The Curse of Deadman's Forest (36 page)

Ian immediately reached up and grabbed the platform with his other hand, panting with the effort. “Ian!” Carl called, using his arms to balance on the branch. “I believe I can help you down as well! Just let go and I’ll try and catch you, mate!”

Ian assessed the branch Carl was teetering on. Theo was
safely moving her way along the branch, but he worried that his weight would be too much for Carl to hold while keeping his balance on the branch, and they’d likely both fall off as a result. “No,” he told him, straining to hold on to the platform. “Get Theo down, Carl! I’ll find my own way!”

Carl gave him a worried frown, but he sat down to straddle the branch again and inch his way along to help Theo to the rope ladder.

Ian looked back up and tried to get his leg over the top of the platform, but it was too high and he was too tired. He hung there for a moment and tried to think about what to do, when to his immense relief, the platform began slowly to pitch sideways. Ian hauled himself onto the plank and waited for the movement to stop.

The bridge sank lower and lower, and he heard the supports snap one by one away from the trees that held it. His relief was short lived, because as the section he was perched atop sank several meters slowly at first, it quickly picked up momentum until it crashed to the ground.

Ian fell on top of the planks with a teeth-rattling thud, and the tree to his right tumbled to the earth beside him—a large branch nearly taking his head off. When the dust settled, he peeked warily about at his surroundings and froze.

Looming menacingly in front of him was the giant form of Lachestia, fully free from her earthen cradle, looking positively terrifying. The sorceress was even taller than she’d appeared to him earlier, at least eight feet tall, with elongated bony arms that stuck out from her wormy-looking
torso as her grotesque head swiveled back and forth, as if searching for more victims.

Ian caught and held his breath as she hovered over him. He noted brown ooze dribbling down her cheeks, leaking out of her eye sockets. The sorceress’s lips were pulled back in a tight grimace, exposing her sharp pointed teeth, and she was making loud heaving sounds as if in great pain.

Her mother had obviously blinded her—but Ian wondered if, in doing so, the crone had enraged the sorceress beyond all reason. He thought that in her current furious state, she was likely far more dangerous than she had been when she could see.

Ian held very, very still as he watched her, terrified that she would sense where he was standing and drag him under the earth like she had the soldiers. The sorceress appeared to be listening carefully for any sound that might indicate another victim was nearby.

Lachestia resorted next to sniffing the air, and with great dread, he realized she had likely picked up his scent. He made an attempt to crouch low, hoping the branches of the fallen tree would hide him if she decided to reach out with her hands and feel about.

The sorceress made a grumbling sound and then she did stretch out her hands. She sniffed again and patted the ground a meter to Ian’s right. He considered running for it, but he knew she would hear his footfalls and swallow him up faster than he could get away.

He watched, wide-eyed and terrified, as she felt the
leaves of the tree, then the branches, then the planks of the wood nearby. Ian braced himself. She would find him at any moment, and his mind raced to come up with some way to distract her. Then, right in front of him, he spied a loose chunk of rock from one of the megaliths and carefully picked it up. The sorceress’s hand made a clapping sound as it connected with the edge of his section of platform, and Ian took the opportunity to whip the rock over the sorceress’s shoulder. It landed with a
whump
just behind her.

Faster than Ian would have thought possible, Lachestia whirled around and pounced on the rock. A hail of earth and debris exploded into the air as she disappeared with it underground. Ian wasted no more time watching her; he broke away from the platform and ran for all his life.

“Ian!” he heard voices calling. “Over here!”

Ian looked to his right and saw Theo, Carl, and Eva safe on the ground some twenty meters away, but before he could even react, there was a terrible rumbling behind him and the ground under his feet began to vibrate. It felt as if a train were approaching. Ian tried to lean into his stride to gain momentum, but the vibrations underfoot only intensified and his feet began to slip, slide, and sink.

He knew he was unlikely to make it to his friends, and even if he did, Lachestia would surely gobble all of them up. He had the macabre thought that this must be what Laodamia had been talking about in her last prophecy: how his end would come at Lachestia’s hand. He also remembered that the Oracle had prophesized that if he was killed,
then Theo would surely die, and Ian wasn’t about to let that happen.

