They found me three days later, almost dead from hypothermia and ranting about thorns and monsters with no eyes. The doctors discovered rose thorns in my skin all across my arms and legs. It took another day to make me lucid enough to tell the police about what had happened.
Chip's body was never found. Neither was the mill we discovered together. The mill never existed at all; no record was ever found of a logging operation inside the forest, nor any construction of a logging mill in a fifty-mile radius.
I was in hospital for weeks, nursed back to sanity by doctors plus a whole battery of psychotherapists. Despite their efforts I could recall nothing of the period between finding Chip's body and being found in the woods days later. Amnesia, they told me, apparently very common in trauma victims; the mind blocking out memories too painful to deal with.
As soon as I was discharged I left town, went to stay with relatives across country as my parents fretted over what to do with a mentally-damaged son.
I have not returned since, nor will I if ever I can help it.
For I know that there is a man waiting for me in the forest that surrounds that town. He is the man who took my best friend, and who almost took me.
He has no eyes. Only roses.
YOU ARE READING
ROSES
ParanormalIn the depths of the Scottish countryside, something lurks. Something old. Something deadly. Something that, when crossed, will never relent. Two teenage boys are about to encounter it. Only one will live to tell the tale.
