Trembling, he wandered down the forest all alone in the dead of the night. The only source of light was the full radiant moon, half obscured by the drifting thick clouds.
Even the little light that came through was veiled by the tall sentinel trees forming a canopy of shadows above. The air was heavy with mist, and every breath he took burned in his lungs.
The faint stench of mud hinted that it may have rained a few hours ago, or perhaps a day ago (it was hard to tell).
Jimmy couldn't recall how he had ended up in this place, but some invisible force seemed to pull him forward, guiding his weary steps deeper and deeper into the darkness.
He felt an unimaginable pain coursing throughout his lanky build, as if he had been walking since the dawn of the universe without any rest.
Wh... where the fuck am I?
A cold wind howled throughout the gloomy forest, sending a shudder down his spine, and it was that moment when he glanced down at his scrawny build and realized he was completely naked!
His body was as thin as a reed, with his ribs visible beneath his skin. His pale and thin body was marked with several bruises and grievous wounds.
He hugged himself, trying to fight the biting cold.
Am I... dead? Why can't I remember anything? What is this place? Hell? Limbo? Purgatory?
Dozens of questions flooded his brain, but unfortunately, he had no answers, nor did the forest seem to clear his doubts. His mind raced through possible explanations, but none made sense at that moment.
He could hear wolf howls far away, adding to his fear, and as he walked further, he saw animal remains littered all around the ground.
He tried to convince himself it was the wolves' doing—until he noticed something else.
As he walked further, and as much as he could see from the faint light, he noticed some of the remains looked disturbingly… human.
Are those… human skulls?
Am I dreaming?
I'm probably dreaming, and maybe I'm inside a nightmare. I should probably imagine something positive, and the dream would change.
To steady himself, he let out a nervous laugh.
Yeah… I'm lucid dreaming. I should be able to control this. I imagine something… something positive. Better. Hehe… I imagine some beautiful ladies with sexy curves. I'm locked in a room with them; they are all naked… and seducing me.
He opened his eyes.
Nothing happened.
He laughed at his foolishness to believe it was a dream, the pain he felt, the situation he was stuck in; it was all unfortunately very real.
He was still in the dark forest, surrounded by trees bent at unnatural angles. The trees seemed ancient, and he felt as if some hollow eyes looked at him through the gaps between them, sending chills down his spine.
I… I'm not dreaming. Where the fuck am I?
...
Slowly, slowly, memories started flooding into his mind as he recalled that he was Jimmy Morgan, a sixteen-year-old loser who had all sorts of interests in occultism and medieval history.
He was still in high school but had dreams of becoming a medieval historian, and spent most of his time reading books on the Middle Ages. It was just last week when he had visited a local thrift store and found a book written by Lucien Crow, a very disreputable historian of his time.
Crow was infamous for his controversial works—"The Shadow of the Cross: Faith and Fear in the Middle Ages," "Lords, Peasants and Kings," and "The Birth of Nations." The more ordinary the titles seemed, the more controversial the books were, because Crow suggested that vampires, werewolves, and demons did exist during medieval times. He argued that the historical records weren't just superstition or folklore, but actual documentation of supernatural events that had been dismissed by modern academia.
Any rational person would discard these beliefs entirely, but these convictions were deeply rooted within the mind of Crow. He had been laughed out of academic circles, his tenure at various universities revoked, his papers rejected from every respectable journal.
Yet he persisted in his research, convinced that the medieval world held secrets that contemporary historians refused to acknowledge.
And Jimmy, despite knowing well that Crow was considered a fraudster by the academic establishment, was drawn to his books. Something was compelling about someone who believed so completely in something everyone else rejected!
The book he had bought from the thrift store was actually the personal diary of Lucien Crow, which his son, Marcus Crow, had later published—and the book had been a massive flop. It sold fewer than three hundred copies upon release and was quickly remaindered, ending up in thrift stores and library discard bins across the country.
But to Jimmy, it was a door to understanding what was in the mind of Crow that made him believe in all those supposed fantasies.
The book didn't give much information (a reason for its massive failure in the market), but one thing caught his attention—the phrase "the forest beyond dawn, where the dead feed the soil."
For some strange reason, after reading that phrase, he had felt an overwhelming sleepiness and slept soundly for the first time in weeks.
In his dream, he saw a door in his room—a door made of bones and bark, with strange carvings etched into its surface. He slowly opened the door and stepped into the gloomy forest.
