I miscalculated and the branch broke under my foot, causing me to fall against the wall. In a desperate attempt to stabilize myself, I propped my hands on the window sill and on the tree trunk, but I’d already scraped my elbows and it hurt, badly.
I looked around for signs of the thing, then back inside.
On my right, the bedroom, dimly lit and cozy, where Dina had been sleeping just a few moments ago. On my left, the dark backyard, surrounded by the forest, and the desolated trees reaching their empty branches towards the sky. I could barely make out their outline, everything seemed to just blend together into this mass of darkness.
And it was cold, too. Really cold.
I studied the tree, noticing scratches that led down to the ground. When I got down, gasping and bleeding from the rough branches, I followed this trail.
It seemed so obvious. Did it want me to follow it?
Somehow, I wasn’t exactly afraid. No, this other feeling had taken over me, half curiosity, half guilt from being in charge of my sister and her getting abducted. I would have never forgiven myself if she went missing. Never.
I walked across the backyard, following the trail up until the fence. Of course it had climbed over it. I just needed to do that too.
I grabbed it with my hands and tried to lift myself up over it, but the fence was too tall, so I started searching for a log, a boulder, something to roll over and step on. It was so dark I could barely see, so I had to use my flashlight, and that meant my battery wasn’t going to last long.
Scanning the ground for something, I noticed some fur among the dried leaves. It couldn’t have been…
I stepped over the dead dog and kept looking. I tried not to think too much about it’s missing head. I tried not to think about how that must’ve been that thing’s work. I tried not to think about what was about to happen to my sister.
I tried. But my mind kept slipping back to all these horrible things, and that’s when desperation started building up in my chest.
Finally, I rolled some log over and stepped on it, lifting myself up and over the fence. I fell on the other side on my leg and directly on my ankle and heel. I gasped at the pain, but stood up and propped my back on the fence, facing the darkness ahead.
The flashlight showed me the dense and silent trees, and a path marked by broken branches and stepped over plants that plunged deep inside the forest. It was an eerie sight, and fear started taking over.
I could not lose her. I could not return, not when I had a trail, not when I had the advantage of time: she had just disappeared, which meant she could not have been dead yet. By the time the police came, who knows what this thing was going to do to her?
I took a deep breath and started making my way through this path, which wasn’t exactly made for humans. My feet kept getting stuck in branches and webs and mud, and I kept tripping.
The forest had swallowed me whole - everywhere I looked, just darkness. I felt helpless.
I had been walking for some time, and I started wondering if I had even followed the right direction. Was it even a trail made by this thing? Could I go back, or was I lost?
At some point, the trail had stopped, or the signs didn’t seem so obvious anymore. I was expecting to see some sort of hole in the ground, but I saw nothing. It was the end of the path, and the creature - and Dina - were gone, maybe forever.
I was incredibly cold and my throat was hurting. I heard some rustling behind me, followed by silence. That made me want to move faster and, in my desperate attempt to run, I tripped over a stone and fell, dropping my phone face down. The flashlight shone towards the sky and I looked up, as a reflex.
Its pale face stared back at me, eyes fixated into mine, limbs stretched out and tangled in the branches. It was right above me, and still. I couldn’t even make out if it was breaking or if it even needed to breathe.
Have you ever seen something that scared you? If you have, you know the first thing you do is just freeze. You don’t scream, you don’t run, hide, fight. You just stare, wide eyes, law clenched, holding up your breath.
Then, after the sheer terror washes over you, your mind starts sending these desperate signals to your body to run, run, run. If you refuse to, it tries to find other options for you.
Well, what options did I have? Fight it? How? It was about nine feet above me, and I really didn’t feel like touching it. It was also faster than me and so fucking creepy. And it hadn’t blinked. Not even once.
I was afraid that even my smallest move would trigger it and it would attack me or something.
What did it even want? How do you behave around it?
‘Dina’ I whispered, staring into its abnormally wide eyes. ‘Dina.’
It didn’t react in any way. I kept repeating, ‘Dina, Dina, Dina…’
It tilted its head, eyes still fixated on me. I had just noticed that it didn’t have a proper mouth, just some hole without lips, clenched shut.
Its eyes suddenly moved to some spot a few feet away from me. I looked in that direction, but it was dark. I had to shine my flashlight to see what it was, and that meant taking it off of the thing.
Which meant not seeing it anymore, letting the darkness surround us.
My shaking hands were so sweaty I could barely move my phone. When I did, I saw this hole at the roots of a tree. That’s where Dina was?
I moved my flashlight back up, and the thing was gone. Damn.
