Obsidian Wings

Chapter 1

My car is not going to start again. In fact, I’m lucky to be alive after that stupid deer ran out in front of me. The engine hitches and splutters, but no matter how many times I turn the key, it never turns over. 

 

Frustration roars in a harsh scream out of my chest, the solid steering wheel bouncing under my furious punching. The horn still works. That’s the least helpful thing I can think of. As though I have any right to be frustrated. My Honda is crumpled out of shape around a tree, and even if the engine turned over, I wouldn’t be able to move it.

 

Making sure the emergency flashers are on, I try my door. It creaks open enough that I can scramble out. Thank goodness I’m not stuck inside. From the edge of the road, I see how much damage the tree caused. The hood is crumpled, the front passenger side curled around the trunk like a lover. Totaled. Damn it. 

 

Rifling around on the floor, I locate my iPhone under the front seat. The signal is popping in and out of one bar, finally settling on nothing at all. Maybe if I get to the top of the hill, I can get out a call of some sort?

 

Serves me right for driving through the night. My brother told me to take it easy, but I wanted to get all the way there without stopping to stay anywhere. All of my important things are in my backseat and trunk, my deposit is paid on a small apartment in rural New York, and I took to the dark backroads of Pennsylvania. Now, I’m going to need a tow truck and a new vehicle, and I passed the last town 15 miles ago. If I remember right from the GPS, Sheffield is just up the road three miles or so along a real highway.

 

I haul out my purse and stuff it in my small backpack, using my phone’s flashlight to double check I have my wallet and computer before saying a quick prayer to the starry night sky that nothing gets stolen before I can return. Then, I snatch my Nalgene and head up the path.

 

This sucks. May is cold at night. Maybe I should have stayed in my car and hoped someone would come by. Frogs croak in the distance, hidden in some secluded pond. Clouds skid across the velvety darkness of night, a stiff breeze making my skin break out in goosebumps. It’s dark, so dark, and icy fingers crawl over my back as I fight the feeling I’m being watched. In response, I turn up the collar of my jacket and trudge up the hill, wishing the fabric blocked the eyes trailing my slow climb.

 

At the peak, I’m disappointed to see no signs of houses or buildings. The next hilltop is at least another mile. It would be really nice if I didn’t have to walk all night, and I desperately want the relief of humanity and light against the dark chill in my bones. 

 

I make it down the hill along the road edge, humming Taylor Swift to myself. Nothing like Shake it Off to chase away the ghostly sigh huffing in the branches of the old oaks. It isn’t until I stop for a sip of water that I realize how quiet it’s gotten. The frogs stopped peeping, even though I’m next to a little stream. No crickets. No night birds. Even the wind has stilled. Something about the quiet makes my stomach clench, something unnatural swirling in the dark around me. The cruel gaze from the shadows feels hungry, and I shiver from head to toe.

 

Snap out of it, you idiot. There’s nothing wrong. It’s just a quiet Pennsylvania woods. If you work yourself into an anxious frenzy about the monster under the bed, you’ll never make it anywhere.

 

Only my brain doesn’t like my pep talk. It’s already in fight or flight, beating like the wings of a hummingbird. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always been scared of monsters. I hate horror movies, true crime shows, and zombie stories. Something about the unknown, the unexplained, makes me feel like a target. In college, my roommate found and posted my zombie apocalypse plan all over our dorm, cementing my reputation as the weird girl. At home, I was always the one hiding under the covers, crying about something dark and shadowy under my bed. Now, I can’t shut down the hamster wheel of rotting corpses, skeletal claws, and sneaking darkness in my brain, and anxiety-inducing, terror-ridden slideshow that haunts me from within my own self.

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While my brother teased me and my father rolled his eyes, my mom took me seriously. An immigrant from rural Latvia, my mom was a firm believer in the occult, the unexplained, angels and demons. She was a devout, practicing Catholic, dragging my family along with her every Sunday to mass, having us blessed by the priest regularly. In the night, she would crawl into my bed and whisper prayers over me, clutching her crucifix and running it across my forehead. The cool metal was soothing and grounding. She made me feel understood and safe.

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“Damn it!” I burst into the dark silence. That memory has revealed the fact that I left mom’s crucifix in the car, where it is curled in my cup holder around my water bottle.

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Mom died when I was fourteen from a fast and furious round of pancreatic cancer. Just before she died, she spoke a prayer in Latvian over me and hung her crucifix around my neck.

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“Believe in yourself, Elizabete,” she murmured through pain and a drug-induced haze. “You see what others cannot. You feel what the world rejects. Believe and be careful of the darkness.”

