THE EVIL FOREST

EPISODE 8

After falling asleep he fell prey to some terrifying dreams. He came woke up well past midnight, trying to shake a vision of a gigantic demon, monstrosity crashing through the house on which he was a mate. At the sound of Matendechere screaming and the house falling down on them with a loud thud, heavy stones falling on them and crushing his fingers. his eyes opened in a chamber.

He managed to fall asleep once again, but yet another nightmare came for him He was tied to the ground in the woods at night, and a man whose head was encased in a bizarre metal apparatus approached him, holding a baby high above his head. He was begging this man not to harm it, but he then stood over him, the baby crying and kicking, and without a word he slammed that poor little child down upon Abednego's left arm, undoubtedly killing the infant with the awful force of the strike.

He awoke at that exact moment, a dog howling somewhere far away in the interior of that forest. He lay in down in a chamber quite still for a moment, feeling a tingling in his left arm, as if in fact it had been struck. Then, perhaps five seconds after this terrible dream ended, an excruciating bolt of pain leapt up his arm from fingers to shoulder. A second bolt followed the first, and he rose from the chamber in a panic, moving his arm into the moonlight that streamed through chamber.

What he beheld caused him to cry out in horror. His arm was twisted around so drastically it was as if something had attached it to his body incorrectly. It had also broken in two places, white bone protruding just below his elbow. He managed to stagger three steps forward but then collapsed to his knees, weeping in agony, having no understanding of what could have happened to him.

The thought that perhaps an intruder had broken in and assaulted him flirted in and out of his fevered mind, but it simply could not be. There came a final grievous bodily injury he did not even feel at first, but which asserted itself there in the dark only when he began to stumble down the stairs to the inn’s bottom floor: some of the fingers of his left hand, and his entire palm, had been burned red as if he had doused it all in hot water. Only some moments later did he become certain that the afflicted flesh corresponded exactly to that which had touched the tiny bat brought to him by Matendechere.

Not ten minutes after discovering his injuries, he made his way out of the place and climbed onto a tall tree to try and see how far he was in the forest. He climbed the tree with great effort so as not to have his arm strike his side. He had made no effort to wrap it; it would have been too painful. He somehow saw a road, four miles away, though he was in great agony. He simply could not take his time.

His injuries were slow to heal, but heal they did. It was immensely difficult for him. He was musing upon what could possibly have caused the affliction. Nothing made any sense. Especially puzzling was the conundrum of the burns on his hand; the pain from these marks had faded quickly, but the redness remained there. He climbed down from the tree, he'd seen one thing that had given him pause.

He laboured to think about it, deeper contemplating, uncertain as to how to convey the image in words and unsure of what to make of it. The sun had been low in the sky as he’d trotted down on the road, the horizon orange and red, throwing everything into sharp relief. In a distance he’d seen two silhouettes, feminine ones.

They were engaged in a frenetic sort of dance, he thought, though that wasn’t quite right; they were locked at the arms and were spinning fast, their heads c****d back, one body urging the other toward greater and greater speed. There was nothing in this act. Trees had blocked his view rather quickly, and he had been unable to get another look at this anomaly.

Some thoughts came to him, more carefully this time, but again it led nowhere except into the parts of imagination that pondered such enigma only in the lonely minutes before being hindered by the worries of the spirits of the dead; thus his life less afflicted with banal solitude.

He was thinking of going back, the taste was breathtakingly and would set out in the morning because the forest was too risky at night, but he simply could not abide the wind and cold he’d come through under a waning moon.

He emerged into the woods, collected some woods to light fire to keep himself warm. He moved close to the fire, gazing into it, appearing utterly exhausted. His face and his hands were chapped from the cold.

As the night hours passed, Abednego became more and more troubled by the silence. Despite Matendechere warning, she knew he would have to at least get deeper into the creatures inhabited house in that forest and confirm to himself that indeed those creatures are food for the ogrism.

He had decided upon morning to set out on this task, but upon stepping outside an hour in that night hour, he could see the mists over the forest swirling ominously, and he knew the heavy downpour wind was about to blow in with high winds. During that night the wind screamed as it swept down trees, stranding Abednego at the same place for another three full hours filled with loneliness and troubled thoughts. He tried to take his mind off such disconcerting matters.