I took a deep breath and walked towards the hole. It was pretty large, since the thing was way bigger than us, but my claustrophobia still got triggered. I didn’t want to die in some tight tunnel in the ground, but chances were Dina was there…
How would I even go in? Head first? Feet first? I decided on the latter. I wanted to still be able to breathe.
With every push, I felt as if the earth was swallowing me whole. I tried to slow my breathing, become numb, as to not let fear take over. Panic was building up inside me as the tunnel seemed to get tighter and tighter around me. I was completely underground and had to push and fight my way down.
My hands were tired and the hole was so tight, I could not take deep breaths. The flashlight didn’t really help, just showed me an outline of the walls and my clothes and scratched, bleeding hands.
I thought I was about to give up and I was preparing to try to pull myself up, when I suddenly stopped feeling the tunnel walls around my feet. I moved them around, nothing.
Open space.
I pushed myself down and let myself slip through the earth’s folds until my whole lower body was hanging. How big could the fall be?
I finally escaped from the tunnel and hit the ground hard. The fall had been longer than expected and it took my breath away. I needed a few moments to adjust to the humid air, and then shone my flashlight around.
I was in this sort of cave, not too big, and the hole I’d come through was on the ceiling. There was no way I could go back through that. I couldn’t reach it.
Then, I saw Dina in a corner.
I gasped and felt so relieved, tears build up in my eyes. I crawled to her and grabbed her, shaking her and trying to wake her up.
When she finally opened her eyes, I let out a cry. ‘Dina, thank God!’
‘What are you doing? You’re so dirty. What is this?’
‘It took you, Dina. I came after you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The thing you told me about. It took you.’
She rubbed her eyes, confused. ‘Leah, it couldn’t have taken me, it never hurts me! It just stares. It doesn’t hurt people-‘
I put my hand over her mouth. I could hear something being pushed through the tunnel I came in through. My heart was beating so fast that waves of dizziness rushed over me.
We both looked up to see its smooth, sickly white head pop through the tunnel. Its eyes fixated on me again, even it its head did a full turn.
Then, the rest of the body came through, and it crawled on the ceiling, then dropped on the floor right next to us.
Dina let out a scream, despite my protests and attempts to tell her to shut up.
The creature flinched, then looked at Dina. It had not blinked, not even once.
Then, it did the most bizarre thing. It put two fingers from each of its long hands in its mouth, then pulled, stretching it impossibly far. The scream it let out echoed through the cave, hoarse, soulless, a sound I never thought I’d hear.
I heard Dina sob next to me, and covered her with my body.
‘Let us go,’ I whispered, mostly to myself. I stretched out my hand towards it, holding my phone. Its eyes followed the flashlight. ‘Let us go.’ I shone the light at the hole, then back at the thing, and kept doing that. ‘Let us go.’
‘Maybe if I scream again?’
‘I don’t think it helps, Dina. You’ll just piss it off.’
The creature reached out its ghastly hand and covered my flashlight, casting long shadows across the cave walls. No, buddy. I’m not leaving us in the dark.
I shook my head and pulled my phone away from its fingers. Then, its eyes grew even wider, impossibly wide, and it lunged towards us. I pulled back and screamed, feeling its slippery skin on my hands, then lost my phone. When I opened my eyes, it had it.
It was turning it over, trying to turn the light off. Please, don’t. There was no way we were making it out if we couldn’t see.
‘Don’t worry, Leah, it doesn’t know how to turn it off.’
Dina was right. However, it didn’t necessarily have to turn it off.
Stretching its mouth again, it swallowed the phone, and with that, gone was our source of light.
I covered my sobs with my hand, the other one wrapped around Dina. I heard it climb on the ceiling again, then leave through the hole we both came in through.
I kept telling Dina to calm down, but she wouldn’t listen. Finally, I screamed at her to shut up.
‘If you cry,’ my voice was hoarse and my throat hurt, ‘you’re not gonna help me! You shouldn’t have told me you were joking! How could you go to sleep, knowing that thing regularly visited you? We’re both gonna die here, and it’s because of you!’
Her little chest kept shaking with sobs. I felt sorry and hugged her. ‘Hey, come on. I’m sorry. We’re gonna be fine. Stop. Hey, we’ll make it out of here.’
Finally, I got her to quiet down. ‘Look, we need to crawl back up through the tunnel, but it’s too high. I’ll lift you up. You stand on my shoulders, then pull yourself up through the hole. After that, I need you to crawl outside.’
‘Without you?’
‘Look, it’s day by now. Mom and dad are worried sick. We need to be quick. You crawl out, get help. There’s a trail you follow back to the house.’
‘No, I can’t. I don’t know how.’
‘Yes, you can. And you will.’
I stood up and propped myself on the wall, then helped Dina get on my shoulders. ‘Can you touch the ceiling?’
