The crunching that kept going didn't belong to me.
Someone else is here in this forest with me. And if it's not a person, maybe it's..

I looked around the forest, trying to find the source of the sound. The crunching echoed through the forest, filling in all the silence that the forest was swallowed in before. The sound was now further away from me, somewhere behind a few trees, off the road. I followed the sound, separating from the road and fully going after the crunching that could be heard somewhere between the tall trees. The sound suddenly stopped, yet I chose to continue following it. It almost felt as if they didn't want to be seen. Almost as if they wanted to hide. I leaned against a tree and peaked out of it to try and see who was there without them seeing me.

Well.. I expected to see anything but this. It could've been a normal person from the village, a lumberjack of some sort, or someone who likes to go on walks in the forest. Maybe someone who wanted to take pictures of the tall trees, or the house, or anything else that they find interesting about this forest. Or maybe just someone who could tell me the way back to the house. I expected something like this. And while I should've expected this outcome after all the things I've seen here, I still wished that whatever was happening would all be a big lie. A hallucination. A trick to keep me away from here. But it was real. It was actually real. It was so difficult to accept it, but this was really happening.

I expected to meet a person. Yet what I saw in front of me instead were three pairs of black eyes that stared right into my eyes, deep into my soul, sucking the fear out of me and pulling it out onto the surface. Its sharp teeth were stained with dark red liquid that was now dried out.

While it seemed like the creature was about to kill me, I think instead it wanted to tell me something. One word, specifically.
„RUN.”