Waiting For Sunrise - The Books Of Beginning AU

27. Cambridge Falls

A figure came barreling out of the bushes and right into Emma, Michael, and Kate's upended lives. It moved quickly, but with an odd jerk to its gait, as though something in its legs had been broken. Dark rags covered its entire body - it was like some creature out of one of the Edgar Allen Poe stories Violet so enjoyed, except it wasn't a story. It was real, and it was terrifying.

"Run!" The man - the photographer - told the siblings urgently. "You must run."

"What is it?" Kate asked. It was like nothing she had seen or heard of before, not even in New York's magical quarter, where all manner of creatures congregated.

"Just run! Run!" The photographer cried out.

But Michael had started to hyperventilate again, and Emma (fierce Emma, who had fought so many bullies at so many orphanages) had snatched a rock off the ground. It was too late to run, especially since, to everyone's horror, the creature pulled out a long, jagged sword, and screamed once again.

That scream was horrible. It made the children's bones shake and their hearts beat fast, attempting to crumple like paper. It was colder than the draft that had tormented them all through last winter at the orphanage. And then the creature knocked the photographer to the ground like he was nothing at all, and it advanced upon them.

Even in her fear, Kate managed to push Michael and Emma behind her, to shield them with her trembling body. 

"Stop!"

The creature did stop, to everyone's surprise. It stopped mere inches from her, and Kate realized with a start that the creature, whatever it was, wasn't breathing heavily after its advance. It wasn't breathing at all.

That wasn't the only thing about it that was disturbing, of course. Its rags were the long tattered remains of some sort of military uniform, and its sword was coated in a thin veneer of rust. And its skin... It's skin was greenish and dirt covered, and parts of it were rotted away. It was like the open sores that came with a disease such as the Bubonic Plague, except worse than the children had ever encountered, even after years traveling between slums and orphanages and the places where sickness tended to fester. What little skin could be seen on its face - black strips of cloth had been wrapped around its head - was the same as the rest of the body. Its eyes, however, were a sickly yellow, its pupils slitted and serpentine. It smelt of mold, it smelt of something pulled out of an ancient grave.

The creature raised its sword and pointed down the ridge and towards the field where people were being gathered. 

"You'd better go," the photographer said sadly. "It'll make you anyways."

The creature stepped around Kate like she was an inconvenience and grabbed at Michael, shoving him towards the path down the slope. It reached for Emma, but Kate once again threw herself between her sister and the monster.

"Stop! We're going, just stop!" She exclaimed, half demanding and half pleading.

The creature did stop, and so Kate took Emma's hand (the one not curled around a rock just waiting to be thrown) and the two of them joined Michael. They were then shepherded down the path and through a thicket of trees - it would've been a nice walk, everything lush and warm and alive, had it not been for the circumstances. As it were, the children could hardly pay attention to their surroundings.

"What do you think he wants with us?" Emma asked. 

"He's probably going to execute us," said Michael, pushing his glasses back up his nose. (He had once read about the French Revolution, and proceeded to decry the guillotine as primitive in comparison to how a Dwarfish King would go about executing someone.)