My Life As Stacey Green.

Chapter 7

A thicket of trees lay before us. "Where?" I asked utterly dumb struck. "Come on then," he beckoned me towards him. He slowly entwined his fingers with mine and we barged through the massive trees and bushes of all manners. "Stay close to me!" He yells, probably having 500 leaves forced down his throat, as I began to lag behind.Never the less he continued to drag me through it, then suddenly we burst into a 20 metres by about 30 metres open area, camouflaged tents, about 6 neatly arranged around a roaring fire. Twelve pre adolescents sat hunched by it. The almighty noise made them all stare in our direction, we must have looked far beyond funny. A tall, muscular, olive skined teen stood up and a knife protruded menacingly from the back pocket of his faded jeans. The others followed suit but instead of pulling out knives they pulled an all manner of weapons from their belts. "Hey it's me!" Sam yelled quite clearly exasperated at the threatening looks he was being thrown. He slowly and stately tore off his ski mask and gently bent down and dramatically dropped it onto the floor. The tall dude stared at him and ran up to him and slapped him on his shoulder.
"Sam," he breathed, "you had me worried. Anyway how are you.... WHO IS THAT?!" He yelled, scowling down onto Sam.
"Woah, man it's the only reason I came, she's Stacey Green, you know..." he trailed off into mutters and the boy glanced at me a few times before finally saying that i was welcome.
"Hi my name is Braydon and welcome to the gang." The tall boy introduced, his starry blue eyes bore into mine. His skin was olive and perfectly bronzed, black hair styled with so much gel it was really a brick, he had pearly white teeth, he was undeniably sexy, his voice had a seductive likeness to it. Perfect muscles bulges under his grey shirt and his biceps, well don't get me started on them, Sam was exactly the opposite, snow white skin, arctic blonde hair and a slightly toned stomach. After I had finished staring, Sam took my hand in his and led me to sit on one of the ancient logs that played around the campfire. He dug around in his backpack and wore a victorious grin when he found what he was looking for. Marshmallows. Marshmallows really? Why would he pack them?
"You always come prepared, don't you?" A high pitched voice asked. A small girl around my age sat down on my right. She had black hair in a tidy bun and dreamy grey eyes with a caramel complexion. "My name's Violet." She had annoyingly dreamy expression in her voice. I looked over at my left, a skeleton he was, a thin veil of skin encased it and a mop of thick ginger hair topped it. He wore a massively big dark blue shirt and had hideous ankle swingers of jeans and scrawny converse. His eyes cautiously glided over to me, he gasped and began to blush awfully. My stomach clenched and I suddenly felt the strong impulse of Sam's arms wrap around my waist, he then put his head on my shoulder and softly cried, I could feel his body shake and his heart beat against my own. Braydon meanwhile scoffed at him and strutted over to me, grinning. "Hey Stacey, sorry about earlier," he sounded cockily confident, and I rolled my eyes, "well anyway I was going to come over to tell this wimp here to man up and stop weeping, we've all had a hard time." With one more flirtatious glance he clicked his tongue and strolled over to a log already accompanied by two crazily muscular teens. Sam had immediately composed himself and muttered an apology and sat on an empty log and put his head between his hands. Then a girl who looked a bit like Libby (the resemblance made me sad) began telling vivid tales of giants and pirates, it was pretty fun actually. On her fifth story we were rudely interrupted by echoing rustling of leaves and the sound of a body falling to the floor. Everyone then directed their eyes to the thicket we had previously prevailed through, a man was lying there, and at that precise moment it hit me, it was Terry. There was blood matted in his hair and his eyes had gone milky white. A range of wounds covered his body and everybody froze. A note was nailed on to his hand. I could barely make out what it said with my eyes blurry with tears, it read :

He is the first of many
To stop this hand the girl over to the shadows

My blood ran cold. Terry was murdered because of me. I leaped up from where I was sitting, ready to run into the shadows, but hands gripped my wrists and pulled me back on to the log. Sam whispered in my ear, "That's not Terry. Terry and another one of our group, Jason, is currently being held captive by the government. That's why we need you. To help us get them out." I stiffly nodded but then a thought crossed my mind, well actually many thoughts.
"What is that then? Why do the government want Terry and Jason? Is this why yo-" I stopped and stared at the body. A shed of mist fell on the body and seeped into the ground. I gasped as I saw what the body was of. A little girl.
"We have to move, Stacey follow us." Braydon commanded and as if I was being possessed, I followed them, being influenced by Braydon's voice. Within moments the gang had hastily packed up everything except the logs and we were forcing our way to the opposite thicket to the one we entered through. "Run," Braydon said with a surprisingly coolness.
Miraculously, my legs moved as if on a conveyor belt and before I knew it we were, once again, in the murky woods. After a few breaks we finally made camp at an abandoned monastery. It was a large building of white brick, most of its windows boarded over or smashed out. It was tagged here and there with graffiti. Turkey vultures, disturbed by our unexpected arrival, circled the crumbling bell tower. Braydon stepped forward and pulled out a small pocket knife. He dragged it over his olive skin and a trickle of blood hit the ground. He started chanting something: