HAVEN BLACK - complete

DESCENDING THE PATH OF ANGELS

CHAPTER 29 – DESCENDING THE PATH OF ANGELS

A jabbing sensation on my shoulder stirred me out from my slumber.

"Uyanmak! Hey, hey, uyanmak!" The kind old man who had given me a ride had reached his arm through the gaps between the wooded rails and was poking me.

"Okay, okay," I responded wearily blinking my dry eyes and gazing upwards at the blood-red dusk sky. It felt like it was early morning, but as I sat up on the hay bale I pulled my phone out to look at the time; the time disagreed with my body clock and told me it was in fact early evening. I'd been on the back of this truck for over six hours but it felt like so much longer – damn jet lag.

The stars that had already started to shine through a patchy red sky looked abnormally placed and strangely brighter than they did back at home.

The old man had walked around to the rear of his truck that was parked to the side of the road, opened the rickety gate and urged me to get off his truck, which, I obliged, and after strapping my backpack over my shoulder I jumped off the vehicle, staggered slightly unbalanced on my feet for a brief moment before gazing past the truck and down the road ahead.

The smooth dirt road split into two distinctive paths, fifty feet ahead, but there were no road signs around – I had no idea at all where I was and the sunken sensation of the thought that I had just trusted a complete stranger to carry me for the last six hours to my destination threw me into a panic.

The weathered old man headed hastily back to the cab of his truck as though he was in a hurry to leave.

"Hey!" I yelled out worryingly. "Hey! Where am I?"

Just before the man stepped back into his truck, he prodded himself enthusiastically in the chest with his index finger then pointed his finger in the left direction, and then he pointed at me before swinging his arm back to the path on the right. He urgently nodded and smiled, and he then jumped back into the truck and crunched the vehicle into gear driving off down the road on the left. Seeing as I had foolishly entrusted this stranger for the last six hours, I followed his suggestion and headed down the road on the right.

The first stretch of this foreign road was mainly straight and before I'd reached the first noticeable bend an hour later, the sky had fallen dark. The path that lay ahead of me was barely illuminated by the patchy stars above; my eyes had since adjusted to the dark of the early night but I could only see about a hundred yards around me; it was enough to avoid tripping over the rocks and raised humps of the beaten road. I glanced back to see how far I'd come; the road had seemed to have climbed slightly for the entire walk so far and this explained why my legs progressively protested at this prolonged inclination, but I couldn't be sure, it was too dark to see far enough back. My mind had started playing the album "The Division Bell" by Pink Floyd while the surrounding flat plains appeared as though they were morphing into two dimensional shapes, closing the distance between me and the stars above. I felt as though I could simply reach up and carefully pluck a star from off the black canvas the lay just above my head.

Nearly out of breath, I walked around the long sweeping bend, and my suspicions that I'd just climbed a long sloping hill were confirmed. Bending down and resting on my knees to catch my breath, I gazed out in hope at the hilly landscape below. Numerously scattered soft yellow lights that diffused through thin layers of fog glimmered in the distance in the valley below and beyond them sat towering masses of black. The dark peaks of what appeared to be hills beyond, almost entirely blended in with the patchy night sky; it was almost impossible to see where the hills ended and the sky started.

The descent towards the village of lights was windy and a lot rougher than the road behind me. The jagged-edged rocks raised up out of the road threateningly – one slip and they'd easily gash into a limb or crack my head open. The temperature around me dropped slightly and the air that entered my lungs felt heavy and damp. Gazing back up at the now star-less night sky, a drop of rain landed on my forehead; it felt refreshing, yet at the same time gave me a sense of urgency to push forward before the rain had a chance to settle in, but the lights ahead were still a couple of miles ahead, maybe more. I broke into a careful run just as the heavens opened up turning the dirt road almost instantly into a slippery clay-like mess.