Admittedly, I don't know exactly how long the whole story's going to be. I've got the plot roughly worked out, and I've got this much and a bit of the next chapter and we'll see where it goes from there.
The story overlaps with the timeline of the game, and while people who've played the game should recognize where they link up (and which story choices contributed to the 'canon' in which this fanfic resides), I've endeavored to write this such that you don't need knowledge of the game to enjoy or understand it. I hope I've succeeded.
Anyhow, let me know what you think, that'll help me decide how and whether this is worth finishing.
The story begins just below the cut. If you'd rather download this as a PDF and/or read it on a site other than this blog, I also have it up on my FurAffinity page and on SoFurry. (Warning: Neither of these sites should be considered SFW in general.)
Song
in the Dark
A
Night
in the Woods
fanfic by Chris Shaffer
Night in the Woods is copyright
Infinite Fall, story and original characters copyright Chris Shaffer
2019, all rights reserved
Day
1: Welcome Back
The
mural on the bus station's wall depicted a beautiful, sunny day over
the valley. An old-fashioned train, spitting out cartoon-fluffy
clouds of steam or smoke or whatever, seemed to float over the valley
on invisible tracks. On one hill sat a coal-filled mine cart,
celebrating a lifestyle that no longer existed. A stream ran over a
hill on the other side. In the middle of it all the figure of an old
soldier towered over the woods, shouldering a bayonet-affixed rifle
and wearing a dome-shaped helmet, just like the war memorial in the
middle of town. A banner reading 'Historic Possum Springs' spread out
front and center.
"So,
fancy new mural for the bus station, huh?" Eric asked nobody in
particular as he made sure his suitcase survived the bus's cargo bin.
"There's a good use of state money. 'Welcome to Possum Springs,
where the jobs are shit, mining is over, and you get to watch the
rest of the world die first because it'll be a decade before we catch
up to rest of reality!'" The red fox raised an imaginary toast
to the empty bus station with a black-furred hand.
The
vending machine behind him KA-CLUNK'ed as it gave up a soda. Eric
jumped and let out a startled yelp.
He
turned to see the janitor, a cyan-colored bird with a beard, wearing
a flannel shirt and a tool belt. The janitor pulled a can of soda out
of the machine, opened it up, and chugged it with a loud slurp.
"Holy
hell, where did you come from?" Eric asked.
"Always
here, except when I'm not," he said as he took another drink.
"I'm
certain
you weren't there a second ago," Eric said. He looked around, in
case he'd missed anyone else, but the only other sign of life was a
'back in 20 minutes' sign at the ticket counter.
"Somebody's
gotta keep an eye on this place when people don't pay attention,"
the older man said as he took another sip of his soda. "Speakin'
of which, things to fix." He turned and left through a door
marked 'Employees Only.'
Eric
shook his head, shouldered his backpack, and turned his suitcase over
so he could roll it out into the parking lot. He pulled out his phone
to call a taxi, only to find out that there wasn't any signal -- ah,
right, 'Historic' Possum Springs. He
let out a sigh of relief when he realized there was already a taxi in
the parking lot. The driver sat behind the wheel with an elbow
sticking out the open window, reading a worn paperback book, as the
radio blathered on about how immigrants were destroying American
jobs.
Because, y'know, it was all of
the immigrants who closed down the coal mines and the glass factory,
Eric thought to himself as he made his way over.
Eric
tapped on the roof of the car to get the guy's attention. The driver,
a bear bulky enough to look like he had trouble getting in and out of
the car, scowled at him.
"Heading
to Maple Street."
The
man grumbled at him and popped the trunk. Eric put his suitcase in
the back, closed the lid after a couple of attempts to get it to
catch, and climbed in the back. Without a word, the guy took off
while Eric was still buckling his seatbelt.
Eric
had forgotten what 'construction season' was like until he saw all of
the barriers warning people away from road repairs. He remembered
Possum Springs as the sort of place where certain times of the year,
pot holes only got fixed because the local papers shamed the city
into paying for it. At some point during the drive over, it'd started
drizzling -- not necessarily umbrella-worthy weather, but everything
was now wet and miserable and gray.