Matendechere had explained to Abednego much about the place she gave an explanation for the vanishing of any person who was in pursuit of ogrism tail and looking for the ogrism tail. They have vanished and no trace of any of them, was ever found. It was at this time that whispers of some satanic influence within the place Abednego took hold as never before.

The creatures have a craven temptress whose true ambition had been to reach out from beyond the grave to consume the souls of the living. The creatures have frightful appearance. They are wisp of creatures, pale as sleet, with a piercing gaze. A bednego set of that very night to where the creatures are believed to be hunting, the place is filed with human limbs and heads. The weather was passable when he left, with low winds coming from the east, a crisp but not terribly unpleasant night.

On the way he saw someone coming down the road in the other direction, a solitary man who was singing very softly to himself. Aside from this man he saw no one. He reached the creatures inhabited house gate at about there hours later having travelled more slowly than normal, giving himself every chance to turn around, thinking of all the reasons he should not be on this mission.

Moving on silently and the midst of frenzy, he actually stopped briefly when he could spy the upper part of the forest against the sky. But in the end he overcame his fears. The first thing he noticed through the trees that fronted the place troubling, was that there were some owls that kept flying here and there, they were in form of human beings.

It hasn't been a comforting sight to see, an image of the kind and in form of an owl on this frigid, solent road that stretched for miles in either direction without any glimpse of something welcoming. Now there was just a bloodless phantoms. The building looked as if it had been empty for a hundred years. It would be very cold inside, the stone walls chilling one to the core.

The low iron gate in front was closed but not locked, not a terribly unusual happenstance. Abednego confirming his back bag moved through it, approaching the front door, which he had never actually parted. In his right hand he held a magic calabash, having prepared himself for the dark. Embedded in the door was a heavy knockers shaped like an owl, which he struck five times against the wood.

He waited. No one came. He had not expected a response. He pushed gently on the door and realized it had not even been fully shut. There was no visible gap between the door and the jamb, but someone had obviously not noticed that it had never been closed. Or perhaps it had intentionally been left open. He entered inside for the first time.

All was black within. Closing the door behind him against the light wind, he found himself in a long, draught front hall that stretched left and right. The gloom shrouded him, and his magic calabash could not show him anything that was not less than five feet in front of him. The walls around him were hundred-year-old gray stone, virtually devoid of ornamentation of any kind. He called out a greeting, his words echoing with a sad shallowness, and he received nothing in return.

He chose to move to his left down the hall, stepping carefully, his eyes trained mostly downward. The floor was scratched and in many places not quite level with the earth. Abednego's foot came to rest on dead winter leaves once or twice, a sign that perhaps the front door had been left open wider and longer than it had even first seemed. He knew it was true then, that they had all perished. He needed little more proof. He wondered if the creatures killed and ate the owners before occupying the place.

The hallway ended at a short flight on curving steps. He ascended them, surprised at the din of his skin animal boots on the stone. Before him was a short corridor with a single room on each side. He moved forward. That was when he heard something, a faint musical note coming from the end of the corridor. Someone was at a piano, and from the depths of despair his heart leapt with hope.

The same high G was being keyed again and again at three- or four-second intervals, meaningless. He followed the note down the corridor past closed doors bearing empty sconces. This hallway ended up ahead in a room with no barrier to entry. Holding the magic calabash high, he began to make out the shapes of furniture, and then its details.

What he entered was a sitting room with two straight-backed chairs and little else. Turning and casting the beam of the lantern to his right, he beheld the origin of the music. Someone looking like a young lady sat at a small piano, the index finger of her right hand resting gently on that G key. She lifted it and reset it, striking the note again, for the seventh or eighth time.

There was something deeply wrong with the woman, as Abednego saw instantly. She was completely un-clothed from head to toe as she sat there in this tenacious enclosure. Abednego's magic calabash light revealed a n***d and emaciated body. He would have looked away in shame had his eyes not been drawn irrevocably to her face.

The lady, one of the younger ones at the place, appeared blindfolded, but then, looking harder, Abednego saw the truth of the matter was that she had been crudely and haphazardly bandaged around the eyes. She was utterly blind as she sat there, n***d and unaware of Abednego's presence. She must have been freezing, but of it she gave no sign. He did not know what to say, or if he should say nothing at all and meekly withdraw. But then she sensed Abednego's presence and took her finger from that solitary key.

