Under The Wolf's Moon

Chapter 34: Carry Me Home

Chapter 34  

Ronnie's POV  

I found myself looking up into nothing but darkness as water fell from above, it hit my face and everything around me. I could imagine the gray and ominous clouds hanging low in the sky if I could actually see the sky. The darkness filled my body with dread which made it feel like the air around me dropped ten degrees. I hate rain, it made the streets empty and everything else depressing yet others seem to love when it rains in Florida.  

Florida, that's where I was. It was spring break but this doesn't feel like the right weather for Florida. When it rained, it was hot still and this place smelled of wet wood and age. The darkness obscured my view in front of me and I could hear a low rumble in the distance. A storm was coming, a storm not just of rain.  

I heard a scream suddenly and as if my brain was automatic, my head jerked to where I thought it came from. After a moment nothing else came and the area was quiet once again but that scream beckoned me to it. It was like a symphony that wrapped around you and pulled until you were right in front of the stage that held the band. I began to walk slowly at first testing the ground to make sure it didn't collapse in on me. I could feel the dress that I had worn drag across the mud almost telling me to stay where I was.  

I decided to venture deeper into the tangled heart of this darkness hoping that it would reveal its dark secrets to me. The further I went, the more mystical and spellbinding it became. I began to see huge roots spread-eagled like on the ground, twisting like the great backs of sea dinosaurs. The foliage became thick and lush, forming an arch of fairytale-green above our heads and then I realized I was where I feared the most. The woods behind Dave's house, the same woods that he told me to stay out of for whatever reason, the woods where I got attacked on my first week there. These woods with its deep, haunting ballad of its ancient song called out to me. 

Coils of vaporous mist enwrapped the shaggy heads of the oak trees. They writhed around them like a conjuror's milky smoke, sensuous and illusory. Sieves of mist caressed the lichen-encrusted bark. Adding its phantasmal gas to the damp breath of the forest, it glided with deadly intent towards me. It deadened sound, haunted glades and poured into empty spaces. A sepulchral silence overhung the hallowed ground where the trees dared not grow. Nothing stirred, nothing shone, nothing sang. A hollow echoing, like the hushed tones of a great cathedral, entombed the wood. 

Then a finger of supernal light poked through the misty mesh. I thought for a moment that my soul had risen from my body and now was on the journey to the other world, I thought the light was a portal opening to the world in which Ocean's sisters waited to either pass on or to come back to the earth plain. My fears were doubled when the light turned into a blood red color that shown just on the horizon, as a scream reached my eardrums once again, all my senses were directed towards the piercing sound. My ears perked up at the low rumble that vibrated my entire being. My heart felt as though it was beating a thousand miles per hour, as a consequence for my brain being on automatic my legs began to move through the forest stomping on dead leaves in my wake.  

I was running, my dark hair clinging to my exposed skin on my face and neck. When I finally arrived at a wide glade, where the trees fell away, I saw the horrid sight in slow motion. Just as the sword entered the body I screamed letting the wind carry it through the trees and over the tops of them. I heard howls seconds later and then watched as a girl no older then I run across the field to the boy who now lay on the ground. Her black dress was torn in multiply places and blood ran down her arm most likely from a cut she sustained earlier. Suddenly the girl rose to her feet and the wind around her picked up, bringing leaves and dead branches flying in every direction. Hearing the unknown words she spoke almost like the wind was transporting them to my ears, I watched as the girl brought her hands flat out in front of her. The wind blew with heavy hurricane like speed and once it reached me it lifted me in the air then sent me hurling back towards the hard ground.