"...pened
up last night," the driver said, a couple of blocks from Eric's
family's place.
"'Scuse
me?" the fox asked, ears perked.
"Sinkhole.
Opened up just last night." The driver pointed back.
"Wow,
that's... pretty bad..." Eric said with a frown, noticing with a
distinct lack of surprise that there was also a lot of road work
being done on Maple as well. "Mine's that blue one there."
He
indicated a house and the driver pulled up and popped the trunk. A
few minutes, twenty bucks, and a brief conversation about a political
petition later, Eric hauled his suitcase into the house.
"Hey,
I'm home!" he called out.
Nothing.
He
frowned and set his suitcase and backpack in the hallway, and went
into the kitchen. He picked up a note from the table.
Eric,
At the grocery store getting
stuff for dinner. Your dad's at the store. There's some tuna salad in
the fridge if you need something to eat. Sorry we weren't able to
make it to your graduation.
Welcome home.
--Mom
A
sandwich later, the fox headed towards the center of town, silently
thanking anyone or anything listening that at least it wasn't too
windy. The rain he could handle, but the wind would bring a chill
he'd feel even through his fur. The weather gave the town a gray cast
that matched the one that always seemed to settle over it in his
memories.
A
black and orange shape darted around the edge of his field of vision.
He glanced up to see one of his neighbors, a black cat in an orange
shirt named Mae, running and jumping on the power lines, using them
to get along like they were her own personal sidewalk. It still
baffled him that someone only two years younger was not only capable
of acting so childish but also physically capable of running around
on those lines without destroying them or herself.
Didn't she kill a kid once?
he thought to himself. No,
wait, if she had, she'd probably still be in jail or it would have
been all over the news or both. That's a stupid question. You're
stupid.
He
kicked aside some wet leaves and ducked through the old underground
trolley station tunnel, passing by the pierogi stand and a mural
depicting miners on their way to work. The mural had been vandalized,
recently-so according to the guy who ran the pierogi stand. Someone
had crudely painted "NUKE POSS" before trailing off into
just swipes of paint over the image, apparently having lost interest
eight letters into "Nuke Possum Springs," an ancient slogan
of disaffected youth.
The
tunnel at least gave him some respite from the sprinkling up above,
albeit by literally burying himself in a representation of everything
Possum Springs used to be. So, really, just trading a
physically-oppressive environment for a metaphorical one. He stopped
and leaned against one of the pillars, watching the water run over
the tracks where the trolley used to take workers to the mine --
before the mine died off and took the trolley's purpose with it.
Some
years later, a massive flood wiped out the tunnels and turned big
chunks of the station into a waterlogged ruin. A combination of
historical significance and sentimentality about the old pierogi
stand kept the whole mess open. People sometimes fished down here,
and Mr. Salvi went hunting for junk in the old wreckage that he could
fix up and sell.
He
could hear the sound of rain from up above washing down into the
water, filling the tunnels with white noise. But despite that, he was
sure he could hear someone humming a tune... The tune sounded
familiar, but without lyrics he couldn't place it. He looked for the
source, but none seemed obvious. It didn't match the radio up on the
counter at the pierogi stand, nobody else was humming or singing, and
he was pretty sure Mr. Salvi wasn't out there now.
Eric
shook his head to clear it, and lost the tune he heard. He mentally
wrote it off as some trick of sound, white noise combining with
probably some rain ringing on a pipe or something. People look for
patterns, and he'd happened to hit on a pattern that sounded like
music to his ears. That's all it was.
The
fox decided that the train station wasn't the best place to be alone
with his thoughts. He went up the stairs on the other end and
ventured back out into the rainy gray city center.
The
bell over the door of the liquor store rang as Eric strolled in. He
swiveled his ears as he looked down the aisles for someone specific.
