All the young girl could hear was the sounds of her heart beating out of her chest as she ran through the Grove. Rays of the morning sun just barely peeked through the heavily dense limbs of the trees. Had waited till the monster was asleep before Nyx took off running.
The forest once her wonderland turned to pure, unadulterated hell which she desperately was trying to escape. To get away from the vampire that sleeps in her home, now it has become a tomb of a life she lost.
She hopped over various logs and limbs that had fallen over the years as she raced towards an opening. What she could make out was a road, a road forgotten in time that would lead towards civilization.
As soon as Nyx reached the entrance, she was instantly knocked back. The familiar taste of her blood coaxed her tongue. Slowly sitting up and holding her bleeding nose, Nyx looked up at the entrance. She could see from the morning light a faint shimmer.
A sad reminder to the child that she was trapped. What was once just a simple protection barrier so she wouldn't get lost with her mother, ended up making her Grove a cage.
She couldn't get out.
But her sire could.
"Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool."
Nyx's blood ran cold once she heard his voice echoing the nursery song.
HE was awake… and he came out to play. The density of the Grove was enough for him to roam with ease without worrying about the sun.
She quickly got up and started running towards a random direction, away from what could have been her salvation. Knowingly that she can't escape, hearing his awful voice echoing.
"Yes sir, yes sir three bags full.
One for the master
And one for the dame."
As soon as Nyx turned a corner, she felt a hand grabbing her arm and yanked her to the side. She lets out a shout when she falls to the ground.
Her body shook as she turned her head to look up. Tears streamed down her face and her heart just pumped out of her chest.
He stood over her, his lips spread thin as a menacing smile came across his face. His green eyes are devoid of emotion.
"And one for the little girl who lives down the lane."
Nyx let out a gasp when she opened her eyes. Taking a second to register where she was at before she shuddered. She sat up from her bed and rubbed her face with her hands.
He's not here….he's not here… She thought, wiping the tears from her eyes before pulling her legs up to her chest.
"Hello? Nyx?" The child jumped when she heard Sam's voice and his knocking on the trailer door. "Hey why is the door locked?"
Well, Nyx did use pretty much everything that wasn't bolted down blocking the door.
"Nyx?" Sam called again. Trying the door again.
She paused for a moment, thinking the boy might just give up and leave. However, he kept knocking on the door.
"Nyx, can you open the door? Please?" Sam calls out again softly. "What's wrong?"
Outside of the trailer, Sam was holding another stuffed satchel full of things he collected from home. More things that Nyx might be interested in.
He gazed up at the door as he tried his attempt to open the door once more.
"What are you doing?" Evra called out to Sam as he continually knocked and pushed on the door. He brought over a plate of food for Nyx to eat for breakfast
"Nyx locked the door, I can't get in." Sam said. "Nyx, it's Sam and Evra, please open the door."
Evra's eyes softened. It didn't take a genius to figure out why. He walked up to the door, having Sam step aside.
He knocked on the door. "Nyx, if you're scared of that man last night, you don't have to worry about him, he's gone."
"Man? What man?" Sam asked, alarmed. "Did something happen to her? What happened?"
"I don't know, I don't think so." Evra said. "I think she was just scared of him, everyone is." he muttered.
Sam frowned. "How bad is he?"
"Let's just say you'd rather not cross paths with him." Evra said, giving him a vague warning before trying the door again. "Nyx, it's alright, we have food."
"Uh….Evra." Sam asked, a little spooked.
"Huh?" Evra looked at the blonde hair boy. He then followed his gaze all the way up to the small window and jumped.
Nyx had climbed onto the countertops and was just staring at Sam and Evra. She was positioned to where they could see her red eye eerily staring at them.
"Oh hello." Evra then greeted her with a soft smile. He held up the plate of food for her. "I hope you like eggs and bacon."
She didn't say anything to them as usual. But it was clear that as soon as she saw the food, her eyes were locked on it.
Yeah, she's definitely a cat. Evra declared, seeing how she's reacting. "I can bring the food in if you just open the door. I promise that man isn't here. Please?"
Nyx stared at Evra for a moment before she slunk away from the window.
The two heard movement within the trailer. It shook as weight was being shifted around. It creaked and groaned for a few moments before it stopped. They waited before they heard two knocks on the door.
Evra smiled a little before he reached the door handle and opened the door. However he was only able to open midway. "Huh?"
He poked his head in and saw she still had a lot of stuff piled up to the door, blocking it from opening all the way. "Nyx?" he looks around before looking right over towards the bed. She was sitting on her knees on her bed waiting for them. Cautiously keeping her distance.
"You...were busy last night." Evra said, entering the trailer. Being careful where he stepped. Sam soon followed in with his satchel of surprises.
"Wow, this is messy." Sam quipped, getting a glare from Evra as a result.
The snake boy shook his head before maneuvering over to the bed and set it down on the mattress. "Here you go." He said with a smile.
Nyx tilted her head to Evra before looking down at the food. However, instead of grabbing the fork that was on the plate, she used her bare hands and grabbed the scrambled eggs and shoved them in her mouth.
"Uh...I think we'll teach her table manners later." Sam suggested, whispering to Evra as they watched her devour the plate.
"So Sam, what did you bring?" Evra asked Sam.
"Oh right." the younger boy smiled before kneeling down on the floor and opened his bag. He dug around before pulling out a sketchbook, crayons and markers, pencils, building blocks, some comics he had stashed in his room. "My mom likes to draw a lot, she let me take a couple of things from her art room." He beamed.
That got Nyx to stop stuffing her face and look up at Sam. She tilted her head at him curiously before going back to eating.
"Little kids do like to draw." Evra said before looking at Nyx. "So what do you think? You wanna draw after you eat?" he asked her.
