The Last Guardian

The Prologue

I've always heard the rumours of ghosts hunting the woods and little children going out to play and never coming back but I never believed. These fables - as my Dad would call it - kept the children in our town up at night and out of the woods. The old lady that washes by the docks, Ms. Samantha Finch, always claimed she saw them ride in and out of the village at night on horses as pale as the moon with cloaks that dazed the stars, but no one actually believed her - I mean, who would? Now, few years later, I think I might actually believe her after all.

My name is Carter Zed. My parents died when I was just five, at least that's what I was told. I've never understood the incident, one minute they're here, the next, they're gone for ever; no bodies, and definitely no clue just an empty vehicle in the middle of the road at Midnight.

After their death, I had to go stay with my aunt, Preteria, my mom's only sister. She's a lot nicer than my Dad's sisters. She's the village Nurse. She schooled in the City though, but  decided to come home to help the community and it's people. Growing up here, for me, sucks a lot. You literally know all the kids and their entire families - I mean, where's the fun in that?  When I turned 16 nothing changed, but little did I know that my life was never going to be the same.

One night at Horston village, where I lived, I saw them. After six years of doubt, I saw 'em ghosts with their pale faces and their flowy, misty gowns. I had gone into the woods that evening to get some herbs and wild mushrooms for dinner. I was in there for some minutes picking the mushrooms, and when I was about return home, I felt the wind brush hard on my skin, and then it stopped, and then suddenly, everything felt icy and cold. The air became too heavy: time frooze, and I with it. There in the woods, I stood, shocked! My eyes sternly fix on their awry figure, and my gaze met with one of them - they weren't ghosts, they were something more icy than ghosts. They rode on paler horses whose hoofs bounced effortlessly in mid-air as though there was no earth beneath it.

One locked eyes with me and rode towards me. My legs couldn't move, and as much as I wanted to run, my legs didn't just give in. I was scared. I watched it come close. Too close. Its ghostly face read nothing, not a single emotion. No hate. No anger. Nothing! Just blank. It wore the stale smell of death - how I'd known that, I don't know. It held on the back of my neck as though it wanted to pull the life force out of my now flaccid body, snap me like a twig or something of the sort, but it didn't. It stared into my eyes, trying to find something, like it had questions. And just as I felt it in my head, it shrilled, like it was in pain, and then it rode off together with the others. Vanished, and my consciousness as well.

I woke up months later with a scar at the back of my neck. Only, it wasn't the normal scar anyone had seen. It was the color of ice and likewise cold, and it was shaped like a bow that glowed in the dark. And when the very superstitious villagers started talking too much and asking a lot of silly questions, my aunt and I decided it was best if we moved to the city, away from all our pasts.

This is the Story of how I became The Last Witness.