It started twenty-one years ago when I was seven and my sister was ten. We were playing in the woods in our backyard. It wasn’t unusual for us to venture far; our parents really had no idea. They figured we were safe, and they were right for a while. Until, one night, my sister and I went a little too far and couldn’t find our way home.
I remember it all so clearly.
“Which way do we go?”
Alana squeezed my hand then, a gesture I could only feel due to the inky blackness, the moon shielded by lush treetops.
There was a moment of hesitation before she answered, “This way,” and yanked me along.
What seemed like hours passed.
“Are we almost there?”
Alana was in the lead, telling me when to duck and where to step. She grunted and growled before each instruction, making me assume she either got hit in the face with branches or tripped over rocks and didn’t want me to suffer the same.
“I’m sure we’re nearly there, Alice,” she replied.
She sounded annoyed, whether at me, the situation, or both, I didn’t know, but I didn’t say anything else after that, not until I saw moonlight bathe a clearing up ahead.
“Alana!”
“I see it.”
We picked up our pace and broke through to the clearing, touched by pale gray.
What took up the small space were five tall, slender boulders encircling a stone pillar. It was a peculiar sight. We had journeyed through these woods so often; we had never come across this.
Alana approached it. I didn’t.
I can still feel the moment her hand slipped from mine, the moment I should’ve pulled her back, told her no, but I was scared. I didn’t know what we were even looking at, but something wasn’t right.
When Alana met the epicenter, she glided her fingers across its surface, her eyes widening.
At last, I found my voice, though my knees still wobbled. “Alana, I don’t think we should be here.”
“They’re just rocks,” she said.
I looked along the treeline, unable to see anything beyond it. I couldn’t shake an awful feeling like we were trespassing and being watched. I had always been afraid of the dark, a fear everyone, including Alana, admitted was irrational.
There’s nothing there, they’d say without even sparing a glance. There’s no such thing as monsters.
For a brief time, I, too, had started to believe the phobia was irrational, despite not being able to rid myself of it, but after this night, I think I’m well within my right to be terrified of the dark, even if no one can know why.
Alana went from boulder to boulder, placing her hand on each. “Wonder how they got in a circle,” she said, expecting me to offer an explanation.
Wondering how those rocks were able to be moved was the last thing on my to-do list. Instead, I pleaded, “I think we should go.”
As Alana went to respond, the brush opposite us rustled. Branches crackled and broke. Leaves shook violently.
Then, something emerged.
Two sets of antlers jutted out from the darkness, a larger set overshadowing a smaller set between them. Next came a head shaped like a deer’s, only strangely off-white and as smooth-looking as the antlers it bore. The rest of the bipedal creature was covered in brown fur, not unlike a deer, and all four of its limbs were hooved; however, what gripped me like a nightmare come to life was the way it stared at me with eyes that weren’t there.
From a short distance, whatever the horrific thing was seemed small, hunched over, arms shriveled against its massive, heaving chest. But as it began to move, every one of its joints cracking, its body contorting, its neck snapping from side to side, nearly turning 180 degrees, it straightened its spine, vertebra by vertebra, growing taller.
I froze in place, head unconsciously tilting back, following the beast’s height. Something warm streamed down my leg. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe.
I heard the words echo in my mind. Alana! Run! Run!
But nothing came out.
The beast crookedly stepped forward, like it was a chore, making its slow way toward my sister.
Alana hadn’t moved either. She stared at what stood before her, towering over her, casting a looming, disconcerting shadow.
It reached out, bony fingers spreading, revealing tips impossibly sharp, black nails inches from Alana’s cheek.
The words that had been ricocheting off the walls of my skull finally found their way to my vocal chords, first coming as a shriek that halted the creature’s approach and had both its and my sister’s heads jolt in my direction.
“Run, Alana! Run!” I yelped.
The creature let out its own feral screech and barreled its claws down on my sister.
Alana’s body whipped and flew sideways, landing face-first into the grass.
I screamed her name but cowered as the monster that attacked her began its ungraceful march toward me.
I folded immediately, knees buckling under the weight of my own fear, tears and snot I couldn’t control streaming down my face as I whimpered like a wounded puppy.
It fell to all fours and craned its neck. It was so close to me, I could feel and smell its warm, rancid breath.
I stared into the empty eye sockets of what appeared to be the skull of a buck, as if whatever this was wore the animal’s remains as a mask.
It stilled for minutes, picking me apart, and I waited, paralyzed and helpless, for it to slay me the way it did Alana. But rather than the terrible call it emitted moments before its strike, a soft, prolonged coo accompanied a slight upturn of its chin.
I stayed as quiet as I could, thinking any noise would set it off, and I’d end up dead on the ground.
