CHAPTER 11

"I… I AM NOT the only one that can see that, right?" Sophie stammered, pointing at the child.

Tristen and Emma shook their heads. "Yeah, I can see it too," Emma said.

The child still stood near the large tree. One of his hands rested on the bark of the tree as he half-hid his face. He was small and thin. And he was white. Very white. Almost pale.

Tristen shuffled forward. Emma gripped his arm. "What do you think you are doing?" She whispered fiercely.

"Going to speak to the kid," He whispered back.

"Are you crazy?" Sophie asked. She didn't bother to lower her voice. "That child is damn creepy. I suggest we turn back and head back to the meeting point." She looked at the screen of her phone. "Our time is up anyway."

"I agree with Sophie this time," Emma said.

Tristen snatched his arm from Emma's grip. "That might be the child that Henry saw… and the main reason that we are here." He said. " and that might be our only chance of getting help," He walked forward carefully.

Emma and Sophie looked at each other and shrugged and walked behind him.

Tristen stopped 6 feet away from the child, who had not moved. He only watched them approach with deep sunken eyes.

"Hi, there," Tristen tried to bring up a cheery voice.

The child looked at him, and it the girls without saying anything.

"What's your name?" Sophie asked.

In a cold, husky voice, the child said, "My name is Jacob." It was almost like he didn't open his mouth but instead, the wind had carried the voice from the unknown and into their heads.

Tristen felt goosebumps break out all over his arms. "Uh, Jacob. Are you al-"

"My name is Jacob Baskins," The wind carried that voice again.

Sophie whimpered and grew closer to Emma. Tristen swallowed. "Okay, Jacob Baskins… where is your mum?"

Jacob Baskins raised a bony hand and pointed.

Tristen yelped and turned, expecting to see a scrawny white woman standing in a corner, watching them sourly. But they were alone. He breathed out in relief. "Where?"

The child pointed again.

"Can you take us to the other people?" Tristen asked.

"What?" Emma snapped, grasping Tristen's shirt.

"They will be able to help us. They might even have a fire and warm food." Tristen said.

"Or they could be serial killers," Sophie muttered. She looked at Jacob Baskins and said, "I don't like the feeling of this. There is something wrong with this child, I'm sure someone on I*******m would know what to do in this situation."

Tristen turned. "I can't believe you are seriously thinking of I*******m in a time such as this,"

Sophie shrugged. "Well?"

Tristen turned, but Jacob Baskins was gone. Disappeared like that. "Where'd he go?" Tristen asked. He looked back at Sophie and snarled. "See what all your talks about I*******m caused."

Then they heard a light giggling coming from inside the woods.

"That is him," Tristen said. "Let's go. He'll take us to his family. Quickly," He walked fast, following the laughter.

Sophie and Emma were too scared to walk back alone, so they followed Tristen.

After a few minutes, they heard the sound of feet on dry leaves. "He's just ahead. Come on." Tristen called.

They followed Jacob Baskins through a small bush path. Suddenly they rounded a corner and came upon an opening. There were fallen logs of wood around the opening. Their arrangement formed a semi circle.

And sitting on the logs were other pale, almost translucent, scrawny looking people seated and watching with their dead-sunken hollow eyes.

"YOU ARE STILL thinking of that child Jacob Baskins, aren't you?" Lucas asked Grace. They had been walking in silence for the past 10 minutes and Grace had stumbled many times during that time.

"I just can't help it," she said. "There was something about his grave."

"There was nothing about it," Lucas said. "It was like every other grave there. Don't stress yourself about it."

Grace shrugged. "He was just a kid." She was thinking about what Henry had told her and Tristen about the suspicions surrounding this village.

If indeed, there was a flesh-eating monster eating people, it was wrong for it to eat a defenseless child. But according to the history texts, the creature was gone over a hundred years ago. So what happened in the village after that?

A whole village doesn't just die off unless there is a plague. And if it was a plague, then the village that they had been in the previous afternoon should have been wiped out too. She suddenly missed a step and yelped.

"Focus on where you're going, Grace," Lucas said. "The ground is uneven, you can twist your ankle if you're not careful."

"Yeah," She replied. "We should be heading back. The others would have been waiting for us now."

"I think so too," Lucas said. He stopped and turned back. "I would like us to avoid that graveyard, I don't want you to see the graveyard of that kid anymore." He rubbed his chin and looked around, "We should be able to make a wide turn and come out in the village, yeah?"

Grace nodded. "We have to walk fast though. I can feel the air changing."

The clouds were gathering above and the air was becoming more chilly. A rain was brewing.

"Let's go and stop thinking about a dead kid," Lucas snapped. "Children die every day."

They hurried through the dark woods, and Lucas led the way. They walked in a wide arch, trying to avoid the graveyard but heading even deeper into the woods.

The first raindrops fell a few minutes later. Lucas grabbed Grace's hand and broke out in a soft run.

"I see a building just ahead," He said. "We'll shade there until the rain is over."

They fan over a mound of soil and leaves and stopped in front of the house. It was a small wooden cabin, it looked old and abandoned. And burnt.

One side of the cabin was burnt to the ground.

Lucas kicked the door open and hurried in, Grace followed him. They shook their wet clothes and hair before looking around the house.

It was one room, stuffed with odd things. Lucas went over to examine the things in the room. The whole place was dusty, and like Con-Hagen, the house felt dead.

"There is something awfully wrong with this place," Lucas said. "Who would put all these kinds of stuff here? What are all these?"

He held up a bunch of feathers, strung together with a thread of Fibre.

Grace came to join him. "It looks like some kind of ritual place."

Lucas laughed. "You don't really believe in rituals and magic, do you?"

Grace shrugged. "I don't know what I believe in anymore." She picked up a curved ivory knife. "This doesn't look like it was used to slice up vegetables."

Lucas scoffed. "Yeah, whatever."

Grace walked to the window and creaked it open slightly. The rain was falling heavily outside. She closed it and sighed.

Lucas was fascinated by what he was looking at. He found some really shady things. He took the ivory knife that Grace had picked up and put it in his pocket. He turned to see Grace staring intently at a place on the wall. "What is that?" He asked.

She was looking at a daylight smudge along the wall. "I think that's human blood."