This story! I'd lost it for the longest time and now I've found it, I think I want to do something with it.

Update! I'm doing something with it! I'm now writing this in episode form, like I did with Ash's story.

I started this one years ago - years and years ago!

Pictures from Google

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

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The man stopped running. He skidded to a halt and looked around in a frantic manner. Eyes wide, arms flailing as he turned. He started to turn back the way he’d come, but skidded on the loose gravel. Katie heard the sound of his boots crunching the small stones and then the skid as he stopped dead again.

A low moan started in his throat, a pitiful howl of a man that knows he has no escape. But Katie couldn’t understand what he was so scared of.

He swung around again, desperate in his attempt to escape. He couldn’t go back into the trees, he tried but bounced off something. He tried again and finally realised there was no going back.

He looked down the lane and Katie thought he would try that avenue next, but his face fell as he looked. He could see something that terrified him. Katie looked behind her. All she could see was bright sunlight, the town of Verdigris and her grandfather, crouched and watching her.

The man’s howl escalated and the sounds of his feet shuffling in the dust and gravel caught Katie’s attention again. She looked back to the man. His arms went up to protect his upper body, hands held out to face an invisible threat.

Katie cringed as the man’s howl became more anguished and painful to her ears and her heart.

“No…” the man cried in a desperate plea. “NO! Please! I want to repent!”

Then Katie heard a voice that sent shivers down her spine, her arms and the backs of her legs. The very sound of it set her teeth on edge and her hair to rise on her scalp and arms. The back of Katie’s neck prickled and she knew the voice.

She recognised it.

Memories came flooding back to her. She concentrated and blocked them out as she watched the horrifying scene before her.

“Repent?” the voice said, and a laugh emanated from all around the man, echoing and reverberating.

The man threw back his head and screeched. Katie couldn’t see anything to make him cry out in such a way. She realised that a shadow had crossed his on the ground and the two shadows fought. The man’s shadow didn’t match all of his actions, it threw punches, ducked and dodged as it battled the other shadow. The man swayed and rocked on his heels as though he was taking a beating.

Katie caught glimpses of something standing before the man, glints of darkness caught her eye as a glint of light reflected off water would. The other shadow resisted the blows and punches from the man’s shadow and started enveloping the man’s shadow. The man’s howling reached a pitch that pained Katie’s ears again. As the man’s shadow disappeared into the other, the howls and shouts became muffled, enveloped like the shadow.