It leaned in. Every one of my muscles tensed as it sniffed. Its tongue, long and thin, slithered toward me, caressing my skin from my jawline to my temple, leaving what felt like a disgusting slime in its wake. When the appendage recoiled, the beast let out a hum and rose on two legs, the crepitus sawing my nerves. It raised its arm as high as my torso, fingers clenching and unclenching as its hand advanced.
A near-deafening pop and the creature collapsing happened simultaneously. Something wet splattered onto me.
My eyes fell to the creature’s unmoving body, limbs splayed out, a hole in its back oozing black viscous liquid.
“Are you all right?” an orotund voice filled the clearing as a woman stepped into the moonlight.
She was tall, and her long, braided hair rested against her shoulder, its fiery color a stark contrast to her black apparel. A large rifle sat in her grasp, her posture relaxed as she made her way over.
“What’re you doing out here, kid?” She looked down at me with a cocked eyebrow and a grimace.
I frowned in turn, shock obviously still choking me before a groan grabbed my racing thoughts, anchoring me as if to pull me into the earth itself.
Alana stirred but barely.
I rushed to her side, dropping to kneel, hands hovering, contemplating what to do, what to say.
She shivered and rolled onto her back.
Her face was covered in blood. Slash marks stretched from her collar bone to her waist line, tearing through her shirt, digging into her flesh.
She coughed; red droplets sputtered from her mouth. Her pupils found me, and her lips moved, but there were no words.
“Alana?” My voice cracked.
I didn’t want to believe it then, but I was watching my sister die, and I was powerless to help.
Footsteps came and stopped behind me. “She isn’t going to make it,” the woman said rather coldly, like it was routine.
I ignored her or, well, tried to anyway. She wasn’t wrong. Alana spat up blood, and her every breath was slow and shallow. She was going to die. She was going to die, and there was nothing I could do.
“Who are you?” I asked, annoyed that some stranger was witnessing my sister’s final moments beside me instead of our parents. If I had the strength, I would’ve carried her home…wherever home was.
There was a pause before the woman spoke. “You can save her.”
I shot her a look, vision blurred by tears. “What? What do you mean?”
“Do you want to save her?”
The question hung in the cool night air only for the reason of my naive brain trying to catch up. Once it had, I nodded.
The woman glanced at the moon and swung her rifle around to her back before leveling her eyes on me. She reached out. “Give me your hand.”
I stared at the gesture at first, but a terrible coughing fit from my sister had my arm springing forward.
The woman took my hand gently, turned it so my palm faced up, and placed something into it.
When I retracted my arm, she crouched and whispered something close to Alana’s ear.
Alana shut her eyes, and the rise and fall of her chest stopped.
Panic set in. “What did you do?”
“Quiet,” the woman said. “Put what I gave you around your neck.”
I opened my embrace to a small wire pendant in the shape of spirals hanging from a black thread.
“What is this?”
“It’s called a Celtic Spiral Knot,” the woman explained. “It’s said to symbolize many things, like life, death, and rebirth.”
“How will it save my sister?”
The woman took a deep breath. “Shut your eyes and picture her smiling.”
I did as instructed, dubious to say the least, but I was desperate.
“Hold onto that image.”
I thought about the day Alana and I went to the zoo, and she got to touch the giraffes. They were her favorite animals. She was so excited; she couldn’t stop grinning for weeks after.
“You won’t feel it happening.”
“What?”
I opened my eyes, but I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I was alone, surrounded by a thick fog. The grass beneath me was yellow and wilted. Even the sky was completely black, no stars, no moon.
I put my hands out where Alana was just seconds ago.
“Hello?”
The only answer I got was my own echo.
I stood and started to walk. No matter how far I went, it didn’t seem like I got anywhere. It was all the same—fog, dead grass, and a blackened sky. There was no one else around.
I wasn’t scared, though. I didn’t feel much of anything, honestly. My tears had dried. My scrambled thoughts had calmed. My worry had subsided. I was at a sudden, strange peace. Nothing could touch me. Nothing could hurt me.
But the longer I stayed, the less I remembered from before I had even arrived.
Memories became mangled messes of static. Names were stuck on the tip of my tongue but never came to be. My favorite foods, my favorite color, my favorite television shows…They were all draining away. My mom’s and dad’s faces…Did I even have a mom or a dad? And who’s A…Alaina? That wasn’t it. Alicia? No. What was it? Why couldn’t I remember, and who even was she?
I was teetering on an edge I hadn’t realized I trod. Everything I knew was fading.
When I was brought back, plucked from a place I now call Nowhere Land, it was like having someone startling you out of a deep slumber, and all you were able to do was gasp and breathe like you’ve never tasted air in your life.
I noticed the breeze first; then, the navy blue sky freckled with white dots and a bright waxing gibbous pouring onto me.
“She’ll live” in a stony voice interrupted a vague moment of serenity and, with it, came a whirlwind of emotions I had nearly forgotten existed.
Fear dragging its nails down my throat. Sadness poking behind my eyes. Solicitude plummeting my stomach to the soles of my feet.
