I just finished this please leave questions and thoughts in the comments. A Krow’s Tale: “The Bone Man in the Dark woods”
By J.C.B
In the dark night not even the stars could be seen, but what could be seen was a wave of light, far away, pricing the darkness of night and fog, atop a tree sat a boy, a dirty boy with twigs in his hair and a rain coat that could have been some color long ago but had faded and was buried under dirt, he watched the light fade and appear over and over, he wondered where it came from, what was beyond the dark woods. The boy slowly began to climb down from the tree, carefully, slowly, till he reached the forest floor, but there was no sound, no cricketing of bugs, chipping of birds, but also no sound of animals stepping on the ground, the boy picked up a stick, stepping carefully back, he looks around into the darkness of the woods, then he saw them, a pair of eyes in the darkness, pale, almost like pearls. They were watching him, like how a wolf watched a sheep, but that thing was no wolf.
The eyes tilted at the boy, waiting, waiting for him to run, and then the boy heard it, the clicking of bone, the clicking of its jaw. The boy began to run, as fast as he could, as fast as he hoped. The creature, the man began to walk after him, the boy saw its pale skin of its arms, barely, just barely, he he ran faster, faster, but the man still followed, the man was toying with him, wanting him to be scared, flavored in fear, the boy knows this, but he keeps running, leads crunching under his feet as the man began to run on all fours like a dog, a wolf, like a hound. The boy ran and ran but the man was behind him, he could feel the coldness of it’s skin, the tightness of it, but the boy dived desperately into a hole in a old oak tree and crawled deep inside, as the man crawled into it howling, banging but soon, leaves, it’s foot steps growing distant, then just silence, but when the boy looked out he saw those eyes in the darkness again, the same eyes as before, the same ones mocking him, telling him that his hiding is pointless.
But the boy stays, and slowly falls asleep. In his dream he is running in the woods again, the man chasing like before, but flying above is a large shadow, like a crow and from the shadow are many orange eyes, watching him as the looks up at the shadow to then fall into a pit and around him are the bodies of many other children, mauled and killed, toyed and eaten, and standing above him, the man, the man’s body is tall, thin, skeletally thin, his skin pale like the moon, with patches of thinning hair across his body but his head is still in the darkness like always, but those eyes, white pale eyes are still looking at him, always looking at him. The man begins to walk into the pit it’s bones creaking, creaking. The boy grabs his head and pulls them into his knees as the man approaches, growing like a dog, and when the boy looks up again the man is standing before him again and then the boy wakes back up in that tree, it was day, the sun still not truly showing.
The boy crawls out of the tree, greeted by the chirping of birds and bugs, the man is not here now, but he will be, the boy began to walk through the woods, the leafs crunching under his feet, as he walks to a larger tree that sits on the edge of the woods, he crawls atop it the bark scraping his hands and feet, atop he his greeted by two of his friends, they hug him tightly, but 1 of his friends were missing, like others of his friends the man took them. The boy and his friends began to plan, to on how to kill the bone man, the boy agrees to lure the man into the trap. The friends began to dig, and dig, a hole, a somewhat deep one, as the boy sharpened sticks into points, as the sun moved across the sky, and began to set, the boy and his friends cover the pit of spikes, and hid.
The boy waited until it was dark, inside of the oak wood he hid, as he waited for that silence, and those eyes that stared at him, so he must wait, and he stared the woods, and then he sawed, 3, no 6, no 4 orange eyes staring at him and then, those were gone with the sound of large wings flapping and the caws of a crow and the eyes were and gone. Then he was yet again alone in the darkness, waiting yet again for it, for the man, and then the woods where silent unnaturally so, and that’s when the boy knew, knew the man had returned to hunt like it always does, the boy hurriedly got out of the tree and looked around, and in the distant stood those eyes, those pale, white, mocking eyes, it was watching him, the man was watching yet again, waiting yet again to hunt, to hunt him.
The boy began to run, ran as fast as he could go, he was afraid but he still ran, still acted as bait, the man fallowed him slowly at first, then began to run behind the boy, then run on all fours, the boy ran, and ran he could hear the man’s growling, and then the boy jumped over a pile of leafs as the man fell into it, landing into a pit of wooden spikes letting out and inhuman scream as the boy saw the spikes price it, and the man later still. His friends came out from behind the large tree dirt covering them even more so then before and they hugged him, they had began to celebrate.
But it was too soon to celebrate, too soon to let their guard down only the boy could step back in time as he watched in horror as a long, boney, white arm from the pit swatted one of his friends away into a tree, the boy could hear the disgusting snap of his spine as his friend dropped dead, slumped against the tree eyes rolling to the back of his head and before the boy and his other friend could even react, the jaws of the bone man bit down on to her, causing a sickening meaty crunch from her body as it soon hung limp in the man’s jaws as the man crawled out of the pit, spikes still stabbed into it, one through its shoulder, a few in its stomach, a couple in its legs, and the boy looked at the man’s if you could call it a face, there were no lips, lots of teeth, pointed dog like teeth coming from a snout, and the boy looked at the man’s face of as it slowly limped back into the darkness grunting, but the boy knew it will be back, not the next night, nor the one after, but it will be back, he is braver for he knows the man can be hurt, things that can be hurt can die.
The boy walked slowly to his friend’s body, and held the dead corpse, crying, he cried till he couldn’t anymore, till it hurts to do so, and picked up his friend’s body, carrying it by the tree and dug a hole, taking him some time to dig a shallow grave, he buried his friend, and then waited, but hound did not appear for 3 more nights, nor for 4 more nights after those, the boy had begun to wonder the woods almost aimlessly till he heard it, foot steps… but they were too small, too many. He heard a scream, a girl screaming, screaming a name “Light! Help..!”, he then walk towards were the girl scream originally came from and found a ditch, coming near it foot prints of the man, and then he looked down into it and the boy found another boy, the boy has red messy hair, goggles on his head, he wore weird blue pants with straps and they had a large pocket and the red haired boy slowly woke up and looked up at the boy, and said “Who are you..?”
The End
