Chapter Eleven

Josh tensed up when the hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he could feel eyes watching them among the trees. Leah looked at him weirdly. "What's wrong with you?" She asked him. He faced her and Jake with panic. "It's here, and it's watching us right now." He said to them in a hushed tone.

The three of them immediately closed in on each other and made a triangle with Haley inside them. Leah moved the lantern around hoping to spot something in the trees, but when she looked up and saw that it was looking down at them with a dark grin and drool dripping from its mouth, she screamed.

Josh and Jake looked up with alarm when they noticed what she was looking at. He pulled Haley up in his arms and had her laid out on his back. "Run!" He told them and they all started moving. Cuts were scrapped against them from the branches of stray trees, and breaths came out in heavy pants, but then, it happened. Leah dropped the lantern with a scream.

"Leah!" Jake screamed in fear as Josh watched the demon snatch his best friend up into the trees with a loud snarl, and it went dark when the lantern broke in pieces.

LATE INTO THE EVENING

Josh blinked a bit in the pitch black, but when his eyes adjusted, he wished he could unsee what he just saw. There he was, his best friend's torn-up body, with his neck crooked as though it were bent, and his eyes were all red and bloodied, and he heaved in anxiety.

Almost instantly, Leah appeared in front of him, tears coming down her cheeks hard, and tugged his hand. "Josh, we have to go!" She pleaded and he obediently followed her lead. In his daze, he had no idea that he had accidentally dropped Haley when Leah had started pulling him towards home.

He gulped in fear when he looked up. In hindsight, seeing his now-dead best friend falling to the ground from above was way too much and the same killer in the trees lunged at him. Its cat-like eyes gleamed in the darkness and the only he ever said was Haley's name.

Leah turned around when she saw Josh's broken body had fallen from midair and her heart filled with fear. She tried to find Haley in the dark, but in her panic, she couldn't find her best friend, and with that thought, she started running.

Trees passed her by as she ran, her dress occasionally getting caught by a stray branch. Tears slid down her cheeks as she struggled through the forest in her attempt to get back home. Away from the demon that wants her dead. The tie that held her long blonde hair had already fallen off when It tried to grab hold of her in her attempts of escaping.

Her male friends had been brutally yanked upwards into the trees and tossed back down onto the ground, hard. She had no clue where Haley was, or if she made it out. But she prayed she survived. She thought she briefly saw her village; she knew she spotted some of the cottage rooftops in between the trees.

Just as she ascended down to the ground from jumping off a rather large rock, something gripped her hair and pulled her body upwards. When she tried to scream, long spidery fingers wrapped themselves around her throat. The demon let off a low jittery sort of growl and ran, taking her with it until blackness consumed her.

WITH HALEY

A groan pulled out from her mouth when she woke up, and she flinched in pain. The bright sunlight blinded her eyes, so she flickered them to wake up and looked at her surroundings in confusion.

Trees filled the forest with birds chirping in a happy tune. Wind flowed through the wildflowers, and she blinked when she spotted a lumpy figure behind a tree. She shakily got to her feet and made her way to the tree and leaned on it tiredly. Shaking her head to get rid of the cobwebs, she moved her body around to see what was behind the tree.

She spotted three bodies, and when she moved them over, tears filled her eyes as she gasped painfully. Panic surged through her chest when saw that it was her best friend and the guys they were interested in were all broken and bloodied. Eyes looked up at her in a glazed blank stare and she cried.

She pounded at the ground in anger and yanked out the grass. "Noo!" She wailed out, and the demon weaved its body through the trees before leaping at her with a loud snarl and everything went dark.

END