Witchling (Chronicles of Witchood) (3 page)

A twig cracked to my right. I spun around. There was no one there. Not even a flash or a shadow. I lifted my hand and pushed my hair out of my face. I gasped as a figure appeared in front of me.

“You!” I said as I took a step back.

“What are you doing here?”
he asked, his voice low and dangerous.

I stared at him, half bathed in the sunlight, glorious as a young earthbound god, beautiful in
every way, from his flawless skin, clean cut face, strong torso and eyes that were the color of emeralds. I could have swooned, but a part of my brain chided me for my dramatic stupidity. Yes, the guy was definitely a looker, but I shouldn’t allow him to have such an effect on me, not that I had much choice. He had appeared out of nowhere and stood over me with his strong body.

The mysterious boy turned his head slightly to the
side, lowered his chin in a questioning manner, and demanded an answer with his eyes.

“I lost my phone.”

“It’s not here.”

I blinked. My tongue continued to work despite the sudden blankness I felt. His presence confounded my senses.

“It must be here. I already searched my house and the lake. This is the only place left.”

“You should go home.”

I noticed how he did it again, his alluring eyes locked on mine as the strong urge to follow his instructions took over me. I tore my face away. The spell between us broke and he took a step back.

“Aren’t you at all afraid?” he asked. There was something cryptic about his question.
I wasn’t sure if he was speaking about himself, about the forest or about the fact that I am alone in the forest.

“Nothing ever happens at Angels Fall,” I said to him. “You don’t look familiar at all. You know what? Let’s start again, from the beginning.”

The mysterious boy frowned. I extended out my hand.

“Hi,” I said, “I’m Amy Ryans. What’s your name?”

The mysterious boy pursed his lips. He stared at me and refused to accept the handshake.

“Go home,” he said.
“And you shouldn’t be talking to strangers.”

I lowered my arm and sighed. “Okay, I’m going to find my phone and if you don’t like that, I’m sorry.”

I turned around and trudged away from him. He was strange, his broody mood irritated me and if not for his good looks, my opinion of him would have been worse.

“Wait,” he said. “It’s not that way.”

I stopped. “It’s not that way?” I repeated, my voice high and accusing. “What do you mean, it’s not that way?” I spun around to face him again but he had disappeared. The mysterious boy moved like a ghost and he could not be seen anywhere. My eye widened with surprise but is quickly replaced with confusion. On the spot where he stood was my phone, its bright florescent case on the ground.

I went to it and picked up. My skin pricked as I felt someone watching me again, from the trees, invisible to the naked eye. I l
ooked in the direction I felt I’m being watched from, but found nothing.

My phone rang and I jumped at the sudden sharp burst of sound. It was Karen.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m at the lake’s forest. Why?”

“What are you doing there? Anyway, you can te
ll me later, but first, come to the hospital.”

“Hospital? What’s wrong?” I didn’t really
need to ask the question. “What happened?”

“Lydia’s hurt.”
 

Chapter 3

Lydia’s phone cut off before I could get any more out of her. She must have run out of minutes again. I did not loiter about in the forest and went right back to the parking lot where I had left my bike.

The
journey on bike to the hospital was at least forty minutes away and I looked forward to the day that I will be able to drive to places. I must have broken my own record as I managed to shave off about fifteen minutes by the time I reached the hospital doors. I rushed in and searched for Karen but she was not in the foyer.

I
dialled her number and pressed my phone to my ear.

“Pick up,
Karen,” I urged.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at home. What’s up? Are you ok? You sound flustered.”
Karen sounded oblivious and I began to suspect if it was some sort of bad prank.

“What are you doing at home? What about Lydia?”

“Lydia? Lydia’s at home, isn’t she? I don’t know. She left like an hour ago.”

“But you just called me,” I told her.
“You said she was at the hospital.”

Karen
slipped into a moment of confused silence. “No I didn’t.” I could almost feel her frown through the phone. “I haven’t touched my phone until you called.” Karen paused for a moment. “Rick’s home. Do you want us to pick you up?”

Before I could answer, an emergency crew rushed in a girl on a bed. My heart sank as I recognised her face through the blood and
shredded clothes.

“Oh god,” I breathed.

“What’s wrong? What is it? Amy?”

“Lydia’s at the hospital. She looks mauled by something.”

I hung up on Karen and followed the paramedics.

“What happened?”

One of the men turned his face and looked at her.

“She’s my friend,” I explained.

“Jess, this girl says she knows her.”

