Page 100 of Marked By Shadows

Of course the box conjured up a million scenarios and nightmares, but I examined the surrounding area with my gaze, clinging to a tree, hoping that if someone wanted to gun me down, they’d have to work for it. There was no sign of anyone. Simply the light and the box.

I approached it slowly, waiting for something to jump out at me. Nothing moved. I stood a few feet away, waiting, and watching the trees.

“Alex,” I called. My voice echoed a little, but no other sound filtered back to me. I picked up a stick, about two inches thick and a yard long, and nudged the box. For all I knew it could be a bomb or Alex’s severed head. The box wasn’t locked, and appeared to be a cheap sort of thing that could be bought at any craft store and then decorated. I’d done similar in my life for costume props. Nothing popped out of the box and it didn’t explode.

When I opened the lid, a scream shattered the silence. Not mine, but human and horrific, like someone was dying. I dropped to my knees, searching the area for the sound, straining for the direction, though it felt all around me. It wasn’tmyscream, or anything like the sounds I normally heard at night. More like something out of a horror movie. It didn’t sound like Alex either, not masculine enough to be his voice, even in pain.

Was someone else out there hurt? Had they taken another member of the group? Technically everyone had plans that would take them away from our get togethers. I might have been the first, creating the shop and a new life, but Jonah had the show, Nicole and Julie their own shop, Chad and MaryAnn, his non-profit, and Freya expansion into traveling. I wondered vaguely about Melissa. If she’d done all this to get rid of Byrony who always put her down, or maybe because she hadn’t felt like she was part of the group. Or was it someone we didn’t even know?

The scream echoed again, ahead and to the right, up higher than where I knelt. I closed my eyes and let my hearing trace the sound, the way it bounced and traveled. I’d spent a couple years studying sounds in the dark. There was someone out there. Messing with me? Trying to make me afraid with screams in the night? Hadn’t Detective Manning said something about Joe shooting Byrony by accident because something scared him? Were they trying to scare me?

I thought back to who I might have told in the group that I heard things since my return. Had I confided that in anyone? Freya, maybe. But if I had, it had been years ago. If Alex hadn’t heard the noise himself, I’d have never told him. He didn’t need the torment any more than I did, and I really hated when people looked at me like I was crazy.

Another sound rose up from the darkness. Some sort of mess of birds or apes. If I hadn’t been hearing something stalking me at night for the past two years, it might have frightened me. But this noise was too faded, and distant, almost like a recording. The breeze felt almost icy against my bare arms, a fast cooling of the sweat of fear. I’d survived staring into the face of more than one monster. This seemed more like a show, and not a good one.

Someone was fucking with me. And it wasn’t cool.

I snarled at the darkness and got to my feet, kicking the box over. The lid popped off and out rolled a handgun. I didn’t know anything about guns. Had never held one in my life. Never even cosplayed with one. This one looked small and relatively new. Alex probably would have known the make, model, and caliber of bullets.

I didn’t even try to pick it up. A gun was of no use to me. Even if there was some sort of monster in the dark, I was not going to run after it, shooting. I was more likely to shoot myself by accident with a gun, than any attacker. Again I was reminded of Joe and Byrony, frightened by something. The ‘Rake’ even, if I went by what they’d been searching for. I was pretty sure whatever was out here wasn’t a mythical creature created on reddit.

A note had been taped to the lid of the box. It read:Save yourself.

From what?

The scream echoed again, closer this time, followed by a replay of those odd recorded noises. Did that normally fool people? Maybe those who’d never heard what I had.

For a moment I wondered if Alex actually heard the same thing I did. It wasn’t like I could record it and play it for him. Had tried that a dozen times or so to prove to the police I wasn’t nuts. But whatever was making a fuss out in the woods right now was neither mythical beast, or my demon.

I glared into the darkness and hit the light on my phone, holding it up to illuminate as much as it could reach. New phones had flashlights with intense power. When we’d gone in before we left home to get Alex’s new phone, I had upgraded mine as well. The one-click on the phone face blasted a flood stream of brightness into the woods. The glow stretched several meters.

