Walk a Path With Me

Day 13: Prompt 31 - Truth and Lies

Walk a Path with Me

Day 13: October 12, 2020

Prompt 31: They were playing a game.

One person out of four was telling the truth but the others were telling lies.

The one telling the truth though? Told the story of a killing stalker.

And how he took someone from them.

Warnings: off-screen death

Magical wards that kill

Stalking behavior

Sitting around the campfire, the group of friends were all laughing at the end of the story that Brinda had just finished telling.

Brinda, Alex, Brian, Richard, and Lee had gotten together to go out to have some fun before their last year of high school started for them.

Brinda had just finished with her story about a werewolf who had been under a familial curse and the others clapped, all agreeing that it was a good story. They had all decided to do Lies and Truth, a spinoff of Nine Lies and One Truth. To play it, Lee had torn a piece of paper into five parts, wrote four Lies on the slips, and one Truth on it. After that, mixing it all up, they had gotten their pieces of papers and kept the papers hidden.

Lee had gone first, then Richard, then Brian and finally Brinda. Now it was Alex's turn and he stared at his piece of paper. Folding the paper up, he rested his arms on his knees and looked over the group of people before him, all of them looking at him as he smiled.

"My story is that of a stalker and a family," he started, gaze turning to the fire that danced, consuming the logs in the pit. "This family was normal. They had a mother and a father. A son and two daughters. A grandmother who knew things before the rest of the world knew what would happen." He shot a look at his friends, finding them leaning forward as he talked.

He smiled slightly again before going back to looking at the fire, continuing the story.

"This was just before the veil of hiding dropped all over the world mind you. The son was the oldest, protective of his younger sisters and so very willing to learn about the hidden worlds around them. But what they hadn't thought of was that the grandmother would be from a family who talked about the hidden things. It brought attention to the family. Good attention in a lot of ways." His smile was brittle as it tugged at his lips. "And bad. Bad in the way that someone didn't like her talking about what she had put out. What she had written as stories for teens and adults.

"He found where she lived and watched her carefully. He found her family by following her every so carefully. He couldn't trip her wards after all. They would destroy him down to his very soul for the things that he wished to do to her." He picked up his bottle of soda and took a swig, feeling the fizzy drink slide down his throat. "And oh the things that he wanted to do."

Brinda shivered at the look in her friend's eyes. It wasn't often that Alex told his stories, weaving truth and lies together so well it was never easy to figure out what was wrong and what wasn't.

Alex shifted and leaned back in his seat, feet sticking out towards the fire and warming up as he thought of how to word the things next. There was no reason to give them many details after all.

"He found her grandchildren and her children. He found out that they believed and knew just as she did. He found that they would keep her work going even after she left the living world. And he hated that thought. So, he started to stalk the family," he said, playing with the bottle of soda in his hands. "He wanted to work the magic that he reveled in. The slick and slimy kind that left damage to the soul but never the body. The kind that tore you apart slowly, working to drag you into an evil that nothing else could. But the grandmother figured out what was going on when she was told by the grandson about the wards shimmering sometimes at night."

Lee breathed out a slow breath as he shared a look with Brian, the other man frowning but not saying a thing. They all knew that when wards shimmered, they were being tested by an outside source, their laid wards to protect them from others with mean intentions, animals, and bugs solid and clear around them.

"She didn't take that well and went to find out who was daring to touch the wards that protected her family. She found him. Standing outside of the house of her family late at night, glaring up at the house," Alex said, crossing his legs again. "She went into the house like she had done thousands of times before and soothed her grandson from his nightmares. The next day she laid stronger wards, new wards. She knew that the man thought that he would get through, but she tied them to her very being. If he tried, she would drag him into death, binding him to her to make sure that he could never leave."

He looked up at them with a blank face, seeing the horror on their faces. They all knew that to bind someone to them in death meant that if the person bound was brought back, they would have to share the body with the other soul. And the other soul would kill themselves the moment that they could. The bound soul would never know when they switched out or when they would die again, but it would happen.

Alex smirked and tilted his head. "The next night she died in her sleep, dragging his soul with her into death. The father and grandson found the mangled body the next morning. The veil fell that night, showing the world what they had never seen."

Brinda shivered as Alex finished his story. "I hate your stories sometimes," she complained, getting a low chuckle from him as he shrugged. "So, remember the rules. If we can't figure out who has told a lie and who has the truth, none of us know until the person tells us," she said, breaking the atmosphere.

The group decided that Alex had mixed truth with a lie and labeled his story as one of the lies. Alex had just said nothing, looking at the piece of paper that said in Brinda's cursive writing 'Truth' and tossed it into the fire.