The Lost Boys

Chapter Three

Anya boarded the carriage with her basket filled to the brim with medical supplies. She adjusted her black velvet cloak and shivered as the wintry air blew tendrils of her hair away from her face. She had always been a spring type of person, and often enjoyed how the air became so much lighter as April began. The winter hair was heavy and constricting as it blew, making Anya’s cheeks become cherry red. She grasped her bonnet, pulling it over her ears.

As the horses trotted through the desolate forest road, Anya wondered if her parents would consider even visiting her on her birthday. She doubted they would, seeing as they didn’t for her seventeenth or sixteenth. Her fifteenth birthday however was the worst of all.

She remembered quite vividly waking up to a brutal storm that made the earth appear blank as a sheet of parchment for miles. She had never seen so much snow in her life. She remembered padding down the stairs into the living room, expecting to see her parents already awake, perhaps with a small gift they had saved some money up for. Instead, she found her parents with bleak faces and a man, perhaps twenty at the time, dressed in his best. Anya surveyed the look of her parents, realizing something was very, very wrong.

“Anya, my dear, today you turn fifteen,” her mother said very matter-of-factly. Anya didn’t like the snide tone in her voice, it gave her this terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach as though she would vomit at any given second.

“Fifteen is a very old age, Anya. And with Peter gone, may God rest his soul, your mother and I have decided that fifteen is the prime age for a suitor,” her father told her.

Her father, Anya remembered, had this way of talking to her as though she was a very unintelligent child. His voice would often make her feel as though she was just a small worthless girl in an enormous and important world. He often pointed out the negative and ignored the positive. He also had an apparent hatred for the animals Anya often brought in the house, usually without his permission.

“I don’t understand,” Anya frowned, looking at the stranger sitting in the parlor as if he owned it. “You mean that I am to be married to someone I don’t even know, let alone love?” Anya asked, baffled by the suggestion.

Despite their lack of interest in each other, Anya knew that once long ago, her parents were very much in love - so in love that her mother had run away from her home in North Hampton, a village that took a five day trip to get to, and eloped with her father. But after Peter had passed away when Anya was only ten years old, things began to change. Her mother had grown distant, her father harsh and negative. Everything Anya did was never as good as Peter could have done. In her parents’ eyes, after all, Peter’s death was solely Anya’s fault.

A faint whisper followed by a cold chill shook Anya out of her dreamlike state. Her heart plummeted to her stomach farther than it already was due to the trip down nostalgia lane.

Tonight

Anya looked around wildly, trying to find the source of the ominous whisper, but not a single soul was to be found. Shivering, not only from the cold but from fear, she bit her lip until it bled. She pressed her tongue against her lip, her mouth filling with the taste of copper. She didn’t like the sound of that whisper, harsh and uninviting. Anya couldn’t have just imagined that voice…could she?

Anya perked up, listening as hard as she could to hear the voice again. It was the voice of a young boy, but the words sounded slightly choked and strained.

Tonight

Anya felt warm air hit the back of her neck like a slap. She whipped around to find nothing but a desolate dirt path. She hurried along the horses pulling the carriage, terrified that someone, or something was out there…

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I apologize for the shortness of this chapter, but I felt as though I needed to get a chapter out asap for all those waiting for one. Next chapter is filled with new characters and begins to delve into the world of these mysterious "lost boys". I hope you enjoyed and constructive criticism is greatly appreciated. Glad to be back everyone and thanks so much for the great comments!