EPISODE 6

Abednego was given a clear information where to get it, it stays in this evil forest, in a long cave found in the forest. The figure is only seen during night hours when there's either bright moon or total darkness. It appears very fat and able to stretch its limbs and torso to inhuman lengths in order to induce fear and ensnare its prey. Once its arms are outstretched, its victims are put into something of a hypnotized state, where they are utterly helpless to stop themselves from walking into them. It is also able to create tendrils from its fingers and back that it uses to walk on in a similar fashion to ogrism. It can absorb, kills, or merely takes its victims to an undisclosed location where it crushes the bones and sucks out bone marrow. It is a terrible figure, its face is pale and ghostly, and appears to have been wrapped in a type of gauze or rotting skin. There's a time this creature often kept its long, pale hands crossed politely behind its back and sometimes hanging loosely at its sides. Abednego is supposed to search for it and feed it to the ogrism. It can also be found in sections of woods. Matendechere explained to Abednego that is s very dangerous figure and that it is often thought that it enjoys stalking people who become overly paranoid about his existence, purposefully giving them glimpses of himself in order to further frighten them. For this reason, it seems like awful to look at and very much enjoys psychologically torturing his victims. More so, it also often appears to float or drift around rather than walk, which suggest the possibility of it being an ethereal being rather than a creature or a man. This would also explain why it is able to remain mobile in spite of his poorly proportioned body. "You will see it and the magic calabash will help you," Matendechere told Abednego as he was preparing to leave. She told him that the creature does not have hair or a face. That he should be very careful when tracking it down. He was running so fast through the woods, Crasher had vanished from him, he thought that he would be of help, but he was wrong. As he turned back, he could see terror transform his face. Something called his name, but he didn’t have appropriate time to react. "Definitely another damming creature," he cursed. He didn't know that there was another creature that had bounded from the woods and leapt to the front tree ahead of him. It crouched, dropping its face to be even with his. Sneering, its rancid breath smelled of dried blood. Abednego didn't have time to stop or be troubled, but his knees weakened and buckled as he swooped in to pass the other road. It jumped out of the tree before Abednego could make a term, it attacked him there and then. He fought with all his might, but wasn’t a match and ended up crumpled a few feet away from a certain rock, In hysterics, he tried to flee but quickly found he had nowhere to run. The thing caught him promptly and dragged him into the woods with little effort. Abednego composed himself enough to start running as fast as he could, screaming for anyone insight, the thing wasn't willing to leave this kind of tender delicacy. It pursued Abednego, creeping here and there onto the trees. "Your magic sword, get it from the back bag," he heard Matendechere's sorcerer voice clear in his ears. "Your magic sword, I gave it to you, use it or you die a painful death," the voice went on, this time louder. All over a sudden it caught up with Abednego, it knocked him off the ground, the back bag tightly fixed on his back. Abednego was unconscious, he don't know how long he was there before he gained consciousness. He opened his eyes and Alas, the creature sat squat across from him, l*****g its lips and watching him zealously. It was muttering anxiously and rocking on its wolf's feet. He was surprised, as ancient as Matendechere had earlier on told him this was too dangerous than other beasts. His chest throbbing, it looked at Abednego its coal eyes following him as he nervously brought himself to a sitting position. He seemed to be in a cavern of some sort with two tunnels that faded to blackness, neither discernable as the exit. He hadn't forgotten how it knocked him mercilessly to the ground. The look in its eyes when it opened its mouth was frightening. An awful smell from its mouth permeated into Abednego's nostrils. He was still in for another shock, a shock that sent frenzy in his nervous system. It could speak. “You can’t leave. You are mine. You belong to me. You crossed and came in the forest. But you are too thin to eat. You spoiled,' it thundered. Realizing the thing was contemplating over whether to kill him or not, Abednego's screams strained through its head, and he understood that it had meant for him to make a deal with the creature for his life. The creature wanted something different. So Abednego asked it what it wanted in exchange for letting him go. It thought for awhile, before it smiled maliciously. It wanted Imboko the king dead. Abednego didn't