Caged Light

Caged Light - Cage Series Book 1

And so it begins...

Lying there in the transparent space between sleep and awake, she had no idea what had just transpired. The warm breeze of the evening gently caressed her face, causing her eyes to slowly open. The stars were shining brightly as they surrounded a full moon. It was eerily quiet. Only the sound of her pounding heart could be heard as she gripped her head. The fog lifted and the grogginess cleared, her brow furrowed as she realized something was seriously wrong. Confusion engulfed her as she wondered why she was sitting at the bottom of a twenty-foot-deep crater, and how she'd gotten there. She wasn't too badly injured, just a little sore in her right leg with a bruise on her calf the size of a baseball. Other than that, as she checked herself over, all she found was her white, mid-thigh length dress was tattered and dirty. It was almost as though she had been in some kind of fight and dumped there, left for dead. The only problem...she couldn't remember anything.

She looked around the crater and noticed the top was much wider than the bottom, with one side slanted more than the others, as if that's where she had been tossed in. There were two choices placed before her: stay where she was and pray for help which may never come, or climb out and try to solve the mystery of who she is and how she came to be in the crater. Taking a deep breath, she gathered what strength she could find and began her ascent. Even though the hole was only twenty feet deep with an incline, the majority of the portion was rock, with the top five feet being soft soil, which all together made the climb more difficult.

Inch by inch she made her way toward the top, with freedom only feet away. Just as she reached for the top, the soil slipped from beneath her hand, causing her to slide down, slicing her leg on a sharp rock. Immediately blood began to flow, however, she wasn't able to tell if it was superficial or deep enough to hit something important. All she could focus on was getting out. With only a few thrusts upward, she was finally free. As she emerged from the giant pit, through the darkness, she was able to see the field she was in, which appeared to be about fifty meters squared, surrounded by thick woods all around.

As she was sitting in the grass nursing her wound with a piece of cloth she had torn from her dress, she noticed the woods around her weren't as silent as they had once been. Strange sounds began to make their way through the tree lines. She wasn't able to tell what was making the noises, but was certain it was no small animal. Suddenly, out of the deep of the trees next to her came the close sounds of crunching leaves and snapping twigs. A low, rumbling growl could be heard as though a wolf were circling. Her heart began to pound as fear overtook all of her senses. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck suddenly rise as her eyes widened at the sight before her. Just beyond the shadows, with aide of the moonlight, she watched, nearly paralyzed in fright, as a figure began coming toward her. She could tell this was no mere four-legged animal. It appeared as though a gangly looking man dragging a hurt leg. The man appeared to be nothing but skin and bones, however, the growl was coming from him. What scared her the most was the closer he came, the more she could see. The man didn't appear to be human. He was missing the top portion of his head from his forehead up, his nose was only the cavities one would see in a skull, and his eyes were a deep shade of orange. His skin was such a dark shade of reddish brown it nearly blended in with the night. The girl wanted to move, wanted to get away, but she had forgotten how to move. As the creature made its way closer and closer toward the edge of the tree line, it reached for her, but suddenly yanked its mangled looking hand back into the shadows the moment the moonlight touched it, and let out a yell the likes of which no ear had ever heard.

That was her chance, the woman knew she had to get to safety somehow. For a split second, she looked away, toward the direction she was going to run, then back to the creature only to find...it was gone! There's no way that thing could move that fast, she thought, not the way it had been moving so slowly. Even though her leg was in serious pain, the woman knew she had to get out of there as quick as she could. So, making her way to her feet, she began to run toward the trees to the north of her, away from where the creature had just stood.