‘No.’
‘Okay, you’ll need to stand up.’
‘What? No!’
‘Come on! Do it.’
Her legs were shaking, but she managed to get up. My shoulders were hurting, but I had no other choice.
‘Do you feel it now?’
‘Yeah, I do.’
‘Good. I’ll start walking, and you can cling to the ceiling and feel around for the hole. Ok?’
‘Ok.’
I moved slowly, carefully. I knew that, if she fell, there was no way I could catch her in the dark.
Absolute darkness. No sounds, except my footsteps and our heavy breathing. I didn’t know how much I could do it anymore, I was tired and my shoulders must’ve been bleeding my now. Then, she let out a gasp. ‘I found it!’
Just as she said that, I felt a hand around my leg.
I could not scream, not yet. I had to get her out. ‘You did? Good. Can you pull yourself up?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Ok. Do it. crawl to the surface, and when you reach it, yell back at me and tell me you did. Tell me if it’s light outside.’
‘Okay.’
When her weight lifted off my shoulders, I finally managed to pull my foot from the cold grasp.
‘What the fuck? Who’s there?’
‘Please,’ I heard a whisper. Was it a boy? A man? That’s what it sounded like.
‘Who are you?’
‘It brought you inside, too. It’s had me here for months.’
Damn.
‘I’m a hunter. It knocked me out and got me here. For the past months, it’s been feeding me dogs and cats and birds and I think I went blind because of the darkness.’
‘What is it? What does it want?’
‘It wants us. It will eat us. It had been watching over me for months, and then it knocked me out, I told you. It tries to… fatten you up.’
‘How do you know?’
‘That’s what it did with the other lady. Please, I can’t make this up. When it comes back, it will spare you for now, but it’ll get to me.’
That was worse than I’d imagined. I knew it was not going to kill Dina if it found her outside, because it didn’t necessarily care about her. But if Dina got lost, or couldn’t get any help, I was going to remain here for months, force fed, and then… well…
‘Can you lift me up? I can try to get help.’ I blurted out, suddenly terrified of my fate.
‘Didn’t you already lift your sister up?’
‘She’s seven. I don’t know if she’ll manage. I swear, I’ll come back. I swear. Just lift me up. It’s out only chance.’
There was a long pause, then he spoke. ‘Or you could lift me up.’
‘You’re a man. I’m fifteen. I really couldn’t.’
Another pause, followed by a sigh. ‘Please come back. I have kids.’
‘I will.’
I heard rustling, then felt around until some hands grabbed me and helped me sit on this man’s shoulders. I stood up, just like Dina had, and felt the ceiling.
I found the hole, then lifted myself up. As I pulled my torso through, the cold hands grabbed my feet and started pulling me back down.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t, you’ll leave me here… maybe I can get it to eat you first, please forgive me…’
I screamed and kicked around, Luckily for me, the man was weak from the strange diet he’d endured, and I managed to escape. Crawling through the tunnel, I felt desperate and wild, my instincts telling me to go, to get out, my mind flooded with disturbing images of what the thing could do to us.
When I felt the cold air on my hand, I started crying with relief.
Pulling myself up, it felt like the earth had spared me, spit me back up to the real world. I looked around for Dina. Had she managed to find the way back home?
In the daylight, I realized I’d actually managed to walk pretty deep into the forest. Luckily, the trail was still there, and I followed it back to the house.
I reached my fence, which I’d thought I’d never see again, and heard my parents’ voices on the other side. Along with Dina’s. Tears were streaming down my face. I started banging on the fence.
‘Mom!’ I wailed. ‘Mom!’
I saw my dad’s head above me, then his hand reaching out at he pulled me up, helping me climb the fence, back inside the backyard.
Dina’s eyes widened. ‘You’re here! You made it out! Mom, this thing with long arms and it stretched its mouth too wide…’
‘…it was watching Dina for sooo long…’
‘…and the hole in the ground…’
‘…there’s another man inside, we need to get him out too…’
We kept talking over one another, while our parents stared at us, perplexed. I could see that they’d never believe us, yet the words were just pouring out of me, desperate to get the story out.
Despite my desperate cries, they would not let me back in the forest. They told me I couldn’t just call the police and tell them about a skinwalker. More than anything, they were mad at me. I had been irresponsible and put us in danger and what was I even talking about? They thought I was more mature than that, and past the age of monsters under the bed.
They didn’t believe me, despite the days that followed when both me and Dina would wake up screaming. They accused me of losing my phone, even if I’d told them the thing had swallowed it.
I didn’t care. I knew I was going to go back for the man. I knew I had to save him. He had kids.
That, however, needed to wait for a while, because I needed a plan.