Blood Lust

Chpater 2

Her blood was running cold, fearing collapsing as she finally raised herself to her feet and took a good look at the townsman. His emancipated features were painful to look at. His eyes were devoid  of any life but wrenched open as if someone had tacked his eyelids open to force him to watch whatever had occurred. His cheeks were sunken in, the skin adorming a grey hue, with lips chapped and split in half. His clothes had been torn to shreds, muddled with dirt and blood. With precise steps, she rounded the man and nearly collapsed again at the gaping hole in his neck. The spinal bone was on display, nothing but torn cappilaries and strings of flesh providing an autopsy of what he had once looked like. The  free-flowing liquid was fresh; seeping steadily from the wound.

Stepping back, she whipped around to see if whatever animal that had did this was lurking in the bushes for her next. But thankfully, she seemed to have interrupted its dinner and it had fled back wherever it had come from.

Eleanor swallowed the steadily rising bile down, and kneeled beside the man's face to shut his eyelids. It was the best she could do.

This is for my father. If I turn back now, I will never make it back this far in time.

"I will come back for you, sir. I promise. You will be laid to rest properly."

With whatever resolve she had remaining, she mounted Everest once again, stroking his mane to calm him. "Alright boy, let's go..."

She tried not to wince as the horse stepped on the poor man's corpse.

After she had travelled for another few hours with nary another consequence accompanying the veiled shadows, Eleanor chalked it up to nerves and paranoia, and gave them no further thought. The man's death weighed heavily on her conscious, although set aside for the time being. The underbrush got thicker as she made her way deeper into the forest, and the trail she was traveling slowly disappeared, until the hope of a beaten path became nothing more than a pipe dream.

The trees overhead grew thicker and the air became more stagnant; there was only the stray beams of sunlight, the crunch of leaves underfoot, and the smell of decay to keep Emma's company. Taking a steadying breath, and hoping it was just dead animals who had strayed too far, and not  more people like her and the sad bloke who'd become far too lost to ever be saved, she began to whistle a tune to herself to bring some noise into the otherwise still forest. She had that same sneaking suspicion someone was watching her, but look as she did, the unrelenting shadows only stared back.

She had been wandering through the woods for half a day now, the conversation with Joan playing through her mind over and over again. "What happens when all the stars go out" she'd said, and Eleanor, try as she did,  couldn't stop thinking about it.

The abysmal sunlight that had been filtering through the leaves began to fade, and Eleanor took that as a signal to set up camp for the night. If she had been put off by the silence before, she wished for it now, as the forest floor was alive with glowing eyes and chirp-happy cicadas. Thankfully, very much unafraid of whatever beast lurked in the trees. She stared up at the sky, a few stars peeking through the foliage. She blinked, and another star went out. After ripping some bread from the loaf she had baked that morning and offering some to her horse, she settled onto the damp ground and waited for fatigue to overtake her, with the sounds of Everest lapping at water from a nearby stream lulling her into another nightmare ridden sleep.

She tried to shut her eyes, but they felt pinned open to witness her own suffrage.
But as usual, as the jawline of this creature was lit up, the room began to fill with crimson, the stench of copper making her head spin.