AN: My love for the KH universe knows no bounds, and has recently been met with my love for classical literature. Though there is going to be some similarities to the KH storyline, it only affects the MAJOR plot points while characters, worlds, reasoning, and over all storyline hold an original twist in homage to the stories no one seems to read outside of school. (Though if you're reading this, it probably means you like reading these on your own XD; )
Characters: Huckleberry Finn, Injun Joe, The Welshman, mentions Tom Sawyer and Widow Douglas
Rated: T for teen because of fighting, occasional adult themes and mild language.
Disclaimer: I do not claim to hold anything or anyone as my own. All characters and places and events are copyright of their respected creators. I just like to play with them.
The redhead tried to steady his pace as he crept after the two shady figures, his eyes never leaving the box under the larger man's arm. After he and Tom had spent nights keeping alert for this moment, so sure they carried treasure on them, Huck was determined to follow them until dawn if he had to. If only he had gone to fetch Tom sooner he wouldn't have to do it alone, but to try to go up to his best friend's house at this moment was insane. The minute he went to fetch him, those men would be lost to the night. Bare feet felt soft soil as the three reached the other edge of town and the wind softly picked up. Huckleberry gazed up at the sky as a flicker of lightning illuminated the slowly swirling violet clouds over head. There was gonna be a storm that night and though there had been several small storms lately, this one almost felt threatening. With no moon out and the lights of town behind them, he tried to close the distance between himself and the men, hoping to hear their steps just ahead. Onward past the quarry, past where he thought they planned to bury it, and continued farther uphill until they had vanished into the darkness of the woods. Huck began to realize he couldn't see the thieves... or anything else for that matter. The woods were awfully still this night. He tensed up and glanced around as the feeling of being watched began to creep over him. A few small and vague lights darted between trees. No need to fear, it was probably just lights on the river... although the last boat he saw didn't have that many lights and passed by so quietly it seemed all on board were asleep. A screech came from overhead just before some creature dropped from above and swung passed him, a rush of feathers over his arm as he tried to shield himself but it moved on. The boy held his breath again, this time as if to quiet the pounding of his hear from being heard, and froze as he head one of the men, not more than four feet ahead of him, yelped at the attack.
"You tryin' ta ruin this for me?" a harsh whisper came from ahead. The other meekly whispered back how he didn't mean to. Everything in those woods left him jumpy. Huck glanced up at the tree overhead, a pair of large yellow eyes peering down at them looking ready to attack again. The boy heaved a small sigh of relief as it gave another softer screech; they were getting scared over some ol' hoot owl. The stranger had a point though, something was making the area restless. The trees rattling against each other in the wind, the animals starting to act funny, those weird lights Huck had begun to realize were coming from all around and not just the water. The boy was a firm believer in such superstitions and told himself that if there was any proof in the world about wandering spirits on stormy nights, he had found it. Perhaps he should go back. When witches and spirits and who knows was else began creeping out of the shadows, no matter how many hundreds of dollars those men had, or how disappointed Tom would be if he found out Huck had lost the chance, seemed worth it.
Huck could vaguely see the large sumac bushes now, and realized he was at the edge of the Douglas' Mansion property. Despite the storm picking up, the sight of familiar territory eased his fears about the woods and he decided to hold on a little longer. Here? He thought perhaps they planned to leave their treasure here? It wasn't a bad place really, in fact, this would make finding treasure easier then. All he had to do now was stay quiet and wait... that is until he heard the men speak. "Damn her, she's got company." The voice clearly came from Injun Joe, and low as it was, the voice was enough to send chills down the boy's spine. A thought struck him as they went on, talking about the Widow Douglas and arguing whether to give up or not. This must have been the "revenge" job he and Tom had overheard more than a week ago in that rotting old shack. They had been lucky then, and too scared to do anything as they hid from the killer and his companion, but now was different. The Widow Douglas had always been nice to him, even if he was a vagrant, even if half the town knew him to be some street wanderer, but she thought to treat him like any other who came to her for hospitality. "Her husband took advantage of me and died, but I'll take it out of her."
"Oh don't kill her!" pleaded the companion, but Injun Joe just grinned. Huck was almost tempted to step back, as the man's eye almost seemed to shine in the darkness.
"Kill? Who said anything about killing? I would kill him if he was here, but not her. When you want to get revenge on a woman, you don't kill her. You go for her looks. Slit her nostrils, notch her ears like a sow! If she bleeds to death, is that my fault? You'll help me in this thing, for mysake; that's why you're here, I mightn't be able alone." The man's grin in the soft flicking lights overhead had turned threatening. "If you flinch, I'll kill you. Do you understand that? And if I have to kill you, I'll have to kill her and then nobody'll ever know much about who don this."
The stranger along side him began to stutter, easing back as if ready to fly for his life but managed to nod. "If its got to be done, then let's get at it. The quicker the better."
"Do it now? And company there? No, we'll wait til the lights are out; there's no hurry."
Huck knew he had to something, anything but stay there. In the silence that followed, worse than any of their talk of murder for at least then he knew they weren't listening for him, he tried to slip away. Carefully, cautiously, the redhead backed away, the motions of stepping backward going so slowly with pressure to keep invisible he almost lost his balance. After a few noiseless successes, luck ran out as a twig snapped underfoot. His breath stopped, his heart felt it would stop, everything in the world seemed to have stopped until there came a movement from the bushes. The boy turned on his heels and took flight, back down the hill, back through the darkness of the woods with is rustling and whistling and skittering of small shadowy creatures, back until he reached the Welshman's house by the quarry, and never looked back. Huck banged on the door urgently pleading to come inside.
"Why? Who's there?" a voice called through the door.
"Huckleberry Finn, quick, let me in!"