take matters to chances, but he took that deal. He nodded his head, and agreed. It might seem like a rough bargain, but it would get two for letting one go. Abednego was finally set free, his relief came when he saw an old deserted houses in view. At night, the tall peaks on the buildings cast odd, angular shadows against the ground, elongated by the light of the full moon. There were no street lamps – or any kind of electric light. Most of the buildings he passed were dark. Once he ran through some plantations that were in the forest and onto the back roads, it was even worse. Dense treetops bowed out over the road, blocking the moon for the majority of the run. His eyes fought to pierce the thick fog covering the forest roadway. Abednego is now used in the forest and not easy to scare. But his palms were starting to sweat a little. The hair on his forearms was on end, sending tiny pin prick of electricity up his spine every time they brushed him. Despite the balmy weather, he felt a chill creep along his skin. He ran in silence for the better part of his way before he came to a halt. The world descended into darkness, an inky black nothing that swallowed him up. It was as quiet as a grave. The sudden silence left his ears ringing. “So, I came all the way out here… now what?” he wondered. The scant moonlight that cut through the canopy of leaves didn’t illuminate much. He walked to the bridge ahead. He began walking down the road, not looking back. The road meandered through the thick trees for a few hundred yards before coming to a tight curve. He walked through the still night. Rounding the bend in the road, he reached an area where the tree cover was thinner and the moonlight broke through. The road narrowed into a concrete tube cutting through a small raised embankment. It was too dark to see the top of the elevated roadway. In the waning moonlight, the tunnel was little more than a yawning black opening, flanked in pale gray concrete. He noticed movement near the tunnel. At first, he thought he was seeing things, but then he saw it again. From the bushes on the side of the structure, a tall, white form emerged. Standing there, in front of the gaping black maw of the underpass, was a man six feet tall, looking like an old man. Well over six feet tall and gangly, all limbs and no mass. There was a yellow and red fire axe gripped in his hands. The long, slender ears of the Fox skins swayed behind him as he slowly made his way toward Abednego. Dark patches stained the front of his skin coverings. Abednego didn’t need to stretch his imagination to figure out what it was – blood. Abednego stammered and back peddled into some woods behind him. Without thinking, reached behind him in his back bag and removed his magical sword and hold it firmly in his hands and looked at the approaching form. The man didn’t stop. He continued moving towards him, closing the gap. The axe swayed back and forth in front of him, and as he neared Abednego could see there was blood on the blade. He moved, taking swift strides towards Abednego, no chance to miss. Good meal for the night, he seems to be thinking so. Cultivating his move and eying him. He was already in his trap, too careful not to miss him, it appeared well to him. He kept coming not scared with whatever Abednego was holding in his hands. The movement was slow, but he kept pacing towards him. He couldn’t see his face in the deep shadows but he could tell, he knew, that he was staring him in the eye. He pivoted and ran, full bore, towards Abednego. He didn’t hesitate. He exhaled, relaxed his arms, and raised the sword, positioning himself in readiness. The handle of the sword shook his already strained muscles, he swung it up and magically through it to him, it. The sharp edge of the sword got him. The man staggered, slowed, and slumped down into the roadway. He had only moved a few dozen feet from the mouth of the tunnel to where he now sat. The scent of condit tainted the cool night air. Crimson oozed from the front of his neck and joined the darker brown patch already there. The axe slipped from his grip, making a dull clunk on the asphalt. Abednego stammered, mouth moving like a dying fish. He run up to him and picked up the sword. He kept the edge of the sword trained on the man and cautiously looking at him. The sword had cut him in the chest, but not in the heart. Still, he was sure he wasn’t going to last long. He moved to the side, kicking the axe away from him. His right hand, still holding the magic sword, betrayed his frayed nerves. It vibrated at the end of his arm. The man coughed and sputtered, blood splattering his lips. “P-please,” he choked out. He reached for his midsection. Abednego assumed he was going to press his hand to the wound, but it disappeared into a pouch on the front of the knee. Abednego hadn’t noticed it due to the huge, dark smear across the front. His hand came out holding a furry, black object. A rabbit, neck broken and head hanging pimply to the side. He reached