Art by James Fenner (@JMFenner91 on Twitter)

A couple of travelers found me a week later near the borders of Redwood, a little further away from the beginning of the old trail. I was lying unconscious and was found nearly half dead next to the bandit's abandoned wagon. A few things inside the wagon had gone rotten, but most of the stolen goods were still intact since they were non-perishable and made to last for months.

I hadn't been so lucky, showing up with a deep, nasty, stab wound on my chest and a strange dark bruise around it. I was rescued extremely debilitated and weak.

It was by the mouth of my rescuers that I learned the name of the Boss of the gang that had kidnapped me. Geoffrey Dirt was the one strangled by Erebus' very own hands. The dirty Jeffrey's gang had been plaguing the neighboring towns and villages for a while, but their days of thieving and murdering were now over.

The news about the empty wagon found close to the Redwood ran fast throughout the area. Old Buckle's tale was still vivid in everyone's memories and they were wise not to inquire me about the bandit's well-deserved fate at the old cursed trail.

The travelers had taken the wagon and its contents back to their rightful owners and I was taken back to my village, straight to the healer's cabin, so she could see if there was something that could be still salvaged.

I didn't remember much of the first days in the healer's cabin, but I do remember feeling this burning ache in my whole body, an emptiness swirling in my head, and a hollow feeling inside my chest.

Eventually, things began to come back to me... slowly and hazy, a few fragments of blurry memories that drifted in and out of my mind, changeful and disarranged images that faded away as soon as I tried to shape them into focus, like when you tried to remember a dream born out of fever.

But things started to return to me after a couple of days, flashes of moments lost in the dark that resurfaced, emerging from the shadows of my mind.

I remembered his touch first... how soft and gentle it felt. I think I was carried somewhere, someplace warm and safe, and I rested there, wherever it was, for a long while it seemed... It was cozy and dark, like the insides of a deep cave, and there was an intoxicating scent of wood and wild Red Drops with a faint hint of autumn in the air.

I think he laid there with me, one arm wrapped around my waist and his soft, sweet breath fanning next to my face... Sometimes I could feel the warmth of his solid body next to mine, his fingers trailing over my chest, the comforting touch of his hands... Other times it was an immaterial presence, like a thin blanket made of darkness, wrapped all around me, encasing me in a careful embrace. There was no talk, nor sight of light, there was only him with me there. Him and the dark.

Or maybe he was the dark itself, and I had just been alone all along?

Sometimes I had visions while I was resting there... they appeared right out of the dark, like nightmares coming to life. I remember the foul smell of decay and death invading my senses then... Erebus was there, sinking his teeth into me, ripping my flesh out like a wild animal, teeth-baring and sharp fangs dripping with blood... I remember his starlit demonic eyes on dark fluttering wings, and deadly inked talons shredding through my skin, digging into me while I just laid there in that numb, paralyzed torpor.

I also remembered the feel of raw meat and blood in my mouth, the tangy taste of iron on my tongue... That was usually when I realized in horror that it wasn't Erebus that I'd been watching. I was the one biting into my own arms, ripping the flesh off my bones, slowly devouring myself.

The whole thing felt like a never-ending nightmare that I couldn't wake up from. All I could do was stay there, choking in agony, waiting for the sweet relief of death.

I didn't know if the things I remembered actually happened or if they were just hallucinations, maybe nightmares, I couldn't tell if any of it was real or not... Maybe I was in limbo, not actually living, not really dead... I do know that I was in the dark, and he was there with me, watching, waiting for something...

And then I remember waking up at the healer's cabin, alive and still breathing, saved by sheer luck or by chance, or maybe both by fate combined.

The healer was an old woman who lived in a small, humble hut on the outskirts of my village, not close but not too far away either. She helped mend my body, cleaning up the wound on my chest and stitching me up the best she could.

The burning pain I felt in my entire body didn't seem to ever recede though. After a while, it turned into a constant lingering sensation in the background, always there, never really going fully away.

It took me a while to get back on my feet but eventually, I was finally well enough to leave the healer's care.

I could say I was fairly okay when I left that cabin, but whatever had happened in the shadows of Redwood, it had changed me in more ways I knew it could be possible for a man to be changed.

My hair had turned silver gray, even though I was still young in my living years. And it wasn't just this strange physical change in my appearance that had caught people's attention.

There was something else...

Something was wrong with me... something I couldn't quite explain, but it was there nonetheless, as real, vital, and unseen as the air I needed to breathe.

Everyone was curious and wanted to ask me what had happened in those woods but all their questions died in their tongues at the sight of my face. They started to avoid talking to me, even looking me in the eyes seemed too much of a risk.

They sensed that there was something different about me, but also very dangerous, and they chose to keep a safe distance. I didn't mind anyone talking to me. I actually preferred it that way.

I was not the same, I knew that.

I could see it. Everyone could see it too.

I tried to settle back into my old life and carried on as best as I could, but I couldn't shake off this weird sensation that had taken over me, a rancorous burning that had been growing silently inside, festering like an unstoppable tumor.

Then the nightmares began. Horrid gruesome dreams plagued me incessantly in my sleep. I was always back in the woods in the dreams, hands tied, wrists bound with an unbreakable rope while those criminals punched and stabbed me over and over again... but sometimes in the dreams, I was the one torturing them, and to my shame and horror, it felt like I was enjoying all that violence and pain...

There was always so much blood everywhere, on their faces, on the grass, at the trees, dripping from their leaves and branches, crimson dark red filling puddles on the ground while vibrant red drops floated around them...

And then there was him.

Him and his many eyes glinting eerily back at me, and his fluttering dark wings watching in silence, waiting for something.

At this point, in the nightmares, the shadows around him would spread out and take over everything. They would reach me with lightning speed and engulf all of me. I'd wake up thrashing in bed then, kicking and screaming in panic, drenched in sweat.

My neighbors said they could hear my screams from many houses down the road. I started to fear going to sleep.

For most of the day, I walked around the village aimlessly and without purpose, like a deranged, exhausted, sleepwalker, not quite sleeping or awake, not quite here or there, body dragging and mind elsewhere.

Overcome by exhaustion, sleep would win at some point and the nightmares would return, bloody and gruesome as usual, to my despair.

I tried seeking the healer's help again and she offered me a herbal concoction to aid me in my sleep and made me a new ointment for my wound that would not heal. The ointment made no effect, it was as useless as her tea that helped me fall asleep but couldn't stop the nightmares that still came, more vivid and intense than before.

Things started to get worse soon after that. All the blood and horror I used to see in my dreams started to leak into the waking world. Visions appeared to me while I was awake now, small glimpses of abhorrent things showing in the shadows and disconcerting scenes becoming real to only disappear a second later, in the blink of an eye.

Something was definitely wrong with me. I began to lose hope of ever getting out of this hell I was living in, but then, I finally caught a break.

At the village's tavern, I discovered how the ingestion of great amounts of alcohol was going to be the remedy that I so desperately needed to ease me into a numb and dreamless sleep. When I was drunk out of my mind, the nightmares didn't come.

Alcohol was my way out of this hell, it seemed. Certainly, it was a much better solution than the healer's useless potions. So I started drinking every night, and I drank until I passed out, so that there would be no more shadows or other unspeakable horrors awaiting me in my dreams.

I didn't even have to worry about money to cover the alcohol expenses since I still had plenty left saved from my fast deliveries. The nightmares were blissfully gone during the night and hangovers were what was left for me during the day, but the horrors I experienced in my sleep were no more, and that is all that mattered to me. My problems were finally over.

But... something was still wrong. I could feel it still burning in me, growing, festering, and rotting inside, biding time until it would be too late.

...