Now that he was out of the rain and someplace familiar, he perked up
considerably. Where before the gray outdoors had drained the color
and life out of him, he was replenished now that he was someplace dry
and kind of warm.
"Hey,
there, buddy!" came a voice from behind him. "Welcome
home!"
Eric
turned around with a smile to hug the older fox standing there, his
father Richard. Despite his approaching middle age, his father's fur
was still a bright red, his ears sharp with black points.
"Thanks,
dad."
The
older fox reached up and brushed some dampness off of Eric's ears,
and the younger fox's ears flicked away from his fingers.
"Didn't
get too wet, did ya?"
"No,
no, I'm good," Eric said as he took a moment to straighten his
headfur back the way he liked it. "I cut through the train
station for a good chunk of the walk from the house."
"You
get y'self some pierogis now that you're home?" came another
voice from just around the corner.
Eric
caught the flicker of a shadow dance across his dad's face, something
deeper than a frown but not quite a scowl. As he turned, Eric came
face to face with a brown bear the same age as his father who
lumbered around the corner. He smirked like he'd just said something
legitimately clever or even vaguely interesting.
"Welcome
back," he said as he held his hand out to Eric.
"Thanks,
Randall." As Eric shook his hand, he felt like the room had
cooled by a few degrees. It wasn't anything directed at him, just...
something lingered in the room. An awkwardness.
"You're
joinin' us here at the store?" the bear asked.
"Once
I've had a little bit of time to settle in back home," the fox
said.
"Probably
just a couple days," his dad spoke up, out of nowhere. "After
Harfest." His tone was much firmer now, like this was an
important declaration.
Eric
flicked an ear back but tried not to show his surprise. He'd intended
to take a week or two, maybe get a bead on living arrangements beyond
crashing at his parents' house. As far as he knew, his dad knew that.
Eric simply just nodded, as noncommittally as he dared without
contradicting his father in front of his business partner.
"I'll
get a time card ready," Randall said with a nod before wandering
off.
Eric
glanced at his father, hissing "What was that about?" under
his breath.
"Just
think you can start sooner rather than later," his father said.
The
younger fox frowned but let it sit for the moment.
"We
can talk about it later at home," Eric said. "Mom's out
getting groceries for dinner, I was mostly just stopping by here on
the way to catch up with her at the Food Donkey."
Richard
shook his head. "Food Donkey closed last year. Your mom's at the
Ham Panther, out by the highway."
"Well,
crap. Really?"
"Yeah,"
he said, in a 'you should have known this' tone.
"Is
the Ham Panther the only place you can go to shop for stuff?"
"There's
a Snack Falcon now," his dad snorted. "They've only ever
got this one guy working there and he's terrible, just terrible,"
he said with a surprising amount of exasperation given they were
literally talking about a register jockey at the convenience store.
Eric,
having little investment in the Snack Falcon or its employees, wasn't
sure what to say to that.
"Hey,
when'd you get back?" another brown bear, this one only a year
older than Eric, asked as he walked by. A couple of cardboard cases
of something or other filled his arms. He set them down, opened the
top one, and began putting bottles on a shelf.
"Just
got back a little bit ago. How are you doing, Jim?"
"Can't
complain," he said with a shrug. "Don't help much when I
can," he added with a chuckle, smirking like his father. He
glanced past Eric and spotted the older fox behind him, and the smirk
fell. "Have a nice trip back?" he asked, desperate to
change the subject.
"Bus
ride wasn't too bad. The leaves always look nice from the road."
Eric shrugged. "How's your brother?"
"RJ's
alright. Still a punk, but alright," Jim said, smiling like that
was the funniest thing he'd heard or said all day. He moved the
now-empty case to the floor, opened up the next one, and kept going
without looking away from his conversation. "So how come you're
just getting back here now? There a Halloween graduation?"
Eric
sighed. "I was graduating at the end of the summer semester, and
then there was some glitch right before the ceremony and I had to
make up a credit by testing out of a class. They let me do the
ceremony anyway, I got the credit taken care of, it all took a few
weeks to sort out, and here I am."
