Phantom Pain (trilogy)

Prologue

Prologue:

The first thing I noticed was the smell of damp earth, like I was lying face first in a garden.

The second was that my eyes were already open.

The darkness was absolute, as I took small shuddering breath, after small shuddering breath. Above me, I felt wood—below me, something soft. Every side was covered, and as I kicked upwards I was already repressing the realization I had reached as to my whereabouts. When it hit me full force I screamed for help. I scratched and I slammed my body upwards. Was I running out of air? Could oxygen reach me down here? It felt like every breath I took was shallower than the one before it.

Eventually things blurred together into a soup of adrenaline and animal instinct, and my cross was somehow in my hand. It was impossible to tell how long it took, scraping through the wood. It could have been two minutes or half a day. Then the dirt came rushing in, and I was truly dead: surrounded by the decomposing bodies of things far older than myself. Then—coughing and gasping—my head pushed its way into cold night air.

The dirt was up my nose and matted into my hair, but I was alive, and I could breath again. Pressing my palms against the half dead grass I wormed my way out of the ground. The dirt seemed reluctant to relinquish its death grip, but eventually I was on my stomach, staring down into my own grave. There wasn't even a proper head stone: just a cross made out of two sticks tied together. There was no name, no loving inscription, but I was in a cemetery of crosses just like mine.

My heart had been beating in my ears like a drum, and I only began to notice it now as it faded away. The pounding quieted, and I became truly aware how silent it was. I was in a forest. It surrounded the square plot on all sides. But I heard not one bird, not one cricket. It was quieter here than it had been covered in earth, and I became claustrophobic again.

I got slowly to my feet. Legs shook, and the world dipped and stumbled, before straightening itself out in my vision. I had to get away from this place. It felt like there were eyes, burning into the back of my neck, waiting to drag me back to that dark box. I ran down every row, my footsteps the only sound. I listened closely for screaming, or scraping. But it was deathly quiet. There were no other holes where people had pushed their way to the surface. The grass was smooth and unbroken. I was truly alone in the graveyard, I tried to tell myself. In this silence I would hear any movement.

I was alone. And there was nothing I could do for all those other graves.

There was no light except for the low hanging crescent moon. But I could see the trees, their trunks grown so close together they made a wall, and their canopies blocking out where I was sure stars must be. Spinning. Spinning. I saw it. There was a gate, and a path. I raced towards it.

The old metal creaked. I asked myself why I was running, but my feet did not respond. I looked behind me, back to the gate, and the crosses shining white under the moonlight. My toe caught and I pitched forward. Gravel dug into my forearms, and my face stopped just inches short of it.

No. I was not alone. There was a sound in the forest. It was the crack of branches underfoot. Or the crack of something. It was booming in the silence, and I scrambled to my feet, really running now. I stumbled once more, but I refused to fall. It flashed through my head over and over again, being dragged backwards into the ground—deeper this time—and having the soil piled over me, shovel full after shovel full. I could see it. And it could not come to be.