Shadows Envoy

Chapter 1

As I laid in the middle of a wood bleeding out, I decided that I didn't care anymore. It's one of the things you realise when you're knocking on death's doors screaming at him to wake up and get his ass in gear because this shit hurts. But I should probably give a bit of context to how I got here should help explain this.

My name is James Sharp, and I'm a 15-year-old high schooler with absolutely nothing important happening in his life until today where my life took a 180.

As I was walking around town, I had decided that 6:30 am is a strange time to be up. My mum, however, insisted I needed a job and a paper route half an hour away was the only place available so there I am riding through the woods in the dark to get to my torturous routine of dropping off papers.

"At least I get some time to myself" I muttered sarcastically to myself. Yeah, more time dedicated to my brain and me as if 8 hours at school with no friends and no one who cares enough to talk to me isn't enough time as it was.

Don't get me wrong I didn't want to be a loner I tried everything to fit in, from smoking with the cool kids all the way to prepping with the nerds, but they just act like I don't exist. I didn't have a single memorable experience in school not a single fight, girlfriend or even praise from a teacher on how well I did.

But getting back on track I was entering Bluebell woods, the best route to get to the start of my rounds, and I felt a sudden chill that rocked me to my very bones, a feeling that caused me to swerve to a stop and look around as if someone was staring right at you. I should have turned right back around at that point, but I idiotically decided to dismiss this feeling and carry on because who would be in the woods at this time and more importantly why would they notice me. No One else does.

That feeling stuck with me the entire time, and when I was halfway through bluebell, I realised why I should have turned around and left. As I was climbing the last peak of the woods and could enjoy the downwards slopes until I reached the shop to start my rounds, I stumbled upon a nightmare.

Three ghastly looking men, who all looked like they were mummy unwrapped with grey dead skin and sunken eyes, were standing in my route holding a dead woman and before you ask how I knew she was dead, they were quite far apart maybe three meters in all each carrying a different part of the woman.

The first man, if you could even call him a man, had her limbs bundled together like firewood ready for the fire slung over his shoulder. This thing as I took to calling it in my head had a twisted grin on his face as if he had just seen the happiest thing in the world.

The second Had her torso strapped to him like a backpack caked in I'm guessing her blood. This thing was snarling like a wolf when someone has entered upon its territory.

The last held her head which was stuck in a state of terror with eyes wide open and a scream carved upon her face. I instantly knew she died in pain. This one was sad. He had a look of depression with slouched shoulders like he was just told his football team didn't even qualify for the tournament.

And all three were looking right at me.

"Well, well, well. Who do we have here then?" A deep melancholy voice uttered in my ear.

I screamed in terror and fell from my bike as I tumbled away from the scene in front of me off the main path more profound into the woods. I must have hit a tree part of the way down as I clutched my leg in pain feeling the wetness of blood pooling through my jeans and I see the bone protruding from my shin.

"That does look painful" The same melancholic voice uttered as soon as I stopped moving. How did he get here so fast? I was in too much pain feeling too much terror that I couldn't speak. "Not going to say anything young one, I'm not surprised you humans are petrified of us, I suppose you're wondering what it is that you have stumbled on this early morning. Well, let's just say Mrs Holland up there saw something she shouldn't have so we had to find out what she knew and who talked to her then after that she wasn't needed anymore." He monologued on.

Now that I could see him he looked. NOrmal. 6ft 2 ish muscular but not to bodybuilder levers more like a swimmer, with a squared off face, deep blue eyes and short cropped black hair. If I had to guess, he couldn't be over 23 years old, yet his voice and his eyes conveyed someone so much older.

" who are you? what are you going to do to me?" I asked shakily as I finally found my voice. I needed to know. I needed to.

"Hmmm. You can call me despair, and you are going to die." he uttered with zero remorse and thrust his hand into my stomach then disappeared with not so much as a sound.

This is how I find myself now laying in these woods with a broken leg and a hole in my stomach thinking that if I by some miracle survive then I don't care what people think anymore because I felt despair and I never wish to touch it again. As I was thinking this, I started to see things that must have come from the lack of blood because it looked like the shadows in the darkness were twisting and thrashing erratically and as I passed out, I never realised that this was happening that they were moving.

I didn't realise that the shadows engulfed me and when they receded I wasn't in the woods any longer, and neither was any sign that I had been there in the first place.