his arm as far forward as he could , which wasn’t far, and tried to fling it to his side, back toward the tunnel opening. It landed two feet away with a sickening thud. He looked at Abednego in the eye. For the first time, Abednego really took in his features. He was young, Abednego's age, younger even. Clean cut. Abednego didn't know what he was expecting. Crazy eyes, maybe? Homeless drifter meth mouth? He was not sure. But it wasn’t this. “Please,” he coughed out again, motions towards the rabbit. He opened his mouth to speak but all that came out was a pained cry, followed by a wheezing, gurgling sound. The sword has worked magic, it has hit and cut him in the lung. Abednego stared at the rabbit, trying to understand the situation. He was in shock, looking back on it. You never know how you’re going to react to the horrendous situations life throws at someone until you’re there. That was the first time he paid attention to his surroundings since he initially saw him. The moon had shifted and he could see the opening of the tunnel now. And the large, black fingers splayed on either side of the concrete. The opening was at least 12 feet wide, and somehow these hands were grabbing both sides at once. Hands that had to be a foot long, easy. Two tiny red orbs danced in the darkness, the light reflecting and giving them an odd, pale glow. That’s when Abednego first heard the scratching. Slow, like the laboured dragging of heavy furniture across an ancient wooden floor. Followed by a ticking, tapping sound. The man heard it too. His eyes grew wide, his mouth trembling. He attempted to speak again but all that came out was that wet, rattling cough. He fell over trying to reach for the rabbit. About grabbed the rabbit carcass. It was still warm. He threw it, with everything he had left in him, into the dark opening. The silence grew palpable, and the tapered shadow fingers retreated into the tunnel. He heard a sickening crunch. The dragging started again, retreating into the depths of the darkness. He looked at the man, laying on the ground, labouring to breathe. His face relaxed and he smiled. His unfocused eyes locked on Abednego's, and he looked relieved. “Y-your problem,” he said, then laughed. The laugh turned into a gurgling, choking noise, and then he laid still. Abednego turned and ran back towards the forest lane. He ran as fast as he could. After some good miles of running he sported the place, in somewhat forbidding edifice deep in the forest, accessible only by a winding road that is often made impassable during heavy rain. The figures are terrible, absolutely horrible, they occupied the place. Since their occupation there has been the victims of suicide by poison. It was rumoured that the figures were normal human beings but had dabbled in the occult and brought doom to themselves and other innocent people by seeking immortality through demonic visitations, turning the place into an impure, accursed place habitable only by those with total sorcery spirit like Matendechere. The place the creatures inhabited is a no go zone, Matendechere is the only woman, with her sorcerer spirit, able to move there invisibility. She knew their language; thus her magic spells have been of help to her. She was a gregarious woman who invariably came out to meet the creatures in spirit. So she knew by sending Abednego to get the creatures as food for the ogrism, all shall be well. She grew fond of that place for years, so she she was rest assured. Abednego struggled all day long and all night long in the forest. The mind was preoccupied with finding the creatures. He got an unusually late start, and night fell as he went, the mad and water of a recent heavy downpour settling in the woods all around him. As usual, he passed no creatures journey. The weather in these parts is unpredictable enough to dissuade any casual person from venturing too far into the forest. Abednego arrived at a road he wasn't sure of as day became night. The tall spires of the creatures place became visible through the trees a half-mile away. The road sloped upwards gradually, and a man on foot would be exhausted upon reaching the entrance to the creatures inhabited place. This time Matendechere was already there in the spirit form waiting for him just off the road, most likely having spotted something from one of the trees high above. She laughed at Abednego's tardiness and informed him that the creatures are now hostile. Matendechere's spirit did magic, she told Abednego that there's a gate in that place that he can't see with his n***d eyes. So she blew smoke in his eyes and Abednego's spiritual eyes flung open. She opened the gate in the spirit so that he could proceed to the so called place, where there could be creatures. When he entered, the spirit of Matendechere approached him holding something in her arms, something swaddled in a blue blanket. She introduced her to what she called her ‘Okunani,’ a baby bat that had wandered onto the grounds seeking transformation of human