The sound of the note faded to nothing, and there was silence save for the sound of the wind sighing through the big house hidden crevices. Slowly she turned her head in Abednego's direction. The bones in her face protruded unflattering, and her lip had been bloodied. She said to him, softly and pleasantly as if nothing in the slightest was wrong,

"Who is it that has come to visit the ladies?"

For a moment Abednego was too taken aback to respond. Finally he managed to nervously utter Abednego's name, and state where he had come from, the plume of Abednego's breath visible before him. He apologized for his presence and assured her he would withdraw from the place immediately if she wished it. Out of shame he raised the magic calabash higher so as to direct its feeble glow only above her neck. But instead of asking him to retreat, she offered a slow, sickly smile.

Even though she could not see, she seemed to be looking directly at Abednego. She bade him stay, stay and meet the others. He swallowed hard. He could see a drop of moisture high on her cheek, and moving just a little closer could determine that what he was looking at was blood. Abednego asked the lady if she desired a blanket, or food or any assistance. He could not stop himself from asking what was wrong with her eyes. She tilted her head strangely. She said that of course she had torn them out as soon as she’d been able.

Certain that he had misheard, he leaned in ever closer and asked her to repeat her words. When she did, in a chiding tone that made him feel like a child caught not paying attention, he asked her why she had done such a terrible thing. She was barely able to get the words out. She said that the nightlife was a tolerable time but that in the day, all the creatures saw much too much of this hideous world.

Abednego stood in stunned silence. He was about to offer his skin coat, nervous at the very thought of getting so near to this deranged woman, when she rose from the wooden bench in one swift motion. She was more emaciated than he had even thought at first, and a streak of wet dirt ran from her exposed hip down to her right knee.

She excused herself, told Abednego she was terribly late for something, and suddenly took off in a run past him, moving trusting into the dark, arms outstretched. Instinctively he reached out to her, her fingers only brushing her shoulder, which was so cold to the touch that he would have believed her to be a corpse. She left the room and moved down the hallway, intent on leaving Abednego behind. Mortified, Abednego remained where he was.

The light of the magic calabash gave him the last glimpse of her he would ever have, her short, ragged black hair matted to her skull as she vanished, feet making soft padding sounds on the stone.

It was fear that kept Abednego in place, fear that had already overwhelmed his sense of concern and compassion. Being there in that big house felt like being in a tomb. He knew that if he turned fully in the direction the lady had fled, he would continue out the front door, flee and never return. So he forced himself to stand perfectly still and reclaim his nerves.

Thirty seconds passed, then a full minute. He shone the magic calabash light around the room. There was a thin door set into the rear wall, and he went to it. As he touched the knob he felt a certain draft swirl around his legs and heard the sound of a single dead leaf tumbling across the stone nearby. He moved through the door and closed it behind him, trying intently not to let it make a strong sound as it latched.

He do not remember the turns he took then, never daring to venture up the stairs that sometimes concluded a hallway’s length. Climbing deeper into the house before he was aware of all that was truly around him seemed a daunting, frightening undertaking. He dreaded the way the house so effectively hid what lay ahead of him, reluctantly revealing itself in cryptic patches and sections before the slowly weakening kerosene flame.

He had no more than five more minutes navigating the lonesome place narrow passageways before he received another, more ghastly shock. Suddenly the magic calabash light fell upon two livid faces in the dark.

He stopped short in his tracks, his heart thumping. A pair of women stood under an archway, their backs against a ragged stone wall. They too were n***d, scrawny, and they too had crudely bandaged their eyes with strips of torn cloth. Moving the magic calabash slightly to his left caused three more faces to appear, all of horrible.

They were un-clothed, sick with some illness that had no name, and perhaps utterly insane. Almost all of them possessed a sinister grin that belied their sorry condition. The oldest of the sisters, perhaps seventy years in age, spoke. She said how delightful it was that someone other than creatures should visit them and perhaps bring them treats and rescue them. She hoped whoever stood before them now would be of help.

Abednego did not respond until another lady asked his name. He gave it. One of them offered apology that the big food was not here to receive him. When he asked where the big food was, another replied that she had been among the first to ‘offer herself up for feeding.’ Abednego asked what that meant, and the older sister barked out hoarse laughter.