"Cool,
cool," Jim said, doing his best to sound interested. "So
when are you starting here?"
"In
a couple of days," Eric said, biting back an 'apparently' at the
end of that.
"Cool,
good to see you back behind the counter." Jim held a hand up and
Eric slapped it.
"Good
to be back," the fox said, trying to sound enthusiastic. "But
until then, I'm gonna get out of here and let you guys get back to
work," he said, turning to his father. "I'll see you later,
okay?"
"See
you at dinner," Eric's dad said as he went in for another hug.
Eric
hugged him back and slipped out of the store, trying hard not to look
like he was desperate to get out of there. However much getting to
the store had revitalized him, something going on he didn't quite
understand had drained the feeling from him already.
Eric
felt the drizzle on his ears as he just stared at the abandoned Food
Donkey, not too far from the train tracks. Weeds grew up through
cracks in the parking lot, the earliest beginnings of nature's
reclamation. He was pretty sure he saw someone moving around inside
the building, either some meth-head stealing copper pipes or drifters
come in off the rails.
Possibly
both, he supposed.
It
was just a grocery store, it wasn't like he spent countless hours
there as a child or anything. But it was a sign of a time that, in
his eyes, had passed and gone. On the way out here he'd also
discovered that a few other businesses, including his favorite
Italian restaurant, Pastabilities, closed down. Judging from the
condition of the restaurant's building, it must have been pretty
recent. Coming home had not been much of what he'd hoped.
The
wind carried some damp leaves past him, and he thought he heard music
on the breeze. It came from the woods just up the hill, and his first
thought was that someone was out there with a radio or something and
the gust carried the sound. After all, it's not like the wind blowing
through the trees could produce a melody.
When
he looked away from the store, he was already walking towards the
hill. He went with it, assuming it was just the curiosity getting to
him. He trudged up the hill, starting to make out a proper tune
coming from the woods. Whatever the music was, it was familiar enough
that he found himself humming along and keeping up rather well. He
couldn't place a name or artist to it, though.
The
woods before him went into the hills. He knew they went deep, and
there were old mine shafts and tunnels and hollows out there. He had
spent some time in those woods as a kid, both actually as a child and
later as a high school student getting up to things he ought not to
have been up to.
Now,
the woods felt like they were opening up to him. Despite the lack of
an obvious trail, his gaze followed an open path between the trees,
laid out before him. The tune he heard continued, the source still
unseen. Was that a saxophone, maybe another brass instrument in the
background...?
Eric
sneezed. The sneeze became a snort and he stopped and shook his head.
He'd stopped humming. The music he'd heard was also gone.
The
forest was different. The path was gone, and everything in front of
him was just jagged trees going every which way. Behind him, a chain
link fence separated him from the slope of the hill leading down to
the Food Donkey.
Eric
blinked. Where had the fence come from? It was too wide, he couldn't
have walked around it without noticing. He certainly couldn't have
climbed it, either. Could he? No, definitely not without noticing.
The wind blew from the woods, and a shiver ran up his spine. It
wasn't a pleasant shiver.
He
quickly moved to climb back over the fence to get back into town, his
musical curiosity and drift into nostalgia suddenly no longer fun.
Eric
got home and shrugged off his jacket, hanging it up on the coat rack
like he'd done so many times growing up. He reached up and wiped rain
off his ears. The door opened behind him and he turned around to find
his mother, Lyn, coming in the front door, arms loaded down with
groceries.
"Let
me get that!" he said, startling her. He caught a plastic bag
before it fell to the floor and gently took another from her.
"Oh,
Eric, you scared me!" his mother said, her ears laid back. She
had one arm free and gave him a hug. "Did you just get home?"
"I
got back a little while ago, then I went out again, and I just got
back in." Eric carried the groceries to the kitchen and checked
the bags for anything that needed to go in the fridge.
Lyn
joined him a moment later, having gone back to the car for another
bag. Like his father, she was visibly approaching middle age, her fur
more of a reddish-brown color, bits of early gray showing on her
eartips and the sides of her muzzle.
