Serlock Pines

Nine

Who

The sound came into Caleb's mind faint at first. Then the owl piped up once more.

Who

Caleb's eyes snapped open. His heart still racing. He frantically stood up, initially panicked from the lack of sight before his eyes adjusted. It was now dark out, the only light coming in from the few stars that managed to still shine above the dreaded hollow woods.

Who

The owl seemed to call to Caleb the more it made noise. Looking upward he turned his head to the left, then to the right, he looked all around but he couldn't seem to find it. Every time the owl called it seemed to be coming from somewhere else, and ultimately Caleb was just fumbling around in the darkness, constantly chasing the echo of an owl but never seeing it for himself.

He stopped and stared at the ground in thought. With his arms folded Caleb tried to consider his remaining options. He searched his thoughts but could only keep going over the facts he already knew. He was just lost in this forest in the dead of night, desperate to find something. Something that, perhaps, wasn't even there. Then....
Caleb's eyes shot open wide

"Wha..?" He couldn't finish the single word.

Completely and utterly frozen, terror, the chill of terror, in fear, Caleb stood motionless and wide eyed, the blood seemed to fall from every limb somehow, his fingertips and goes growing cold. Though through all this his heart pounded relentlessly. What was this, this silence? This silence! It's too much! It's deafnening!

"Ahh..I..." Caleb's mouth couldn't form words. His body stood as still as silent trees that surrounded him. He was getting cold, very cold. Then the dread came, it hit it him like a punch in the chest.

Caleb dropped to his knees, tears streamed from his eyes. He sobbed into the dirt, surrounded by the dark pine and more of the odd fauna.

Is this all? All there is?
Is this it?
Is this where it ends?
Is this where I die?

The questions whirrled in his mind for but a moment, but didsaipated upon acceptance, or forced acceptance, of an answer.

For the first time, Caleb didn't know of anything else that could be done, for the first time he was truly hopeless. There was no more call od the owl, perhaps there never was at all, who could say? Soon his tears stopped to form and fall from his eyes, soon, like the forest, he too was silent, and remained this way for quite some time to come.