Prologue

Branches whipped at a frightened face. Wind tugged at short wild hair. Rocks and branches obstructed the path. A young boy was running through an ancient forest. It was a dark night with very few stars and the full moon was hidden behind impenetrable clouds. The boy could hear nothing but the sound of his own breathing, twigs snapped below his feet as his own heart pounded in his ears. But he was not alone.

His pursuers were closer than ever. The rustle of leaves was growing louder. The approaching footsteps were no longer discreet. The boy risked a glance over his shoulder and lost his footing, tripping on a decaying tree branch and falling to the dirt. Panicking now, the boy of only five years scrambled to his feet and staggered onwards. Suddenly, rearing up out of nowhere was a cliff face, previously hidden by the dense foliage. There was no escape now.

There! The opening of a small cave was now barely visible at the base of the rock face. The young boy scurried inside and tried his best to remain quiet. He covered up his mouth and nose with his hands to silence his ragged breathing as his eyes adjusted to the unbroken black within the cave.

After a few minutes, feeling slightly safer, the boy began to calm down. He felt around himself quietly, trying to get an idea of where he was. The darkness was too extreme to make out more than the most basic shapes close to him so the little boy instead tried to use his hands to make out shapes and objects. Rock. Rock. More rock. Something smooth… what was it? A knife? A dagger! Why was there a dagger in this old cave? He felt around further. His tiny hands finding their way across more rock. Then something unusual lying not far from the dagger. Something that was cold, rubbery and clammy. It seemed to be quite large with material covering a great portion of it. The boy held his breath and brought his face closer to whatever it was that his hands had found, praying that it was not what it felt like.

A flock of birds erupted from the tree tops and all types of creature were stirred from sleeping as a blood curdling scream pierced through the formerly peaceful night like a lightening bolt in the darkness. The boy was frozen with fear. Terror coursed through him like never before and all he wanted to do was start running again, but that was all he could not do. His horror had trapped him inside his own body. He couldn’t even bring himself to close his eyes or turn away is face. He was just frozen in time as though everything in the world had been put on hold.

The older children who had been chasing the young boy stopped laughing and running when the child’s shriek met their ears. Whispers and cries echoed around in the dark after the air fell silent once more.
“Screaming isn’t part of the game!”
“What was that? Was it one of the little kids?”
“Do you think they’re hurt?”
“What the hell happened there?”
“It’s called ‘Hide and go Seek’, not ‘Hide and go Freak out,’ isn’t it?” One of them joked before the adults came running with flash lights and cell phones. Something had gone wrong and they could all feel it.

A good ten minute search was put in by everyone before anyone caught sight of the small opening at the base of the rock face. It certainly was the best hiding place a child could find. No grown up could squeeze into the opening, but they could see the five year old boy frozen inside when they crouched down to check if it was clear. All fun and games forgotten, the adults tried calling to the boy but he was unresponsive, as though he couldn’t hear a single thing.

The boy hadn’t moved an inch since he laid eyes on the other occupant of the cave. He simply couldn’t. He could barely hear the voices of the people searching for him outside simply because he wasn’t concerned with any of that. But the young boy wasn’t truly afraid of what he thought he saw until the beams of a flashlight shone into the little cave and bounced from wall to wall, illuminating all of the horrors within. His eyes opening wider, the boy tried to scream again but found no voice. He was now a mirror image of the preserved corpse that lay beside him, still holding a knife that had clearly been used to do away with two other people inside the cave. Three people lay dead on the stone floor of the cave, their blood had stopped falling long ago but the wounds were still clear. Their glassy eyes all stared vacantly at the only other living thing around. A five year old found himself inside a cave that had played host to a double murder suicide. This was not a hiding place. This was an open tomb.

Strong arms reached into the cave and pulled the little boy away from his nightmare and into the cool night air. Though he was away from the cave now, those three corpses would not leave his mind for even a second and he doubted that they ever would again. Soon enough the little boy with the pale face found his voice again and before the dozens of whispering people crowded around, he began to scream. The boy screamed and screamed so loudly that it chilled all those around to the bone, striking fear into each of them as though he were screaming emotion rather than sound. Eventually one of the adults peered into the small cave with a flashlight and gravely but shakily reported to the group what they had seen.

The young boy was taken away in an ambulance, still screaming as though his life depended on it and the police soon arrived on the scene. This was no longer a harmless game and they all knew it.