kind, a magic bat that will conceal Abednego and camouflage him from the creatures. She held it fondly and maternal, explaining that she had little choice but to watch after it until it could survive on its own, as its mother had never appeared. Peering through the growing dark, Abednego saw that the tiny bat was sleeping, its head almost completely enclosed and snug under the blanket. He immediately communicated to the spirit of Matendechere, he was surprised the bat wasn’t awake and alert in the bitter cold, and She said she worried about that too; the poor creature often slept for hours and hours at a time. Abednego reached a hand under the blanket and touched its little head. For some reason the bat's body was incredibly warm to the touch, disturbingly so. He mentioned this, too, to Matendechere, and she concurred. All they could do was to transform it slowly, for the beast has to be transformed and taken care of it as best they could. Matendechere gave Abednego some herbs for sleeping, the herbs were to make him sleep in the spirit form. After falling asleep he fell prey to some terrifying dreams. He came woke up well past midnight, trying to shake a vision of a gigantic demon, monstrosity crashing through the house on which he was a mate. At the sound of Matendechere screaming and the house falling down on them with a loud thud, heavy stones falling on them and crushing his fingers. His eyes opened in a chamber. He managed to fall asleep once again, but yet another nightmare came for him He was tied to the ground in the woods at night, and a man whose head was encased in a bizarre metal apparatus approached him, holding a baby high above his head. He was begging this man not to harm it, but he then stood over him, the baby crying and kicking, and without a word he slammed that poor little child down upon Abednego's left arm, undoubtedly killing the infant with the awful force of the strike. He awoke at that exact moment, a dog howling somewhere far away in the interior of that forest. He lay in down in a chamber quite still for a moment, feeling a tingling in his left arm, as if in fact it had been struck. Then, perhaps five seconds after this terrible dream ended, an excruciating bolt of pain leapt up his arm from fingers to shoulder. A second bolt followed the first, and he rose from the chamber in a panic, moving his arm into the moonlight that streamed through chamber. What he beheld caused him to cry out in horror. His arm was twisted around so drastically it was as if something had attached it to his body incorrectly. It had also broken in two places, white bone protruding just below his elbow. He managed to stagger three steps forward but then collapsed to his knees, weeping in agony, having no understanding of what could have happened to him. The thought that perhaps an intruder had broken in and assaulted him flirted in and out of his fevered mind, but it simply could not be. There came a final grievous bodily injury he did not even feel at first, but which asserted itself there in the dark only when he began to stumble down the stairs to the inn’s bottom floor: some of the fingers of his left hand, and his entire palm, had been burned red as if he had doused it all in hot water. Only some moments later did he become certain that the afflicted flesh corresponded exactly to that which had touched the tiny bat brought to him by Matendechere. Not ten minutes after discovering his injuries, he made his way out of the place and climbed onto a tall tree to try and see how far he was in the forest. He climbed the tree with great effort so as not to have his arm strike his side. He had made no effort to wrap it; it would have been too painful. He somehow saw a road, four miles away, though he was in great agony. He simply could not take his time. His injuries were slow to heal, but heal they did. It was immensely difficult for him. He was musing upon what could possibly have caused the affliction. Nothing made any sense. Especially puzzling was the conundrum of the burns on his hand; the pain from these marks had faded quickly, but the redness remained there. He climbed down from the tree, he'd seen one thing that had given him pause. He laboured to think about it, deeper contemplating, uncertain as to how to convey the image in words and unsure of what to make of it. The sun had been low in the sky as he’d trotted down on the road, the horizon orange and red, throwing everything into sharp relief. In a distance he’d seen two silhouettes, feminine ones. They were engaged in a frenetic sort of dance, he thought, though that wasn’t quite right; they were locked at the arms and were spinning fast, their heads c****d back, one body urging the other toward greater and greater speed. There was nothing in this act. Trees had blocked his view rather quickly, and he had been unable to get another look at this anomaly. Some thoughts came to him, more carefully this time, but again it led nowhere except into the parts of imagination that