"In which direction are we going?" Diederich asked.
"I want to retrace our steps up to where we found him, then I want to see if we can trace his trail. I want to see if he found anything he shouldn't have," Vincent said.
They set out through the woods, down the same clearly marked path they headed down the first time. The sun was just at the horizon line and dipping beneath it; while they followed the occasional blotches of blood from where they dragged the comatose kid by the bleeding, soles of his feet. They turned on the lanterns and held them up as the light had grown dimmer with the lack of sunlight. Vincent held the lantern in one hand, and a gun in the other. They followed the trail back down for awhile, until they came to the bramble patch where the boy had been hiding. Vincent walked over closer to it, Diederich standing guard behind him to investigate it. He illuminated the area, trying to find blood here and there to mark the direction from once the boy came earlier that day. There were tiny splotches here and there, wiping on the tips of branches. Diederich and Vincent set out in different paths, trying to find evidence but Diederich didn't wander very far from him. Vincent looked over at him and noticed a familiar pale expression of fear on his face. A few hundred feet from where they found the kid, they saw the torn up remains of his white linen shirt. It was more dirty gray with splatterings of rust colored dried blood and torn beyond repair.
"Let's see if he went further", Vincent said. Diederich nodded, not making a sound.
They looked around, trying to navigate their way through the woods. It was now completely dark outside, save for the light of their lanterns. The silhouette of the trees and dark purple sky nearly blended together in a homogeneous black. It was overcast so not even the moon or stars illuminated the night sky. They found some blood here and there though they couldn't be sure if it was still the trail of the kid they were after, or if it was just blood from some random animal killed out in nature. There weren't any shoes or scraps of fabric to be found; no large broken or bent branches to infer a delusional human romping around aimlessly. It was about an hour after they found his shirt that Vincent remembered that he had no idea from what direction they had come from. They both went off the trail, and walked around back and forth, trying to track the trail of a person. A trail which they were no longer following. It was oddly quiet outside, not a single sound of crickets or birds chirping could be heard that night, clearly everything else alive was sleeping tonight.
"Hey Dee, do you remember which way we came from?" Vincent asked him.
"I was following you," Diederich admitted.
"I'm lost and I have no idea where we are going."
"Goddamn it Vincent," Diederich said. He looked really uncomfortable and paranoid. As they tried going back to the little cabin by walking from what they believed to be the opposite direction. Vincent followed him around in the woods, and every once in awhile, DIederich would stop for a second and look back at him silently as though Vincent had said something.
"I really feel uncomfortable right now, I think we're being followed," Diederich finally said. Vincent rolled his eyes. It was like unfounded paranoia and delusions had become contagious.
"It's me, that you're hearing," Vincent told him.
"I think there is something following us," he insisted. This was getting ridiculous. Stick some people out in the woods with the 'threat' of a jack in a costume and suddenly the sound of he wind rushing through the trees would become the errant growls of a rabid, hungry beast.
"There is nothing following us, you're just hearing the echo of our footsteps," Vincent said. The day when Vincent Phantomhive had to become the bringer of logic and reason was a dark day indeed.
After what felt like hours of walking around aimlessly in the woods, they had finally themselves at the clearing. They were now across the field from the cabin, they could see a light from the window of the farmhouse, and it felt like a beacon of hope to them. They were both annoyed with each other at this point. There was no conversation polite or otherwise, just an air of tension and the sound of their footsteps crunching the grass and twigs beneath their feet. Vincent was annoyed with Diederich's superstitious paranoia, and Diederich was rather vexed by Vincent's tendencies to completely ignore or mock any of the concerns he had. An annoyance, which he reminded Vincent, was not confined to just this night by itself. Now he was ignoring him, and Vincent was doing the same. They trekked back to the cabin, exhausted and frustrated with each other and their inability to have found anything. The only thing they accomplished in that unpleasant stroll through the forest was disliking each other. It was only slightly more of an accomplishment than the utterly pathetic display of disappointing behavior they achieved at the Viscount of Druitt's shindig.
"What should we do now?" Diederich asked.
"Well, I'm going to sleep, and I don't care what you do," Vincent said.
"I really would like it if you didn't touch me, when you think I am asleep. It disturbs me."
"I won't do it again," Vincent said. Diederich looked at him in a way that Vincent could see the sheer disbelief and fear in his eyes. For some weird reason, that look was incredibly appealing to him, and not just because the face making it was so damned attractive.
"Really. Now please, I am exhausted of your constant paranoia, go to sleep."
Vincent wonders for a second if his paranoia is paranoia really is irrational, or if he's being just a little bit unreasonable by expecting Diederich to be unharmed by the mental pressures of this job after one case. Vincent himself had been doing this for almost three years now and it hadn't always been that easy. The last time where he needed his younger sister to bail him out of trouble was proof enough that he wasn't perfect as a detective. Frances would have best candidate for this job, she was resistant to distraction, she was strong willed and tough as nails, but Vincent knew it wasn't because she wanted her life to turn out that way. It was mostly his fault that she had to protect him, his fault that she grew up knowing the atrocities of cruelty to be just another fact of her daily life. He had ruined any chance Frances ever had at being the ignorant perfect angel woman that every man wanted, she was marked, she was mentally scarred from seeing the marks of his abuse. Vincent already had a leg up in this whole watchdog business because he was already fucked in the head, there wasn't any kind of murder or torture he couldn't stomach looking at, because it wasn't like he hadn't already been there himself. Then again, it wasn't like death was a stranger to Diederich's mind, it just presented itself in a different way. Both of them had tried to kill the people that hurt them the most, the only positive thing to be said about this morbid little thing they had in common was that Diederich didn't succeed like Vincent had.