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That memory. I’m covered in goosebumps again with her pale, sunken face seared behind my eyelids. I hate that memory. I’ve never gone anywhere without her crucifix in the decade since her death until tonight. Even though I know my sweet mom held a strange mixture of pagan folk religion and Catholicism, the object keeps me feeling connected to her and protected in the way she used to make me feel. It shuts out the crawling shapes and flickering forms in the periphery of my vision.

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As though my fear awakens something around me, mist creeps onto the road from the stream in the ditch. It’s just the product of warm water and cool night air mixing, but all the hairs raise on the back of my neck. I sip from my water bottle again and start walking, eager to be free of the cloying humidity nearing my ankles. It’s hands and teeth and the freezing fear of the rabbit beneath a predator’s shadow, and I find I can’t move away fast enough, breathe deeply enough, stop the tremors emanating from my racing heart.

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The dip in the landscape stretches on, utter darkness falling as the clouds thicken in the sky. Leaves rustle in the night breeze, but all the animals are silent. No scurrying of mice and voles. No hooting owls. Nothing but yawning, consuming emptiness around me, the mist growing thicker as the temperature drops. The silence yawns wide like an open mouth, ready to devour any sign of life that makes itself known.

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I check my phone again, but I’m still without any signal, stranded in the darkness. Down between these two hills, I’m not surprised. I queue up a message to my brother. At least if I get enough bars, it’ll send to him and let him know I need help on the highway. Despite the frantic voice in my head telling me not to, I take a moment to glance over my shoulder where I feel the presence following me. Nothing. It’s mist and dark night and nothing else, but I the shadows between the trees are darker than the blackest night, and I can imagine anything in there, waiting and watching. Dark eyes, rotting skin…stop it, brain, stop!

 

God, if you can hear me, now is the time to make my 4G work, please.

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When the landscape begins to rise again, I start sweating despite the cool night. My breaths sound harsh and ragged around me, quiet screams, and my heart rate jumps in response. Goosebumps prickle on my arms again, and I take a few extra deep breaths to calm my nausea. I’m not used to climbing this kind of rise. Even walking this distance in the night on flat terrain would be an unusual workout, especially considering it’s night. It would be silly for this to be anything other than exertion because monsters aren’t real. I’m safe and smart and monsters only exist in movies and corporate board rooms and-

 

Elizabete…

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I jump and shriek, the disembodied voice coming from all around me. My stupid imagination. It’s just wind in the leaves, scratching and rustling into the sounds of words. Like hundreds of voices whispering unintelligibly.

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Then, undeniably, the disembodied attention burns into my shoulder blades like ice, and I whirl back around on the road.

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“Hello?” I call, afraid to find out who is with me on this empty stretch of road. God forbid a derelict crawls from the ditch to murder me and cut my body into pieces. 

 

No response. The silence stretches like a physical string growing thinner than fishing line. What will happen if it snaps? The mist is creeping with me up the hill. Great, another disturbing addition to this crap adventure in the middle of the night. 

 

A branch snaps to my right in the woods. I spin, heart pounding, sweat beading on my forehead.

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Elizabete…

 

Tears prick my eyes, terror flooding my system with adrenaline. Run, run, run, you idiot. I breathe slowly to calm my inner animal. It’s just a deer in the woods. Everything is fine. 

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Only deer don’t make the next sound. A long, harsh hiss, followed by rasp of something heavy dragging over old leaves and branches. I make the sign of the cross over my chest and begin backing up the hill, eyes darting around to make sense of anything in this blackness around me. A deeper black shadow moves within the trunks, and its long inhale sounds wet and feral even as more twigs snap. 

 

Desperately, I look behind me, ready to dart into the mist to escape the monstrous presence in the forest that even now seems to have locked me in its sights. Then, I stifle another shriek as I watch a shadow rise, outlined by the mist. Pouring from the asphalt, slender arms push a body up, shrouded by thick, white humidity. Too tall for an adult human and thin as a rail, it quivers in shadows, swaying slightly, then dissolves backwards like a wraith. 

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My stomach drops out of my body, nausea churning bile into the back of my mouth. I can’t breathe through the tightening of my chest, the fear, the horror of whatever lurks in the mist that has once again almost reached my feet. 

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A snap in the forest, followed by another wet breath, and my panic splits wide open into a terrified race up the dark road. I pant and gasp, my sneakers scraping old pavement as I dart over the stretch of empty highway. The buckles on my backpack clink in the silent night, and my heart thunders like a freight train in my chest.

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“Oh please, anyone, please,” I gasp as I crest the second hill and stumble onto the embankment, gravel slipping beneath me and tumbling down the steep slope obscured in night. “If you can hear me, please God, save me.”

I take another wavering step as I drag sharp air across the raw tissue of my throat, grappling for sanity and balance, but the road edge crumbles. Screaming like a banshee escaping hell, I go with the tumbling dirt and rocks, sliding down the cutbank on my ass. Rocks and branches stab my hips and thighs as I scrabble for purchase with my bare hands on the hard packed clay hillside.

