Girls of the Unknown (17)

Chapter 17 : Past & Present





The spirit still hungered. She shouldn’t logically be able to feel hunger without a body and yet she did, like an amputee can still feel the limb they lost.
She couldn’t go back to her body : the bell had explicitly commanded her to “go away and don’t come back”. Maybe she could find a new host? Could she even inhabit someone other than Lorna?
It wouldn’t hurt to try. Probably. Well, it would hurt someone, just not her.
For now, the only creatures she could see in this part of the Unknown were a few black turtles and squirrels. This wouldn’t do for a predator like herself who needed to leave nothing of her preys but perfectly clean bones.
An owl hooted in the distance. It was better than nothing.
The spirit stole the body of the owl. It was much easier to do than she expected, and now she could fly silently to kill from above.
However, this body was way too small for a hunger that great. She needed bigger preys and a bigger body, so she started looking for both of these.
She caught and devoured a few rodents on her way to find yet another host. She eventually found a wolf and stole its body so she could devour more flesh.
She went on like this for some time, regularly changing location in order to never run out of prey.
One day, she got way too close to a house next to a river, and one of its young inhabitants found her prey. She didn’t even get the time to finish it.
The child’s screams attracted two teenage girls. She didn’t know either of them, yet she could swear that, as she was fleeing into the woods, she heard one of them call Lorna’s name. Or at least part of it before falling silent.
Feeding now. Questions later.

“So… how was the other world?” Clover asked Beatrice as they were on their way to the mill with Lorna and the Woodsman.
“Very different from what I remembered”, Beatrice replied. “The street lights looked… unnatural, in a way. And there were horseless carts that moved way too fast and made way too much noise. We’ve been away from it for so long… it’s nothing like what we knew.”
“I see…”
“And…” the girl in blue started. “Nevermind. We’ll talk about that once the spirit problem is solved.”
“What is it, Bea?”
“Did you listen to what I just said?”
The Woodsman’s daughter fell silent again. If her girlfriend really didn’t want to talk about whatever was on her mind right now, she couldn’t force her.
“Anyway, I’d like to see this world again some day”, she said. “You know. Seeing how much it has changed, meeting your friends…”
Clover had fond memories of that world even though she had that uneasy feeling in her guts that whatever happened right before she and her father found themselves in the Unknown, it had been anything but pleasant. And it just might be her fault.
Either way, it wasn’t because of the past that she wanted to go there, but indeed to see how it was in the present. And also-
Her train of thoughts was interrupted when she felt a familiar presence nearby. She froze right there and then in the middle of the path, trying to focus.
Slowly, she slid her hand into her shoulder bag, grabbing what was inside and holding firmly onto it.
The others looked around, not saying a word but understanding what was happening.
“It’s going away”, Clover whispered. “Over here.”
They followed the direction given, going deeper into the woods after the monster.
Soon, with the power of the bell, it would finally be stopped for good.

Were these humans seriously chasing her?
Fine, the spirit thought. She would let them think they could actually do anything to her. She would let them find her after a few moments.
And then devour them and place the bones somewhere else. Old habits die hard.
Maybe she would spare Lorna though, for old times’ sake. Or devour her anyway to prove herself that she had moved on and this girl she used to be a part of in the past was no longer part of her present.
She hadn’t decided yet.