--- means it's Pete's writing.
--- ---
"What is up with that new teacher lately?"
"Who? Mr. Whitergray? Nobody really knows, you know. People say he kinda lost it when that rich kid, Grayfield, came out of the closet about his ears."
"Probably. Either way, Whitergray's class is really easy now, so no complaints here..."
Marty and Pete had been listening to the girls' conversation while they were eating lunch in the cafeteria. They had heard about Mr. Whitergray's behavior from Freddie and Sam beforehand.
"Huh," Pete commented. "So it's not just those guys who noticed it."
"I noticed it, too," Marty told him. "Whitergray had an On-Call for our math class today. I could swear that he kept looking at me like I was his long-lost son or something. It was really creepy."
"I'll bet," Pete muttered through his sandwich. He looked at his watch and got up to leave. "Last period's starting soon. I'll tell Freddie about this, if he's interested."
"What good will it do?" Marty joked. "He's already crazy, so this would just prove he has something that he obviously doesn't: a shred of sanity."
Pete laughed as Marty got all of his stuff together and followed Pete to his locker. They chatted a little bit about regular teenage guy things, like video games, girls, movies, girls, homework and girls. Eventually, a recent topic that was on the evening news came into their conversation as Pete went through his own locker.
"Hey, Pete," Marty said. "Did you watch the news last night?"
"No. Why?"
"There was something pretty interesting last night. Really weird," he added. "They were talking about walking trees out in the mountain range just outside of town."
Pete froze with his head in his locker. Something about theses walking trees disturbed something in his mind as well as his soul.
"Walking trees?" he managed to choke out as he tried to catch his breath. He momentarily forgot to breathe because he was so shocked.
"Yeah. That rang a bell with you, too?"
The warning bell sounded before Pete could get a chance to answer him. He quickly zipped up his bag and slammed his locker shut as Marty ran down the hallway to his own class. Pete skidded into his desk just as fifth period started.
"Right on time," Mrs. Walker, his English teacher, had watched him fly into his desk and sit down with perfect poise. When she wasn't looking, he put his head on his desk and took a deep breath.
Freddie chuckled as he pat his back. "You okay, man?"
Pete smiled and nodded. "Still not used to going up and down those stairs yet."
Mrs. Walker started droning about the structure and pattern about a humongous, long poem in their poetry textbooks and Pete started to feel his mind drift off into his own world. His eyes were closing when he felt a poke in his side.
Freddie pointed to the note on his desk. Discreetly, he opened it and read it.
/Hey. Boring, isn't it/
He scribbled down a reply and flicked it back to Freddie's desk. Freddie read his reply and a little conversation started.
Gee, when'd you first noticed that? Before or after people started to snore?
/Haha. So how's your day been?/
Not bad, not bad...heard some interesting news at lunch.
/Really? What was it?/
You're not losing that last bit of sanity you're holding onto.
Freddie glared at him when he read this.
/Fuck you. What made you think that I can keep my sanity?/
Other people noticed that Whitergray's been all weird. Congratulations! You, Sam, Aaron, Leo and Marty aren't the only ones who're going crazy!
/Fuck off! At least I've got some sanity to lose! But, we're not the only ones?/
Nope. I think this means that Whitergray's truly lost it.
/Him instead of us, huh? Hehe./
Mrs. Walker had stopped talking and was writing down notes on the blackboard so Pete decided to get out his binder to make it look like he was working on copying down the notes on the board.
His pen was microns away from his and Freddie's piece of paper when something caught his eye out the window. It was a girl walking towards the forest that bordered the track and field yard in the distance. He watched her lithe body sneak towards the privacy of the trees. The girl, obviously a student skipping class, quickly disappeared into the shadows of the forest. Once she was gone, Pete then resumed writing a reply to Freddie.
About fifteen minutes had passed when Pete heard a distant, blood-curdling scream which reverberated through his ears. His blood can cold as the echoes of the unnerving shriek throbbed through his mind. He turned to Freddie and he saw that he, too, had heard it.
With eyes wide with terror, Freddie asked him in an undertone, "What the hell was that? I've NEVER heard anything like that."
He couldn't answer the question, but his stomach clenched at the possibility of who it might have been. No one else in their classroom must have noticed it because everybody else was still copying down the writing Mrs. Walker was putting on the blackboard. All but one person: Gary O'Dell.
Gary was looking at Pete with a fierce intensity in his eyes that always made Pete feel nervous when he looked at him. Gary wasn't tall, no more than 5'0", but his size and strength was still very intimidating. He was infamous to several groups and cliques for his ill temper and tendency to get into fights. Most people kept a distance from the volatile boy, but those who could keep his temper down had said that he was just a misunderstood boy with many hidden talents, especially when it came to creating things out of metals. Ever since the new school year started, he had been eyeing strangely at Pete and Freddie while they were in their English class.
Pete shifted nervously in his seat since he was fully aware that Gary was staring at him. He looked out the window and his stomach clenched again.
"I think I might know what that scream was," he told Freddie. "But I really don't want to be right..." Freddie's eyes were looking intently at him, searching for an answer. "Look; just meet me in the main hallway after school, okay? I want to check it out."
