A fist to the face was one of the last things that I saw today before I blacked out, I guess today wasn’t the day to play a hero. I guess I should introduce myself; my name is Jackson Erwing, a student of a small school and an even smaller town situated in God’s blind spot, a place none would know exists if they weren’t from here, but I assure you, we exist and the punches here are hard.
Now to get to the topic of the punch, but before that, I have to warn you; don’t pity me, I don’t need it. I am what people call a lone wolf if they want to sound cool or the outcast if we are being honest, if you ever met that one weird kid that no one wanted to be around due to weird rumours about them; that’s me.
I was sitting in a classroom that was made around the sixties, a worn-down brown carpet on the floor that was probably red a long time ago, tacky yellow wallpaper covering the walls, and three out of six fluorescent laps that still work hanging above my head, a book in hand and a pen in another. I was writing some notes on the writer’s style to study later when I heard some shouting, two of the class’ troublemakers were arguing about something and pushing each other back. Normally, I wasn’t the person to mind that considering my personality and that each of them could beat me up to a pulp but I saw that as they were pushing each other, some of the neighbouring school desks were toppled over along with the classmates in them which I wasn’t a fan of so all I intended on doing was asking them to mess with each other outside.
All I said was „Take this outside please, you will hurt others if you keep this here“ In a slightly louder tone to even have them understand me but their reaction was unexpected.
The taller one whose name was Mitch stopped punching and turned to me along with the other one, whose name was Daniel.
Both of them smiled to such a degree that it sent shivers down my spine. I knew I was in trouble when I saw them slowly approaching.
Mitch began by saying „This little twerp is annoying, we should beat some sense into him“ as he punched me in the belly, almost knocking me out; Daniel said „Not here, we will take it outside, into the forest“ Do you know how strong people get when adrenaline rushes into them? They don’t, it’s bullshit because the adrenaline was pumping through my body as I was trying to get away from them without any luck, for every move I made I was punched, kicked, and slapped.
Finally, as I gave up, they dragged me out to the forest to beat me up. I wasn’t thinking of beating them up and going back to school while looking like a badass as I knew the reality, all I could do was sit there and hope they made the beating easy, at least that was until I opened my eyes, I had them closed for 10 minutes they were dragging me in fear that they would start the beating session earlier if they saw me looking, but something was strange.
They were me dragging for almost an hour in a direction I knew I would not be able to get out of quickly. Just as I was memorizing the path they took to drag me here, Mitch dropped me, smiled, and said „No one will hear you scream now“ and that was true, no one but them heard the screams I produced for hours, the hope of a quick beating were gone, I was beaten merciless for what? For one sentence. Those bastards beat me half to death for saying something, I want them dead, I want them in shreds.
That’s what I was thinking as they beat me, the only thing that kept me conscious through all that pain was my hate. They stopped hitting after the sun started setting. They just stopped, looked at me, and went back, but not even twenty steps later, Daniel came running, He stood over me, spat at my face, and kicked dirt into my eyes while laughing.
After the sun went down and darkness came, I mustered enough strength to stand up and slowly start walking. It was already night by them.
By some miracle my phone was cracked but still working, I tried calling the police or anyone to come and pick me up but there was no signal and this forest was always messing with compasses and GPS.
I couldn’t get out of here tonight, I wasn’t dumb enough to walk around at night and get even more lost than I already was so I started to rack my brain, how could I even survive the night here? Sure, no wolves were living here but the number of wild boars and legends I heard from the locals made me shiver, if I was unlucky I wouldn’t get out of this forest alive just from the coldness so I stuffed some leaves into my jacket to keep me warm or at least not as cold.
Now that I was at least somewhat prepared for the cold night I had to find a place where I could sleep safely without worrying about the wildlife attacking me while I slept.
While those two jerks were beating me up I noticed a small cave around 50 meters away from us but it was night and I had no idea of what was in the cave or if it just went straight down and was a pit.
It would be a better idea for me to climb a tree and sleep there, I shouldn’t fall off, right?
So I went to complete that goal, I found a tree that looked sturdy enough and had a few big branches intertwined that looked like a good place for me to sleep on without the risk of falling off.
I was never the greatest climber so I fell four times trying to go up the tree. I succeeded on my fifth try. I sat on those branches that would keep me safe thanking the Lord for at least sparing me of death.
That’s when I heard something, a „crack“ sound, it instantly put me on the edge. Could something be on this tree along with me?
I shined my phone slowly to the place a bit up from me where I heard the sound come from. I expected a monster to jump on me and rip my intestines out when what I saw was just a sleeping bird. I was too on the edge and overreacted to a small sound.
