The chirping of birds grab my attention, my eyes slowly open to the bright shine of daylight. Reality hits as my vision returns, I grasp at my neck with my hands franticly searching for wounds that were no longer there. I stare at my hand that is no longer broken and the thought of a nightmare crosses my mind, that is until a voice behind me spoke.
"Ah! You are alive then! I thought so"
I look to see of whom speaks... An old man sits on a log, tatted clothing and eating some mushrroms while keeping warm by a camp fire.
"It is getting harder for me to tell if the people I see are survivors. You must be hungry, Mushroom?"
The questions I wish to ask go unheeded as I sit speechless and stare in disbelief of my condition.
"Well I suppose you have quite a few questions, many of the people I see do"
When I try to speak the man stops me as he says my wounds are still healing. He said if was to try and speak "it would hurt like bloody hell".
"For your first question; yes you are alive, but for your second question; yes, unfortunately you are still in forest labyrinth"
He passes me a beaten metal beaker filled with water telling me to drink up, as it would help me speak.
"My name is John... don't laugh... Dear, John Dear. However, of whom is it that I am speaking to?"
I speak but with a gravely, groaning voice and I only speak my name, as it does hurt to talk. "Lewis Nightingale"
"Ah! Well... Mr Nightingale, nice to meet you and welcome to the forest of fears. If I was you I would eat up, retrieve some of that much needed energy back"
I knew it was too good to be true, that my ordeal was over and done with. I should have not expected any less. I try to eat the raw mushrooms, they taste disgusting, plain and like soil, but I still eat them knowing that I am going to see another fearful creature. I ask John, the best I could in my weakened voice, who or what it was that is in the forest terrorising me? John sighs before speaking to me, I guess it is not a subject he likes to talk about.
"It is a spirit... that feeds on the souls of the living. It terrorises anyone that walks into the forest at night because fear is one of our strongest emotions, an emotion that we put the heart and the soul into, unfortunately."
There is a question I wish to ask clearly through curiosity as I do not wish to know the answer and so the question remains unasked. John had been telling of his ordeal with the spirit, that he has named 'Pythose', and how he has been left here forgotten. Forty years he has been trapped in the forest... An aspect that scares me to death as I do not think I could last much longer...