Dark Soul Silenced - Parts One & Two

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

When he woke it was midday. Stretching gingerly he found only stiffness in his body – not the agony he expected. As far as he could tell he was in the same clearing, though the rope he’d been tied with was gone. He stood, then stretched again, noticing a few bruises that were already almost faded.

That made no sense. Had he been asleep for days? Had something sped his healing? He didn’t know and his memories of the night before, if it wasn’t longer, were slippery, impossible to hold on to. The blazing sun stabbing down and giving him a thumping headache wasn’t helping his attempts at thinking, and he was still exhausted. Shading his eyes he stumbled from the glade, searching for somewhere to rest. Even in the shade of the trees the light was too harsh for his eyes. He came to a fallen tree trunk with a small hollowed space underneath. Crawling in, he curled up with his back to the light and closed his eyes. Within seconds he was asleep.

He woke to darkness and a feeling of being smothered. Panicking, he sat up quickly, smacking his head on the trunk and falling back to the ground. Slightly dazed, he felt for what he’d hit. The tree’s rough bark reminded him of where he lay. This time he turned over carefully and crawled out, then looked around. The moon was shining but only a little light made it through the spreading branches of the trees. He stood for a while, head still throbbing where he’d banged it, thoughts coming slowly.

He knew he should be scared… or worried… or even angry – but he wasn’t. He felt strange, distant. The world around him felt… not dreamlike exactly… but separate. He felt out of step with everything around him, even with his own body.

After standing for a time, he had no idea how long, something stirred inside. An appetite. A thirst. Both, yet not quite either. He started walking. He had no direction in mind, just a need to keep moving.

He walked and walked, still with no direction in mind. Walking through a forest could became repetitive enough normally. Doing so on a dim night, when very little detail could be made out, was doubly so. Wolves, bears, bogs and holes… all could be deadly when walking a forest at night… but he didn’t care. Somehow he felt sure nothing would harm him, though he had nothing to base that feeling on.

He walked until the pre-dawn light started to hurt his eyes. From the lightening of the sky he knew he was walking eastwards, towards the sunrise, though he had no idea if he had been going round in circles the rest of the night. Once again he sought shelter from the bright daylight. This time he found a small hollow filled with leaves. Bushes surrounded and covered it. Burrowing down into the leaves to get comfortable, he was asleep within a minute.

He woke to night again, and walked all night in the same trance like state as the night before. As dawn approached he sought shelter from the rising sun then fell into a deep sleep again. The next two nights followed the same pattern. Nothing changing, except that the not quite hunger and not quite thirst grew steadily stronger.

He drank a little from streams, but the water just made him feel queasy. The thought of food almost made him retch. The ache in his head remained and his thoughts stayed sluggish. Once or twice he wondered if the beating he’d taken had cracked his skull. Such worries were fleeting. The thoughts soon slipped away, replaced by the mindless wandering.

One thing he did notice was that the moonlight was brighter each night, or the covering of leaves less, as with each new night he was able to see more clearly than the night before.

Things changed the next day. Sometime mid-morning he woke, screaming in agony, pain burning through his left hand. He snatched it close, seeing smoke rise from it as he squinted against the bright daylight. The pain faded quickly as he tried to work out what had burnt him. He was crouched by the base of a huge fallen tree, in the depression left when its roots were torn out of the ground. There was no fire nearby. There was no smell of smoke, other than the burnt flesh smell of his injured hand.

Tentatively he stretched out his other hand, snatching it back with a curse as it exploded in pain. The sun. It wasn’t just affecting his eyes, it hurt his body too. For a moment fear gripped his soul. What was happening to him? What was wrong with him? But then the warm sluggishness spread through his mind again driving away all worry.

A little experimenting with his legs confirmed the sun wasn’t suddenly much hotter than before. His boots and trousers were fine, as were his legs as long as they remained covered. His skin though… it started to burn the moment the sun touched it. Squinting against the light he shifted around the tree’s roots, trying to find a safe position to lay where the sun wouldn’t find his skin. Within moments he dropped back into a deep sleep.

Twice more that day he woke in agony, woke to find flesh burning and smoking. Each time he managed to squeeze into a new position, one that shielded him from the sun’s rays… for a while at least. Leaving the shelter of the fallen tree and its roots was out of the question. He only had boots, trousers and a vest left, and the nearest shade was twenty feet away at least. He was sure he wouldn’t make it without being crippled by the sun, most probably stuck partway to shelter as the sun beat down and turned his body to charcoal.

Despite the severity of the burns the pain quickly faded each time, and as soon as he found a new position safely out of the sunlight he fell straight back to sleep.

The next time he woke it was to moonlight. He breathed a deep sigh of relief, then quickly checked the burns… only to find they were gone. Had he imagined the agony, the burning? Had he dreamt it? No… the last burn, on the back of his right forearm, was still faintly visible when he checked carefully – but it was fading before his eyes. For a moment he felt dizzy, the world seemed to lurch below his feet. Just what was happening to him? As fast as the worry came it was pushed aside again, replaced by the warm, fuzzy feeling in his head. His fears withered and died and the hunger returned, stronger than ever. Once again he was driven to move, to walk, though still with no clear destination.

As the night faded to dawn he searched carefully, seeking better shelter from the sun than he had found the night before. He discovered a small cave in a north facing outcrop of rock and headed inside before once again crashing into a deep sleep. He hardly even noticed the large bear whose sleep he interrupted. He was asleep within moments. The bear stood, back pressed against the wall, for long minutes. Finally it moved, tentatively, watching him the whole time as it slunk past. Once it was past him it turned away and raced from the cave as if its fur was on fire.

The next night brought more changes. He’d been finding it easier to see each night but had put it down to the moon growing brighter or the tree cover thinning. Now the moon was hidden by thick clouds, yet the forest shone as if in full daylight. There was no avoiding the fact that it was his night vision that had become stronger and stronger.

Another, even more disturbing, change came over him during that night. He started to see the creatures around him. Not just as he saw the trees and rocks, bushes and ground. The creatures were different. They glowed from dull red to bright yellow, standing out clearly against the background of the forest.

The hunger had changed, too. It had grown stronger, as it had every night, but now it was also far more focused. It drove him towards the creatures he saw. Drove him to grab, tear and consume. It would be so easy. He focused his attention on an adult rabbit and it froze, letting him approach… reach out a hand… grab it… lift it to his mouth…

“NO!” The hoarse shout startled him, breaking the spell. The rabbit bit and clawed at his hands till it broke free. It took a few moments more for him to realise the voice had been his own, the shout had come from him. And it was right. The hunger was still burning strongly but something inside him resisted. Neither the hunger nor the resistance were strong enough to win out, so the struggle continued inside him and he did the only thing he could. He started walking again. With the spell broken the creatures of the forest fled at his approach, which he was glad of. For the moment.

Several times that night he was nearly overwhelmed by the hunger, dropping into a dreamlike state where he was hardly aware of what he was doing. Each time he managed to fight back before it was too late. The final time a squirrel was held so close he could feel its fur on his tongue. As the spell faded it bit and clawed its way free, badly scratching his face and arms. Yet within minutes the wounds were healing, and soon they had faded completely.

Dawn’s light in the sky came as a great relief. He found a hole, a crack between two rocks, and squeezed himself in. Once again he dropped into dreamless sleep within a few moments.