He had been terrified before, but now his panic and fear reached new heights.
Then James heard a voice, one that was distinct to him, and it came from a few feet behind him.
‘Don’t resist it, James,’ it said. ‘Let her have her way.’
James’ body seized as he recognised the voice to be Roberta’s.
But if she was standing away from him, then that meant the person currently thrusting on top of him was not her.
Ice ran through his veins, and his squirming and fighting resumed with renewed energy, desperate to stop the unknown thing that writhed atop him.
As if reading his mind, the tongue slithered its way out of his mouth, allowing much-needed air to once again enter his lungs. James coughed and spluttered, fighting not to vomit again when the blindfold was quickly ripped away from his head. As his vision restored, James let out a long, panicked scream.
What he saw above him was far more terrifying than anything he’d seen in his entire life.
Though, in truth, he had seen glimpses of this woman before, in the video footage taken on their first night in the Black Forest. At the time, however, she had been peeping from behind a tree, teasing her presence, only half of her face on display. That had been an unsettling image, but now he was able to take everything in, eliciting a repulsion that sickened James to his core.
The woman was not human.
James was now staring up to the cold, dead form of Mother Sibbett.
Her long black hair was thin and greasy and hung down to her midsection, but it was so damp that it clung in clumps to light brown, brittle skin that had the consistency of dried meat. The ghoulish woman’s frame was painstakingly thin and frail; her ribs and collarbone stretched the flesh to the point of splitting, and her stomach was sunken so much that it almost reached the spine behind. Her hands—that now lowered and started to caress James’ chest—had long, spindly fingers, and they ran to a claw-like point at the ends. The face was a mangled, distorted mess of features: sagging eyes, and a mouth that looked painfully too wide and also revealed long, razor-sharp teeth behind. The shape of Mother Sibbett's skull was evident as the skin that pulled tightly over it clung to the bone like lycra. Mother Sibbett's gross appearance was rounded off with a long, twisted nose that ended in a definite hook.
But as bad as all of that was, there was one feature in particular that truly terrified James, and it was the one most evident, too, covering the entirety of her form: multiple rolling eyes lined her body like tumours. Some clustered together in groups, like globs of caviar, while others were dotted intermittently about the expanse of flesh. Each fleshy orb, complete with a jet-black pupil, looked about wildly, flitting in different directions and all moving independently.
And James’ quickly deflating penis was still inside this horror.
He continued his wild, manic screaming and bucking, trying to throw the demonic witch off, but it was useless. He then saw Roberta approach and kneel at his head.
‘Fun’s over,’ she told him. ‘Things are about to get a little… painful.’
And they did.
The claws at his midsection suddenly thrust down, piercing his flesh at the stomach and pulling it open. Agony flared, and James’ cries echoed off the stone walls around them.
And then his suffering began in earnest, and Mother Sibbett bestowed upon him acts of torture and deviancy that completely broke his mind.
The baying crowd of monstrosities around him then descended to partake in the fun as well. One of the last things James saw was the gleeful face of Roberta as she indulged her deviancy to the fullest.
32
Ken checked his watch.
He’d been walking again for a little over two hours, and it was now close to one in the morning. Since he’d discarded his tent and sleeping bag, moving through the forest had become a little easier. However, that didn’t change the fact that he was still bordering on exhaustion. As much as he didn’t want to stop, Ken couldn’t force his aching body on any farther and dropped down to a sitting position. He took off his pack and rechecked the compass to make sure he was heading west—the direction he hoped would take him out of the forest. After confirming that was indeed the case, he set the instrument down on top of his rucksack.
He was tired. Soooo fucking tired.
So he lay back, stretching out across a patch of soft ground that felt damp. He could smell the musty wet grass and soil, since it was now only inches from his nose, but he didn’t care. He didn’t have the energy to care.
Though his thermal clothing kept Ken warm, he knew that if he were to lie in place for long, the biting cold would soon become difficult to bear. Of course, that would make drifting off to sleep difficult, which was a good thing.
He didn’t want to sleep. Couldn’t afford to.
But he did want rest, and just needed a little longer.
Ken yet again thought of James, certain that his friend was now dead, probably sharing a similar fate to Tony’s. Both of them had died because of him. And then there was Roberta… and he had no idea what to even make of that. She might not be dead, at least physically, but after what he’d seen of her, Ken couldn’t be sure there was anything left of the Roberta he knew. Not anymore.
And that left only him.
Ken realised he was crying, and he noticed his first instinct was to stop himself, to swallow the guilt and the pain—emotions he knew all too well—and to push them down inside of himself. Because he could ill afford to let himself lose control and potentially draw the attention of the things that lived in the forest.
But he couldn’t.
The tears came anyway, strong and quick, and soon he was a sobbing mess. Through clouded thoughts of Tony, James, and Roberta, another figure ghosted its way to the forefront of his thoughts.
Amy.
