Leaves and Shadows

by Christopher Chancy

  Her fatigue and aches that she had felt only moments ago vanished as a renewed dose of adrenaline pumped through her veins. Dread cloaked itself over her shoulders as she stared at the leaves before her.

  "What's the matter dear?"

  She gasped as a hissing voice spoke out from the darkness. It had originated behind her and sounded as if it had only come a few feet from the barrier of light.

  "Did we scare you?" another voice spoke from her left a moment later.

  Her head darted from one point to the other. She instinctively inched away from her aggressors, shielding Evan from them as best she could.

  "Aww. I think we did."

  She actually squeaked in surprise.

  Her reaction elicited cold amusement from her tormentors. All at once, they laughed all around her with their scathing, hissing laughs. There were so many of them, and their symphony of chaos hacked at her self-control. Nails down a chalkboard would have been a welcome sound anything to alleviate the hated noise as they tried to drown her with the tones of their madness.

  "Stop it," she said softly. They continued to laugh at her.

  "Stop it," she called louder. Their ruckus grew to deafening levels.

  "Stop it!" she cried out. They continued on.

  "Stop it!" she shouted at them, hate burning in her eyes.

  The laughter continued.

  She filled her lungs and opened her mouth in a scathing shriek. Each syllable became a cannonball of her malice. "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!”

  They ceased abruptly. The sudden drop in sound made the silence that much more pronounced. In the quiet, echoes of their malicious glee thrummed in her head. In the void the weight of their unseen stares became palpable and Erin began to tremble.

  She fought to steady her breath. She kissed Evan’s little face with pale lips and whispered, "It's okay, baby. We're safe here. They cannot come into the light! We're safe here as long as I have this torch! And I'm not letting it go for anything!"

  "Are you sure about that?" a voice inquired from the dark.

  She involuntarily shuddered and silently berated herself for her reaction. She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. "It's okay. I'm not going to freak out." She looked down at her son, "We just need to reach that red light and then we can get your soul back . . . somehow." She tried to skate over the obvious question as to how exactly she would accomplish this feat. Shaking her head in an unsuccessful attempt to rid herself of her doubts she said, "Okay, we won't worry about that right now. We just need to reach the red light and we’ll figure the rest out later."

  The unbidden voice in the dark spoke again. It cooed ominously, "But where is it, dear?"

  She looked up sharply. Her head turned this way and that. She slowly turned round and round again, her eyes searching. She spun around again and again and again trying grasp onto something with her sight. As she rotated her whispered mantra steadily grew swifter and louder. "No. No. No. No. No. No-No-No!”

  She couldn't find the small light in the distance. It was nowhere to be seen.

  Somewhere off in the distance she could hear a dark thing chuckle at her as the severity of her situation became brutally clear.

  She was lost.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lost

  "Where did it go?" She searched area around frantically. "Where did it go!" she shrieked. Everywhere she looked, there was only the darkness. The night had swallowed the red star.

  Her audience's malicious glee was palpable. Goose flesh rose up on her bare arms and she began to shiver violently. The evil things had distracted her so much that she had somehow lost her way completely. Her only landmark in this forsaken place had now completely vanished.

  What am I going to do? she thought furiously.

  She could feel the dark presence listen to her terrorized thoughts, like a sadistic voyeur. She looked around wildly. Terror and despair gave into vile hatred. They had done this to her son, and now they hid the beacon from her! This was entirely their fault!

  She snarled out into the night, "You did this to him! You!" she spat out the words transforming them into a curse. "What did you do to the light?" Her screams pummeled the darkness and were swallowed away. The silence that followed expanded for several minutes. Nothing even acknowledged her as the night watched her intently.

  Their continued silence grated on her. "You can't answer me!" she shrieked. "You evil things were all laughs and giggles only a few moments ago! Now you’re afraid of a little confrontation! Is that it, you cowards?" Huffing and puffing, she watched and waited. Only the sound of her breath broke the quiet. In the absence of their hateful responses, her thoughts turned down grim pathways like buzzards circling the dying light of her hope: They’d never find their way out. Evan, would remain in his catatonic state, his soul trapped here forever. She would never see Scott again. She give birth and her baby would never stand a chance.

  As each possibility passed before her mind’s eye, her despair inflated all the more. Her panic-induced mantra became more pronounced: What am I going to do!

  Then another thought struck. "What are you going to do?"

  She paused as the question demanded to be pondered. It felt external, but not from this place as if it were from somewhere or someone better than anything this place could ever muster. The question broke the cycle of debilitating thought and calmed her.

  “What am I going to do?” she asked out loud. There was no point in asking the question silently, since the dark forces could hear her thoughts. However, this time when she asked herself the question, it wasn’t just because she was swept up in the tidal wave of her own mounting terror. She was honestly giving it the consideration it needed if she were going to solve her predicament.

  She looked around slowly as she contemplated her situation. The red star still wasn’t anywhere to be found. Okay Erin, she told herself, taking a breath. There isn’t anything I can do if you succumb to your fear. There isn’t anything I can do about the lost star. I’m going to find my son, even if I have to search every inch of this dark place to find him.

