CHAPTER 12

"DO YOU THINK that Henry is right?" George asked Jeff.

They had been walking without seeing anything suspicious or even a bit scary. But Jeff was not yet relaxed, he had been here before, and he remembered how he felt. He remembered the bone chill and goosebumps. He knew there was something "off" about this town.

He shrugged at George's question. "Maybe. I don't know."

George sighed androyght out his phone. "I should call my sister," He said.

Jeff scoffed. "I doubt that there would be service,"

George looked at his phone's screen. "You are wrong. There's service," He trusted his phone to Jeff's face. There were two bars of service. He dialed Grace's number.

"Come on," Jeff said and they continued walking ahead as the call rang.

After a few rings, it went to voicemail. "The hell?" George muttered. "Why isn't she picking up?"

"She's probably busy. You know… she and Jeff… alone… in the dark," He laughed.

George snorted. "Yeah, very funny, Jeffery. You know, your Carmen and Henry are together in the bus with a lot of soft chairs."

Jeff stopped laughing. "Let's turn back. We didn't find any help. The 15 minutes are almost done."

George chuckled and nodded. "You are right. Let's go back," They turned but a glint in the sand caught George's eyes. "Wait," He said to Jeff. He kept his eyes on the glint as he reached back to collect the flashlight from Jeff. "Do you see that?"

Jeff squinted. "What?"

"That!" George focused the beam of light on the spot.

"Oh, I see it," Jeff said. "It's nothing. Let's go back."

"Did Henry not say he dug out a piece of Silver from the ground?" Geroge muttered. "And it was what he said chained the creature he was babbling about."

"There is no creature, George," Jeff snapped. "Leave that thing, let's head back to the bus."

George was focused. He didn't hear anything Jeff was saying, he walked forward carefully. The glint in the ground was surely a piece of silver like the one Henry had brought to the bus.

He bent to pick it up. "It's a bigger piece of what Henry had," He called to Jeff.

"Happy now?" Jeff called back. "Let's go!"

"Wait," George muttered. He climbed over a fallen tree trunk and came face to face with a large gaping hole. "What the fu-" He breathed out in shock. "Jeff! Come check this out!"

He shone his torchlight into the hole and looked around. He noticed that it was not really a hole, it was only a tiny space, it was covered in a thick silver chain mail – just like what Henry had said.

He looked over the top and poked it with his fingers. It ground away at his touch, but it wasn't sand. It felt very grainy, more than the texture of normal sand.

"It's like old, worn-out cement," He whispered to himself. It was just like what Henry said.

If all these things aligned with what Henry had said and they didn't believe, then the part about this village being dangerous was also true.

He stooped up abruptly and walked back, tripping over the log of wood. "Jeff! We need to get out of here right now!"

There are foot tracks in the sand where he picked the silver from. He placed his size 10 boots beside the tracks, and his foot suddenly looked like a baby's compared to the print on the floor. He crouched to look closely. "Are those claw marks?" He asked himself. The claw prints were the size of his index finger.

He packed himself from the floor and looked around.

Jeff was nowhere to be found.

"THE RAIN HAS reduced a bit, don't you think?" Grace asked nervously.

"I don't want to get wet," Lucas said. His nose was almost touching the dark smudge of blood on the wall. He seemed to be fascinated by it. He took out the ivory knife from his pocket and poked the wall. "I wonder who used to live here,"

"Let away from there, Lucas," Grace said.

"Don't make a buzz about it," Lucas snapped. "Besides, how do you know it's human blood? It could be that of a deer, or an elk. Didn't Emma say that elk is the major inhabitant of these woods?"

Grace scoffed. "Well, I haven't seen any elk since I've been here." She said, and added as an afterthought to herself. "Matter of fact, I haven't seen any animal in these woods. Even tiny squirrels."

"You are about to blame that on the ritual and human sacrifices, aren't you?" Lucas asked and laughed.

Grace threw him a dirty look and scoffed. She focused her gaze out of the window, monitoring to see if there was a drop in the rain intensity. She wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.

There was a bright flash of lightning, closely followed by the loud clap of thunder.

"Hey, see what I found," Lucas called from behind her, and suddenly the room was bathed in the soft golden glow of a candle.

"Where did you find that?" Grace asked.

"In the drawer, alongside some weirdass scrolls," Lucas muttered, placing the candle on the floor.

Grace walked to the drawer he had indicated and pulled it open. There were rolled-up scrolls stuffed in there. She piled them up in her arms and dumped them on the floor.

"You want to burn them?" Lucas asked excitedly. "I'm down for that."

"Don't be silly," Grace snapped. "I want to read them!"

"Oh, that sounds boring," Lucas said, but he sat beside Grace and watched as she rolled the first scroll. "What language is that?" He peered closer at the curvy writings.

Grace squinted her eyes. "It's English… I think," she said. "Some sort of English." She traced her finger over the letters.

"What does it say?" Lucas asked.

"Uh… something about the moon, full moon," she said. "It's not complete English. See this word, that's 'luna', it's Latin for the moon."

"Hmm," Lucas seemed interested now. "What does it say about the full moon?"

"Um…" Grace read the words slowly. "Okay. The full moon is like a charger for the supernaturals…"

"Supernaturals?" Lucas asked.

"What? Are you surprised?" Grace scoffed. "We are in a weird house filled with strange-looking things, and the term 'supernaturals' is freaking you out."

Lucas didn't say anything. The candle flickered, and he covered it with his palm, throwing a part of the house into darkness. It might have been the movement of the light, but a shape seemed to materialize from the shadows and melt into the night.

"What type of supernaturals?" Lucas asked.

"I can see some words I understand," Grace said and pointed at a place on the scroll, "this is exspiravit… that's the Latin word for ghost…" Grace said.

Lucas scoffed. "They aren't real."

"Who knows?" Grace shrugged and pushed aside one scroll. She reached for another scroll and opened it. There was a grotesque picture of an animal. or was it a man?

"Hey, what is that?" Lucas asked and chuckled, "The person that drew it was no artist, that's for sure."

Grace traced the words on the scroll as she read out, "They call it Rex Noctis, which means king of the night."

"What are all these?" Lucas asked.

Grace kept quiet as she read on. With each sentence, it was sounding more like the story that Henry had told her the previous night. "in saeculum", that means one century.

So this creature comes out every century. "Femina", that means females. "Vir-lupus", that means man-wolf. Those words were highlighted with thicker ink.

The scroll also said something that made Grace gasp. It was said that this creature creates a bond with the first person it sees after a long time.

Henry!