Chapter 1: Dark Trails
"Following them may lead you astray, even in familiar lands.”
Evelyn adjusted her tan jacket as she tromped through a little swamp humming with buzzing insects and the stink of the mire she had come to enjoy, the dusty mall and its vine root stitched cars across the street she made sure to avoid.
Ravensmantle summers were always bright and weirdly sticky, especially inside the Zone 17 nature preserve and its far-too-high concrete walls, she often pressed the questions of why it was such a high barrier back.
Zone 17 was one of the last remaining stable ecosystems sharing the border with the Outlands and its fungal infested glory.
The massive pink binder ring jerked at a sneeze, shifting slightly, she adjusted as her steps drew closer to a particularly creepy theater across from the mall.
The little trail of tiny footprints and black flowers led her through the main entrance of the sagging facade after traversing a few sinking boards, the squelching, half sunken parking lot behind her.
The mud ate them regardless, their ends rotted. She wondered how it all looked in the past as she studied the main entrance on her way inside.
Golden scrolls and filigrees on the main door once had an opulent flair, the destitution of the place seemed to bleed into her bones as she resisted the urge to sneeze. A feeling of sheer heat in her core that felt equally ashy washed through her.
As if the place wasn’t meant for her to even enter, punctuated by the black moon slowly blotting out the sun above as it approached daily 2PM eclipse.
But, she was a scientist, and a pioneer, the possibility of discovery only gave her a feeling of careful joy as she noticed the dark floral blooms had multiplied across the theatre floor. They only lasted a few days after being dropped, the creature that dispersed them was an elusive one.
Often, hunters and Doctor Hawthorne said the same thing, any samples of the trails taken simply weren’t viable and likely needed to be connected to the host in order to function, otherwise they died within hours.
She had discussed with Melissa at length how they may be a byproduct of another natural process.
But, if the flowers acted more like animal droppings, she pondered if it would indicate something more similar to shedding or digestion. Regardless, the porcelain-like bulbs grown from the seeds left behind resisted hox-spores. She and the rest of the Ravensmantle Ecological Authority knew they were far too valuable to leave behind.
They had to find the creature, they had to save the rest of the planet, or they’d die too. Not once had anyone seen it, merely its massive hoof and paw prints.
She spent a few minutes standing inside the entranceway, observing the theater seats and stage, it was quiet inside.
She followed the trail of half dead flowers to a fresh grouping that piled high nearest the front of the stage, at the sight, despite her tenacity in discovery, a fear grew in her chest as she hurriedly pulled out her note-book and pen, rapidly sketching out what she saw despite her neural lace’s perfect memory recall.
A trail of little, bare footprints was bracketed by the same hoof and paw prints her entire ecological department had searched for weeks to find.
It looked as if something followed a child inside, a single print concerned her for a reason she couldn’t explain, the right foot, just before it rounded one of the rows of seats, it turned slightly.
To Evelyn, the child knew they were followed, they may have been hiding from the thing, yet it, whatever it was, was nowhere to be found. Time itself felt off as she looked up from the pile of blooms and her heart stopped dead in her chest.
Someone was standing on the stage, she was tiny, young. Though, she couldn’t tell what age due to her back being turned to Evelyn. Her floral dress and its time frayed and greyed appearance felt sickening against the surfaces surrounding her.
As if this little human being gave off an aura or a palpable energy, as if the building was reacting to her presence.
Her shoulders slumped as she stared into the darkness beyond the theater’s curtain, and yet despite the direction the little girl looked, she was pointing directly at Evelyn.
The pressure wave on the back of her head felt crushing.
“Hello?” She timidly asked the silent girl, “can you hear me, are you okay?”
A large shape deep within the seats moved suddenly as a raspy exhale scraped her ears, the breath she forced back came out as a silent gasp. Regardless of the noise or its volume, the little black floral blooms and all of their strange beauty shifted to her left.
And rose as the black moon began darkening the skies.
Evelyn froze, her heart pounding as the pile of flowers shifted and another low, raspy exhale scraped across her ears. It wasn’t from the little girl.
She gripped her notebook tighter, torn between her scientific curiosity and the growing dread coiling in the pit of her stomach.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The little girl on the stage said nothing, still obviously breathing shallowly as if she was entranced or hypnotized by one of the many substances found in the old, charnel nature preserve.
“Hey, are you okay?” Her voice came out in a near choke of fear. “We need to go, it’s not safe for you here.”
She just needed to grab the kid and leave to safety, no child should ever be in Zone 17.
It was literal law.
She made a note to talk with the Director about it when she could. She kept silently trying to call the tiny human, almost too afraid to traverse the mere 20 feet from her to the stage.
Between them, that thing slumbered.
Her discovery, she finally found it, and now the uncertainty of whether she would reach the child in time as the mass twitched.
Both could be seriously injured or killed.
Slowly, she crept forward, her eyes straining to make out the shape hidden amidst the sea of black blooms as she crept passed it. If she kept her voice low, and she was fast, she’d be fine. The little girl’s breath quickened its pace, obviously coming to.
If she panicked, it would awaken.