  An idea occurred to her. She turned around in another slow circle, searching the ground instead of the horizon.

  “Aha!” she cried out. Before her was the small scattered pile of leaves that looked to be the same pile that she had walked past before getting distracted. Was this the same one they had run through? She shook her head. She wasn’t sure. Maybe. But she couldn’t just stand here wondering all night however long that would last.

  She froze as another spike of fear struck. How long would this night last? Was this place subject to the same rules as everywhere else in the world? Just because night had fallen, did that mean the sun would rise? What if the night passed but dawn never came. Her mind drifted inward as she meditated on that horrifying scenario.

  “What are you doing, Erin?” The thought interjected itself into her consciousness, shattering her frightened reverie.

  Just like staring at the leaves wondering whether it was the pile she had passed, she could not stand here contemplating the infinite number of dark possibilities. It was best to focus on what she could control. You need to get moving, Erin, she told herself firmly. One way or another, you have to move.

  She looked down at the leaf pile one more time and set off in the opposite direction of their scattered remains. She had no real way of knowing if she was going the right direction or not, but inactivity felt more dangerous to her. She travelled determinedly for several minutes before the unrelenting dark began to sap her confidence. She looked around to see if she could ascertain any hint to point her in any direction. Nothing. Hers was the only light in an eternity of darkness.

  “Heh heh heh!”

  She froze.

  The hissing laughter came from directly ahead of her. She looked around. The abyss awaited her hungrily. She took a slow step backwards and adjusted her path, veering off to the left.

  A guttural voice hissed from the night. “What’s the ma
tter sweetie? Did I make you nervous?” It had remained parallel to her position.

  Erin adjusted her direction again, her pace quickened.

  “You can’t get away from me that easily, my dear,” it said with obvious delight.

  “Leave me alone!” she shrieked.

  “Heh heh heh! Alone? Silly goose! If we don’t talk to you, then who will? Your mother? No, she abandoned you . . . again. Your idiot child? No, Evan isn’t quite fully himself. He probably won’t be for the foreseeable future. No, my dear. I will keep you company forever and ever and ever.

  “So will I,” hissed another voice directly ahead of her.

  “And I,” another came from behind.

  “We all will,” said dozens of voices from her left.

  She paused as she looked in the direction her “company” spoke from. They were trying to herd away from that direction. Why? Mustering all her remaining courage, she deliberately faced them. “Get out of my way.”

  A crowd of hissing laughter met her statement. “Oh, there is no reason to be rude, my dear.”

  Gritting her teeth, a flare of anger washed away the aches of pain in her arms, legs, and back. She started moving forward.

  The chuckling in the dark cut off. A voice hissed, “What are you doing?”

  She ignored it as she concentrated on her feet. Without any visual references it was her only way to keep track of her line of direction.

  “Are you coming to see us, Erin? Come closer and we will give you a nice hug. We’ll even include little Evan in our embrace.”

  She kept walking forward. Her heart began to hammer hard as she approached the direction her tormentors’ voices. Her breath came in great labored pulls.

  “If I didn’t know any better, I would swear that you were being quite rude.” She didn’t look up from her feet.

  “Answer me!” She kept going forward.

  “Answer me, you stupid cow!” the voice grated.

  Silence.

  “Say something or I will come in there and devour both of your bleeding hearts before your stupid mongrel eyes!”

  She paused and looked up at the place the voice had come from. “Go ahead.” She said flatly.

  “What?”

  “You can’t do it, can you?” she accused. “I know your secret. You cannot hurt me or Evan. You can’t even touch us, not while we are under the torchlight my mother gave us. You, all of you, are dangerous in the dark, but none of you can come into to the light, or it will destroy you. All you can do is throw out empty words and try to distract me. Go away or stay. I don’t care. If you have something to tell me, then please come into the light and let’s see what you have to say.”

  The night became very still. There was an angry petulant silence as the dark things seethed in their impotence. Feeling as if she had made her point, she nodded triumphantly and started forward into the renewed silence. This time she welcomed the change.

  She continued onward for some time on her mind-numbing trek. After her verbal confrontation, nothing had tried to hinder her progress in either word or deed. She searched round for any signs of a focal point. Time stretched by, but as before she had no way to gauge it. She could only judge its passage only by the growing weariness in her body. Holding Evan’s weight was beginning to feel more and more difficult. Her feet ached and she longed to sit down and take a break. But that idea, as enticing as it sounded, scared her most of all.

  What if she did sit down and rested for a moment or two? Then time would stretch on longer and longer, after which she would find it harder and harder to stand up. Then whether she wanted it to happen or not, she would be overcome with exhaustion and fall asleep. There was no telling what state she would find herself in once she awakened, if she awakened at all.

  Riding that thought train was all the rekindling her resolve needed to continue her momentum.

  She paused to switch Evan around in her arms and reverse the torch in her other hand. Suddenly something flew out of the dark and she screamed at the sudden motion. She staggered awkwardly as she thought momentarily that the dark things had pushed themselves beyond their supposed limitations to attack her out of spite and rage.

