Night Guardians

Chapter Nine- Story Time

Hello you amazingly beautiful people! :D Thank you everyone who sent me pictures of Ash and Beth! Especially @CommonlyMisplaced who even sent me some of Zane and Cole which was absolutely awesome thank you! I promise I will full fill my end of the bargain by reading, voting etc for your work at some point. I have some free time today so i'll try ad get through some of it then you've earned it :) So....Story Time!

*Ash's POV*

“Last year, I lived with my mum. I never knew my father. I had no idea who he was or where he was. I didn’t even know his name. I grew up here in Greenvale with my mum.” A small smile pulled at her lips.

“My mum was my world.”

I kept my eyes on her. I already knew this. I had grown up with Beth. I knew everything about her family. Her mum had owned the little corner cafe on the edge of town, opposite their farm house. Her dad had taken off before Beth had been born. She’d never met him or known him at all.

“Why are you telling me this? I know that you live with your mum.”

She looked at me patiently.

“Because you said you wanted to know everything. So I’m telling you everything, from the beginning.”

I nodded, waiting for her to resume.

“I turned fifteen last year. My mum decided to take me out of school for the day, so we could spend the day together. We drove up to the hills in the afternoon. We had brought a picnic, a stereo and other stuff to do. She took us to our favourite spot, near the top of the hill and by the trees for shade. We used to go there all the time when I was little. It was our favourite place. We had spent the whole day talking, laughing and just doing stupid stuff.”

She reached down into her top and pulled out a charm that was attached to a metal chain around her neck. The charm was small and silver, a crescent moon with a star behind it.

“She gave this to me that day, as a birthday present. She said it was my father’s. That he had wanted me to have it one day.

“The sun had started to set and we began packing everything up. We’d been playing Frisbee before and Mum couldn’t find it. She went to look in the trees for it while I packed up the rest of the stuff.

When I’d finished, she still hadn’t come back. I waited for her. I waited until the sun had completely gone and the moon was up.

Finally, I had gone to look for her. I could hardly see anything. It was completely dark.

The trees opened up into a small clearing that the moon lit up. It had looked peaceful, but something was wrong there. I could feel it.”

She took a breath, trying to gather herself.

She’d never told anyone this story. It was obvious. It was so difficult for her to think about it, let alone say it to another person.

I nodded to her in encouragement.

She kept going.

“I stepped into the clearing. At first, I couldn’t see anyone else there. But there was something. In the corner, underneath the shadow of the trees, there was something, something dark and hunched over something.”

She looked at me straight.

“You know, sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d just walked away. What would have happened if I’d ignored it and gone home.

“But of course, I didn’t walk away. I went up to the thing and saw it for what it really was. I still have nightmares of it, even now. Because it wasn’t a thing that was hunched over something, it wasn’t even an animal. It was a person, or it looked like a person at least. A man in dark clothing hunched over something. Something with long red hair, with hair just like my mother’s.