"Today again the lost, pitiful visitors who don't know anything"
"Are probably delivered into the Master of the Graveyard's stomach before long"
Stepping through the whistling trees, his feet finally stopped crunching on leaves and twigs. He had reached a clearing in the center of the forest, no longer wandering blind in the nighttime wilderness. At that point, he realized his journey was almost over and he heaved a sigh at how long it had taken just to get to this stage. The sigh was supposed to be in relief, but all that was coming out of him was dread.
The night had become cold, so much so that his breath was puffing out of him in hot clouds, but he remained steady, the trek more than enough exercise to keep his blood flowing. Yet, when his eyes fell upon this new part of the journey he couldn't help shivering just a little bit.
Beyond a wiry iron gate stood a sea of graves, crumbling and crudely carved. Tombstones and crosses rose into the air at odd angles in no particular order, forming an ever widening ring around this large clearing. Gammon tried to read the inscription on the nearest grave, but the writing was indecipherable to him. The dirt under his feet was no longer fresh; the place must have been built here for some time. Gammon recalled to mind the legends surrounding the forest, of people entering and never coming back out. He crossed his arms over his chest and took another breath. There was no fate for him that feared anymore, he told himself.
Looking past the graves, his eyes finally caught upon the tower rising far above him, a pillar gleaming black in the center of the graveyard; on its top floor sat a white clock facing out to the world like the full moon. Gammon noted that, though the graves seemed so neglected, the clock hands were still turning on the tower's face. This was the place he'd been looking for, there could be no mistake.
Gammon sighed again, but the satisfaction just wasn't coming, so he shook his head and pulled the rusting gate open. He stepped through and it slammed shut behind him with an earsplitting squeak; at the sound every bird in sight took flight and left the trees in a single cloud. Then everything became eerie and silent.
With just a knife in his belt Gammon crept along the graves with eyes darting at every shadow; he tried to walk so that there was an almost clear path between himself and the iron gate, though the graves refused to line up entirely. Within a minute of this slinking half-hunched, though, his legs and back started to ache and he still felt vestiges of his childhood self-consciousness. As the silence began to subside, the insects beginning again their nightly calls, he forced himself to relax and walk upright. His heart was still gripped with dread, heavy in his chest.
Suddenly his foot struck something hard in the grass and he tripped, only a reflex to grab the nearest gravestone stopping him from falling on his face. "Haa-!" He righted himself and wobbled back with a bit of the stone coming away in his hand. Probably just a rock, no need to look, he thought.
Bending down, he took hold of something long and heavy in his hand and brought it up to the moonlight. It was a charred bone.
"O-ho-ho~!" Not bothering with a startled yell, Gammon's gaze flew up, away from the bone to a figure towering over him. She was a strange sight, a slim young woman in a big red ribboned red dress with a large bustle in the back, the outfit of a previous century. She stood planting into the ground the tip of a delicate parasol. In one black gloved hand, halfway raised to her amused face as if giving a toast, was a glass. Her red eyes sparkled in his direction, her lips turned up in a slight smile, and something about her just sent a chill down Gammon's spine. She watched him as he straightened, releasing the bone. "Hello there, young man. You must have wandered here by accident."
Something darted around him in the shadows. Gammon did not smile at the woman, but kept his voice steady as he replied, "This was no mistake, I have been looking for this clearing for some time." Something about her looks familiar, but I cannot decide what.
"Is that so?" Her smile grew wider, and he thought he saw her teeth glinting sharp. "Why would that be?"
He was only partially paying attention, also searching around for the shadows that had just shifted. The charred bone, outside its grave, who left it there and whom did it belong to? "That is my business. I might ask you about your own in this place."
"Oh, my being here is not so strange." Her smile spread up even wider. "I welcome you to the Evil's Forest, though you are a trespasser."
Yes, those were not natural teeth. Gammon's eyes snapped back to her face, and suddenly a memory returned to him, of a history lesson he'd had long before. The Vampire, Vanika Conchita. She looks like her, and the bone there is alone and charred almost as if someone-
"How would you like to be prepared?"
His thought broke for a moment. "Prepared?" The shadows, he could see them now somewhere behind, but he didn't dare turn his back to this lady. No one ever comes back from this forest. Ah...it seems as if she might have-
"Well to be more precise, would you like to be baked?"