With so much stress going on the last few hours, it was normal for my brain to be overworked so I decided to sleep, I made myself as cosy as I could to sleep when I heard a branch snap close to the cave. Something was coming out of the cave, something big.
The moment I heard that crunch I knew that it was something dangerous. I have come from a rural village far away where encountering wild animals such as board and wild dogs wasn’t uncommon, but even then; a normal wild dog or boar would make you cautious, the only time I felt endangered was when I met a boar that was hell-bent on killing, that was the only time I felt such a presence, until then.
It would be stupid to shine my light onto a thing that instantly gave me the feeling of danger and in turn, give it my location so I didn’t. All I did was lay as still as possible, make my breathing as unnoticeable as I could, and pray for it to just be an animal that couldn’t climb trees, but those thoughts were short-lived as I noticed the thing walking below me was acting unusual.
Its walk was unnatural, I was expecting rhythmical steps that every animal I saw until now had but this thing didn’t have any rhythm to it; if I had to explain how it walked, it would be reminiscent of an animal that was shot mid-walk, it staggered, quickened its pace and slowed down every step it took, no animal should have the joints to do that.
Just the sounds it made while walking made me imagine a body being ripped and broken at joints from moving at unnatural angles.
The thing that instilled fear into me without even being seen was heavy, so heavy that each step it took vibrated the earth enough for it to be felt on a tree and its breathing, I can’t even explain this. Every breath it took made me want to destroy my eardrums in hope of not hearing those sounds, it made me imagine thousands of animals whimpering and wailing in agony at once, seeking death, then, as if noticing that something was near it, it stopped and started sniffing the air and step by step moving closer to the tree I was on.
The thing no longer moved after that and I was perfectly fine with that, at least it wasn’t trying to climb the tree to rip my throat out and feast on my flesh, I could wait until morning while staying Awake if it meant that the beast would go away or at least fall asleep.
That’s when I started to hear scratching, it first began slowly and quietly but as each minute passed the sound became louder and was becoming more rapid.
Was the thing digging? It had to be that, I was just overreacting thinking it was out for me, there was no longer any doubt in me that it was probably just a sick boar digging for some food.
Then it struck me, the scratching sound wasn’t of claws moving through the earth but of claws moving through wood.
It knew I was here and it wanted me.
There was no way for me to escape, whatever the thing was, it was definitively quicker than me on foot and its claws were strong to slice through the wood so they would be strong enough to slice through me. I had to think of something before the tree fell and I ended up in the thing’s belly.
There was no need to stay quiet anymore, my heart was beating fast, my eardrums were vibrating from the pressure in my skull and I started to rummage through my backpack, all I had in the backpack were some notebooks, books, pens, and a compass. It was nothing that would help me survive in this situation.
I was going to die tonight after being beaten up for nothing, truly a death befitting of a fool that always had its head low and let others mistreat it, but I should not die here, no I would not die here as long as I stayed cool-headed and thought of something that would save me.
The thing was already a good way through the tree by the sounds the tree was making and I still had no idea of what I could do that would save me, until a water droplet fell on me, or to say, until the rain started pouring down from the heavens.
I got an idea at that moment, an idea that would make me die a painful death if I was wrong. If I remembered correctly from my classes at school and the internet, rain made scents far weaker or at least made the time they needed to spread longer, I had to distract the beast with something so that I could run away while it was away but the problem was, to where could I run away? I could not escape it for long, I needed to hide somewhere that would help me escape it.
The cave was 40 meters from me currently but who knew what was inside it. All I said was „what would happen if I jumped in there?“ in a whisper before remembering what would happen if I stood there and waited for the beat to get me.
I threw the backpack as far as I could in the opposite direction of the cave and waited for the beast to get as close to the backpack as I could afford before it noticed That I wasn’t the backpack.
It was midway to it when I slowly climbed won the tree and started running to the cave. The sounds of my steps were masked by the rainfall and I was so close to the cave, maybe 3 meters from it when I saw my whole world spin and I went face-first into the mud. I slipped.
The beast roared, it knew where I was and it was coming for me.
I had to stand up no matter what and I did but I twisted one of my ankles. I could hear the beast coming closer and closer as I stepped into the cave, it was now so close to me that I could feel the moisture from its breath on my throat, I would die.
And I would have died if not for the fact that the cave was steeply sloped down and smooth, with the last step I took, I didn’t find solid ground under my feet but rock under my back, I was sliding down so fast that if I didn’t die by the monster’s bite, I would die by crashing into something which would be a better death but not a thing I wanted so I did the only thing I could do, I tried to hold onto anything I could, though there seemed to be nothing but smooth stone under my fingers.
Even as my pals started to bleed and almost every nail was removed I was still grasping for the hope I would live until I grasped onto something, the cave seemed to be connected to a whole system of caves and caverns, and I by luck ended up in front of one of those sections and grabbed the fall that separated the two passages.