Ken cried for her most of all as the familiar pain took hold. It was an agony he lived with every day, one that existed just below the surface of his fake exterior—a horrible constant—and it now overwhelmed him. If the guilt of Tony’s and James’ deaths had been tough, and it was, then it paled in comparison to the grief and responsibility he felt over the death of his daughter.
She had been only eight years old when it happened. Far too young to have experienced the things she had. That had been a little over ten years ago, meaning she would have been a young adult now.
But that life had been taken from her, snatched away cruelly and violently, in a way that made Ken certain there could be no God. Because what sort of merciful God could possibly have allowed that to happen someone so innocent?
So no, God wasn’t to blame for what had happened to Amy.
Ken was.
He’d been with her. He’d let her out of his sight for the brief moment it took for his world to fall apart. And he was the one who had so utterly failed in his responsibilities as a parent.
He could almost hear her voice now, almost remembered how she called to him in that terrible moment before it all happened.
Ken had been talking on his mobile phone, when he should have been paying more attention, as the two of them walked through the bustling town centre, weaving between the throng of the crowd as they moved. Ken had been running late. He hadn’t wanted Amy with him that day, anyway, as he’d had an important meeting to attend. Though it should have been a low-key affair—coffee with an agent to talk about his book—it’d still had the potential to change his life. But Ken’s wife had been called into work, leaving him in charge of their daughter. Thankfully, he’d managed to get the okay from the agent to bring Amy along and so had taken her with him, walking as fast as they could across the footpath, Ken desperate not to be even a minute late. But that had looked unlikely, given there had been an accident on the surrounding roads that had caused the traffic to back up. By the time he had managed to get parked, Ken had less than five minutes to spare before the meeting was due to start. So Ken had set off running, with Amy in tow, rang the agent on his mobile—the man who
held the keys to the kingdom—and apologised profusely.
Then he remembered hearing Amy let out a grunt. He turned, just in time to see her fall into the road, accidentally nudged by a passerby. She had been going so fast that, when hit, the young girl couldn’t keep her balance. She had then looked up in horror as the truck, with no chance to stop, hurtled towards her. And Ken had then heard her final words as her eyes darted over to him.
Daddy.
He should have been there for her. Should have saved her. He should have paid more fucking attention.
Instead, he had frozen, and he remembered the expression on Amy’s face just before the truck hit. That realisation that her father, the man she looked up to, the man who was supposed to make everything better, couldn’t help her. A look of realisation that her daddy was going to fail her when it counted most.
Ken wailed harder and hugged himself, the memory real and raw. He hated reliving it, but did so every night, either when awake or by way of his tortured subconscious as he slept.
After that day, Ken’s life had truly fallen apart. He and his wife could not get past what had happened—he never blamed her for that—so he withdrew from the world, finding solace in the only thing he could: the hope that somewhere, somehow, Amy was able to live on.
Because if that were possible then maybe, just maybe, the crushing guilt that had grown to be part of his life could finally ease, if only a little. And perhaps he could then see her again one day, and he would have the chance to tell Amy that he loved her and that he was so very sorry about what had happened.
And he would beg and plead for her forgiveness.
Daddy.
The voice was so real, as if it were coming through the trees on the wind and not just from Ken’s own tortured thoughts.
‘Daddy.’
He then paused his sobbing and his eyes slowly opened wide. A feeling halfway between fear and amazement surged through him as he realised that the words he’d heard hadn’t been in his head.
They had been real.
Ken turned his head to the left, to the source of the sound, and froze, unable to believe what he saw. He was already crying, but that only intensified and tears flooded his eyes once again. He began to shake, unable to process the vision of his daughter standing out between the trees in the darkness.
Somewhere, a voice inside told him that this wasn’t reality, and that his daughter wasn’t really there with him. Something else was behind what he was seeing right now, and that something had already proved itself to be absolute evil.
And yet the sight of the little girl—still dressed in the denim dungarees she had worn on that fateful day—was so powerful that it overrode all logic.
‘Amy?’ he asked, his voice a whisper.
Please be true, please be true, please be true.
The small girl nodded, then began to walk forward, her dirty blonde hair swaying in its pigtails as she moved. Her face was just as he remembered it: with cherubic red cheeks, innocent and full brown eyes, and a slightly buttoned nose.
‘Amy, is that really you?’
She giggled. The sound was so real, so genuine, and so raw that it broke Ken down and cut right to his heart.
It was her laugh.
‘Of course it’s me, Daddy,’ she said, her voice almost as he remembered it.
Almost.
There was a slight rasp to it that he hadn’t known before, as well as having an echoey quality to it.
‘You’re silly,’ she went on and giggled again. The girl walked closer to him, stopping only a few feet away.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said to her, desperate to get the words out. She needed to know how much he regretted failing her, and that not a day went by he didn’t think of her.
‘Sorry for what?’ she asked, cocking her head. Then blood ran from her nose. ‘Sorry for killing me?’
