The blackness turn to red as the sunlight shines on my closed eyes. I feel heat on my back and I hear the crackling of embers burning on an open fire. I sit up quickly turning to face the fire and again only to duck my head over the log I sit by to be sick. The shock of the torture forced ill health to show its self. I look to John sat by a fallen tree staring at me with a slight inane grin on his face.
“Heh, well... I am glad to see you survived the second round...just”
John offers me a drink of water as I tell him what had happened to me before appearing here in the small glade.
“Ah, right!” He says shaking his finger briefly, “You should never attack it's pet, it – finds that sort of action galling”
He then slaps his hand down on his knee saying with a smile, “I can not believe that you found the cottage. I am rather surprised, tell me...did you...find my old diary while you was in their”
“Diary?!” I reply after drinking some well needed water.
“I will take that as a 'no' then. I found the cottage years ago and I used it for a refuge from Pythose for a while” John takes a sip of water and lifts up an old ruck sack from behind the fallen tree sitting it beside him. “While I was there I kept a day by day diary of my research into the old myth of the forest so that I could try and find a way to escape”
He takes out a tatty old leather book he found in the cottage and starts to search through the pages. When he finds a specific page he shows it to me pointing a picture on the right page.
“There was said to be a key in the that cottage that should be able to end all of this. However, no matter how much I searched that decrepit old cottage I just could not find it”
The page shows a depiction of a black skeleton key in the shape of burning flames with an inscription carved down the stem 'Zoluuky'. John says that he does not know what the inscription reads and before I can tell him what the inscription means he asks me if I had come across anyone in the cottage. I tell him the mummified girl that attacked me upon her release and suddenly his smile turns to sadness as he lowers his head.
He explains that he was not the only one to enter the forest upon his capture and that there were several other with him. A small class of eleven including him had entered the forest for an archaeological lesson on the ruins of the cottage. I tell John that she had perished after falling into the cellar but I do not tell him the shadowed figure that I had seen.
“Goldilocks... Her real name is Christina Watson. We named her after goldilocks because they shared redeeming feature, Golden curly hair.
Five of the ten class mates died in the initial attack by Pythose and the other four were unaccounted for ahead of taking refuge within the old cottage. Christina began to change after only a hand full of hours and so John had no choice but to lock her in that bedroom as he did not have the courage to kill her himself.
“She changed so quickly, something changed within her and I wish I knew what it was so that I could help her... hour after hour did I hear her beat against that door...”
For a while there is nothing but the sound wind blowing through the forest and the glade. I hold out the tatty leather book for John the grab but he tells me to keep hold of it as he is stuck with the glade and is unable to carry on his search to escape. He has hope that I may find that key so that I am to escape and hopefully he can too.
YOU ARE READING
Forest Nightingales - The Forest Wants to Play
FantasyLewis Nightingale is late coming out of work and so on the way home he makes a decision and brave the forest he has feared since he were a small boy. But a cruel spirit that lies in wait within the forests dark canopy is alured by the fears and hope...