Even though I was now stationary, I wasn’t safe. I could hear the beast roar in the distance, it was searching for me and I had no way of moving due to me hanging onto the stone wall while hanging down like a mountain climber holding onto a ledge.
It was reasonable to think that the thing I was holding onto was just the stone that made up this whole passage but I was wrong, it was not the part of it but was simply laying on it and started slipping with me as I was hanging on it. I was not the one to curse but at that moment every curse word I heard flashed through my mind, I, along with the object slowly slipped into the tunnel and fell for who knows how long, I lost the count of how many passages I went through, unable to cling onto because I was now moving too fast and still stupidly clung the object that fell with me hoping for it to soften my fall and somehow for me to survive this whole ordeal.
Sliding down for so long meant my whole back was stinging with white-hot pain, no doubt from cuts and tears in my skin caused by the friction but I regained my hope. No longer was darkness all I saw but also light from the passage I was in, it looked like there were no longer any forks in it and I would finally be outside of it, the only problem was my speed, I knew that if I even hit softly packed dirt at this speed I would die.
I flew out of the tunnel, hit something, and blacked out.
The first thing I saw after waking up was a white ceiling illuminated with fluorescent lights accompanied by the buzzing and beeping of medical equipment around me. While I could not stand up due to the pain I felt all over my body, I could still prop myself up in a half-sitting, half-laying position while waiting for someone to come so I could ask what was going on.
Not even 10 minutes later, a nurse walked into the room and was about to look at the readings on the machines and if anything needed to be done when she noticed I was sitting up and was awake, she momentarily froze, looked at me, said „please wait a minute“ smiled and quickly ran while shouting for a doctor to come.
I understood my whole situation when the doctor came. He was a man in his late 50s with grey hair and a clean face, just from how he acted and spoke, you knew he was experienced.
He spoke with a tired voice that made me notice the dark circles under his eyes.
He said „Kid, I don’t know what you were doing out in the wilderness but it’s a miracle you are alive“ and gave me a slight smile that looked like he was really glad I have woken up and then continued „Some hikers found you at the base of a small cliff that was connected to the mountain, it seems you fell through the steep tunnel that exited there and was only able to survive because you crashed into a deer carcass that was near the tunnel, you are a lucky one“
I was happy to be alive but the pain I was feeling even now made me ask the doctor „Doctor, what’s my current situation?“
While he had a faint smile until now, it disappeared „You aren’t in a great shape, a broken right arm and a broken left leg, deep cuts on your back plus scratches to your whole body, we were able to disinfect the wounds so you won’t get an infection but we will have to keep you here for at least a week for your health to stabilize before we can let you go“
He was about to leave when he remembered something and asked „Anyway, what happened to you? You were and still are in a pretty bad condition“
That was a tricky question, I considered telling him the truth but the chances of him believing me were non-existent and I would probably end up on meds so I lied.
„Some wild animal attacked me and while I was running away I ended up in the tunnel“
Both the nurse and doctor softened their gazes on me and gave me some comforting words and left.
The one week I spent in the hospital was hell, I couldn’t move and had to spend all my time laying in bed, I couldn’t even go to the bathroom so I suffered the shame of having to use a urinal bottle, that wasn’t the worst thing, however, every night that I slept there, I would suffer the nightmares of that night, always waking up covered in sweat and screaming, luckily the nurses and doctors were able to calm me down before I harmed myself by thrashing around.
After a week of just laying around, I was finally allowed to leave though not in the greatest state. I still needed to take some medicine to help with recovery and to make the pain bearable.
Though I wasn’t in a state that would be fit to go to school my worries about losing out on some education weren’t needed as the spring break began two days ago and I could comfortably have my body heal.
I was given my tattered clothing back just before I left the hospital in the case I wanted them, They reminded me of what happened so I would, of course, burn them, I wasn’t a masochist to like remembering the pain. Just as I was about to leave the hospital I heard one of the staff shout „Kid, you forgot something“ and run up to me.
She gave me a big, heavy leather book that seemed to be at least a century old from the style the pages were made in, ragged and not straight as modern ones. The book had weird letters on it that looked like a letter 4 but where the letter would end, a line was drawn up to a half of the number, then a letter S with a line drawn in both the upper and lower curve, and a letter that looked like an omega symbol with one line draw in the space in the middle of it.
I looked at the book with a puzzled expression when the person explained.
„You were clutching that book when you were brought here, so we placed it in safekeeping until you were able to take it home“
I said thank you and left, I don’t know what this book contains, but it has been so long since I slept in my bed, all I can think of for now is going home, changing my clothes, and sleeping in my bed.