She didn't respond as she tore a piece of bacon between her teeth and proceeded to eat it.
Before Evra could come up with a plan to get her attention, a knock on the camper door startled the three.
Standing at the partially open door was none other than Mr. Tall.
"Evra, Samuel." Mr. Tall said with a low rumble in his voice but his lips weren't moving. "What are you two doing?"
Sam gulped when Mr. Tall called them by their names.
"Sorry, Mr. Tall, we weren't doing anything." Evra said. "Just trying to see if we can help her."
Mr. Tall poked his head in, looking at the boys and then looking at the little vampire before looking back at the other two. "You can play with Nyx later Evra, you have a special assignment. I assume you saw that there are more little people around the camp."
Evra nodded. "I've noticed. Also saw that Mr. Tiny was around."
"Yes," Mr. Tall said in a soft tone before sighing.
"I'll get it done, sir." Evra said, knowing what that meant.
The little people need to eat, he fed them before, not his favorite chore in the camp but it had to get done.
"Good lad." Mr. Tall said.
"Can I help?" Sam asked. "I'm a good help around! You won't find another helper around."
Mr. Tall looked at Sam for a moment.
"It'll get the job done faster."
"Uh...I don't think you want to help me with this chore. If you can't go near the Wolfman's cage, you don't want to do this job with me." Evra said. "It won't take long. Keep Nyx company." He then turned to Mr. Tall. "If that's okay."
"Yeah, Nyx, wanna spend some time together?" Sam asked the little girl with a smile.
Mr. Tall then looked at the little girl. He stared at her, trying to get any reading on her. He could still feel the unknown barrier blocking him from reaching her mind.
However, he could tell that she had let down her guard some around Sam and Evra.
"Just be careful." Mr. Tall said, saying both to Sam…. and Nyx vaguely before stepping back of the camper to let Evra leave.
"I'll be back real soon." Evra said to Nyx before leaving the two and closing the door.
Nyx watched the door closed and her eyes locked on Sam.
"Hi." Sam greeted her with a kind smile.
He then grabbed the art stuff and approached her. Nyx watched him closely but didn't move. She watched him set the stuff on the bed and dumped all the drawing utensils around.
"It's okay, watch me." Sam said, grabbing a blue colored pencil, flipped the sketch book to a clean page and began to color on it. She watched as she finished up her breakfast.
He continued to color the page with the blue before switching out for other colors. He kept coloring until she was able to see various shapes forming on the page.
"And there! See?" He put the pencils down and turned the sketchbook around and showed it to her.
Nyx just emptied her plate before she saw the drawing. It was of a blue sky. White puffy balls that represented clouds. A mass of green and a blob that meant to be a tree. Along with three renditions of Evra, Sam himself and Nyx. All of them were standing side by side and had big happy smiles on their faces.
"I'm not as good as my mom, but it's great, right!?" Sam then flips the page to an empty page before sliding the book to her.
He grabbed a random color crayon. "You hold it in your hand, and drag it on the page. Wanna try?"
Nyx stared at him for a moment before she reached out slowly with her left hand and took the crayon out of his hand.
"Go on!" Sam encouraged her.
She held the crayon in her hand. She brought it up to her nose and sniffed it. It had an odd smell, not very appeasing, which meant she couldn't eat it. Felt waxy. Nyx shifted her eyes from the crayon, up to Sam and back down on the paper.
The child tilted her hand as for a brief moment, some light in both of her eyes had returned. A flash of memory began playing.
It was blurry, but she could vaguely remember sitting down in front of a coffee table, having something similar in her hands and scattered about the place were pieces of scribbled art work of a past long gone. She remembered drawing trees, she looked up suddenly but she couldn't remember who she was looking up to and smiling.
"Nyx, what's wrong?" Sam asked her softly, seeing that she was hesitating.
Before he knew it, Nyx put the crayon down and then picked up a black color and began to draw on the page.
Sam tilted his head as she watched her scribbling, drawing an outline of a scene in black. Switching colors from browns, a large amount of red on the page, a splash of green and other various colors and back to black once more.. As he watched her draw, the color ran from Sam's face when he saw what she was drawing~
A couple of hours later, Evra comes back to the camper. Exhausted from having to hunt for dead animals for the little people, he wanted to check to see how Nyx and Sam were.
He came in with some snacks "Sorry that took so long." Evra said come in. Sam and Nyx were playing with their toys in silence. There were various sheets of paper torn from the sketchbook Sam brought over.
Sam was the first to look up. "Oh hey there." He said, trying to stay calm but clearly it was easy to see that Sam was spooked about something.
Nyx looked up after that and looked at the snake boy and gave him a little wave.
Evra looked between the two. "Okay, what happened?" He asked Sam.
"Uh..nothing bad," Sam responded with a whimper. In turn which confused Evra.
"Uh huh…" Evra looked around and looked at the papers scattered about. He could tell that they were various drawings. Some were Sam's - easy to spot the happy lively colors - and the others were Nyx's - all of them mostly dreaded looking colors drawing upon.
One caught his eye and he bent down and scooped the page up. It was the first drawing she drew. Evra didn't think his blood could run any colder with him being reptilian.
It was a dark scene. There was a door with blinds on it, and in front of that door were two beings on the ground. A man and a woman. Blood everywhere on the drawn floor. The woman was laying lifeless and had a gaping mouth wide open in horror, throat slashed. The man was holding on to the woman with his mouth on her neck.
A vampire drinking from his lifeless victim.
Evra stared at the artwork before looking at Nyx and back down at the drawing. That's when he saw there was something behind the door.
He could just make out Nyx in the drawing hiding behind the door, watching everything.