Okay mates, I have another chapter ready for you... I don't feel that it is all that great, but I hope you enjoy anyone. For those of you that are bad with setting changes, this one goes back to the mysterious man in the prologue. Enjoy!
Chapter 6: Fearing the Impossible
It had been several days since the man encountered the strange, red orb. After the encounter, he had found a way to climb onto the roof of the building that looked like a tavern, and he slipped through a hole in the roof. He had spent the last week or so hiding in there, surviving on the food rations stored in the tavern. That strange being had traumatized him, and it had taken a while for him to recover from it. He dared not venture outside, in case he met with that thing again, and perhaps it wouldn’t be as neutral next time.
He did; however, end up leaving, but only because the food supplies in the tavern had been used up by him. Before he left, he looked around the tavern for a weapon of some sort, so that if he did encounter those beings again, he wouldn’t be unarmed. Although a regular weapon may not work on them, it was better than nothing. After a bit of digging around, he was able to equip himself with a long butcher’s knife and a pistol. He did a few practice moves with the dagger, and instantly he knew that he had used one before. He jumped around the tavern, slicing imaginary enemies, getting the instincts back into the front of his head. Cut, swipe, eviscerate, coup, gouge, backstab, stab, and then finally, spinning around, he threw the knife directly across the room, so it was spinning on its side, and sliced off the top of an unlit candle.
The man smiled as he retrieved his dagger. He double checked that his gun had ammo. It was a tri-barrel, and he couldn’t find extra ammo. That meant he had three shots with it. Hopefully those would be enough.
He stood in front of the door, leading to the outside of the island. He backed away from it, and took a deep breath.
“Ahhh!!!” the man cried as he charged the locked door. He slammed into it, letting out a massive grunt, and the doors flew open. He collapsed to the floor, breathing heavily. He stood up and moved his arm, expecting it to hurt agonizingly. But too his great surprise, it felt just like it did before. He remembered feeling the contact when he smashed into the door, but now that he thought of it, it hadn’t hurt, and it wasn’t hurting now.
“Very odd…” he said worriedly. He took a look at his arm, and then started walking. He wasn’t sure where he was going quite yet, but he just had a feeling inside of him, telling him where to go. He walked across the island, through ruined towns and rocky wastelands. He passed a few little shacks that had been destroyed, like most of the buildings he had seen before. He walked for quite a while, stopping a few times for a few minutes to make sure he wasn’t being followed, and once or twice more for food. Eventually, he walked through a little natural rocky archway, and found himself on another stretch of beach.
He walked out onto this little back beach, and looked at his surroundings. He was on a slightly elevated area, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet from the ocean below. Lining the little cliff was a picket fence, mostly untouched. Behind him was a massive cliff of black stone, just like all the other rock on this island. Looking out at the ocean, he could see massive flocks of ravens flying out above the sea a distance away, but there were so many that he could faintly hear their cawing. The beach stretched a ways down the island, before making a slight bend, making the rest of the beach hidden behind the cliff.
The man started walking down the beach, taking precautions to make sure he didn’t get snuck up on. He looked at the sky, and gaped. He was sure that when he had left, it had been close to noon. He couldn’t have walked more than two hours, and the sun was getting close to setting.
That’s very strange, he thought.
But then again, everything on this island is strange. Time must work differently on this island, with days shorter and nights longer.
He began to pick up his pace, even though he didn’t know where he was going. His hand tightened around the hilt of his gun. All of the sudden, he heard an animal’s shrieking from behind him. He whirled around with his gun drawn, and fired a warning shot. Everything became quiet all of the sudden. And then, the shriek came again, as a massive fiery object charged at him from the sky. The man hit the ground and the object flew over him. He quickly got up to face whatever it was. Staring him in the face was one of the most unnatural things he had ever seen.
It was a bat. A simple looking bat, even though it seemed to be enraged at the man. Its little eyes burned with hate, but that wasn’t the only burning part of it. The bat’s whole body was engulfed in flame, but it seemed almost natural for the bat. It seemed to normally have this inferno around it. The man would have stared at the strange creature more, but he didn’t have time. It shrieked and charged at him again, faster this time. Before the man could raise the gun to fire, he was slammed in the chest by the bat. Now that he thought of it, it was much larger than a regular bat, and much stronger too.
