The Reaper's Keeper (UNEDITED)

Chapter 30

(Recap)

Van went through the window, but I thought I saw a blur of smoke around her, and then Vicky went sailing strait for the dash, knocking her head hard and knocking her out in the process.

I was pinned down by the stirring wheel crushing my legs as a branch whipped inside across my face, and my head was thrown sideway, breaking the driver’s side door window. My head loll forward and I was starting to see black spots.

“Ethan…” I heard myself distantly whisper.

The last thing I saw was Ethan’s pain filled face, as his body was slammed into a tree and being crushed by my car, while the radio kept playing, and the phrase this is the end was the last thing I heard before complete and utter darkness.

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Chapter 30

The smell was the first thing to break through the blackness. It smelled of damp and dust, along with the fresh smell of pine and damp earth. It wasn’t long until the pain over took the smell. My head throbbed and the right side of my face was bandaged up pretty tight only heightening the pain and pressure. I opened my eyes only to shut them just as quick, the room was flooded with light and my eyes burned at the contact. I kept my hands up in front of my eyes to shield them from the blinding brightness of the florescent light just above the bed.

Where the heck am I and how did I get here? I moaned against the pounding pain in my skull, my ears, ringing to a near deafening tone. I touched my head and felt bandages. What happened to me?

The bandaged covered half my face, constricting my vision to one blurry eye, as I waited for the room to stop spinning and the blurriness to recede I noticed that I was in the middle of the room, with the door directly in front of me and the window directly behind me. It was a kind of an odd set up, usually the bed would be against the wall or near the window, but never smack bang in the centre.

Once I could see enough of my surroundings, I tried to get up but my legs where hurting so bad I nearly fell to the floor. I glanced down at them and noticed my right leg was in a sort of crude DIY home made splint, with sticks that looked like they were plucked from the branches of the trees outside, cleaned off from the bark and bound by duct tape. I noticed a pair of crutches nearby, also DIY, it looked more like sticks with a stump jammed on top of it. They at least found sticks with a sort of stump further down the center, for me to hold on to. It looked as if there was another branch growing from it and whoever fashioned the crutches just chopped it off to make the handles. Very smart and outdoorsy, whoever made these knows their first aid, or at least how to patch broken people up.

I shakily got up and walked over to the window. It looked like I was in an attic of a two story cabin in the middle of the woods. I could see nothing but trees not even a road leading to the dusty cabin. It was night time, and there was no full moon to offer any light so I couldn’t see very far in the dark but I could make out the numerous tree tops stretching out to the horizon as far as the eye could see.

The longer I was conscious the more I remembered of the day. I was at my mother’s funeral and at the cemetery I… no… we. Vicky and Van and me… we were attacked by these smoky, shadow creatures. I limped or hobbled over to the bed when my head started pounding again, the more I thought the more it hurt and I need to know what happened. I began to slowly unwrap the bandage on my head, hoping that it would ease the pounding pressure as i tried to remember.

We were in the car and the brakes failed and…

“Oh no… Ethan.” I remembered, Ethan was crushed by the car, pinned to a large tree. I have to find him.