One of the nurses broke away from the group.
She was slim with a mousey face and pixie cut hair. “Oh good,” she said to me. “What’s her name? And do you know her parents contact number?”

“Yes. Yes I do.”

“Alright. I’ll be right with you after this. Can you wait outside by the door?”

They reached a room and Jess stopped to speak to me.

“Yes. What happened?”

“She was attacked. A man brought her in. What’s your friend’s name?”

“Lydia Briewood.”

“Do you know if she has any known allergies to anything?”

“No. Is she going to be alright?”

“Jessica!” a man’s voice called for her attention. I understood.

“Go. Go help her. I’ll stay right here.”

Jess disappeared into the room just as my phone rang again.
It was Karen. She was calling me back. I answered it.

“Amy? What’s going on? You were cut off.”

“Yeah. I hung up on you. It’s Lydia. It’s definitely Lydia. She’s half covered in blood and there were marks on her neck.”

“Oh god. I’ll be right there.”

I sat down on the seat in front of the emergency room, unable to move as my limbs froze with fear. I wanted someone to hold me, to wrap their arms around my shoulders and tell me that everything was going to be alright, that Lydia would be alright.

The strangeness of the event made me think of the mysterious boy in the forest. My stomach turned as a part of me sensed that he had something to do with it, though I couldn’t explain how or why or what made me think in such a way. On the surface, it seemed impossible, but the phone call by the fake Karen had led her here to the hospital, just as
the paramedics rolled in Lydia.

I looked down at my phone, its black glossy screen stared back at me.
Nothing made sense. Perhaps I was simply going insane.

Karen
arrived about fifteen minutes after I hung up on her. Rick was with her and he only had to take one look at my bewildered face to know that something bad happened. I threw my arms around my remaining best friend and held back the tears that wanted to burst forth and drench my face. The images of the wounds were still fresh in my mind. They looked as a large animal had swiped its paw across her neck and shredded her skin raw.

“What happened?” Rick asked.

“I don’t know. I was just down by the lake looking for my phone when Karen rang and told me that Lydia was in the hospital. I came as quickly as I could and then Lydia was rolled in. There was so much blood on her, Karen.”

Karen sat me back down on the seats. We had already established that she didn’t call me.

“Have you called her parents?” Rick asked.

I shook I my head. I was too distracted and
did not have the mind to think about her parents.

“You two stay here. I’ll deal with it,” said Rick. He went down the hallway with his car keys
jingling in his pocket. When he was out of sight, Karen placed her palm on my forehead.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“You feel hot, like feverish hot. Maybe you should get checked out.”

“No. I’m fine. Really. It’s Lydia we should be worried about.”

Karen and I stayed for what seemed like forever. Rick returned with two cans of soda and gave one each to us.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You look like you need it. You look pale. Do you want anything else?”

I shook my head as I cranked open the can. The soda fizzed and bubbled as forced it down my throat.

Jess eventually came out of the room again.

“She’ll be alright,” she reported, “and you are…”

“I’m Rick and this is my sister, Karen. We’re friends of Lydia’s. Her parents aren’t home. I’ve already tried calling them and I don’t know their cell phone number.”

“Oh. Maybe the receptionist might be able to look it up for me in the medical database,” said Jess.

“Do you know what happened to her?” I asked.

“She was attacked. I don’t know by what, but from the looks of the wound, it’s pretty bad and by something big, like a bear.”

“But there are no bears in Angels Fall,” said Karen. “That’s impossible.”

“That’s what I thought too,” said Jess, “but those gashes, well, they’re definitely not inflicted by another person.
It’s too raw and animal light.”

“The man that dropped her off,” I started, “did he say anything?”

Jess shook her head. “He disappeared. I sent one of the other nurses to find him but he’s seemed to have left the hospital.”

“What did he look like?”

“Tall, short dark blonde hair, early to mid twenties.”

I blinked at the description. It sounded too much like the man I
kept seeing in my dreams and the one in the forest.

“Amy,” said Karen as she looked on at me with worry.

I blinked again. “Yeah?” I closed my eyes and shook my head.

“Hey, don’t worry,
” said Jess, “your friend is going to be alright. In fact, you can go in and see her if you want, but she won’t be able to talk because she’s asleep. We rolled her out through the back door and she should be in room 315B, and oh, before you go, one of you will have to stay behind and fill in the forms.”

“I’ll go,” said Rick. “You girls go and check on Lydia.”

“Are you sure?” I said.

“Yeah. If there’s anything I can’t fill out, I’ll give one you girls a call.”