As she drew closer to the stage, a sudden movement made her jump.
It was already awake, it’s snores, it was sniffing her out.
Waiting to spring it’s trap.
A long, spindly limb erupted from the flowers, its clawed fingers grasping blindly and far too large for her liking. It seemed to ebb in the strange light of the black moon’s eclipse.
Her notebook fell from her trembling hands as she stared at the arm made up of floral vines, it just as quickly pounded its weight onto the seats, pushing off the ground in a series of wet tears and rips of vine and flesh as a chair bracket snapped.
The creature rose, towering above her and blotting out the dusty eclipse light coasting in from the rafters. She caught a glimpse of glowing, pale eyes and a gaping maw filled with jagged teeth before it let out an unearthly shriek.
Its mane, a horrific cacophony of colorful flowers and meat, all of it framed by those black blooms she so eagerly chased.
Evelyn panicked and ran, her boots pounding against the decaying floorboards as she fled deeper into the theater, intent on grabbing the child and pulling them out of that horrible place.
But before she could, the child had already run off. She followed in her departing footsteps.
The creature’s mass shook the sunken foundations of the building as it pounded behind her, the child was nowhere to be seen in the backstage, likely hidden among its lighting control panels and tattered prop lines.
Desperate, Evelyn dove behind an old storage rack intent on doing the same until the thing went away.
She held her breath, her eyes squeezed shut as she heard the monster's guttural snarls grow closer.
“Where are you?”
The voice of the little girl was utterly wrong. Why was she talking, now, why right now? She looked around the darkness, barely able to see the edges of the rack she hid behind.
The air grew thick and heavy, and Evelyn felt a chill crawl down her spine. Slowly, she opened her eyes and let out a muffled cry of terror as the little girl spoke again.
“There she is.”
The creature's pale, twisted face was mere inches from her own, its breath hot and foul-smelling.
Her breath stuck in her throat by the unnatural limb of vines and petals.
“You honestly weren’t expecting this, you never do.”
She stated flatly, her eyes. Her eyes, something about the way she said it made her feel hopeless dread and regret. A vaporial entity, of course, why else would a child be inside a military controlled preserve?
The self-deprecating sentiments only made her pain worse as she smiled knowingly.
Evelyn clawed at the fingers constricting her airway, her vision darkening as the creature lifted her effortlessly. Her head turned toward the sky as if it was showing her something, as if it were trying to communicate some surreal message.
The eclipse waited above, in that moment, all she could feel was hopelessness. She should never have entered that foul place. She wished she hadn’t woken up after the day she couldn’t remember.
“Don’t you worry.”
The painful position of her head made it impossible to see the little girl, yet, her eyes burned while trying to clamp them shut. It felt as if it came from all directions at once as she helplessly dangled in the air. She shouldn’t look at the eclipse, she’d go blind.
“Do you know why, truly, you’re not to look at this eclipse with a blind eye?”
The iron grasp lessened, her neck and painful eye pressure finally ebbing away. Regardless, the smell of the blooms was horrifically sweet, the words of the little girl, even sickly sweeter.
“Tell me what you see.”
After gasping in a breath Evelyn replied to the little girl's smile. Something in her eye, something crunching wetly in her brain somehow forced her to see passed the barrier of the black moon as the vine hands clamped her jaw to force her to look.
“I can see... a third of the light, the sun, the moon, stars... it’s all darkness.” The girl seemed pleased at the break in her sanity, something was changing within her. Something burned at the creature’s touch, her neck, it was on fire, regardless of the pain, all she witnessed was.
Her mind, she felt it going blank, slowly being replaced with something familiar.
Memories, hers, but not hers, flooded her mind.
“What else?”
Hot tears ran down her cheeks as she witnessed it all, repeatedly in a thousand different lifetimes.
Death.
Her death.
Condemned to repeat.
Ad infinitum, the clicking of an undying machine.
She knew, with a sinking certainty, that no one would be coming to save her. It felt as if an ominous warning had come far too late.
“And yet, all heard the first three trumpets.”
Even if Evelyn did die.
“I will ensure your safety despite that, however, a small price must be paid.”
“N, no,” she stammered at the impossible ask, she knew what the little girl wanted to do with her.
"I come bearing responsibility, Evelyn Reed."
"You, can't make me, just let me go." He stammering made her nearly incomprehensible as her heart and mind twisted. Her voice was so utterly grating, wrong.
The little girl shrugged her shoulders, “you believe I am making a request.” Her words seemed to bend her consciousness over itself, “you will help me save the world.”
Evelyn stammered further as the creature’s hot breath washed over her in a nauseating wave, the hot stink of the swampy summer felt like she was being boiled alive as she felt her vertebrae grinding, her eyes watered.
“Worry not, Evelyn Reed. As above, so below, whether or not it is you, there is always another.”
She snapped her fingers.
“And another.”
With a sickening crunch, Evelyn’s world blacked out.
Weeks later, the crunching of paper and pocking of a stapler sounded in Abberro Springs.
Evelyn Reed.
Last seen wearing her pink nose ring.