pondered such enigma only in the lonely minutes before being hindered by the worries of the spirits of the dead; thus his life less afflicted with banal solitude. He was thinking of going back, the taste was breathtakingly and would set out in the morning because the forest was too risky at night, but he simply could not abide the wind and cold he’d come through under a waning moon. He emerged into the woods, collected some woods to light fire to keep himself warm. He moved close to the fire, gazing into it, appearing utterly exhausted. His face and his hands were chapped from the cold. As the night hours passed, Abednego became more and more troubled by the silence. Despite Matendechere warning, she knew he would have to at least get deeper into the creatures inhabited house in that forest and confirm to himself that indeed those creatures are food for the ogrism. He had decided upon morning to set out on this task, but upon stepping outside an hour in that night hour, he could see the mists over the forest swirling ominously, and he knew the heavy downpour wind was about to blow in with high winds. During that night the wind screamed as it swept down trees, stranding Abednego at the same place for another three full hours filled with loneliness and troubled thoughts. He tried to take his mind off such disconcerting matters. Matendechere had explained to Abednego much about the place she gave an explanation for the vanishing of any person who was in pursuit of ogrism tail and looking for the ogrism tail. They have vanished and no trace of any of them, was ever found. It was at this time that whispers of some satanic influence within the place Abednego took hold as never before. The creatures have a craven temptress whose true ambition had been to reach out from beyond the grave to consume the souls of the living. The creatures have frightful appearance. They are wisp of creatures, pale as sleet, with a piercing gaze. Abednego set of that very night to where the creatures are believed to be hunting, the place is filed with human limbs and heads. The weather was passable when he left, with low winds coming from the east, a crisp but not terribly unpleasant night. On the way he saw someone coming down the road in the other direction, a solitary man who was singing very softly to himself. Aside from this man he saw no one. He reached the creatures inhabited house gate at about there hours later having travelled more slowly than normal, giving himself every chance to turn around, thinking of all the reasons he should not be on this mission. Moving on silently and the midst of frenzy, he actually stopped briefly when he could spy the upper part of the forest against the sky. But in the end he overcame his fears. The first thing he noticed through the trees that fronted the place troubling, was that there were some owls that kept flying here and there, they were in form of human beings. It hasn't been a comforting sight to see, an image of the kind and in form of an owl on this frigid, solent road that stretched for miles in either direction without any glimpse of something welcoming. Now there was just a bloodless phantoms. The building looked as if it had been empty for a hundred years. It would be very cold inside, the stone walls chilling one to the core. The low iron gate in front was closed but not locked, not a terribly unusual happenstance. Abednego confirming his back bag moved through it, approaching the front door, which he had never actually parted. In his right hand he held a magic calabash, having prepared himself for the dark. Embedded in the door was a heavy knockers shaped like an owl, which he struck five times against the wood. He waited. No one came. He had not expected a response. He pushed gently on the door and realized it had not even been fully shut. There was no visible gap between the door and the jamb, but someone had obviously not noticed that it had never been closed. Or perhaps it had intentionally been left open. He entered inside for the first time. All was black within. Closing the door behind him against the light wind, he found himself in a long, draught front hall that stretched left and right. The gloom shrouded him, and his magic calabash could not show him anything that was not less than five feet in front of him. The walls around him were hundred-year-old gray stone, virtually devoid of ornamentation of any kind. He called out a greeting, his words echoing with a sad shallowness, and he received nothing in return. He chose to move to his left down the hall, stepping carefully, his eyes trained mostly downward. The floor was scratched and in many places not quite level with the earth. Abednego's foot came to rest on dead winter leaves once or twice, a sign that perhaps the front door had been left open wider and longer than it had even first seemed. He knew it was true then, that they had all perished. He needed little more proof. He wondered if the creatures killed and ate the owners before occupying the place.