Rick went with Jess towards the reception area while Karen and I went to Lydia. We found our friend covered in white bandages, her face bruised and her neck scarred. Karen hands covered her mouth as she gasped. She hadn’t expected it to be this bad. We held onto each other as we went to Lydia’s beside, and as Jess had said, our friend was asleep, except she looked like a wounded princess, her dark long hair draped over her shoulders, her face oddly frozen into an expression of serenity by the drugs injected into her system.

“What would do such a thing?” Karen whispered.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “But I’ll find out, no matter what, I’ll get to the bottom of this.” I went over to Lydia’s bed and took up her fragile hand in mine. “I promise.”

~

Lydia’s parents were nowhere to be found and there was no one to pay for her medical bills. My dad decided to split the costs with Karen’s dad as they try to figure out what happened to the Briewoods. They disappeared without a trace, nothing moved from their house and everything seemed the same and in its place, except for the two adults that call themselves parents. No one saw them leave town either.

Lydia had no recollection of the attack a
nd the sheriff couldn’t get anything out of her.

It was a week after Lydia’s attack when I decided to go back to the forest. The mysterious boy certainly didn’t go to Angels Fall High, I was sure of
it, and if anyone knew anything about the attack, it would be him. It was a gut feeling I had that could not be explained. I would have told Karen, but she already thought I was half-insane with all my strange recurrent nightmares that seemed to have gone away ever since my encounter with the mysterious boy in the forest. I didn’t know what he was, except that he wasn’t normal.

The lake was completely empty and I went by myself to the forest. The smell of the pine trees touched my nose as I walked beneath their
cone-laden canopy. I walked without any sense of direction or aim. Eyes watched me from the branches and not even the crickets dared made a sound.

“I know you’re here,” I called out. “Show yourself.”

As stupid as I was feeling at the time, a good chunk of my heart told me that I was not as silly as I wanted to believe I am. I could feel something in the air, although I did not know what it was. I half expected the mysterious boy to make an appearance but he never showed up. I walked about in the forest, keeping to the tracks at times, and wondering away from it every now and then until I discovered another, until the sun was almost gone.

I should have felt scared but I wasn’t.

“I know you’re there!”

I kept walking, until I found myself truly lost. Luckily, I had come prepared and borrowed one of Luke’s compasses from his room. He got them for
Boy Scout, not that he did much scouting nowadays. My phone rang. I looked at the name. It was Karen.

“Hey,” I said, “what’s up?”

“Where are you? Your parents just called to find out if you were at my place. I’ve been trying to call you for the past twenty minutes. Do you know how much trouble you’re in?”

Karen has always been the motherly one of the group and she sounded very much like one
, too.

“I guess there isn’t much reception out here.”

“Where’s here?”

“I’m at the lake, in the forest.”

“What on earth are you doing there?”

I hesitated but knew that I couldn’t keep it from Karen any more.
“I’ll explain when I get back. I know it’s going to sound crazy and maybe it is, but there’s just something I need to check out.”

“It’s not about that weird dream of yours, is it?”

“No. Well, yes, sort of, look, I saw him, Karen, the man in my dream and there’s someone else involved and I think he can help me.”

“He? What is this? Since when have you been keeping secrets from me?”
Karen continued to speak but her voice trailed off as the signal strength died. I looked at my phone and saw that it was almost six o’clock.

The sun was almost gone and as night approached, I decided to head back. I took out Luke’s compass from my pocket and frowned. The magnetic needle spun around
haphazardly, as if it was confused. I gave the device a tap but it didn’t help in the matter.

I half screamed with surprise when I lifted my face. The mysterious boy finally gave in and made an appearance. I sighed with relief.

“Go home,” he ordered.

“Look, you can be broody later, I’m here to see you.”

The mysterious boy, with his dark hair slicked back, bright pale skin and handsome face starred at me, somewhat perplexed that I had chosen to seek him out. His face changed to a pained expression, filled with regret and at the same time bewilderment. I couldn’t quite understand how a boy like him could muster up so many morbid emotions at once.

“My friend, Lydia, she was attacked.”

“So?”

“
You’re going to help me.”

The mysterious boy lifted his eyebrows with slight amusement. “You don’t even know me.”

“No I don’t, but I know that you know what happened to Lydia.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I just know.”

“Go home, Amelia.”

I stood my ground, now that I finally found him, I wasn’t about to leave. As stupid as my actions seemed, I felt uncannily safe in his presence.

“Just snap her neck and get it over and done with.”