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Thud. Slamming into a tree trunk, I throw my arms around it, finally stopping my reckless fall into the woods. I lay against the rough bark, sweating, helpless, sure my entire right half is broken. Leaves rustle under my shoes as I work to sit up, just wanting the world still and upright for a moment.

 

I use the giant oak as a seat back, gazing up the steep rise to the road, which now seems impossibly far away. My breaths lance pain into my ribcage and across my esophagus. My lungs burn with the effort created by fear and flight. Grabbing my knees, I lean back and let myself shake and fall apart into guttural, terrified sobs. 

 

What is happening to me? The woods are still quiet as the grave, unearthly and haunting. I feel like the mouse beneath an owl’s wings. This isn’t possible. There are no such things as monsters. My hand travels absently to my chest, where my mother’s crucifix usually hangs, and I gag on a sob when I remember I left it in my car. Without it, I feel the pressure of slimy, moldy hands gripping my arms. I taste dank air, and see the forms of the dead rising from the hillside just on the edge of my peripheral sight.

 

But no one is coming to save me. I’m alone and stranded, and regardless of monsters, I have to keep going. I have to try.

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Knees bruised and bloody, jeans ripped, shirt soaked with sweat, I manage to climb to my feet. I’ll have to follow the line of the hill, perpendicular to the slope, until I reach the road again on the decline. Deciding I’d rather have the security of the tree line, I slip amongst the old growth oaks and maples, keeping my eyes on the ridge and my ears on the forest for anything unusual.

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I dart from trunk to trunk, gaining confidence until I see mist curling in front of me. I skid to a halt, dirt and rocks tumbling down the hill to my right through the crunchy leaves. Tendrils waver and creep along the ground, almost looking sentient. 

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Then, I hear it again behind me. A hiss. A dragging shuffle like a body getting through the leaves, and wet rasping breaths that clutch at my calves like cold, wet fabric. Goosebumps erupt on my skin, and an owl takes flight right above me in the tree branches, screaming in terror. 

 

Mist before me, slithering behind, I turn to face the steep ridge slope. Without any consideration, I take off up the rough terrain. I’m stumbling, clawing, crawling. I give into desperate tears as the sound of wet, heavy breathing coasts ever closer, the scent of decay filling my nose and mouth as though I’m already being buried. The flickering shadow forms in the mist, the thin creature stuttering through the edges of it in my direction.

 

I miss the next handhold, slicing my palm open on a sharp rock. Blood drips out onto the ground, and the dark shape in the mist screams with hunger. I feel it in my belly, my toes, as it claws along the edge of the mist, trying to catch me, thin arms and clawed hands scraping over the dirt along the boundary of mist and earth. 

 

Trapped on the open ridge, broken and terrified, my primal, instinctual prey self erupts from my body. Heedless of the pain of my hand, I run up the hill on all fours, tumbling on rocks. My ankle rolls with a dull snapping feeling. Tears pour down my cheeks because what the hell will I do when I reach the hilltop and all that’s around me is mist and terror and death.

 

Deep in my bones, I’m sure of it in this moment. I am going to die right here on this hillside in the middle of nowhere with no family and no one to look for me. I’ll be one of those sad missing persons cases, played over and over at 11 PM for dissatisfied housewives to watch so they feel better about their safe, sane existences. Mikhail will wait as the years pass by, never having even a body to mourn or a graveside to visit. 

I choke on a breath and the bile in my throat from exertion, and the terrain abruptly steepens, the indicator that I’m about to hit the road.

 

Looking up so I don’t scramble headlong into a guardrail, my heart halts in my chest. On the ridge, dressed in all black, is a man. A tall, muscular man with biker boots, pierced lip and eyebrow, and tattoos covering his entire left arm beneath his black t-shirt. Icy, glacier-blue eyes cut through the night and pierce my soul, and I can feel it: he’s safe.

 

My heart struggles to continue beating, and I’m reminded of the time my cat launched at a bird in the yard. The bird escaped, only to fall stone dead from the sky two seconds later. Terror induced heart failure. I’m there. I’m right there, and my only salvation is this man who has descended out of nowhere, no vehicle in sight, nothing to stop the oncoming, wet slide of horror behind me.

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He reaches a hand towards me, but I can’t breathe. My vision tunnels to two pinpricks as he squats and leans down the slope. No more air gets into my mouth and lungs, my limbs heavier than lead, and just before I black out, my mind fractures.

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Because in the black night, the man touches my skin and giant, ebony wings explode from his back. Tipped in stardust silver like they’re threaded with moonlight, they block the dark sky above us, and then everything is gone.