"Okay," came the reply. Freddie knew that this was majorly serious by Pete's grave tone. He truthfully couldn't remember when the last time Pete was so serious. He knew that whenever either Pete or Marty were serious, something horrible had happened.
After school, Pete, Freddie, Sam and Marty could have been seen crossing the track and field turf and approaching the dark forest. Pete and Freddie were telling Sam and Marty what they heard and what Pete thought it might have been.
"So you guys hear this god-awful scream from the forest which nobody else hears, and Pete thinks that it came from the girl who was skipping class to take a stroll through the woods," Marty summarized. "So IF it came from her, it'd mean that she was either terrorized or in incredible pain. Right?"
They all nodded silently as they stopped at the tree line.
"Then remind me, why are we going in and risking getting ourselves into trouble where we can't get out?"
"Because we're the only ones who knows she's there," answered Pete. "If it WAS her and she's in trouble, we're the only ones who can help her. Besides, it was Bridget Penney. You know, the cheerleader."
"OH. Well, okay, then. Why didn't you say that before? Lead on."
The four boys trudged through the forest that surrounded half the city. Their school was located at the very edge of the city and forest creatures often crept in and out of the sports fields. The forest itself grew on for miles around until it reached a wall of mountains. Various houses were here and there in the forest, but the nearest one was well out of walking distance.
"Weren't there rumours about those moving trees around here?" Marty asked.
"Yeah," replied Sam. "What, you think that a giant, walking tree happened to be strolling by the school and accidentally squished her?"
They all laughed quietly. The forest was ancient and the trees were tall and thick. They all thought that they could hear whispers in the wind as it rustled the leaves. The bodiless voices sounded curious and intrigued. The voices sounded like they were waiting for Marty's answer.
"No," he finally said. "Trees don't kill people unless they did something to anger them."
Silence fell so suddenly that the boys stopped in their tracks and listened. A sudden rustle of leaves to their left attracted their attention.
"Is it just me, or does that branch look like a hand?" Sam asked nervously. He pointed to a branch overhead with one hand and gripped Freddie's shoulder with the other. "Maybe I'm imagining this, but it looks like it's telling us to go to it."
Sure enough, the hand-like branch waved seducingly to the four boys. It beckoned them without a breath of wind in the air. Without saying a word, Pete slid off his bag and walked towards the small clearing the branch was hanging over. Marty followed him a second after, and Freddie and Sam followed, too, after a moment of hesitation.
Pete pushed through the thick bushes with Marty, Freddie and Sam closely behind him, yelling at him to slow down and wait for them. But, he ignored them and pushed forward with an indescribable urge to uncover the truth. As he crawled through the foliage, he wondered to himself why he trusted an illusion of a hand that was an ordinary branch. Something in his mind told him otherwise and interrupted his thoughts. Something familiar...A name? Or a thing that's been forgotten by him and others? Maybe it was both...What was it that it was trying to tell him?
Suddenly, the branches gave way and Pete was standing in an enclosed, isolated space in the woods. He stood there, frozen in place, when he saw what was hidden in the grove. The others came into the clearing behind him and they all stared into the dead, brown eyes of the girl who was called Bridget Penney.
Her body was beaten, slashed and hung open for all to see. Bruises covered her once-perfect body, especially her face and chest. He stomach was brutally cut open and the organs inside could be seen and were horribly mutilated. She hung from a branch with a rope tied tightly around her neck. Her ghostly eyes were partially open, forever looking at a world where her feet would never walk again. The only thing that could be heard as they looked at her maimed corpse was the constant dripping of her blood.
"I think I'm going to be sick," moaned Sam. He turned back into the bushes and the rest of the boys soon heard retching sounds. Marty noticed something peculiar on the other side of the glade. He walked towards it and picked it up.
"Marty, what is it?" Pete pulled his eyes away from the grotesque, mangled body to ask the question. Marty showed them a crude blade; rectangle in shape and sharpened only on one side of the metal. Blood stained the top half of the sword.
"Well, we've found the murder weapon," he observed. "But, who's the killer?"
"Maybe," Freddie said slowly. "It was that thing."
Pete and Marty gradually followed his petrified gaze to the branches above them. A severed head hung high above their own. The creature's other limbs and other body parts also hung in the surrounding trees. All were separate and all were dripping black blood onto the green blades of grass. The creature could have been human once, but none who were there could say what it was now. Its thick black skin was partially armored with metal; its face was pierced and stitched so many times it was hard to make out; but its mouth was the most terrifying part of the creature. It was open with amazement and its teeth were small and sharp. Red blood lingered on its lips and teeth.
The boys stood paralyzed in shock and fought to try to suppress the vomiting urge that was threatening to overtake them. After a few moments of absolute silence, they turned around and went back to the school. The proper authorities were notified and the body was picked up. The boys were all interrogated about the incident, and, luckily, were not accused of anything. Instead, they were thanked by the parents of Bridget for finding the body. After the corpse was taken to the morgue, the boys found themselves wondering why the creature's body was never mentioned...
Meanwhile, a Darkness grows stronger...