Arthur The Brave One
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Chapter 1
I was born on a warm summer day. At least, so I was told. Obviously, I wasn’t there myself. However, the fact that I was, meant that I would lead a long and prosperous life, or so the superstition in my birth village said. The first decade of my life, if you look at it objectively, was pretty good to me. I had plenty of friends, and I was pretty happy with the way things were. I went to school on weekdays and played with my friends and played tennis in the weekends. But the day of my 13th birthday was different. Not only because I was now finally a teenager, finally a grownup. It was actually very, very different from a normal day. I remember it all quite well. It was a nice warm midsummer day, and the smell of cake filled the air. I lived in a medium-sized village, and so quite a few members of my fairly large circle of friends were there. I remember my mom was almost strangely happy the entire day. I guess she was just enjoying the fact that her little boy had grown up to be such a handsome young teen. Not that I saw myself that way. I was a simple teenager, living with the typical angst that young teens can have, but otherwise quite content with my existence. I remember my impatience towards my dad, who was still at work, even though he promised to be back by four. But most of all, I remember the wind: a rare chilling gust would pass by, not even rustling the leaves at the trees, but making chills run down my spine every half hour or so. It was like the feeling you get when you’re being watched by something gravely unpleasant. At some point, my dad called in that he would be even later, I don’t quite recall why, and we started the party anyway. And still, even though I was surrounded by all my loved ones, was having loads of fun and eating a lot of cake, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something sinister going on just outside my field of vision.
Just when I had started playing some soccer with my friends, I thought I caught a glimpse of something in the corner of my eye. This made me pay a critically smaller amount of attention to the ball, and I kicked it far into the woods by accident. I apologized to my friends, and hastily went to get the ball.
The dry grass and leaves rustled underneath my feat as I jumped across the stepping-stones in the little river that was the border between our large garden and the woods on the other side. It couldn’t have flown that far, so I peered into the undergrowth and bushes to see if I saw traces of black and white. Luckily, it didn’t take me long to find it stuck in a humble bit of thicket. I removed it from the wooden clutches and turned around to walk back to the field. However, when I turned around I found a man in front of me. I was startled slightly, as I hadn’t heard anyone approach, even though there were a lot of bushes, branches and dry leaves, which would normally have made quite a bit of noise. The man wore a sort of strange black cloak, with a cap concealing his face. When he didn’t seem to have any intent of moving from the spot where he stood, I asked him if there was anything I could help him with, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he removed his cap, ever so slowly. Underneath it was a visage with messy black hair, not unlike my own, and eyes which were… strange, for lack of a better word. They weren’t of any particularly distinguishable color, but something about them seemed odd. His skin was equally strange, almost fish-like in its paleness. His nose was flat, as if he’d walked into a wall too many times, and on closer inspection, one could see he lacked both eyebrows and eyelashes. He just stood there for another minute, both of us waiting in silence. Then, his gaze slowly averted upwards, until I was facing two white orbs in an otherwise motionless motionless face. Appalled by this gruesome sight, I stepped back slightly. Then, the skin around his hairline started to wriggle around, and you could literally see the hair receding back into the skull, leaving a completely bald head. As I watched on in horror, a few muscles in his face twitched, and he slowly revealed that smile. As he slowly bared his teeth, his face literally split into two, bursting open at the side of his lips, the blood dripping down the newly revealed teeth, all of them at least 2 inches long and sharp as knives. I simply stood there horrified, certain that I was going to die. As he slowly started to open this horrid mouth, I somehow regained control of my body, and ran. Stumbling and almost falling down over a dozen times, I ran away from the creature, deeper into the forest. And all that time, it must have been over an hour, I hear something rustling behind me: sometimes slightly farther away, sometimes so dangerously close that I thought I felt its breath in my neck, and I dared not look back, too afraid of what I could have seen. At some point I found myself incapable of running any further and as I fell to my knees, I waited for it to catch up. I lied down, waiting for what I was certain would be the end of my existence. Too tired to even think and weep for all the things I would never see in my life, I simply awaited the end of my torture in an almost blissful state of nonthinking.
Hours later, I was found by the policemen, covered in dirt and half-healed scratches, lying down in the mud. According to them it was a miracle that I was still alive, and I was lucky not to have been attacked by any animals. Half-uncounscious, they brought me home. The next day, I woke up because of voices next to me. When I tried to open my eyes, I could make out three vague shapes at first. When I tried and unblurred my vision, there they were: three bald, white-eyed figures, their faces split into razor teethed grins, all staring at me with their horrifying glee. I screamed for almost for the monsters to go away, hopeless, with nowhere to go, as they merely sat there, smiling at me, waiting for me to go insane. It took me an hour until I realized it was only my mom and dad and a doctor that had come to check up on me. There were no split-faced figures. The doctor said it had probably been the result of me sleeping out in the forest and getting ill, or perhaps bumping my head and getting a concussion. After another hour or two, he decided that there was nothing more he could do for me but advice me to take a lot of rest, and to take it easy for a week or so. If the delusions continued, he told me to come see him for additional check-ups. As the doctor went out the door, I looked around: the walls seemed less white than they had yesterday, and the sheets I was lying under less comfortable. Everything had changed forever.
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