"Have
you seen your dad yet?"
"Yeah,
I wandered around town, stopped by the store. Saw dad, saw Randall
and Jim. The usual." He noticed her ears flick back a bit when
he mentioned the Ballards. "Did something happen while I was
away? Dad got real weird about them."
"We've
had some problems. Your dad will probably tell you, he's got more of
a handle on it than I do."
Eric
frowned at that, more about the dismissal of the topic than the fact
that the topic was a topic at all. The Hostetlers and Ballards both
owned half of the liquor store, having inherited from forebears who'd
gone into business together. Once the older generations had shuffled
off the mortal coil there'd been mild clashes between Eric's father
and Randall but nothing that threatened the business itself. The
notion that things had taken a dramatic turn while he was away at
school and nobody told him was concerning.
"Seriously,
don't worry about it," his mother said as she caught him
brooding on the subject. "I'm sure it just seems worse than it
really is. We're having pasta with chicken for dinner. I'll get
started on it here in a bit, but go put your stuff away while we wait
for your father to get home."
Torn
between asking more questions and busying himself with what really
was a necessary task anyways, he decided to lose himself in the
latter. Sure, he was planning on moving out sooner rather than later,
but he didn't relish trying to live out of a suitcase in the
meantime.
Clothes,
books, laptop, just the essentials. A handful of years of living
light in college stuffed into a big, hard-shelled, beaten-up suitcase
and a worn backpack. His old room was just how he left it, though he
could see traces where boxes had taken up residence and had been
recently moved out in his time away. Eric took advantage of an
opportunity to go through some old stuff he'd left behind -- more
clothes and books, mostly -- and made a note as to whether there was
anything to be dumped at Goodwill or a used bookstore when he moved
out.
An
almost disappointingly-short amount of time later, he he had his
laptop out, plugged into the wall, and connected to the wi-fi to
start browsing apartments. It took him a few minutes to register why
the handful of listings were all so affordable, but again the writing
on the wall was clear. Possum Springs was dying. It had very little
to attract new residents other than cheap rent. And even then that
wasn't enough to keep people living in town.
On
an idle whim, he opened a fresh tab on his browser and started
looking at job listings as well, the day's conversations nudging him
into considering alternatives to just going into the family business.
As he fell into the rhythm of clicking entries off a list for closer
inspection, he started humming the tune he'd heard earlier. He still
didn't know where it was from -- maybe something from the high school
band? That made the most sense.
"Eric,
dinner!" his mom called out from downstairs.
He
snapped out of his daze. He stared at his screensaver, a looping
animation of some swirling leaves, and brushed the touchpad to see
that he'd somehow lost an hour, and was that -- he heard the tune
from earlier again, but not because he was humming it. It came from
outside, like a car had driven by blasting it on a radio, and faded
as if the car passed.
Definitely
a saxophone. And a tuba.
"Did
you fall asleep?" his mom called.
"Coming!"
he replied as he snapped the laptop shut.
Eric
shuffled down the stairs to the kitchen table, where his mother was
serving up plates of spaghetti with some sort of cream sauce and
chicken. His dad sat at the table, thoughts resting heavy on his brow
and shoulders as he read something in the newspaper.
"Sorry,
I accidentally took a nap or something," Eric said as he pulled
out a chair and sat down. "Hey, dad, how was work?"
Richard
folded up the newspaper and tossed it onto a side-table once Eric had
a seat.
"It's
holding together, for the most part. But I wanted to talk to you
about that." He watched Eric's face closely.
"I
imagine so," the younger fox said, guarded, as his mother poured
him some iced tea. He took a sip and waited for his father to
continue.
"We
need you to start a little earlier than you planned. The Ballards
have been trying to take more control over the business, and I need
the extra pair of hands there."
"What,
to keep an eye on them?" Eric asked, frowning.
"Among
other things." Eric's dad gave his mom a look before turning his
attention back to Eric. "I think Randall's been taking from the
company."