He gritted his teeth and got up. He held out the gun, and before the bat could charge again, he shot it, square in the head. The inferno around the bat flew outward a few feet as the bat fell to the ground dead. The man looked at the dead bat. The bullet had gone through its head and out its backside, a clean hole straight through it, blood pouring from either end.
All of the sudden, he felt a little tingling on his chest, and looked down to see that his clothes were slightly burnt. He cried out in shock, but not in pain. For some reason, it wasn’t hurting, just like when he had busted down the door. He dropped to the floor, depleting the little flames of air, and putting them out. He stood up, now completely confused. He wasn’t feeling pain, and when he took a look at his bare chest, he realized he hadn’t even gotten a mark!
“What the hell is going on here…?” he muttered to himself as he walked away from the bloody bat. After walking for another few minutes, he ended up right next to a very strange little mechanism. He observed it briefly, and realized that it was an elevator. A cable stretched from the roof of a little box, big enough for one or two people, all the way up to the top of the cliff, at least a few hundred feet up.
He walked inside the elevator box, and saw a little lever. He pulled the lever, and the box jerked, and started moving upward along the cable. The man grabbed hold of some railing and waited as the elevator took him upward. He gulped and gripped his gun tightly. It was dark now. The days really were short on this island, just as he had thought. After about a minute, the elevator stopped at the top of the cliff, and the man carefully stepped out onto the rocky ground. Before him was another small path, winding through massive stone cliffs and into the distance.
A loud noise broke the silence. The man turned around to see that the elevator was heading back down, hundreds of feet below him.
“No, no, no, no, NO!!” he screamed. He watched helplessly as his only means of getting back down left him behind. Soon, it was all the way back down at the bottom, motionless.
“Damn it!” the man cursed, he angrily turned around and cried out again. Standing in front of him was a person, somewhat. He looked like what the red orb had looked like when the person materialized out of it, except this one was orange, not red.
Ghost. That’s what the man’s mind told him. He slowly backed away, but stopped quickly when he realized that he was just inches from the cliff. He pulled out his gun, and before the ghost could do anything, he shot it square in the chest. The ghost doubled over, with his hands clutching his chest. He held that position for about a second before standing back up. The man tried to fire a second shot, but he was out of ammo. He cursed as he threw his gun aside and drew his knife. He cried out and brought the knife down on the ghost, but before it landed, the ghost grabbed the man in a grip like steel.
“Ahh!!!” The man cried out. The ghost twisted the knife from his arm, leaving the man without a weapon. He couldn’t go anywhere now. In front of him was the ghost, straight behind him was a fall to certain death. The ghost grinned evilly, his red eyes glowing with hate. Then, he thrusted the knife straight into the man’s chest.
He grunted with the shock of the blow, and watched as the ghost walked away, moving through a rock and out of sight. The man stumbled backward from the shock of the stab, clutching the knife. He took a step back, but didn’t touch the floor. Before he could regain his balance, he fell, and plummeted down the cliff, to the rocky ground, hundreds of feet below him.
The world seemed to almost slow down around him as he fell. All he remembered was fear, and all he thought about was why he had to die like this, in some strange place, not knowing who or what he was. He could feel the ground getting closer, until finally, he slammed into the ground. His eyes were sealed tightly shut, bracing for death. It never came.
He opened his eyes, and sat up. He had fallen, and he was at the base of the cliff, but he was unhurt.
Impossible! he thought to himself.
A fall like that should have broken every bone in my body!
He felt his body parts, and to his astonishment and relief, they were all still present and intact. He ran his hand down his chest, and jumped as he felt the dagger buried in his chest. All of the sudden, he realized that he still wasn’t feeling any pain at all. He pulled the dagger out of his chest, and watched as the gouge it made healed up in just a few seconds. He had been stabbed in the heart, and fallen hundreds of feet onto stone, but he hadn’t gotten a scratch. Something was out of place. What was the cause of this?
“All this time I’ve been so close to death,” he said to himself. “When it looks like I can never die…”
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There you have it mates! Don't worry, just a few more chapters of that horrible suspense. Questions? Comments? Concerns? Praise? Rum? Rum would be nice.