The Burning Forest : Chapter 4

SCARED
Damien sat at his dining table with his laptop in front of him and his fingers typing furiously. His brows furrowed as he picked up his calculator and jotted down the result. Piles of paper lay on the table and some had fallen onto the ground. Damien sat back in his chair and sighed loudly.
“How’s it this month?” Liz said softly. She spoke like every word was part of her own secret song.
“Bad. We’re this close to having to settle for food stamps.” He admitted
“At least we don’t have to go that far yet. We’ll make it,” she said reassuringly.
“This is no life, Liz. I can’t get you what you need. Should I just ask my mother for money?”
“Damien,” she said placing her hands over his and looking him in the eye. “You once swore to me that you’ll never resort to asking your mother for money. That’s the whole reason you left; to be your own man.”
“This isn’t what I wanted for you, Liz. You deserve so much more” he said looking into her eyes.
“Trust me Damien, when I need diamonds and sports cars, I’ll tell you. For now, I’m happy with this. I’m happy with us.”
“What did I do to deserve someone like you?”
“I should be asking you that,” she said before sitting across his thighs. She smiled before leaning in and kissing him.
“I love you, Damien”
“I love you, too,” he said.
“What?” Pin shouted. “Have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying?” he asked slightly offended.
They walked down a less choked path where a cobblestone road seemed to run through. Pin held the Crow man’s torch in nothing but a hoodie and his shorts. He walked slightly ahead of Logan confidently.
“What have you been saying?” Logan said slightly dazed from returning from his daydream.
“I said we have to be careful around these parts. We’re in Mr. Skin’s district.” He said
“Who is this Mr. Skin anyway? Why does he rule a whole district?”
“He’s the king of con men. He rules a textile company that is just a cover for a drug trafficking ring.”
“Why does he need it to be a cover? You obviously have no law enforcement agency around here”
“It’s a cover because of Draug. He’s more or less a dictator but he hates that the root of the corruption in his kingdom is public.”
“He’s not doing a great job then. This place has gone to the dogs.”
“You better shut your mouth if all you’re going to say is going to get another one of us kidnapped.”
“Yeah about your dad, how far are we from Mr. Skin?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. That’s what I was telling you back when your eyes grayed over and you zoned out.
Logan stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the boy who was definitely going to get him killed.
“You mean we’re lost?”
“You’re lost everywhere in these woods. We’re just not where we need to be” Pin said with a face too plain for Logan’s growing impatience.
“You little shit!” he started with his face squeezed to the physical definition of anger.
“Shut up for a second.” Pin said without even batting an eye.
“What is it?” Logan said calming down almost immediately.
“Don’t you hear that?” Pin said craning his head trying to find where the noise was coming from.
A deep moaning could be heard not too far from them and Pin jogged towards it leaving Logan to his hesitation.
They walked up to an abandoned school which went up for up to three floors before the branches twisted to form the makeshift sky.
“That’s the highest I’ve seen the branches go since I’ve gotten in here.”
“The branches aren’t everywhere. Just here in Skin’s district. They try to escape from the smoke coming out of his factory. They don’t go far before they give up and wither.” Pin said slightly sad.
“This place must be hard to live in for a kid,” Logan said
“Please don’t pity me,” he said before he rushed forward to follow the moaning that still echoed through the silence.
The school was covered in rust and dirt. Glass was missing from panes and doors were either broken or missing entirely. Graffiti stretched every inch of the outside all the way to the second floor. The closer they got, the less complete the building was. Scaffolding stuck out at many parts of the third floor and pieces of it spread across the ground around the two.
The inside was worse as dust and decay stretched across the hallways. The lockers were without doors and desks were thrown in different positions. Cigarettes, needles and glass pipes meant that this was a haven for junkies. They kicked bottles as they walked towards the moaning with the beam of light bouncing along the hallway.
They stopped outside a classroom and looked each other. Both didn’t have the heart to open up the door and see what could make such a disturbing sound.
“Let’s play rock, paper, and scissors?” Pin asked with a smile. Logan returned the smile and put his fist next to Pin’s. Pin laughed quietly as Logan crept to open the door a few seconds later. His heart beat loudly in his chest as he got closer to the moaning.
“Just do it!” Pin said and Logan pushed the door open suddenly. It swung quickly and slammed into the wall before falling off its hinges. Dust flew into the air as the door hit the ground. Pin gasped as the torch fell onto a scrawny man in the corner who was forcing a metal cuff to clasp around his left wrist. He stood in the corner trembling violently before he opened his mouth.
