As we made our way through the closely knit trees, the three of us kept glancing around warily. With every gust of wind that would send the trees swaying, we'd furtively cast a quick glance towards the movement, expecting some fresh horror to pounce out at any second. Each time a twig would snap under one of our feet, or a branch would brush up against as we walked by, we'd either freeze up or quicken our pace.
Our eyes had started to adjust to the dark by then, and being in the dimly lit basement for almost a month had made us used to the dark.
But even so, with the combination of it being night, the black clouds blanketing the sky and the thick branches above our heads, it was too dark to make out much else besides the shapes of the trees around us and each other.
Aaron stayed directly next to me, while Jared was ahead of us, with the shotgun in his remaining hand. I held the flashlight, sparing it for when we would need it. We didn't want to risk drawing attention to ourselves with the light, so I kept it off most of the time. Though the rain masked most of the noise we made, we tried our best to move as quietly as possible.
If only it wasn't night.
...Why did it have to be night time?
Then again, I didn't think the time of day made any difference. It probably didn't This whole world was probably a nightmare 24/7. But still, night time brought out irrational fears that now seemed rational. As my eyes tried to pierce through the darkness, they would conjure up brief illusions of faces peering at me through the leaves. In the current world, I couldn't be sure if they were only illusions.
Jared suddenly stopped ahead of us.
"What's up Jared? Why did you stop?" I asked, dreading the answer. A thousand different horrific scenarios played out in my head in the span of the time it took him to answer.
"...nothing really, I think... There's a shirt and some pants hanging from this branch here. I just thought it was something else at first..."
Clothes on the tree? Weird, but not really indicative of anything.
He kept moving forward, and Aaron and I were about to follow him when he stopped again.
"There's more... a... a decent amount more... in the trees," he muttered.
Aaron and I stepped next to him and I flicked on the flashlight.
Something smacked me lightly in the face, and I scrambled around until I swung the flashlight to the thing which revealed that I had just bumped into a tiny pair of sneakers, swaying from the branch in front of me.
"There's a lot more, actually," Jared said.
I shined the light ahead of us, revealing a small clearing with a few moss covered stones here and there... and dozens of sets of clothing, scattered around the ground and hanging from the trees. T-shirts, coats, pants, shoes... everywhere.
"What the..." I uttered.
They could have just been blown here by the wind or something, right? That was my first impression, but as I looked on I found that there was something strange about the way they were arranged. They weren't randomly strewn about. It... looked like someone had been wearing them one second, and then the person vanished, leaving nothing but their clothes behind, so that they were still in the positions they were in when they had been worn.
"...Weird," was all I could say.
"I don't like this at all... Something obviously happened here," Jared said, "and who knows how long ago... Let's keep moving and try to go a bit faster. Try not to get too deep into these woods..."
YOU ARE READING
Storm of the End: Book One
Horror"I remember a time when we didn't have to fear waking up. I remember a time when there was hope for tomorrow. A time where we could look forward to the future. A time when there was a future. That time is gone now. And it is never, ever, going to c...
