Chapter 12

Chase held onto her tiny frame tightly to his chest and let out ragged breaths almost bordering on sobs of relief. His heart was pounding relentlessly but the faint hum coming from her chest was all he could focus on. He checked to see if she was alright, there weren't any obvious injuries but it was hard to tell when she was covered in mud. There were some cuts on her hands but he didn't know which blood was hers and which were from the deer.

He lifted her out of the hole with him and stepped out into the sun. His body was still wet from swimming in the river and sprinting after the deer made him shiver from the wind chill. He brought her over to the river to try and wake her up. After a few small sprinkles of water she started groaning and rubbing her eyes, he helped Elie clean her face enough so that she could see properly.

He grabbed the blood stained spear, slung Elie over his shoulder and walked back to where they had left their stuff behind. Although Elie was awake she seemed far too dazed and tired to do anything other than let herself be carried.

Chase was fully alert, his eyes and ears scanned everything in the vicinity and his gaze would linger in the direction the deer ran off to. There was a slight uneasiness he felt at not being able to kill the deer. In his desperation he had used the bow as a club and managed to scare off the deer, but not without having to sacrifice his handiwork. It had a strange kink towards the end of the bow, like a crooked smile.

After he got back to their belongings he laid his clothes under Elie's head before sitting down to catch his breath. He swam and sprinted as fast as his body allowed, and in return he felt the weakness that followed disregarding himself.

"Dad, is the deer angry I cut its tongue off?"

"Probably. He's also mad at me for giving him a third nostril." He gestured exaggeratedly.

Elie giggled a bit before rolling onto her side. She tried to take shallow breaths to avoid sparking any pain in the bruise on her back.

"Are you ok? Did you get hurt anywhere?" Chase said, concerned that he had missed something.

Elie made a grabbing motion towards a spot on her back, prompting Chase to pull back her tunic. Hidden beneath the cloth was a gnarly bruise just under her right shoulder blade. Compared to the bruise on her leg it was larger, more red, more raw. It seemed like a web spanning from the small of her back to her armpit.

For a moment Chase just stared at it, a faint chill slowly permeating his body. The cold realisation that Elie wouldn't be able to walk along with him struck. If he had a similar bruise would he be able to move? For how long? A few minutes? An hour?

The more Chase thought the more he tensed up, contemplating a way out. After a few minutes of listening to Elie take a breath, reach a threshold of pain, and slowly exhale he muttered to himself, "All of it..."

Chase started rummaging through the bag he had brought and started unpacking everything, he ruthlessly pruned all the things they brought along.

"Dad?"

He set aside tools, small items of convenience, anything he could do to reduce their load. He cut off a chunk of meat from what they had left and offered it to Elie.

"Eat, you need to recover."

Elie took the dried meat and ate it despite her stomach's protests. She watched as her father threw away weeks of work to make enough space in the bag for her to get into.

Another bite, let nothing go to waste. Swallow through the pain. Do not cry.

By the time Chase had readied the bag for Elie, there was hardly anything left inside but food. He held onto only his knife, makeshift blade and spear.

After getting changed and strapping Elie to his back, he continued on, looking for a place they could stay for the night to recover and more importantly, hide from the herd. He made his way along the same path until he arrived at the hollowed tree. The light of dusk painted the leaves and made the sap bleed red. When he looked along the path it seemed to stretch on into the horizon. There was no other shelter in sight.

He peered into the cavern of roots but couldn't make anything out in the dark. He was a tad apprehensive but there wasn't much of a choice, plus, the foul smell coming from it would likely mask their scent.

He clambered down and felt around for a good sleeping spot, but it looked like they were going to sleep rough tonight. He gently placed Elie on her side and wrapped his arms around her, she seemed to fall asleep as soon as her head touched the ground.

Chase felt an intense relief lying down. Every muscle in his body ached with his constant efforts to keep them alive, an uphill battle as far as the eye could see. The fatigue was starting to accumulate, but he couldn't afford to take a rest. Every day that they survived was a lucky day. He ran a hand over his face and felt the hair that was starting to grow out. When they first arrived he had a faint stubble, but now his face was covered in the first makings of a beard.

He remembered how Elian would be torn between clean shaven and a full beard. She would say that a clean shave was the nicest to touch but a beard looked the best, but deep down he could tell that she liked the clean shaved more. He remembered her telling him how it felt like she was kissing a goat when he grew a beard, before giving him another kiss. The only thing she absolutely hated was stubble, it was to the extent that the only poem he had ever received from her was about the folly of growing hedgehog hair on his face.