There came a laugh as the voice called in amusement. "Huckleberry Finn, indeed. It ain't a name to open too many doors I judge. Let him in, lads, and let's see what's the trouble."
Huck squinted in the bright light as the door opened wide, but he rushed in immediately blurting out "Please don't ever tell I told you. I'd be killed for sure, but the widow's been good friends to me and I want to tell- I will tell if you promise you won't say I told you." His wide eyes pleaded with them as the men looked between each other in seriousness.
"By George, he HAS got something or wouldn't act so. Out with it, lad, and nobody here'll ever tell." Within minutes of hearing the Welshman and his sons were well armed and on their way up hill toward the Douglas house, on tiptoe and guns in hand. Huck accompanied them until he hid behind a great boulder and listened intently. There came a lagging, anxious silence and then all of a sudden there came an explosion of firearms and a cry in the dark.
Huck leaped up from his hiding place, the wind starting to howl as the woods seemed to become alive with the storm as it finally hit. Leaves and twigs and small rocks rising with the force from above. The boy had never seen such a thing as the violet clouds overhead seemed to warp into a large descending dark colored light. As dark as it was, strangely the whole area started to become clearer and easier to see. The noise gunfire continued into the night, from where he could no longer tell, but the boy couldn't think of where to go any longer. To the Widow's house to warn her? To the Welshman and his boys? To the abandoned shed he always used for shelter in the storm? One of the boys called over the roar of the storm, "HUCK? HUCK! WHERE ARE YOU?"
He didn't have the chance to respond. "GOTCHA!" Injun Joe's large arms wrapped around him, one by his waist as he lifted Huck off the ground, and the other placing a hand on the boy's throat. "Is this all a game to ya, ya infernal child? I'll show ya, I'll make ya regret the day ya ever laid eyes on me!" Huck struggled and kicked and tried to breath as the man's liquor filled breath polluted what little he was able to get. There was something more to him though, something vile, something frightening, something... dark.
A soft voice seemed to whisper to him, so gently and light that with all the noise around them it could only have come from his mind. "Don't be afraid."He was tried to relax, tried to focus on what he had to do, to get away from this... this thing. Something started to take hold of him; a power, an energy. A streak of light formed in his hand. The man dropped him as the blade swiped at his stomach and Huck began gasping for air as he stared the man down, the strange weapon tightly in hand. Injun Joe stared back in confusion neither paying much heed to world starting to shift around them. Huck could see for the first time that something was vastly different about the man this time around. His eye didn't just glow in the dim light, the entire socket was colored a bright yellow and held no pupil to it. His features were darker than usual as the wild white hair and beard seemed to swirl in the wind around his blackened face like a mane. Black arms with long fingers almost going to a point stemmed out from his patchwork ragged clothing as his right hand clung to a large silvery knife. Huck wasn't sure what happened to him, but he took his blade in both hands and braced himself as the strange new creature lunged forward.
Ever since that night in the graveyard, Huck had never dreamed of challenging the killer. It was one thing when he got into fights with the other boys, sword fighting, playing pirates and soldiers, betting buttons and marbles on minor contests but never had he ever thought to find himself in a fight for his life. The first swing of the knife cut through the air beside him as instinctively all the fighting he had ever learned came to him as he quickly ducked and stepped and jumped and swung; the blade as swift and natural to him as a fishing rod. The man flinched with every blow before a clawed hand struck the boy across the face and forced him almost to the ground. Huck was tacked to the dirt with surprising speed, the knife flashed as it came down, just barely reaching his arm before the boy reared up both his kicked the attacker off full force. Blood started to seep through his sleeve as he pushed himself back up, but the pain was quickly forgotten in the adrenaline as he charged forward, the jagged end of his weapon hit the creature in the leg and causing it to drop instead.
Huck stood over the man gasping for air as he lay on his back where he fell. The glowing eye didn't seem to look at him but instead at the ominously growing cloud overhead. The boy looked at the blade in his hand, a long metal rod with a key like hook on the end, then down at the strange creature Injun Joe had become. He had been hexed, bewitched, a curse from the woods that's what it was. The redhead tried but couldn't make sense of what was happening, but he couldn't bring himself to kill him. The pain in his right arm had begun to set in and the blade felt grew heavy in his hand as he started to look around. Where had everybody gone? The Welshman and his sons, Injun Joe's partner, the old hoot owl or something, anything. He looked around as entire trees were being ripped from the ground and over head he could see the Welshman's house had gone flying as well as other large pieces as the void made its way closer to town. Huck could feel himself starting to rise as the wind whipped at his face and tugged at his clothes. He tried to hold onto his hat with one hand as he painstakingly forced himself to the rocks, pressing himself against the boulder to guard him from the storm. He struck the strange blade into a crack between the large rocks and held on tightly.
"Is just a dream..." he tried to convince himself, failing to bring any comfort as the storm roared over head. "Tha's all it is, just a bad dream..."
Injun Joe had pulled himself off the ground, appearing more feral than ever as he darted for the rock the boy had hid behind on all fours. The boy looked up from his mutterings as the figure flew at him like a wild cat, claws outstretched, the single eye in that blackened face full of ferocity when suddenly the wind seemed to have caught him too. The man didn't come down on him, but flailed his arms wildly as if trying to swim against the current as he drifted higher and higher toward the large destructive orb of black and violet which had begun to swallow everything. Huck stared for a moment before he began to drift as well, slowly at first but with great force as it lifted him off the ground. He held onto the sword's hilt with one hand as the storm threatened to consume everything, but the rocks gave way and the blade jerked free. Huck flew from the ground, the river, the tattered woods, the crumbling edges of town and boats being pulling on their chains like kites; all vanished from before him as the boy was pulled into Darkness.