Hope in the Shadows

All My fault

AN: Hey it's me Percephine. I would just like to thank those who took the time to read my story.

In the previous chapter we learned 3 things. 1. Ryoga loves Yuma, 2. Yuma loves ice cream, and 3. You should never EVER go through a park at night when there are no lights and a really creepy feeling that you don't understand what it's coming from. Now on with the story!

" AAAHHHHH! " I know I heard it that time. It sounded like someone was screaming, possibly in pain or terror. Without thinking about what I was doing I started running in the direction that I thought that I heard the screaming coming from. I was so focused on trying to help whoever the person was that was screaming that I couldn't even stop myself when I heard Yuma calling for me to wait. All I could do was just keep running, and if I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes I wouldn't have believed what I saw when I finally got there.

There in the middle of the park was a little girl with mouse brown hair and a dirty and torn dress. She was crawling and dragging herself across the grass near the front gate. What really caught my attention though was that she was actually dragging herself away from someone. I say someone but it was really more of a something then anything else when you really think about it. It looked almost like a person except for a few very key differences. The first thing I noticed was the awful smell that the thing was giving off, like something was long dead and rotting away deep in the ground. Then there was the smaller things I noticed, like how dirt seemed to completely cover every inch of the things body, the pale almost translucent skin that seemed to almost glow in the pale moon light, and the way the thing seemed to growl in some kind of predatory, almost animal kind of way. Then when I ran around to get a better look at it I saw something that was somehow even weirder.

The thing had long yellow fangs that came down way past its bottom lip, red glowing eyes with long, thin snake - like pupils, the huge black claw - like nails at the ends of its fingers that gripped deeply into the ground as it crawled almost on all fours toward the little girl. I didn't know what this thing was but it obviously wasn't human. Without thinking I grabbed a large pointed stick from the ground and ran toward the monster, catching it by surprise and stabbing it in the chest and stomach repeatedly until it finally stopped moving. After taking a breathe to calm down I went to comfort the little girl. She was still crying and shaking from the ordeal, which after seeing that thing I couldn't blame her. When I went to try to comfort her she ended up grabbing hard onto my shirt and screaming at me, " please don't let the monster get me. I rubbed her back and said, "Don't worry the monster is dead." She then started shaking her head furiously from side to side and screaming, " NOT THAT ONE THE OTHER ONE! ".

" What do you mean 'the other one'? " She started quickly taking deep breathes to calm down before saying, " There was two of those monsters, this one and another that ran off just a little bit before you showed up." I looked at her very seriously and asked, " Which way did the other monster go? " She pointed back down the path behind my back that led to the way I came from, that led back to Yuma. Oh no! Seeing that a cop that was patrolling the park for vandals was coming toward us and now knowing that the girl was going to be in safe hands, I ran back down the path toward Yuma. What I saw when I fimally got there was enough to make anyone, especially me, sick. Yuma was now laying on the ground not moving and covered head to toe in deep claw and bite marks, his eyes were open and unseeing, while a monster that looked almost exactly like the one that I had just killed before had its mouth clamped down around Yuma's now bleeding neck.
I grabbed a large rock that laid near bye on the ground and hit it in the head, causing a large crunch and blood to start spurting everywhere. All this ended up doing was making it angry as it tossed me like a rag doll into a tree so hard I immediately started blacking out. As the thing started slowly coming toward me and my vision started to fade quickly, the last thing going through my mind was awful picture of Yuma dead on the ground and how it was all my fault. If I hadn't left him to go after the source of the screams, if I hadn't kept him out so late, if I had just said no when he asked to hang out with him in the first place. Then none of this would have ever happened. I'm so sorry Yuma, please forgive me.

AN: Well that's all for today. Hope you enjoyed it. Please leave a comment or review or whatever.