Madly and Wolfhardt by M. Leighton Page A

minutes before. 
    I closed the curtain and turned back toward the spray.  That’s when I felt something cold climbing up my legs.
     

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    Like thick tendrils of black smoke rising from the shower drain, the Seer seeped into the stall.  I watched, mute and immobile, as his dark, diaphanous body filled the tiny cubicle.
    I looked up into the empty holes where eyes should have been just as it wrapped its barely-there fingers around my wrists and started to pull.
    My heart pounded so erratically inside me I felt it against my spine, as if at any moment it might burst through my back and land on the wet shower floor.  Despite my fear, however, I was helpless to stop it when the Seer dragged me down, down, down as we followed the water into the drain.
    I felt something inside me separate as if the part of me that made me me was being ripped away from my body.  I looked back and I could see me standing beneath the spray of water, still and quiet, like a very realistic, life-like mannequin.
    And then I saw nothing.  I felt the dips and sways of travel, but my eyes could not perceive anything but blackness. 
    Then we burst through…something, and the Seer was pulling me through the sky high above the waves of the ocean.   Night had fallen now and it was raining.  We drifted through the precipitation as if we were part of it, as if we were gliding from one fat drop to the next, making our way through the world.
    I looked down and saw land come into view.  We were flying across Slumber.  I recognized Atlas Drive, the main road that traveled parallel to the shore.  I could see the group of buildings where Transport was located, and the Town Square with its perfectly manicured rectangles of grass.  I saw the quad in the center of campus as we zipped over it.  And then I saw tree tops come into view and knew we were nearing the forest.
    We slowed as we reached the trees, gradually descending until we passed through the canopy of leaves and hovered just above the ground, drifting in the heavy mist.
    I looked at the Seer, who raised one ghostly arm and pointed out into the forest.  My eyes followed his long finger. 
    At first, I saw nothing more than what I would expect to see in the forest at night.  But then, as I watched the occasional raindrop disappear into the wet leaves, I saw something move.  
    I focused sharply on the spot and nearly missed the ethereal shape as it climbed around the side of a tree and stopped, clinging to the bark just below a thick, twisted branch.
    He was so wispy, so nearly-transparent, I could barely make out the features of the creature.  He was small, not much bigger than a raccoon, and he was barrel shaped.  His spindly arms were warped and knobby like the tree branches above his head.  His face was deeply wrinkled and boasted a sharply hooked nose and two glowing yellow eyes that stared at me through the fog.
    Impaling me with his eerie orbs, the creature opened up his tiny mouth and made a hissing sound that caused my skin to crawl.  With the noise, I saw movement erupt all around me, teasing my peripheral vision.   I looked left then right and upon every tree that I could see was another of the creatures, watching me with those gleaming yellow eyes.
    “What are they?” I whispered. 
    I wasn’t really expecting an answer, considering the company I was keeping.  But one came nonetheless.  It was neither verbal nor physical; it was more implied, as if something impressed the knowledge upon me, planted it somehow.  It simply appeared in my brain that these were the dark spirits of the trees.  I wondered if that was the Seer answering my question.
    A silvery brightness broke through the treetops and drew my attention upward.  The wind had parted the foliage and, through the break, I could see the perfect circle of a full moon.
    I was just admiring the beauty of it when a crashing sound brought my eyes back to the ground.  All the scary faces of the tree