Not Yours - Prologue

The darkness crept around her. Harriet looked up from her book and calmly considered her surroundings. The car had just begun shaking harder on the rougher road. The trees seemed to reach over and close in on the car. Close and closer they reached as the road thinned out into nothing more than a lane. Her eyes widened sharply as she imagined the spindly branches of the trees were grasping at her, trying to claim her. The fingers and hands stretching out and flexing their muscles before curling up into a fist. 

Her sunny mind was shadowed by the darkness, she had always had control of her mindset but now it turned. It turned to devour her. She dropped her gaze, freaking out at the branches and twigs overhead she tried to find some comfort in the sturdy reliable trunks of the trees. She gently started to relax. Her breathing calmed as her senses returned. 

“Dad, can we listen to something more cheerful?” She stammered, grasping for something to hang on to. The dark, sparse and bare sounds of The Forest surrounding the sand blown gravel voice singing “ he sound is deep. In the dark. I hear her voice . . .  and start to run.” Harriet dares to hope that without the dark swirling melodies filling the car she might rediscover the sunny insides recently lost.

“Not Enjoying The Cure honey?” dad laughed kindly “your turn after this album”

Harriet couldn’t quite find her voice to plead but perhaps a “please . . . “ escaped her mouth before her mum interrupted.

“Now honey we had your tape before, its dad’s turn now. We are nearly there though”

Harriet sunk down, deep into her seat. She was desperately trying to lose herself in the rough, lined back seat. She turned again to look out of the window.

The trees flew past the window. Silver and black lines blurred between the night sky and the harsh jet black darkness of the woods. The ones she could see, the closet ones with the reaching, grasping hands. They looked old and rough, broken and nobbled, bulging and bloated, gaping holes and open sores. She started to make out the shapes of faces. Smiling and open at first. Then screaming and angry. Soon the eyes staring at her were warning her, scaring her, tempting her.

She slammed her eyes shut and turned her face into the corner of the window. She could hear the wind rattling the car and the tyres grumbling deeply on the rough laneway. The sounds were fusing together with the dark melodies emitting from the speakers. She tried to lose herself in the sounds that surrounded her. A slow steady and calming breath streamed through her pursed lips. She dared to imagine that she could rescue herself from her grasping surroundings. 

All of a sudden her calm was exploded with a thousand whispers cutting through the darkness in her mind. Slicing through the car sounds and music and fighting each other for the space in her head. She could barely make out the voices’ message. Then two words boldly tore themselves from the darkness. They started to scratch a dark and foreboding figure into the darkness in her head. The figure was tall and proud, it seemed to be covered in a waxy cloak. Hooded and intimidating she couldn’t see a face in the darkness but she made out a long leather beak protruding from the hood. The figure seemed to repeat the words she had heard moments before as she heard the words again her mind was filled with a shining, dark grey blinding light.

“Not yours, not yours, not yours,not yoursnot yoursnotyoursnotyoursnotyours”