A look into: Beyond the Walls

Chapter 1

Mama always told me stories. ‘Don’t leave the walls if you’re alone, don’t go out at night, and always watch out for strange people.’ I was never really sure what stories I should believe though, because just this morning she said if I didn’t eat my breakfast, a tiny troll would come and steal all our food and we would never eat again. I knew that story wasn’t true, but I ate my breakfast anyway just in case.

Our small town was quite this morning as I walked the streets, it normally is unless there’s a festival or some one is up on the headsman’s block. My stroll through town each day was always the same, from our home near the gates, past the blacksmith and the inn, and up the hill to the baker’s house next to the cemetery where I visit my father. He works there, taking care of the dead and making burial arrangements. But today was different. The baker’s house was dark and the door closed, he wasn’t there. I decided to walk over to ask my father what had happened, I knew mama would be a little upset that we wouldn’t have our bread for the day.

“He went out before the sun and never returned.” father said in a sad tone. The baker and him were great friends. “That’s why we always tell you not to leave the walls in the dark, especially alone.”

”But why? You have never told me why. What is out there?” I asked, slightly annoyed but also a little worried.

“We don’t know, no one has ever seen it and lived. Well except for the ol’ innkeeper’s father. He somehow managed to crawl his way back to the gates as the sun was rising. Some guards say they saw a large shadowed figure dash through the trees, but they couldn’t agree on what it looked like. Anyway,” he rambled, ” the innkeeper’s father said it was a huge black beast like nothing he had ever seen. It had branches sticking out from its skull. But he said that it never hurt him, it had saved him. He died before he could explain more, but I think maybe he was just delusional from all the trauma and pain he had endured.”

”So there is more than one monster in the woods?” I asked a bit shaken

”Why don’t you head on home son, tell your mother that we will have to make our own bread for a while. And get your filthy dog off of the linens, I burry folk in those and I’m sure they don’t want to be buried with dog hair.”

Kye, my big bull of a dog was my only real friend. There weren’t many other children in town, at least not of my age. So when I was younger my mother got me a pup that she found while gathering herbs outside the walls one afternoon.

My father was not happy, he thought dogs and pets in general were dirty and he didn’t want to be that house in town that stunk of pet. But mama convinced him it would be a good thing, and he allowed me to keep him, under the condition that I cleaned up after every little hair that dropped to the floor. And to the best of my abilities, I did just that. I realize now that father wasn’t worried about the mess of having a pet, he was afraid that the dog was possibly one of the woods many mysterious creatures.

He was right to think that. Kye was massive, bigger than any ‘dog’ anyone had ever seen. His green eyes were as bright and stark as a perfectly polished emerald stone, and his howl gave a sharp chill to your bones. But he protected me whole-heartedly since day one, and I haven’t had the night terrors since.

The nightmares had always been there, and scarcely have I ever had a good dream, maybe 3 my whole life. I don’t know what the cause was but once I had Kye, they just stopped. I know it’s something he is actively doing while I sleep, fighting off my dreams, because one night he slept outside after my father got upset that he had eaten off the table.  I could hear him barking in my sleep, like he was trying to wake me, but the dream was too strong, or he was too far away to help.

I was asleep but I knew I was dreaming and it felt as though I was awake and moving, just not in my body. Kye’s bark resonated in the dream like a distant but loud echo. The closer I got to the trees, the louder and more frantic the barking got. I was almost in the forest, I could see a shadowy figure beckoning me in. Just as I reached out to touch the shadowy hand I was jerked awake by a hand behind me. I really was near the forest edge, in the dark, outside the walls. My mother crying, she picked me up and ran as fast as she could back to the gates. My father in tow with his sword in hand. I could still hear Kye barking and howling in the towns walls. When we walked through the gates, everyone was awake and in the street to see what was happening. No one knew how I had gotten there. The guards never saw me and never opened the gates. They say I just appeared in the open field near the trees, and that they only realized it was me because of my dogs behavior. My father, ever since that night, has said to never leave my dogs side, to always keep him as close as possible at all costs.

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This is chapter one of a fantasy thriller/horror story I started a couple years ago. I’m going to be working on it again because this story is one I’ve had lodged in my brain for as long as I can remember!

Let me know your thoughts and if you’d like me to continue posting more as I go along!

~A