"Wait,
when? Why?"
"I
think he's always done a little skimming off the top, but it's been
minor enough until now."
"Holy
crap, dad, then why..."
"RJ's
been fighting a drug problem."
Eric's
eyes widened with surprise as he almost dropped his fork.
"I
found out, and had to be the one to tell Randall, and he's been
taking it out on me and the business ever since," his father
continued. "While taking what he can, I think, to try and get RJ
some help. Thing is, if he'd just asked--"
Eric's
mother reached up and placed a hand on the older fox's shoulder, and
that shut him up.
"Just
eat. Both of you," she said. "Eric's been home all of
twenty minutes. You can talk about this after dinner."
"We'll
have to talk about it tomorrow," Eric's dad said. "After
dinner I've got to head back out. I've got a meeting."
"What
meeting?" Eric asked, hoping this is something to steer things
away from the store.
"Just
local business association stuff," he said around a mouthful of
pasta.
"That
reminds me, when did Pastabilities close?" Eric asked.
"Yesterday,
day before," Richard mumbled around a mouthful of food. "Someone
screwed up, and good people paid the price," he muttered under
his breath.
"Damn,
I liked that place. And Food Donkey, too. I saw. Which reminds me,"
he asked, taking a bite and chewing thoughtfully. "Have any of
you heard any weird noise out in the woods lately? I was out there,
and thought I heard music or something."
Richard
stopped and gave Eric a look.
"Probably
just hitchers off the train with a radio," his mother said.
"That
makes sense," Eric said. Then he remembered he'd heard the music
down in the tunnel, too, and frowned. He noticed his father watching
him. "You okay?"
"Yeah,
buddy, yeah I'm good," his father said as he got back to working
on dinner, eating faster now. "Just trying to finish dinner so I
can take care of the meeting."
Eric
took the hint and just focused on dinner. His mother seemed relieved
that the conversation had stopped for the moment, and his father...
Well, Eric caught his father glancing up at him with a weird look a
few times, just to focus back on his plate when he noticed that Eric
was looking at him. He just brushed it off as a long day at work or
something and focused on his food.
"-if pirating a movie about
first-degree murder gets you more prison respect than one about grand
larceny?"
asked a crocodile
on the TV, the noise kind of in the background.
Okay,
he was home, and on the couch, and the TV was on, and -- what was
that burning smell? Someone was coming inside.
"Dad?"
Eric asked.
"Hey Malloy,"
his dog co-host
began. "You know what I think about the law?"
"Oh,
you didn't have to stay up for me," his father said as he hung
up his coat.
"I
fell asleep on the couch -- were you at a bonfire or something?"
Eric asked. "You smell like smoke, and I don't mean cigarettes."
Richard
paused a moment.
"What, Garbo?"
the crocodile on
TV asked.
"I
had to give one of the guys a ride home after the meeting, and one of
his neighbors was burning leaves," Richard explained as he
kicked off his muddy boots.
"...That's a whoppah!"
the dog said,
before both hosts and the studio audience cracked up laughing.
Eric
had a weird feeling, but decided to keep it to himself for now.
"Coming up next: stupid
sandwiches!"
the crocodile said
as the laughter died down and they went to commercial.
The
younger fox sat up and smoothed down the fur on the side of his head,
and shook his head because he was pretty sure he'd slept on his ear
funny. Richard shuffled past him into the kitchen and grabbed a beer
out of the fridge.
"Well,
unless you need me for anything, I think I'm going to properly try to
fall asleep," he said.
"You
probably need it," his old man said before taking a swig of his
beer.
"I
probably need it," Eric agreed as he shuffled up the stairs,
leaving his father to change the channel as he sipped his beer.
The
trip upstairs to his bedroom was kind of a lazy blur. Eric heard the
song again, but he wasn't sure if it was just in his head or if he
was humming it, and the fact that he couldn't tell just hammered home
how tired he was. He vaguely remembered kicking off his shoes and
pants before all but literally falling into bed.