“You have to run! Please before it begins.” The man struggled to say
Logan looked at Pin for a second before they both took off down the hallway. The silence that was broken by the sound of their shoes crunching debris and miscellaneous items was further disturbed by the loud sound of a concrete wall being broken into powder. Logan looked back to see a large hairy beast shaking the dust off its fur before running on all fours towards them. They got to the stairwell and Pin cleared the stairs in a jump before slamming into the wall in front of it. Logan skipped four steps at a time as he trailed behind the boy who was now a floor below. The beast grabbed at Logan as it was too big to fit into the stairwell. Logan felt relief for a second as he got to the ground floor beside Pin and the two ran into the front yard of the school. They were barely twenty feet out the front door when the wall behind them exploded into a shower of debris and glass. The beast landed hard on the dirt in front of them and let loose a deep and powerful howl that made the ground below them shake. Its upper body was the body of a large and terrifying wolf while the rest of it was human with dark hair covering every inch of it.
“Split up!” Logan said as he ran to the left while looking at both Pin and the beast in the corner of his eye.
The beast looked confused as it struggled to determine who to attack. It tried to swing at Logan but he ran into its blind spot just in time. Logan looked at its giant paw as it barely missed him. Claws the length of his head stretched from each digit and tore at the air around him. Logan and Pin didn’t even look back as they ran into the dark forest.
Logan suddenly regretted it as he found himself in deep, unnatural darkness. The torch was still with Pin and now he had to run through the forest with his hand stretched in front of him. Logan could feel the ground shaking beneath him for a while before it reduced to a mere tremor. The noise could now be heard many feet away from where he stood as the beast most likely chased after the light coming from Pin’s torch. He couldn’t let the boy get ripped to shreds after he had just gotten his father taken. He sighed deeply before he shouted random words to get the creature’s attention. He knew he had gotten it as trees began to splinter and bend in a straight line towards him. He couldn’t outrun this beast so he jumped up into the closest tree. He hoped Pin had turned off his torch and was going to choose to hide as well.
He climbed to the highest branch before he collapsed against the tree in exhaustion. The beast tore through the trees not far from him and stopped suddenly. It growled angrily and let bare his long teeth.
Logan held his breath as the creature began to sniff the air for him. It barely sniffed for a minute before it craned its neck back and looked directly at a trembling Logan. Its yellow eyes narrowed as it began to tear away at the base of the tree with its claws. It didn’t get far with this exceptionally thick tree and it clasped its hands around it in an attempt to push it down.
“What the hell are you?” Logan managed to say as sweat ran down his face.
“I’m the big bad wolf motherfucker,” it said before unearthing the tree completely. Logan fell into neighboring branches as they scratched and tore at him on his way down. They slowed his descent but he still fell painfully right at the feet of the beast. It bent over and opened its mouth; exposing hot breath onto Logan. He knew the gun would have no effect on a monster this powerful and closed his eyes in expectation of his fate. His mind raced as he thought of how he could possibly escape from something like this. A thought popped into his mind and he stared deeply into the yellow eye of the wolf.
“Sleep,” he said as he hoped his ability would stretch to the man within this monster.
The creature looked unfazed before it swayed slightly. Its powerful legs slammed into the dirt and the rest followed. It collapsed face first onto Logan and its longest fang on the left side of its large mouth sank into Logan’s arm. He shouted in pain before he struggled to pull it out of his arm and pushed the heavy head on the ground beside him. It slept soundly like a dog and the threat to Logan’s life a second ago suddenly disappeared.
Logan looked at the deep wound in its arm. He knew it would heal quickly but he remembered the man in the school that had turned into this. He looked through the tightly woven mess of branches above him and could see the full moon shining brightly in the sky. The beast on the ground in front of him was a werewolf. He tore a length of his shirt and knotted it tightly around his arm. The pain was already starting to fade. He realized the wounds needed to be bandaged to rapidly heal but his mind kept wondering if he would become this creature before his task was over.
“Logan!” a voice whispered from the bushes not far from him. “Are you alive?” Pin said before emerging from the shrub.
“Let’s imagine I wasn’t. How do you think this beast would have answered that question?”
“Being coy now aren’t we?” he said with a smile. “How’d you manage that?” he said pointing to the sleeping creature.
“Just one of my many tricks,” he said a bit proud of himself.
“Good work. Remind me never to investigate strange noises in abandoned buildings.”
“You know, I’m starting to see why your dad has a problem with you.”
“You’re delusional, I’m a saint” Pin said laughing before punching him on the arm.
The two laughed as they kept following the path hoping to find a way to find Mr. Skin and save Stephano.
Logan’s mind was a mess as he thought about his wife and how much time he was wasting trying to fix what he had gotten this boy’s father into. He also thought about the wound on his arm as he nursed it from the punch Pin had given him.
“I don’t want to hurt this kid,” he thought to himself as the two walked silently along the cobblestone road.