"We must show him!" she said.

"It is almost time we fed the baby in any case!" One of the group, a woman whose scarlet hair hung down completely covering her face, clapped her hands like an insane woman. She said in a voice almost completely strangled by pneumonia that it had become very difficult to decide who was to be fed to the baby because everyone wanted so much to be chosen. Perhaps he could decide for them. It would be a kind of game.

Feeling his own voice about to abandon him from fear, he summoned it forcefully and told the women before him that he was ready and willing to transport them all, take them to the ogrism and that he felt there should be no delay in this regard.

"We hear so much of ogrism," the oldest exclaimed harshly.

"But we are so happy here, until the last of us has been eaten."

Another stepped forward. Her bandage was clinched so tightly around her eyes that the flesh on its borders had gone red, perhaps from infection. Abednego jerked back as if a snake was approaching him. Perhaps, this one said, the first among them to find him and touch him in the dark would be allowed to experience the feeding this time. This thought occasioned a hitter among them all, and Abednego's very blood slowed in his veins. Giggling, two more stepped forward, reaching out playfully.

Their hands were filthy, as if they had been clawing in the dirt in the frozen garden outside. Abednego shouted at them to stay back. At this they seemed to freeze in mid-motion, and expressions of surprise and genuine offense crossed their shallow faces. There was silence. Then the eldest said if I did not wish to play, I could not speak during the choosing.

"Come, ladies, to the great hall, so we can finish tonight’s event!" she said.

Theroux to become a behemoth, snarled, and Abednego thought he heard a wet clamping sound and a thud of something hitting the earth.

He ran then, abandoning the women to whatever horrors fate had in store for them. Thrusting the magic calabash on the ground as he was instructed by Matendechere, he forced himself to move as fast as his feet would carry him. The worst thing he could possibly do was take a wrong turn in that accursed labyrinth, and yet it happened.

Beyond the sitting room where he had encountered the woman at the piano, he went stupidly in the wrong direction, which he realized quickly when he came to an intersection that would take him either east or west from a wall on which hung a painting depicting the ogrism feasting on a woman's head.

As he turned he looked behind him to quickly make certain he was not being followed.

The calabash light fell across something in the shadows, something only three feet in front of his face. He had missed it in the dark. He was looking at a pair of legs, legs attached to a nude body hanging from an overhead beam. One of the lady, whom he recalled as an enthusiastic helper in assisting Imboko in his courts with various work, dangled at the end of a piece of shredded blanket, her eyes open and gazing directly at her through soiled black hair. He looked at her for no more than a moment, sparing no more time for pity, then retraced his steps.

Soon he found himself again in the front corridor. There the temperature within the house was at its coldest, digging into the very marrow of his bones, yet he felt impossibly graced to make out the main door with his ever-evolving vision.

The calabash in his hands which by now produced no more than a candle’s glow, extinguished itself just then, having lasted exactly as long as he had needed it, for which he will be eternally thankful to whatever force delivered him from that interior hale.

He pushed on the door and went out into the night. The droplets of rain that had been sifting down from the sky upon his arrival had become larger flakes, promising a prolonged fall. As he neared the far entrance of the gate he endured the final jolt of seeing two human shapes coming towards him, nothing more at first than indistinguishable shadows.

He halted and prepared to defend himself however he could from harm, but was immeasurably relieved to find that one of the figure was the spirit of Matendechere the sorcerer. Another figure, which he did not recognize was heavily fortified against the winter conditions by many layers of heavy clothing. Abednego had a terrified face. He Matendechere that there was a force here beyond any comprehension, something monstrous and perilous that might even now be roaming the creatures grounds. Matendechere replied that they she aware of precisely what they had come to confront.

She told him that they would not leave until it had all been resolved and the forest was cleansed of the devil’s touch. With this Matendechere brushed past Abednego and headed in. Abednego watched until Matendechere parted that heavy door, carrying some paraphernalia's. The time had come to preserve Abednego's own life and never return to the evil forest once the mission is accomplished.

The decision to back to the place held nothing fearful beyond the harsh elements and the hidden mysteries of the forest. He sat down on the ground as the first blue hints of dawn tinge the sky, marking it exactly some good hours waiting for instructions from Matendechere on what to do. He knew he had found the ogrism food, now it was time for Matendechere to give further directives. The women in the house were to be taken into the ogrism cage as food for the ogrism.