After
a few moments, he got back up and leaned against a beam of old,
worked spruce. It looked like an old pit prop, one of the supports
that held up the roof in coal mine shafts, but this one was
freestanding. He was surrounded by them, a veritable forest -- some
just the vertical beams, some with the vertical beam and a bit of
crossbeam, like a tiny gallows. Where he would have expected to see
brushes or shrubbery in this not-quite-forest he saw piles of broken
wagon wheels and the frames of mining carts.
He
was outside, and it was night, and there was an odd cast to the sky
around him. Swaths of purple painted the sky in the distance, and
something like an eclipsed moon hung in the sky. But it wasn't
eclipsed the way the moon normally was, it was more like an eclipsed
sun -- a black circle surrounded by a bright ring. Lightning flashed
in the distance, but he couldn't tell if it was behind clouds or
through thick, humid haze or both.
The
only thing that stood out beneath the sky was a bunch of bright
orange light in the distance and down a hill a little ways. He made
out orange windows of city buildings and pinpointed matching lights
that could have been street lamps. Some of the buildings stood at
strange angles, and he was fairly certain he could hear music coming
from the city, carried on a breeze he could somehow perceive without
really feeling. Like he was feeling it through a coat, though he was
just wearing his shirt and pants.
Wood
creaked behind him. Something rustled. He wasn't alone. There was
something out there -- from the angles of it, either something really
fast, or two somethings.
Eric
turned around -- the night sky was deep blue, the unlit chunks of old
mining equipment standing black against it. He faintly heard the
music coming from the city behind him. He couldn't make out the
instruments, but he was reasonably sure it wasn't the same tune he
heard earlier. He wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not.
"Hello?"
he tried to ask, though no sound came out. "Can anyone hear me?"
he tried again.
He
snapped his fingers next to his head, and he could hear the sound. It
echoed like he was standing in a long, narrow tunnel.
Huh,
he thought. He looked around and pondered whether to head towards the
city or not. He knew he wasn't alone in the forest, but were there
people in the city? Something like people?
Something
moved in the wagon wheel bushes, and the rustling moved with it. His
ears swiveled as he tried to track it, but the best he could do was
determine it was getting closer. He saw a shape darting between
shadows -- which was saying something, as he hadn't realized there
were distinct shadows as opposed to a wave of foreboding darkness --
and took a few steps back.
Eric
glanced towards the city and was certain he saw something moving
through there. He tried walking towards it, until he heard the
rustling behind him. Then he tried running. But the not-quite-forest
of mine fragments still stretched out before him and the city didn't
seem any closer.
The
music he heard ahead of him got louder, though. There was a tuba, a
saxophone, and he was pretty sure a violin. He reflexively started
humming along with the tune he heard, and realized he could hear
himself. The city sharpened in his view, like it was closer now,
until he stopped to breathe.
A
sound like a thunderclap went off in his ears and some... some force
swept across his ankles and sent him skidding to the ground. He
rolled over onto his back to get up and a figure in tattered,
patchwork robes leapt from the shadow and grabbed him. It let out a
hissing shriek like a slowed-down recording of breaking glass, and it
took him a moment to realize it was speaking.
"Bring...
me back with you..." it hissed in his face.
Eric
tried to tell it 'no,' but no voice came out of his mouth. He
struggled against the grip of bony fingers but dislodging them was
like trying to tear up the roots of an ancient tree with his bare
hands. He squirmed and fought against it, and out of desperation made
the only sound he could make.
He
hummed.
He
hummed a single, clear tone. He didn't know enough about music to
tell you what note it was, only that it reverberated through him like
he'd been standing beneath a ringing church bell. And in that moment,
it felt about as pure as a church bell's ring.
The
figure's robes rippled and blew as if in a breeze above him, and he
felt those fingers loosen. It let out a loud shriek, a wordless
vocalization of pain, and then a bright light swept over the
landscape. He felt its grip leave him, and his last thought before
everything went black was:
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