Into The Woods

Chapter 16

     "B-but no one closed their eyes" Malachi stated confusingly.
     The keeper raised its twig like arm and pointed to Vincent.
     "That's not his fault! That's yours!" Charlie whimpered painfully to it.
     Charlie sobbed into his hand and both girls sat up from the ground looking like they had lost their memory. Irene and Uriah had still not returned from collecting rocks, so the others started to worry about them.
     "Uriah and Irene should've been back by now" Tatum mentioned fearfully.
     Suddenly, a loud screech followed by a bang came from the direction that Uriah and Irene had gone to. Black smoke started rising from the area above the trees, and began to fill the sky with its eerie presence.
     "Look" Tatum insisted while pointing to the smoke.
     Malachi and Charlie looked up to see the thick haze that the smoke had created. It couldn't have been clouds, since it was too dark, but it couldn't have been smoke from a fire either.
     "W-what is it?" Malachi questioned.
     "Serena, look" Vanessa pointed.
     "I-Isn't that the where Uriah and Irene went for the r-rocks?" Serena asked forgetfully.
     "I believe so" Vanessa replied dizzily.
     A high pitched voice echoed from the smoke giving them that feeling of a pit forming in their empty stomachs. They all stared at each other and looked around for the keeper, which they had realized was suddenly not there anymore.
     "W-where did the k-keeper go?" Tatum whispered.
     They were too scared to answer. They knew that they didn't want to know the answer. Maybe it had caused the smoke? Maybe it took Uriah and Irene? It was a mystery that they did not want to solve but knew they had to.
   "Let's go to the smoke" Tatum suggested.
     "We can't. What about Charlie and Vincent? They're too hurt to walk and we can't just leave them" Malachi reminded him.
     Serena and Vanessa limped over to the boys, carefully putting their arms around each other to support themselves.
     "Are you guys okay?" Malachi asked them.
     Vanessa gave him a thumbs up then painfully put her hand on her knee. They obviously weren't okay, but they didn't want to hold the others back just because they were hurt.
     "Serena and I can stay here with Charlie and Vincent. You two go towards the smoke" Vanessa insisted.
     "Are you sure? Just be careful" Malachi said very caringly.
     "We will" Serena confirmed.
     "Please be careful, and don't get lost" Vanessa smiled.
     Malachi and Tatum started towards the smoke cautiously. They saw no sign of the keeper or Uriah and Irene. There was just clouds upon clouds of this mysterious black smoke.
     "I'm scared" Tatum stated.
     "You? Scared? Tatum is never scared" Malachi replied surprisingly.
     "Not usually. But I have a bad feeling about this" Tatum explained.
     They kept walking towards the smoke but it only seemed to be getting farther away. They estimated that they've been walking for maybe 20 minutes, but it seemed that they were in the same spot they were 10 minutes in the past. They thought to themselves that maybe they were just hallucinating. It all seemed too real to just be in their heads.
     The smoke started to fade into a bright red colour. A bloody red to be exact. The air began to have a strong aroma of burning meat on a barbecue and rotting vegetation. Laughing started from where the smoke was located, but it was no ordinary laugh. It sounded devilish.