There was a tightness in his chest that crushed him until all he could feel was the faint whistle of air making its way into his lungs. He lay on his side with quiet tears streaming down his face.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He whispered, as he remembered his last moments with her. His only relief being the rhythmic rising and falling of their little Elie's chest as she slept.

"I'm sorry Elie."

He was walking along the river in the moonlight, little Elie holding his hand. They were looking for something. No, someone. They kept walking along the riverbank, the river looked so straight, like a road built in the city.

He heard a murmur in the trees, "I'm here." It was the voice he was looking for, the one he had abandoned. Chase would finally be able to see her again, he turned to Elie in excitement and noticed that the warmth of her little hand had disappeared.

His heart was beating loud enough to make his vision distort. He finally spotted Elie on the other side of the river, she was looking at him. Unmoving. Behind her were dark figures, they had no distinguishable shape but had teeth and claws and eyes, or none of them at all.

A small deer with a scarred face gazed at him from the opposite riverbank, it sneered and licked its lips with what remained of its tongue.

"Behind you! Come here!" He started running towards Elie, wading in the river trying to reach her, he dove into the inky black water. In the darkness he could feel the water envelop him. His only thoughts being, to get to the other side. But his arms would not push him forward and his legs refused to kick, he just floated away in the current, the water taking him further down.

The darkness was pricked by a needle and as if the water was a lie the pressure he felt on his body disappeared. Elian approached him, glowing with a halo of white light around her from inside the inky black. She had a faint smile on her freckled face and each strand of her hair was silk against black velvet.

"Come to me, you're safe now."

The Chase who was reaching out to her stopped. That wasn't his wife. It wore her skin and flesh, spoke in her voice, and gave him the same loving gaze. But he knew what it really was.

"Play along."

The same soothing voice. His back was covered in sweat and he shook as he obeyed the command, the closer he got the more his heart pounded, it felt like he would die. He hesitantly wrapped his arms around the stranger as if they were a whipping post, and he was next to receive punishment.

It was a warm embrace that enveloped him, but all he could do was shiver as he the hands of that... thing, tightened around his back.

"Welcome home."

"It's... good to be back."

His eyes snapped open and he found himself looking at the sprawling roots above him. In his arms, made of fine white roots, was the form of this wife. He gulped. His back was soaked with sweat and stuck to his skin, making him feel like he was bound tightly in a cocoon of some sort.

Chase tugged the hair-like roots off himself to one side without making too much noise, it was very early, the sky visible between the roots was still a shade of dawn.

He took a step out from beneath the tree to clear his head and the faint breeze gave him the impression that there was ice pressed against his back. He was taking a deep breath to calm himself down when suddenly he stopped and didn't make a sound.

He looked around in the dim morning light for the river but couldn't seem to find it. Instead of the cliff he was expecting there was some shrubbery. He listened for the sound of trickling water but was met with the swaying of trees and grass.

He couldn't quite make it out, but whatever direction he looked in was like a clearing in a forest. There was a ring of trees around them and not a trace of river nor rocky cliff to be seen. Chase went back inside and grabbed his spear, patiently waiting for the sun to come up.

He locked eyes with something in the dark, he wasn't able to see it properly but there was the vague silhouette of a head and shoulders before the treeline, as he focused he could almost see the shape of a person with what little light came from the sky. He instinctively raised his spear.

"Hello?" His voice broke. When he got no reply he started to slowly shuffle back under the roots.

Whatever was looking at him wasn't alone, instead standing side by side with other silhouettes. He waited there with trembling hands, his bone white knuckles gripping the shaft of his spear.

The stories of mad men that lived in the forest started to surface in his mind, people that spoke to the wind and ate the flesh of their brothers. He remembered the time a hunter managed to escape from the forest after four years of wandering and returned to a loving family, only for him to scream in terror at the sight of them. He would scream until his voice gave out and he spat blood, whenever they approached he would run for the hills. Chase had heard the news that he had murdered his brother and his brother's family a few days after. The image of his body hanging in the square with a large grin on his face still made him shiver in disgust.

Now that they came across others Chase didn't blink, even if his eyes started to sting and water from the wind he kept them open. Neither side moved, a strange silent stalemate was formed where no one side was willing to look away for even a second.

