The Ship of Dreams

Chapter 4: Shadows

Chapter 4: Shadows

I sat huddled on the floor, with my arms wrapped around my knees. My teeth were chattering and I could feel sweat building up on the back of my neck, even though I was cold. As Seth’s figure disappeared I dug my fingernails into my palms and hoped that nothing bad was lurking in the forest and it was just me being stupid. I sat on the floor for about ten minutes, letting the moisture from the sand seep into my ragged clothes. I heard scuffling and then Seth appeared, sprinting out of the forest. I stood up abruptly, and swiftly followed him to wherever he was going. He was obviously running from something; was it the shape I had seen? We rounded the corner of the island and darted behind a large rock; as there was nowhere to run to. Seth pulled me down into the dust and slowly, without making a sound peeked out. He gasped and shrank down again, pressing me to the floor with him. His breath was warm on my neck.

“Don’t move!” He whispered. I heard heavy footsteps and the shadow lumbered past. It was even bigger than I’d remembered, but it ran straight past us, obviously thinking that we would not be so stupid to have stopped running from it. I still had no idea what it was, but I knew we would not last very long in a fight with it; even with both of us. It dawned on me that we were in the kind of situation you would expect to see on a TV show, or in a film, but this was quite real.

“What do we do now?” I asked Seth.

“I’m thinking we find a place to hide for the night and sort out a plan there. You think?”

“Umm sure,” we slowly edged out of our hiding place and ran back to camp, sussing that we couldn’t hide in the forest, as that was where it lived, and we had no idea whether it could climb trees; we weren’t willing to take the risk.

“We need to be where we can see the….shadow coming” I felt a splatter of rain hit my hand.

The rain poured out of the sky and thunder crashed, leaving a layer of thick, dense clouds above our heads. A lightening bold lit up the darkening sky and struck a nearby tree.

“Get under cover” Seth shouted, and we both ran for the trees.

‘I guess we’ll have to take the risk of the shadow being able to climb trees after all.’ I thought. I kept tripping over fallen branches and roots as I ran, but I kept going, despite the growing pain in my chest. Seth was getting further and further away from me. My foot caught in a large knobbly root and I tripped over, falling to the ground with a loud thud. I feebly attempted to scrape off some of the mud on my clothes with my finger nails, wasting time, still on the floor.

“Alanna, hurry up!” Seth called to me.

“Ok-k” I croaked. I picked myself up off the floor, but my vision had gone blurry and my head was spinning. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I carried on, stumbling across the floor, moving too slowly. I started seeing black dots in my vision, but all too soon the black engulfed me…