It was then I saw a glimpse of movement. Something slim and willowy creeping through the brush. For a few seconds it seemed to turn my way and reflect the light.

My brain processed what I was seeing with a quick warning of apprehension as it reminded me of something similar to the ‘Rake’ pictures posted online. Thin with long wispy arms and an almost alien-like head, and iridescent eyes. It had an odd half-hop of a gait, paused as though it were waiting for me, and then turned, scampering off into the brush. If I hadn’t known what might be hiding out there, I might have actually been scared. It looked pretty legit.

Before the most recent events, even after I’d been taken and returned, I’d never been a big believer in random paranormal monsters. Knowing the little about the Rake’s history, I had to say it was one of the least believable stories I’d ever heard. I’d probably get on board the Bigfoot train before the Rake. And there was no skunk smell, that thing had looked hairless, not like a giant man-ape. In fact, the reflective sheen of the creature’s ‘skin’ almost appeared like some of the more luminescent fabrics I’d seen at the convention these past few days rather than anything possible in nature. Animals, in general, had evolved to hunt and hide. Reflective skin would make it really hard to hide, especially for something supposedly as elusive as the Rake.

I narrowed my eyes in the distance, listening for the sounds again. Someone in costume. Did they have Alex? They better hope he was okay because if they had hurt him, I’d teach them what the darkness was. They had no idea what followed me, that black-eyed child, and the monsters that tormented my home at night, maybe even that death collage of souls I’d run into on the road. Were they all tied to me? Maybe. I’d be happy to share it with whoever was playing games with me right now.

I gripped my stick and raced into the woods after it, phone held up more like a lightsaber, spearing the darkness with a brutal intensity. Lukas said I wasn’t a hero, even if I cosplayed one sometimes. But I was done being the coward, the puppet, and the sidekick. Someone was messing with me, possibly hurt Alex, and I was about to break someone’s kneecaps.

The scream, half strangled, came from my left, and I shifted my run in that direction. Man, I needed more exercise than sewing, city tours, and vigorous sex with Alex. My legs felt like jelly, or maybe that was still because I’d had vigorous sex with Alex. I certainly wouldn’t be putting the kibosh on that any time soon. As long as I got him back. My lungs worked harder than I could recall in a long time, but I kept up, the tip of my light still illuminating the creature’s back.

My heart pounded hard. It was running now. All out. Twisting and turning like it had been in these woods a hundred times. And maybe it had. I wondered if this was another spot filled with the bodies of missing cosplayers. Was it some sort of game, scare them to death? Or into an accident that left them dying? Or did they straight up kill them when they ran out of energy or something? What was the point of giving me a gun? Were they suicidal? If I knew how to use it and had been willing, I’d have shot them by now. Though I suspected the stuff they showed on TV about people hitting what they aimed at while both parties were running, was probably a stretch of the truth.

The uneven terrain gave me nightmare ideas that I was half tripping over unmarked graves, even while I was gaining on it. It didn’t run like an animal anymore. It ran like a person, arms and legs flailing, while I was catching up. I might have been short and on the small side for a guy, but I had speed.

Had to lower my phone to pump my arms a little harder. I stretched out, using the stick for added length to jab at the creature, hitting it once in the shoulder. It stumbled a little, but not enough to let me catch it, and then again in the lower back. This time I hit it hard enough to send it into a spin.

It clipped a tree and tumbled down a small hill with a very human “Oof!”

I should have thought a little more about racing after it, as I leapt down the small hill, expecting more ground, but encountering more of a narrow ravine, with a bigger drop than planned, and a thin strip of water. Only my trusty stick kept me from completely breaking an ankle or falling on my face into the stream. The creature rolled and landed half in the water, and I was on it, stick to its neck, realizing I’d dropped my phone when I hit it.

Fuck!

The small bits of moonlight filtering through the heavy foliage, revealed little. All I knew, from touching it, holding it down, even as it kicked and struggled with me, by the shape of their body, was that it was female. My heart flipped over. Freya?

My gut still wanted so badly for it not to be her.