He slowly nudged Elie with his foot to wake her up. She jolted up and immediately looked around whilst lying down, before gingerly sitting up. She grabbed her bone knife seeing that Chase was staring out of their shelter holding his spear. But when she got up to take a look at what was outside she grew confused.

"They're not... real people." She said calmly, trying to clamber out of the hole.

Chase stopped her and went out to see what she was talking about and soon found as he got closer that there were dozens of figures that were holding hands in a circle around the tree. The closer he looked the more relieved and disturbed he was. All of them were made of ivy, twisting and coiling into the shape of people. Some were laughing and some were focused on their footwork, but every one of them had gaping holes where their eyes should have been, the rough ivy lost all the details in their face, giving them the impression that they all had the same appearance.

Elie hobbled along after him, trying to take shallow breaths as she went. Chase was uneasy, although it was disturbing, it's not like any harm had been done. The ring of warped figures must have been the work of the dream demon.

"Elie, did you have a dream last night?"

Elie nodded hesitantly, "Did you have people dancing in your dream?" he asked.

She gave another uncertain affirmation, "It was a festival? I can't remember which one."

Chase felt the uneasiness from before intensify, "Was there someone that talked to you in the dream? What did they say?"

"I can't... I can't remember. There was singing... they said..." But no matter how hard Elie tried it felt like the words eluded her. Chase's brows furrowed in contemplation.

"If anyone ever speaks to you in your dream, tell me exactly what they say. There might be a demon in your dreams."

Elie, became pale as a sheet when she heard this and nodded furiously only to wince at the sudden movement. Chase helped her back towards the tree, as the sun grazed along the nape of his neck he lingered on the strangeness of it all. It was almost as if he could see himself becoming one of those mad men in the forest, just the thought of it gave him goosebumps.

As they walked he tried to figure out if there was water nearby, if he had known this would happen he would have prepared more. No, it would have been thrown away with the rest. He thought. Frustration welled up within him until it blinded him, he covered his eyes to ease himself, and after a few long breaths he uncovered his eyes.

Strangely a blinding glimmer of light was coming from inside their shelter. He followed it inside and the musk of rot that filled the shelter hit him. But this time, he knew where it came from. He stopped Elie from coming in and told her to wait outside, they were going to get moving soon anyway, he would just grab their stuff and they would start marching.

When he turned back to look in the shelter a trembling took over his body, he shivered so violently that it was like the twitching and spasming of the diseased. There was an almost undeniable urge to abandon everything in the shelter but his legs were so shaky he couldn't move.

There was a body. It's flesh had receded and the skin hung taut against the bone, so much so that he was essentially looking at a skeleton. The eyes were shrivelled up inside the skull as if they had been squeezed dry. The skeleton wore polished plate armour and a helm with the crest of the noble house that ruled the neighbouring region, a warrior sent to wipe them out. Along its forearm was a shield with the same crest.

The thing that made his legs give away was the snaking roots all over the body, tightly binding it to the earth. One of them even burrowed into his other eye socket and into his skull. The chest plate was warped in the places the roots rested on them, as if crushing him in their grasp.

But what made him tremble was the impression of a person lying beside them, holding their hand. The shield of the knight seemed to cover and protect the eerily human roots. Slowly being strangled whilst dreaming of your happiest moments, the hand that rests on your chest so lovingly could bind you to the earth forever.

Chase felt light headed as he tried taking breath after breath to calm himself. A small voice in his head whispered.

It could be your turn at any time.

Elie was growing bored of waiting for Chase to come out with their stuff so she stared at the ring of people with nervous eyes until she settled on one of the ivy figures. A sense of familiarity washed over her as her gaze lingered on that one.

She saw a face in the three pointed leaves and hairy bark. A young boy with an unusual combination of dark hair and sky blue eyes that she had never seen before in their village. He smiled so genuinely it bordered on coercive, it was not a real smile but it looked so heartfelt that for a moment you would do anything they asked.

Elie stood transfixed on the figure.

"You are the dream demon...?"

She waited for a response. A few seconds, a minute, more?

The ivy figure moved, "Well aren't you a clever girl." It grinned.

Elie's face went blank for a moment, her pupils dilated and body relaxed. A moment later she returned to normal. Elie looked around whilst waiting for Chase to come out with their stuff so she stared at the ring of people with nervous eyes until she settled on one of the ivy figures.

It was like she had forgotten something.

Probably nothing important.