-killed-
"Or stewed?"
-them-
The shadows behind Gammon blurred as they moved, and suddenly two more shapes sprang into focus as they pounced forward. He was already ducking down, away from their locking arms, and he kicked off to run around the swelled dress. "Get away from me!"
Two new voices shrilly pursued him, "Insolence!"
"Respect the Master of the Graveyard!"
And then even louder than that, he could hear her chilling laughter rising high into the night air. He stumbled over the graves fleeing such a sound, feeling his insides grow cold. His boots caught on roots and stones, making him fall, and his bare palms struck the frosted ground hard.
Suddenly the dirt burst open beside him and gnarled hands started to claw up out of the ground; something wrapped around his ankle and he shouted out, kicking with such violent force he heard something snap. He rocketed back onto his knees and dropped back into a run, now hearing the crack and crumble of earth being pushed aside. An awful stench assaulted his senses as the dead crept on into the moonlit air, and Gammon started to cough. Groping fingers scratched at his clothes and limbs with every grave he passed, and his hand held tightly to his knife, trying to cut away at them all.
He had been running blind, trying to find his way through the graveyard. His breaths were coming hard and fast, and he had to stop for just a moment. He looked up, past the rising ivy covered crosses. The dark shape of the clock tower loomed closer than ever above him. Back down at its base, he thought he could see a door. That's it! He kicked off, breaking another fragile corpse's grip.
Then two sets of arms encircled his own from behind, jerking him roughly to a halt. "Intruder!"
"You'll be our master's meat!"
"No!" Wisps of blonde hair flew at the corner of his vision, two wraiths unlike the rotting devils below, smaller than him in stature but no less strong. He struggled, clawing and kicking as they started to drag him backwards.
"Worthless invader! Loser!" Shrilled the wraiths. From behind, Gammon heard the woman's laughter again, so close and so horrific. It turned Gammon's blood to ice, and his movements grew wilder. "Let go of-!" The back of his hand connected with something and there was a startled yelp-he lashed back with one foot, approximating where the boy's might be, and dug his boot in as hard as he could. The startled yelp became a howl and Gammon's right arm was free; he swung around from the force of his own fighting. In his spinning vision he thought he saw a young girl holding his other arm, whose likeness was familiar, before his skull cracked against hers.
She let go and Gammon didn't have time to feel the horrible headache starting in his head, blurry eyes transfixed on the theater. It took him a moment to get his momentum again, not to mention his balance, but the lady's imperial laugh had become an enraged scream.
There was a disembodied hand curled around his foot. Almost there, almost there! Another was feebly squeezing his shoulder. He could see the door so many feet away, past only so many tombstones he had to weave in and out of. Don't be locked, don't you be locked.
He could hear her, the Master of the Graveyard herself, coming close upon him now. He took his knife and tossed it behind him as hard as he could, and something changed. She made no more sounds but her inhuman growls, though the blood was rushing in his ears so loudly he couldn't hear.
The door stood there in front of him. He reached out a hand to it-he was bleeding, someone long dead had scratched their fingernails over him.
"Get back here!"
The door swung inwards at his touch. Gammon threw himself inside. His own blood flecked in an arc as with the last of his strength the door slammed shut.
He collapsed against it, heaving in the stale, musty air.
The door thudded against his back, and he heard a muffled roar of fury from outside. Then there was only silence.
Well, not silence. Gammon stood there listening to his own belabored breathing and hammering heart-I can't seem to catch my breath, feeling himself go weak and fall on his knees to the ground. "Stop being so stupid," he muttered. Really, after everything he'd been through already, to feel fear now was inexcusable.
He also could hear, amplified in the large empty space, the turning of gears far above him. He looked up, seeing the gigantic cogs of the clock in the distant shadows. The moonlight filtered down onto them through the glass face, illuminating little else.
Gammon looked back down at the ground, seeing only blackness around his feet, and then carefully reached back and latched the door shut behind him. He pushed off into the vast empty space, going slowly and constantly looking behind, waiting for the demon and her wraiths to burst through any moment.
Still, there seemed to not be a soul around except for him. He sighed and said aloud, "Yes…now, time to begin the search."