That wind caressed damp cheeks that sent a shiver through me.
With stiff movements, in a second of what seemed like utter silence, I faced the woman with red hair and black clothes, eyes burning—she was standing now—and then I turned toward the girl lying in front of me.
Alana.
Blood still coated her body, but the marks of her cruel fate had disappeared, leaving only a tattered shirt showing where they once were.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “Where was I? What happened to Alana?”
The woman’s next words stunned me, piercing my core.
“You were dead.”
“What?” I didn’t even hear myself speak. I felt detached; I was there, but I wasn’t.
“The necklace, kid.”
She flicked her head at my open palm where the black-threaded necklace with the spiral pendant draped. What had she called it?
Celtic Spiral Knot. Life, death, and rebirth.
“It has a magical essence to it,” the woman continued. “As long as it’s in your possession, your sister will live. There’s just one condition.”
My fingers folded over the pendant, bit down into my flesh as I clenched a fist, bracing for what she had to say.
“You share life essence now. This girl will live as long as you sacrifice your life essence to her.”
“I don’t…” I was at a loss. I let myself trail off and simply gazed upon my sister who was now breathing steadily, like she was asleep.
“Every night, you’ll give a little of your life essence to her in order to keep her alive. During the ritual, however, you’ll be dead for sixty seconds.”
“Sixty seconds?”
It still didn’t make much sense, but that place…Nowhere Land…Was I really only there for a minute? It felt so much longer, almost a lifetime.
“You’ll be asleep during the process, and it’s painless,” the woman insisted. “When your sister wakes up tomorrow, she won’t remember anything.”
“But I will?” I placed my hand on Alana’s arm.
“You can choose to tell her, but would you really want her to carry the burden of that knowledge?”
“Burden?”
The woman sighed. “The more life essence you give, the less you have.”
“Oh.” I wrapped my fingers around the fabric of Alana’s ripped shirt, as much clarity as a seven year old could have bulldozing me.
“You have the choice not to.”
The woman turned and made her way to her prey. She cranked its head upward and, from a sheath slung across her back, drew a machete. It only took one strike to sever the beast’s head, after which the woman wiped her blade on the beast’s fur coat before re-sheathing the weapon.
Not long after its decapitation did the beast’s body begin to disintegrate, particles caving in, piece by piece at first until they all came crumbling down. Within the gentle wind, the ashy remains drifted away.
The woman continued toward the woods, disappearing within the brush.
“Wait!” I yelled, but she was already gone, and it was just me, alone with a slumbering Alana.
Our dad found us nearly an hour later. I hadn’t moved, and neither had Alana. We were carried home, I in my mom’s arms and my sister in my dad’s.
They kept asking what had happened, especially seeing Alana’s torn clothes and bloodied, catatonic-like state and me frazzled, dotted with blood that wasn’t mine. I said nothing. I couldn’t really say anything. My mom was the one who decided to just let us sleep, that we would talk about it in the morning.
That was twenty-one years ago. Like the woman said, Alana remembered nothing the next day. I was urged, many times, to explain the events that occurred, but the woman’s words replayed in my mind, ultimately dissuading me.
Would you really want her to carry the burden of that knowledge?
No, I didn’t, and I never would.
The woman was right on something else, too. It’s a painless process.
Every morning, at 3 a.m., I visit Nowhere Land, and the only reason I know the exact time is because I’ve stayed awake so many nights, pondering this fate. I even wished it wasn’t true, that it was all just a nightmare my immature brain conjured from being lost in the woods so late at night.
But it wasn’t some nightmare, not the kind you have to sleep to see anyway.
Without fail, when the clock strikes 3 a.m., I open my eyes to the dark setting that has become way too familiar, a second home.
I wander through the fog, memories hazy, faces of family, friends, and neighbors deteriorating until the endless abyss gives way to nothing. I don’t dream after leaving Nowhere Land, and when I wake up, I feel the same as when I went to bed the night before. The only thing I’ve noticed has been slight memory loss. I’ll have forgotten the name of someone I’ve known for years or something as simple as where I put the remote even though I was just holding it.
I’m not sure what that means…The woman didn’t explain anything past the process and implication that I’m shedding time off my own life. I’m not sure how much life essence I’m giving to my sister or how much I even have left to give, but Alana wakes up every day, smiling, laughing, happy. I can’t imagine taking that away from her or my parents.
She’s thirty-one now and on her way to getting married to a nice gentleman who treats her like she’s the world. Had I not done what I did, if I didn’t do what I still do, she wouldn’t get to experience this.
I know I’ll die sooner, whenever that may be, but seeing my sister fulfill her life makes me believe it’s worth it.
I never saw that woman again nor another creature like the one on that fateful night.
Up until now, nobody knew this except that woman and me, and being twenty-eight, holding onto this for so many, many years, it has been a heavy weight on my shoulders.