He kept walking through the forest, deeper and deeper, before finally waking up. He had kept walking in the forest before he woke up. But when he woke up, he was in the place where he had been in the dream.
That forest.
...
He looked back at his naked body, which had grievous wounds everywhere. He wondered how he was still alive with those wounds.
As he walked further, he noticed the trees were getting fewer and fewer, and he was entering into a vast hilly field covered with small grasses. He was almost in the middle of nowhere now, exposed under the moonlight.
But then, he found people around him... or rather, they weren't people at all. They were dark silhouettes, shadows, but they had round, white, hollow eyes that glowed faintly in the darkness.
The eyes bore no emotions, yet he felt as if those eyes were staring deep into his very soul.
He looked at a massive cave in front of him, its mouth a gaping maw. Every instinct in him told him not to go inside, but the same invisible force that had been guiding his steps forced him to walk toward the cave.
Step. Drag. Step.
Now he stood outside the cavern, which was lit with torches along its "walls." But as his eyes adjusted, he realized with horror that the cave walls weren't stone at all.
Instead, they were faces—all screaming, contorted in eternal agony.
He felt as if thousands of souls screamed from the walls, begging for help or mercy that would never come.
This is probably hell… I'll suffer too.
Thinking about it, I was never quite religious in my entire life... sometimes even mocked God, never went to church, nor was my family quite religious.
Oh… they were anything except religious or moral! My dad was a drunkard, my mom a… hooker. It was all because of her that I had to face all the bullying.
I never even respected my parents. I'm absolutely going to suffer in hell for eternity. I don't fear death, but will I really die young? I'll really die avirgin?
...
He reached the end of the cave, and there was a cliff. He looked down the cliff, and there was complete darkness below.
Every part of his body screamed not to go down there, but he felt as if some invisible force was pushing him toward it.
And then… he jumped.
He went down and down and down into the dark abyss. And for some strange reason, he felt no fear, and soon he was in a black void. He saw nothing, he felt nothing.
But still, he heard a female voice in his ears, the voice was melodic and very calm.
"My Blessed… Do not seek the dawn; it will not come for you. The light has forsaken you, but I have not."
Wh… what?
"All things fall to me—kings, beggars, gods, and ghosts—all swallowed in the same silence. You are no different, and yet… You remain."
"So be it. You are no longer of the living. The dark needs you. You will not rest. You will simply be. That is my blessing."
...
And suddenly, an unimaginable pain erupted through his entire body, as if something was scratching him violently from the inside, and his entire body was tearing apart.
He screamed in agony, unable to handle the pain. He felt as if someone was plucking his nails out forcefully, one by one.
He felt as if his entire body was burning in fire, every nerve ending ablaze with torment. He kept screaming until he couldn't anymore. No voice came out of his throat. He was just screaming silently in an endless void, his mouth open but producing no sound.
Then, slowly, the pain faded. He was cold.
Wh... what's happening? The pain's gone.
He tried to move but couldn't. His body was frozen.
Is this death? Is this real death? Am I stuck here forever, trapped in my own thoughts until I lose my mind?
He tried to recall what the woman had said.
What did that mean? Why me? I'm nobody.
I could get used to this, I'll stay here until—
Something changed.
Suddenly, he felt as if something was pulling him upwards, like a hook in his chest, dragging him upwards.
The darkness around him started to change, to fill up with shapes as though he was moving past them, or they were moving past him. It was hard to tell.
Then everything came into sharp focus.
Jimmy tried to open his eyes.
Nothing happened.
He tried harder and pried open his left eye. The right one refused to budge. That was odd; he'd never had a problem opening either eye before.
He could see that there were rusted iron bars inches from his face through his left eye.
Beyond them, darkness stretched out, save for a distant, faint orange glow. He sensed the air was thick with the smell of decay and rust, tinged with something animalistic.
He tried to move his arm, to push himself up; his right arm refused to respond. His left arm started to scrape against stone and then... His right arm moved.
But he hadn't ordered it to.
Jimmy's left eye widened in shock. His right arm was clawing at the floor, fingers scrabbling for grip, dragging his body—his body—in a direction he hadn't chosen. His legs began to move as well, both trying to rise in the cramped space.
"Wait, stop—" he tried to say, but his mouth wouldn't form the words. Only the left side of his lips responded while the right side produced other sounds: "—out, need to get out—"
The words tumbled into gibberish.
His body lurched to the left. Then to the right. Then it froze, every muscle tense.
Someone else was there.
It came upon Jimmy with a sharp, chilling clarity: there was someone else inside his body.