Lost: Casa Perdida [Completed]

Uncovered Truth

Hernanda Wilkinson

A Few Hours To Midnight

It was chilly. I braced myself tightly and rubbed my palms together, trying to warm myself. A cold breeze blew through the trees, tearing away some leaves. My teeth were chattering and no matter how many times I yawned I couldn't get rid of the sporadic shaking of my jaws or the cold that gripped my body with its icy cold fingers. Goosebumps protruded from my skin as it yearned for warmth. The presence of the boys and the lack of a spare change of clothes prevented me from removing my wet clothes, which aggravated the chilliness I felt.

When Timothy and I had jumped into the water, I dove with all my clothes on. And after we had come out of the lake, in evening, the waning strength of the setting sun seldom helped dry our clothes. We had to deal with the cold and the uncomfortable sensation of our wet clothes sticking so close to our skin for the rest of the night. Only the weak flame of a nearly-dying fire had warmed our faces for a while after sunset, after which we decided not to light another one: to keep away the attention of certain things that lurked in the forest.

Just an hour before the fire had died, we had dragged the box into some thickets and had covered it with leaves until it was perfectly hidden in a way that only we could recognize its location, or so we had thought.

Then, we had chosen a tree for us to sleep in. In that tree, each of us had selected a branch or group of branches that we had liked to spend the night there. I had selected the topmost while Timothy was three branches below, behind my side of the tree. Jackson had chosen the branches quite close to the ground. "I can't sleep when at the back of my head I am always thinking about a bloody - literally bloody - death," he had told us before Timothy and I had climbed above his branch, "Guys, I really suggest that even if we've got to take rest, we still kinda be awake so that we wouldn't lose focus and fall off the tree. Just make sure."

Timothy smirked when Jackson had said that. But, even if he didn't voluntarily want to follow Jackson's words, his little friends helped him with that. Slap! "[Explicit] Mosquito!" I heard him say. I giggled at his reaction until a lizard had appeared under the branch above me, right above my head: a big one. For hours it had kept me awake. I loathed lizards, and the thought of one falling flat on my face was repugnant enough to make me forfeit much-needed sleep. Fortunately, after a while, the reptile vanished, and it did so without collapsing into my mouth.

The lizard had caused a rise in adrenaline that kept me warm for the period of time it was above my face. After it was gone the cold's fingers wrapped around my body once again.

I stayed for hours trying to brave the cold. It seemed like it would take about six hours for the sun to rise and the chill had reached its peak.

The view from the tree was beautiful. I could see miles and miles of tree canopy broken only by a hill nearby, the lake and mountains in the far distance.

Over time, my mind drifted to thinking about Kirt as I began to lie down on the branch, letting go of some of the initial apprehensions I had towards sleeping at that height. I tossed and twirled on the branch as I struggled to sleep. The cold played its part in that, but it wasn't alone in doing so: my mind was plagued by nightmares, terrifying imaginations of Kirt's fate. What I had seen from a similar tree on the day Kirt and Alice were captured flashed before my eyes. And that demon's face! Whenever I shut my eyes, I felt as if someone was watching me from the bushes down below, waiting to nab me.

I shifted my position on the branch and shut my eyes but then other legends and stories I had read about in Wyoming came to my memory. I turned to the other direction and brought myself to a fetal position but that didn't stop the fear. I couldn't help but think, Timothy might be right. We have been underestimating this threat. We are assuming that the demon wouldn't harm Kirt any time soon. We are simply having a flawed assumption that it would wait until we try to rescue Kirt and Alice.