So he changed course and began running away from the three terrified faces watching him in horror. “Get Theo to the portal!” he yelled at Carl, and didn’t wait for his friend’s response. Instead, he dashed back to the ravine they’d been kicked into earlier, willing himself not to slip and fall before he got there.

Racing straight toward the drop-off point, he increased his speed in the last few strides and launched himself high into the air, landing on the far rocky side without room to spare. He hit the ground hard and rolled, tumbling over onto his side only to see the mighty sorceress burst straight out of the earth behind him and slam headfirst into a rock on his side of the ravine. The impact was so hard that it rattled and shook the earth where Ian was lying. The sorceress shrieked in pain and her nails clawed their way down the side of the ravine while she cursed and growled and snarled in anger. Finally, she landed at the bottom, sending a flurry of sticks and leaves and dirt high up into the air.

Ian watched her for a moment before he decided to waste no more time. Scrambling to his feet, he began moving again, searching for a place to hide. Ahead he saw a large boulder and clambered up on top of it; then he held perfectly still, trying to keep from breathing too loudly. He could hear the sorceress thrashing about in the ravine, her growls and snarls like a crazed wild animal’s.

Then there were more digging sounds and Ian held his
breath. From the top of his boulder, he could see the earth all around swirl and ripple like water. He crouched down and waited with his heart thundering.

He knew that the evil sorceress was about to erupt out of the ground again; he just didn’t know when or where. And then, to make a desperate situation even worse, a gunshot echoed from nearby at almost the exact moment something hot buzzed right past his neck. At first he was too stunned to move, but another pop and a chunk of rock from the boulder kicked up into his face made the situation crystal clear—someone was shooting at him!

Ian moved to the lee side of the boulder and lowered himself over the edge, hoping it was enough to give him cover. He knew he couldn’t step on the ground without alerting Lachestia to his position, and he hated to think what she’d do to him when she sucked him into her earthly grave.

Another shot resounded across the forest and loud voices called back and forth to each other. Ian flattened himself as best he could against the far side of the boulder, but just behind him he heard a sucking sound. Glancing awkwardly over his shoulder, he saw to his immense horror that, smeared in mud and looking as frightful as anything Ian had ever seen, the sorceress was standing right beside him!

Terrified, Ian faced forward again, attempting to make himself as small as possible. He dared not breathe, but his heart was pounding so hard against his chest that he felt certain Lachestia would hear it.

He tried to calm himself, but his grip on the rock was
becoming more difficult to hold now that his palms were sweating. The sounds around him grew louder as more shouting echoed across the forest. The sorceress growled low in her throat, a noise that raised goose pimples along Ian’s arms.

“There!” someone shouted. “Over there!”

“Shoot it!” someone else commanded.

A loud bang echoed from the other side of the wood, and a bullet whizzed past Ian a mere instant before he heard a soft, wet thwack.

Lachestia screamed and the noise brought tears of pain to Ian’s eyes. It was so shrill and sharp he wanted desperately to cover his ears, but that would mean letting go of the boulder and he couldn’t do that.

Eventually, the sorceress stopped her screech and Ian felt a whirl of air as she moved quickly back underground. “What is happening?” a stern voice from the forest demanded and Ian could swear he recognized it.

“I … I … don’t know, Colonel. There is an entire battalion missing. Eighteen men and one tank came under attack somewhere across that ravine. One of the survivors claims that a creature rose up from underground and buried the men and the tank alive.”

“Where is this survivor?”

“We sent him back across the border, Colonel.”

“What are you shooting at?”

“There was someone over there by that boulder,” said the soldier. “We assumed it was the enemy and opened fire.”

There was a pause, then he replied, “I see no bodies,
Lieutenant.” And with that, Ian heard the cracking of twigs and leaves as footsteps came through the underbrush. Ian felt his fingers slipping, and he tried to hold on, but he had to reach up and adjust his grip on the boulder. One of the men coming toward him must have seen it, because the footsteps halted and the German colonel shouted, “You there! Come out from behind that boulder with your hands up!”