Abednego was rest assured all shall be well, in a moment's time he shall be heading back to Namamali to avenge for the innocent souls killed and for the souls that are in the village, sorrowful looking at death as it beckons. One has hasn't experienced it, they have all experienced it. That sudden feeling like someone is looking for them, looking for the entire village. A chill runs up the villagers spine, and you are convinced that you have to find the source of the sensation. You look around and see someone just randomly staring at you. At gives you even more of a spook, but, after a few seconds of awkwardness, it subsides. You and the person go your separate ways, never to see one another ever again.

The village was really haunted, the king Imboko had put everyone at stake, it wasn't easy. The ghosts of the innocent that were killed wee not at rest, actually they weren't. Only revenge, they were baying for the blood of the king.

Something has to be done, indeed something has to be done. There he was, Abednego, deep in the haunted Igodo forest, his life on the verge of death. Only ogrism tail would save them, but by an obligation, obligations of feeding them in a cage until the tail grows in a state that it shall be easy for Abednego to cut the tail and run away with it. The tail will make them invisible and enter in the king's court. By so doing, they will be able to bring the king's reign into a stand still by eliminating him.

The spirits will be at peace, they will go to eternal rest, the village will be at peace, no more cruel death, no more people being burned at stake, no more innocent victims dying on gallows. Matendechere is the remedy, her magic powers has to work, they have to. Abednego waited patiently,

"Why is it that we get that sensation when we make eye contact with another human being? I will tell you why. Its because they aren’t human beings. Not. At. All." He could hear like chatting with an invisible figure.

"They look just like us, talk like us, act like us. But there is something strange about these creatures that mock us. They are each destined to certain people in their lives, they know not of who they are or what they look like. Just ordinary people, like you and I. When they find one of those people, the two of them make eye contact. At that moment, they are linked to you by a mortal bond. That is, if you die, the human, then they die." The voice was audible in his ears.

"Well that’s not so bad, now is it? I mean, if I was linked to someone by those means, I would personally try and protect the person. Wouldn’t you?" The voice was still clear. Talking to him, could it be his imagination, he figured it to himself.

"Remember that chill? That eerie feeling of ice shooting up your spine and back down again. That is your memories and your future, both of which are being copied at that moment and stored into their minds. Yet again, so what? Now they know all of your personal secrets. Its not like they will do anything, save for steal your life, or something. But no one ever does that, really they don’t." It was now too much for him to bare.

"Imagine this. Say you met someone the other day, a random person. Who’s to say that’s not the next Imboko, ready to skin you alive? If I was to be endowed with all of the mind-set of that person…I wouldn’t care if I died, as long as I took them with me.

Then again…maybe its not so bad. Sure, it’s rare, but there are defiantly good people out there, they are just hard to find. And, if I was to see an extreme goodness in someone’s heart, I would want to protect them. For my life, yes, but for theirs as well. Like a guardian angel, right?

Just…remember one thing. If anything, remember what I am about to tell you, because if you are like me, it will change the way you think about your life and the way you live. It may even save you from being struck down by one of THEM.

Humanity is inherently evil."

He scrubbed his eyes to see what could be talking to him, there was nothing, he was just alone, alone in the place left by Matendechere.

"She Should be coming back by now," he was waiting for her. A yawn escaped Abednego's mouth as he waited for the spirit of Matendechere to come and give instructions on what to finally do.

the entire moment had been nothing more than a dream. Yet, as a large hand rose from the inky waters to engulf his own, Abednego felt his hope slip away just as easily as the the rock he had held so firmly in his grasp.

As another arm wrapped around his waist and

pulled him roughly against a hard chest, Abednego found he had lost the will to fight and instead he dangled from the man’s arms as pathetically as broken doll. The other wasted no time as he pulled them both from the lake, pausing only to toss the rock back into the murky lake. Before he threw him to the ground once again.

Grunting in pain, Abednego turning over onto his back to looking up at the man who now stood towering above him so threatening.

Abednego became incredibly paranoid and on edge; he could guess everything just seems so much more dangerous and scary waiting for her at an isolated place. The very last thing Abednego wanted was to be anywhere near Namamali village and safe in Nina's arms smiling at Kipili, their only child.