After what felt like hours of running, we eventually made it out of the forest and back to the park where I started. It had gotten dark, the moon above being the only source of light. I was frustrated; after all that time spent in those woods, I was no closer to finding my sister. That frustration gave way to fear shortly after, however, because now I was alone at night with a strange man in an area I was still mostly unfamiliar with.
“I’m leaving,” I said, trying to calm my nerves. “Don’t follow me.”
“I understand, that had to have been harrowing for you. If you still want to find your sister, meet me at the coffee shop tomorrow, and I’ll tell you what I know. Just show up whenever’s convenient for you, and I’ll be there.”
On the walk back to my apartment, I was assailed by a relentless sense of paranoia that I was being watched by the figure from the clearing. For the first few minutes I would look back over my shoulder, but it was dark enough that I couldn’t see more than a few feet around me, so I decided to not waste the effort, and kept walking. To my relief, the walk back home turned out to be pretty uneventful.
When I got back to the apartment, I went straight to bed. I couldn’t sleep. I kept having nightmares, about the disappearances of my sister and her friends, about my journey into that forest a few hours prior, about that house. I ended up going through everything I had that was even tangentially related to my past, now present again, circumstances. There wasn’t a whole lot, just a video of me in the woods the night I summoned the creature, chat logs taken from my sister’s computer, notes about various works of fiction that feature entities similar to the one that haunted my sister and her friends, things like that. I’d looked through all this material before, of course, but I thought it might be helpful to have something of a better understanding of what was happening for when I meet up with the guy from the coffee shop.
You keep saying that word, "summoning". I wonder if you understand that the ritual, or more specifically, the steps, were not all that important. What was it again?
ReplyDeleteSacrifice something important to you in a forest.
Whatever it is that you summoned, whatever it is that took your sister, whatever it is that took her friends, do you think it cared about the thing you sacrificed? Do you think the item is what brought it to you?
If you think the answer is yes, take a step back.
Look at it from another perspective and revaluate the scenario you stuck yourself into willingly.
Ask yourself what your real problem is, and if the answer you arrive at is the "demon", ask me something.
Ask me if I know him.