Ian was shaking with both fatigue and fright. He knew that if he let go of the rock, the sorceress would pounce. He also knew that if he showed himself to the Germans, he would be shot. “Come out now or we will open fire!” added the colonel.

Ian closed his eyes. He was out of options. He would be either shot or sucked down into the ground by the sorceress. The only decision now was selecting which way to die.

After thinking for a brief moment, he considered that being shot might get the deed over with more quickly and perhaps even be less painful. So with great regret he pulled himself up on top of the boulder and stood with his arms raised.

Below him glowered the colonel with about twenty men, including the sergeant who had spared his life just the day before. The colonel seemed to realize this as well, because after taking one long look at Ian, he turned to the sergeant, raised his pistol, and shot his own man.

A hushed, stunned silence fell on the entire group as the soldier fell face-first to the ground with a loud
whump!

The colonel swiveled, his gun still raised as he pointed it up at Ian. “This time,
I
shall make certain you die, spy!”

Ian closed his eyes, shaking from tip to toe atop the boulder, his arms still pitifully raised above his head. His heart continued to hammer away and he tried to think of something peaceful in his final moment before death, but nothing other than the angry rat face of the colonel filled his mind.

As Ian waited to die, he quickly became aware that the shot that was supposed to kill him had not yet come. He wondered what the German colonel was waiting for, so he risked opening one eye to take a peek.

But when he looked, he saw only a large hole in the earth where the colonel had been a moment before and the stunned pale faces of the soldiers standing nearby. And then pandemonium ensued.

Some men shouted and ran; others pointed their rifles at the ground, which Ian noticed was once again swirling; still more men trembled but otherwise did not move. And then, one by one, the soldiers began to disappear. Lachestia claimed the German soldiers who’d been standing closest to the colonel first, and moved her way outward, attacking each man in turn.

Ian stood on his rock, petrified, as the muffled cries of the victims filled the surrounding forest with panic and fear. He saw some soldiers throw their rifles down as they ran. Others shot directly into the earth but were still unable to get away; nearly the entire battalion was quickly and efficiently
buried alive, save for the man shot by the colonel himself. Besides Ian, that soldier was the only body who remained aboveground.

With some guilt, Ian focused his attention on the prone figure lying just a few meters away from him. He couldn’t tell if the soldier was still breathing, but he knew he had to find out. So when the earth rumbling around him moved off into the distant forest in search of two fleeing soldiers, Ian slid very carefully to the ground and crept forward on tiptoe to the soldier’s side.

Kneeling down, he carefully rolled the man onto his back and found him conscious but clearly in pain. He’d suffered a gunshot to the left side of his abdomen, and Ian doubted he’d live more than an hour or two without medical attention. “I’m going to get help,” he whispered to the man. “I know someone who might be able to heal you.”

The soldier gripped his arm. “The curse is loose!” he gasped. “Leave me! Save yourself. Get out of this forest while you can!”

Ian, however, was not to be dissuaded. This soldier had risked his own life to save them, and he felt indebted to the man. “Stay here,” he instructed. “I’ll be back soon.”

But the soldier would not let him go. “No!” he insisted. “The curse will kill you if you come back!”

“I’ve no choice,” Ian told him. “You saved our lives. I’m not leaving you to die here alone.”

The sergeant was hissing through his teeth, obviously in a great deal of pain. “Help me to my feet,” he whispered.

Ian eyed him doubtfully, but the soldier pulled on Ian’s
shoulder, determined to stand. The two of them got to their feet and, with the sergeant leaning heavily on Ian, made their way out of the small clearing.

Ian managed to pull the sundial from his pocket, and saw with some surprise that the dial still showed a shadow across the surface. “Sundial,” he whispered, “show the way to Theo, Carl, and Eva.” The shadow did not choose a new direction; instead, it thickened slightly and began to pulse. With careful, slow steps, Ian and the wounded German made their way closer to Ian’s friends.