Vincent is back in the woods, the sky is a strange mauve color, so he's pretty sure that he's dreaming. His dreams tend to be just a little more colorful than reality, and he remembers quite distinctly that the stars weren't shining brightly in the sky fifteen minutes ago. These are the time when he wishes that he could control the subject matter of his minds darkest thought, but he can't do that. He's now walking alone in the woods, with nothing to light the way for him except for the stars and moon shining cold light on him. He wishes that he could dream about being a nude beach in France populated solely by attractive young men, but nope, he was dreaming about being in a boring little woods. He looked behind him, and there it was, towering above him. That thing. It was tall and it's featureless white face was looking down at him. Vincent felt himself paralyzed in fear beneath this... dream creature. It moves with jerky motions, it's head moving from side to side, reverberating back and forth. It gets closer. Is this the monster Diederich imagines when he closes his eyes in the woods? It is inches closer to Vincent, behind it, dozens of sharp, hooklike, black appendages sprout from its back. They are closing in on Vincent, within seconds, the appendages will close down upon him and skewer him alive. There is only thing he can do. He pulls out the knife he always keeps stashed on his person and plunges it in the center of it's face. He stabs it again, and it falls to the ground, all crumpled up black bits and the white face turns crimson with blood. It looks up at Vincent and it has the face of his father. He gets up, the knife still wedged in his bleeding, wrinkled face and shakes Vincent hard. Vincent tears the knife from his face and stabs him again but he won't go back down.
"Vincent you're a mad man!" Diederich is screaming at him. There is no father, there is no monster. Vincent is now aware that he is holding up a hunting knife to him, he's in a cold sweat and for a second he's not sure where he is, then he remembers that he is in a cabin and he nearly murdered someone who he would be quite sad if they died. Vincent is now very aware that he would never forgive himself if he had actually hurt Diederich, which implies that he cares about him enough that mourning would occur if he had died. Diederich has a firm grasp around Vincent's wrist and is looking at him with wide, shocked eyes. Vincent loosens his grip on the knife and Diederich takes it from him with his free hand. He lets go of Vincent's wrist when he has the knife.
"I'm sorry," Vincent whispered, "I don't know what happened."
"I tried to wake you up and you tried to knife me!" Diederich yelled at him, Vincent is acutely aware that he deserves this, even if he didn't mean for it to have happened. He doesn't know how to apologize for this. Sorry I'm so fucked up because my father beat me? He tried that excuse before it got him no sympathy, and why should it now.
"If I were anyone else, you would have slit my throat," Diederich reminded him, the knife still in his hand. Vincent shouldn't have to be impressed that Diederich is quick and strong enough to stop Vincent from murdering him on a whim.
"I get night terrors and it's a bad idea to wake me up, I should have told you about this," Vincent excused himself but he knew there would be no acceptable excuse. He just gave Diederich just another reason to be paranoid and fearful. "Why did you try waking me, again?"
"I couldn't sleep so I was just looking out the window and I saw that dreadful monster, and it was staring at me. It was staring at me. So I tried to wake you up and you nearly killed me," Diederich reminds him. This of course implies that Diederich still believes in made up monsters while a real monster is next to him right now. Vincent sighed, finding himself doing a lot of sighing lately, though he wasn't so sure if this signature sigh of derision was aimed at Diederich or himself.
"You are in no position to tell me that I am the one acting delusional," Diederich told him.
"Alright, alright. Let's go out there and hunt him down," Vincent said as he slipped on his coat and shoes. Diederich was fast behind him, getting the guns out and ready. Vincent looked at him with a questioning glance.
"Can I have my knife back?" he asked. Diederich handed him the knife.
"Please don't kill me with this," he said, realized the gaping plot hole in this sentence and finished it with, "Or anything else."
Vincent and Diederich quietly strolled around the field with their lanterns. They were on a missions to find anything out of place, given that Diederich just saw the culprit, it seemed reasonable to suspect that they ere still lurking around near by. The sheep were peacefully being sheep and doing sheep things. They walked about the pasture, trying to find a dead sheep, but as far as they could tell, none of the sheep had yet to be mutilated or hurt. They were white, pristine, gentle, innocent, unmaimed sheep. They baaed quietly or slept like little white tussles of wool on the ground. There were no signs of mutilated sheep anywhere, and they had given a good look around the field for mutilated sheep corpses. Not a single white tuft of wool was out of place on that entire field. Vincent looked at Diederich, who was still clearly on edge from Vincent nearly knifing that beautiful face of his.
"There is nothing out here," Vincent said. He spoke too soon. They both heard a loud snap of a tree branch and quickly turned towards the sound. They saw a long, tall, black shadow of a something flash behind the trees, too fast for them to get a good look but not so fast that they didn't realize it had to be at least fifteen feet tall.
"Nothing?" Diederich asked Vincent. They both had their guns out and were ready to go back into the woods yet again.
So I live out in the woods, so trust me I have gotten lost in the woods at night like, a lot of times in my life. Like one time I was out in the woods behind my house and I was like eleven and my cousins who were like, still in elementary school at the time went out there with me in the late afternoon and we got super lost after dark. And my 8/9 year old cousin started bawling her eyes out. So I was all panicking on how to get her to stop crying so I pulled out my yugioh cards and I told her they were magical cards, and that if she thought happy thoughts the heart of the cards would guide us out of the woods. She stopped crying and that's all that matters. I have no idea why I'm telling you all this extremely embarrassing story. but there you have it.