The Nightmare Incarnate: The Beginning

Samuel Martin had written so many entries, and had started out so gaily, that it was certainly hitting a chord with her when his tale took a twisted turn for the worst,  even as Vera packed the most minimal of supplies to prepare for the long road ahead.  The little nomad crossed her arms, and looked out the window with an unusually heavy exhale of the breath. The distance would be great despite being a proud owner of a motorcycle, made by the hands of non-magic users and crafted by the affection of artists. She would pack an obscene amount of wet wipes and some essentials for the trip she cringed from.

“I don’t know where I’m going,” she mumbled, as she looked attentively at the nothing, “but I’m going. Are you coming with me to the inconspicuously named Spooky Forest? Going once, going twice!”

That was an instant no, she gathered.

She grabbed her little backpack, with her fingers tightening around the doorknob. “ Oh, peas no, you say? Why are you bean like this? You must really not carrot about me at all. It probably is for the best if I just go on this crazy expedition alone. We can’t both be sent back home in a body bag. ” Vera morbidly explained, leaving her cozy sanctuary for a more familiar way of life. She was a seasoned traveler in spite of demeanor.

The hotness of the sun bearing down on her had been torturously draconian for days, and it was here and now a brisk and inky night. The old silvery moon was abounding and generous in the queerly starless cobalt sky, and the plant life as well as the ancient gnarled roots of the trees  appeared beastly;  much more so in the enigmatic light. The objective of stepping into the grubby jaws of the forest any sooner than she would have liked to repulsed her. The chance of perhaps having her heart gorged out by the ghost of the ill-fated Mary Martin, or the chance of simply going in and coming out a mangled gourmet meal for the carnivorous inhabitants of the thicket, had the aspects of, in the fried, almost always baked, deepest dark recesses of her mind, similarly ending in her demise.

She willed herself to park on the outskirts of the forest by the most savage plantlife she could find and took advantage of such lushness to conceal her motorcycle. There, between the flourish of topiaries, she stood dumbly, dressed in a black top and cargo pants with pockets galore, her face creased in grave consideration on the darkness before her, the streak of illumination from her flashlight pointing to the cancer-infested bark, as a small harmless animal clung to it with all the likeness of a statue. The closer she was to the lizard, the clearer it was for her to determine its passing. “Rest in peace, little guy.” Vera whispered, undeterred by its death as she sympathetically pried it off the wood and buried it in the soil where a dead flower conveniently rested beside it. She gently pushed it on top of the burial site and awkwardly clasped her hands together with the flashlight wedged between them.

Vera was over and above stunned by the revelation with which this run-of-the-mill lacrima voice recorder purred its initiation from her backpack without assisted activation, in the witching hour at night and in that eerie quietude, to reveal the documentation of yet another victim. The rune knight in the recording spoke first. Walden looked anxiously over her shoulder; shook off her backpack like it was a poisonous spider of some sort; cackled the words, ”Oh, you must love the predictability of this. Do you suppose I’m just going to call out the inevitable ‘hello?’ and seal my doom? In your dreams, haunted entity.” and looked hard at it, giving the thing an experimental poke with the tip of her sneaker shoe.

The woman squeaked and flinched unnecessarily.

She might not have said much after that cowardly display, as she remained seated. What she did do, was to try and use this time by sifting through its contents to free the cursed recorder. Vera seemed about to question it some more; but while she was listening to the articulation of Lieutenant Jacob Lars, her ankle came in contact with something cold and formless. The seized limb was pulled upward by an invisible force, causing much of her upper body to fall flat on its back.

She held both items protectively, and she looked apprehensively at the apparition with no real detectable shape. Vera opened her mouth, and then closed it again when she realized there really wasn’t a need for witty banter when she was so close to death. In such times, silence was golden, especially if one flipped the bird as she had done before being mercilessly dragged through the undergrowth.