  The object that flew out of the dark plopped to the ground directly before her with a wet squish.

  Erin stared down at the object. It was an oddly-shaped mass of fur and moldy cotton. She flipped it with over with her foot and shuddered as she revealed a pair of black beaded eyes, the ragged remains of a teddy bear soaked all the way through with the pond scum water of the lazy river.

  A hissing laughter, low and maniacal breeched the darkness. She looked up wild-eyed at the sound. Her ever-present fear bloomed in her chest.

  With a splat something wet and putrid smelling struck her in the back. "Ow!" she screamed. She whirled around as another soaked bear plopped to the ground in a crumbling mess. Its soggy contents burst out and the unfiltered stink assaulted her nostrils. She gagged as a wave of bile fought its way up her throat. Gasping and swallowing it down, she staggered back from the mess.

  Another chilling laugh erupted.

  Erin looked up at it, pulling Evan her chest. She began to tremble.

  In the corner of her eye, she saw something shoot out of the dark. She ducked as another soggy animal flew over her head. Another chuckle. She turned just as another missile hurled out of the night and struck her full on in the face. It exploded in a mass of fetid stuffing.

  She retched as she wiped her face furiously with her forearm while holding the torch.

  Another wet mass struck her left side with enough force to sting. Her cry of pain was choked as she gagged and dry heaved. Then another struck her in the thigh, followed quickly by one to the arm holding Evan. They came at her from all directions, pelting her every which way, disintegrating on impact. She was covered in stinging red marks. The smell was horrifying. All the while as they hurled teddy bear after teddy bear at her enveloping them in a chorus of laughter.

  Worst of all, they weren't just targeting her. Red welts began to appear on Evan’s exposed flesh. No matter how hard she tried to shield him with her body, more wet missiles exploded against his body. Desperately she tried to dodge their salvo, but suddenly another bear smacked into her head. It knocked her back and she staggered blindly to her knees into a small pile of leaves.

  Self-preservation overrode her pain as her hand shot the torch up high. The last thing she needed was to fry them both in a fire of newly-ignited leaves.

  Resting Evan over her lap, she worked to clear the mass of moldy cotton out of her face.

  A familiar sound grew rapidly before her, different from the rustling of the leaves.

  She opened her eyes just in time to see a gray line stretching across her patch of light. Recognition dawned on her: It was the divider rope her mom had used to pull her from the wading pool. An instant later, the rope clotheslined her across the chest.

  "Oof!"

  Her hand flailed forward and she was vaguely aware of a sudden flash of light with a Fwoosh as her torch was jerked down.

  She gasped for breath. The rope cinched around her chest and dragged her backwards at tremendous speed. She writhed and tumbled in a disorienting mass as she skidded across the ground. One hand desperately held onto her torch while the other clutched at the constricting line wrapped across her chest.

  One thought resonated through her vertigo: Evan!

  Their vicious maneuver had caused her to drop him in this hell of eternal dark, and she had the only light.

  She frantically fought to free herself as she skidded across the ground on her back. Gritting her teeth she heaved on the rope and jerked her body free. But no sooner had she freed her body the torch became tangled in the line wrenching her arm and dragging her with. Flailing the wake of the rope, her fingers dug at the rope wrapped around the torch, trying to pry it free. Her weight held it taut, the monsters tried to drag her away from Evan.

  She released the torch and slid to a stop. Without her wei
ght the rope suddenly sagged and collapsed to the ground. The torch flipped out of the rope, clattered along the ground, and in the process lit a pile of leaves catching the rope on fire. The torch itself landed about twenty feet away.

  The dry tether blazed to life. Fire rapidly licked its way up the line in opposite directions, so fast that the surge of light surprised the evil beasts hauling the rope on both ends of it. There was a cacophony of twisted screams as shadow creatures ran for cover into the night.

  She focused on the torch and tried to scramble to her feet, but her world tilted out from under her and she fell back to her knees. Vertigo spun her balance as she shakily tried to run for her light. She made it two steps before she stumbled to the ground again.

  Behind her she heard a primal voice growl triumphantly, "You are mine!"

  Fear drove her forward in a maniacal crawl. She could hear things all around hissing with malicious glee and rifling through leaf piles. They were closing in fast.

  She pushed herself up and broke into a shambling run that threatened to topple her at any misstep. The clawed steps pounded closer.

  She was almost there! Another few steps and she would be in the corona of her torch's light.

  Something raked across her back. She screamed as ice ripped through her soul. The claws snagged her shirt and tried to yank her back into the darkness. She dove forward with the last vestiges of her conscious effort. Her shirt ripped as she collapsed into sphere of light. She lay there panting sprawled on the ground while the flickering light of the torch burned a few feet from her head.

  If she listened to the desires of her body only, she would have lain there until the night ended.

  "Evan!" she moaned. "Oh, God, no! How could I have been so careless? How could I have dropped him and left him for those things!" She snatched up her torch and got to her feet with a wobble, "Where is he? Where is he!"