A horrible feeling began to worm around in Ken’s gut, and he could only watch on in alarm as her very form changed before him. Bones cracked, an arm splintered, and her body twisted into horrible, painful positions. Cuts and gashes developed over her skin and a dent formed in her skull.
‘Amy?’
She walked forward again, her movements now awkward and broken as she heaved her twisted legs in laboured steps. ‘Sorry for ignoring me? For caring more about your meeting than my life? Sorry for not trying to save me? Is that what you’re sorry about, Daddy?’
Ken got to unsteady feet and moved back. Amy continued to approach. The sight of her in this condition turned his stomach, but also unlocked something deep within him that pushed Ken to the breaking point. He’d always remembered Amy on that fateful day, but had forced himself to think of her as she was before the accident.
What had remained of her body after, he had blocked out, so painful was the memory.
But now that memory was in front of him, and it hobbled closer, showing him exactly what he’d done to his beloved daughter.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whimpered again. ‘I’m so sorry, Amy.’
‘Not good enough!’ she snapped and continued towards him. Ken backpedaled, matching her pace, something inside telling him he had to keep away. He turned his head, as looking at her broken form was just too painful. ‘Saying sorry is not good enough. Look at me!’
He didn’t want to. It was just too hard. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked. ‘Please, just tell me and I’ll do it.’
She laughed, and the sound was not the sweet and innocent one of moments ago. This was laced with malice.
‘I want to you stay here,’ she said. ‘Stay in this forest, Daddy. Stay here with Mother Sibbett. Let her take you. She’ll make you real sorry, I promise you. Then I’ll know you regret what you did. And I’ll know that, deep down, you do really love me, because you’ll have accepted what you deserve. Will you do that for me, Daddy? Will you stay here with her?’
She began to laugh again—that horrible, mocking sound. Ken turned and ran, sprinting away from the nightmarish vision that taunted him as he fled.
He’d known that thing couldn’t have been his daughter, but after seeing her, as she was, as she used to be, the temptation and need to believe was just too overwhelming.
But it had been nothing more than a cruel trick. And it had pushed him to the brink, as right now there was a strong temptation to simply lie down and let the monsters of the forest take him and dish out their punishment, one that he so richly deserved. Because even if that thing behind him wasn’t Amy, what it had said to him rang true.
Because you’ll have accepted what you deserve.
For now, though, he ran. Farther into the woods, knowing he would soon meet his fate, one way or the other. The only question was, did he even want to survive?
33
Ken wandered the forest until dawn broke, unable to get any bearings on which way he was going. He’d left his pack behind after running from the vision of his daughter, meaning he was without food and water, and also without his compass.
He was completely alone—isolated like a stray doe—and had nothing but the clothes on his back to protect him from the elements. His body was ravaged with exhaustion, but it also craved food and—more importantly—water.
Though the sky above was starting to brighten, the sun had not yet reached a high-enough level to break over the canopy of the trees that surrounded him. Once it did, he hoped he would be able to work out which direction he was travelling. Perhaps that could help him get back on track. But for the moment, his walking was aimless and without purpose, merely moving for the sake of it, to keep the horrors within the forest at his back rather than out in front.
With his throat dry and coarse, and his body craving refreshment, Ken made sustenance an immediate priority, though he had no idea where that would come from. His first thought was to find a stream or brook, but he couldn’t remember seeing a single one in all the time he’d been in the Black Forest. His next idea was to check the leaves of plants and trees, to see if any rainwater residue w
as still there that could be harvested. He found only droplets, which he greedily slurped up—moving from one leaf to the next, getting all he could. It amounted to less than a mouthful in total, but at least it was something. Enough to wet his mouth, but a far cry from satisfying his thirst.
Ken even contemplated going back to retrieve his rucksack. There he had water left, and even food, that would help give him the energy he needed to keep going. But he knew what would be waiting for him back there, as he hadn’t been able to shake it from his mind. And he didn’t think he was strong enough ever to see that again.
So he ruled out the idea.
He knew the chance of finding food out in the woods was likely non-existent, given he knew nothing about the plant life of the forest, nor its edibility. So that meant turning his attention to the wildlife that resided in these woods.
The thought of catching and cooking an animal over a fire seemed incredibly difficult, if not impossible, but he knew it was something he would need to seriously consider soon. For now, however, he searched more of the vegetation for further droplets of precious water. As he did, he contemplated his fatalistic thinking of the previous night, where he had questioned his worthiness to live. In truth, that internal battle was still unresolved, but for now, at least, an inherent drive for survival had taken hold and was pushing him on.
But he could feel that fading.
Ken’s weariness, coupled with the hopelessness of his situation, threatened to kill whatever urge he had to survive. And, in truth, whether he wanted it or not, Ken could not see a scenario where he made it out of the forest alive. Not when he considered what it was that hunted him.
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