Resident Enis: Trail of Lies

Chapter one

Mark walked along the muddy path in exhaustion and annoyance, with Dodger and Enis singing 1,000 Bottles of Beer on the Wall for the past two and a half hours behind him. Why did these things always happen to him? First Dave died, then they lost all of their supplies, then Dodger and Enis sang a whole musical number on using imagination, and finally they escaped certain doom for the umpteenth time!!! Could this day get any better?

Having enough, Mark turned around to face the two and said, with the fakest smile he could muster,

"I have a great idea!! How about we don't sing until we get to the summer home Enis was talking about?" Enis and Dodger looked at each other and shrugged, not singing any longer. Mark breathed out with relief and just enjoyed the silence...for about 2.859 seconds.

"I spy with my little eye something that is gray!!!" Enis called out. While Mark groaned, Dodger responded,

"All the dead trees around us?"

"That's right!!" Enis replied in a way too excited voice for Mark's liking. He was regretting allowing Dodger to let Enis follow them from his mansion. The journey out of Shadow woods would be so much more peaceful if he had just put his foot down on making Enis stay at his mansion.

Dodger looked around. "I spy with my little eye something that is creepy, weird, and cranky." She said.

It didn't take even two seconds before Enis guessed, "Mark?"

Dodger laughed and nodded. Mark turned around angrily.

"Could you two please be quiet for five minutes? I can't think straight with all of this playing behind me. If I had known that I would be the mature one babysitting you two, I would have tried to find someone who would pay me for having to put up with this!!!" He stopped talking and then took a few deep breaths before asking, "Now, Enis, are we almost to that place that you were talking about? We have about an hour until sundown."

"What place I was talking about? My friend's summer home?" Enis asked. Mark's eye began to twitch with anger and disbelief. "Oh, well you guys never said that you wanted to go there, it was the other way away from the Bandit shack. I've just been following Mark."

Mark breathed deeply and tensed up a bit.

"Enis..." he began. "We have been walking for three hours and forty-five minutes...and you tell us now that we're not even close to the summer home?"

"Well..." Enis began. "Technically speaking, I told you five seconds ago."

Mark had to stop himself from strangling Enis. He took a few deep breaths before saying,

"I'm gonna go climb a tree and see if I can see any place we can stay for the night. Dodger, take my stuff." He handed his bags to Dodger before using a large stone as a step-stool and climbing up a nearby tree.

Looking out at the terrain around them, Mark saw the bandit shack, which now looked about as small as a lego house, and sighed. There was no way that they could even get back to the shack before the sun set; much less anywhere away from it in the opposite direction that they had come.

Looking back down at Dodger and Enis, he saw that Dodger looked a bit unsteady. She had her baseball bat at the ready, and was looking around every which way.

"Dodger?" Mark called down. "What's going on? Are you okay??"

"There's something here." Dodger called back up, her voice at a normal talking volume so that Mark had to strain to hear her. Enis began looking around as well, as if noticing what Dodger has noticed. "Rather, someone." She clarified. "Someone's breathing, and I think that they're-!" But Dodger didn't get a chance to finish her sentence. A brown blur shot out from the bushes and on top of her, snarling and snapping its teeth. Dodger screamed as she toppled over and dropped her bat, squirming and rolling around, trying to get the monster off of her.

Mark began to panic, not being able to climb down. The branch he was standing on began to crack, and Mark realized just how weak this tree was. Of course the branches would be brittle; this tree had obviously been dead for at least a few weeks!!! He watched in terror as whatever was on top of Dodger continued to snap its jaws, closer and closer to her neck. Enis was just...standing there while Dodger screamed bloody murder.

"Enis!! What are you doing?!!!" Mark yelled. "Help her!!!" Enis seemed to take a hint, but instead of hitting the monster or using a weapon against it or something, he went from behind it and pulled it off of Dodger. It kept going berserk, as Dodger scrambled away from it and against a tree, yanking her baseball bat from the ground and in front of her. Enis seemed to be...talking to the monster, who was snarling at Dodger. But Mark could hear what he was saying, as he was yelling above the snarls.

"Amber, calm down!!! It's okay!!! She's a friend!!! You're okay!!! She's nice!!! A nice human!! I promise!!!"

The monster finally stopped moving and looked at Enis. It sat there and stared in awe.

"Enis?" Came the voice of what sounded like a teenage girl from the monster. "What are you doing this far south? And with humans? Are they bringing you somewhere against your will?" She snarled again at Dodger.

"No. It's nothing like that." Enis promised. "This is Dodger. She's a friend. I've been following her and our friend Mark for a while now."

"Mark?" The girl asked. "Where is he?"

"Up there." Enis pointed. The girl looked up and Mark saw her eyes widen.

"You need to get down from there!!!" She said, her voice frantic. "Now!! It's not-!" But before she finished her sentence, there came an ear-splitting crack from beneath Mark, and he began to plummet towards the ground.

Dodger, Enis, and the girl yelled at him as he fell, and he blacked out at he collided with the ground.