This story is one of the September Writing Challenge entries chosen to be a featured story.
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I don’t know for how long I’ve been running, but I know for sure it’s not long enough. I can’t stop. Not yet.
“Come on,” I encourage myself. “Just a little longer.”
Despite the sound of heavy raindrops, I can still hear their screams behind me. I can still smell their breaths. And if I’d close my eyes, I’m sure I could see the whole scene all over again.
My limbs are getting heavier after every step I make, and my lungs feel like they are on fire.
“I can do it,” I think, but my body finally gives up, and I collapse on the ground. Like dead, I lay there waiting for something, for someone, to come. I know they are coming for me. I’ve seen too much.
. . .
“Come on,” he said with a big smile on his face.
“Where are we going?” I asked him, but he didn’t answer. Instead he headed towards the old cabin in the woods we found a few days before.
“Don’t do this,” I tried to warn him, but he didn’t listen. He never listened.
The door creaked as he opened them.
. . .
“Maybe dying doesn’t seem that bad.” My whole body aches and no matter how much I try not to think about it, my heart aches too.
He was lost before, and now he is gone.
A tear drips down my face.
“He’s gone forever, and I’m never going to see him again.”
. . .
After that day, he kept returning to the cabin. There was something about it that seemed to attract him, despite everything we saw the first day.
He didn’t care about the wind that kept on blowing through the halls, even if all the doors and windows were closed. He didn’t care about the constant feeling of being watched. He didn’t care about me, terrified of this place and what it’s done to him.
. . .
I hear it again. The scream, with a frequency that cuts my ears. They are here.
Their every step echoes all around me, and the ground trembles. Their smell… oh, god, their smell of blood and dirt and death weaves through the air and fills my nostrils.
I close my eyes. I don’t want to see their faces ever again.
. . .
“What are you doing?” I asked him one day when I finally found the courage to follow him, only to find him leaning over something. He was wearing an apron and gloves – both completely covered in blood.
“GO AWAY!” he yelled at me, and I ran outside.
. . .
So close. They are so close.
. . .
“I’m worried about you,” I told him, looking at his thin and pale face. We were in the cabin, sitting in the puddle of blood.
“You really shouldn’t have come here,” he said with a cold voice, his eyes staring into the distance.
“What are you…”
“They know. That you know.”
“What? What do I know?”
. . .
And they do know.
. .
I’ve never seen anything like them before. So inhuman and cold. Corpses hanging over their shoulders, blood dripping down their chins.
Looking in my eyes, they cut his throat with one clean cut. I screamed as his blood splattered on me.
Then I ran.
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They are here. And me too, waiting for them to finally find me and bury their secrets forever. But until then, I am here too.
But not for long.