Forgotten

It had been a stormy Thursday night when I came up with an idea that was thrilling dumb, exciting yet potentially life threatening. I wanted to visit the town called Tobias’s valley.

It was a story passed down from generation to generation and it stated that Tobias’s valley was once a thriving industrial town but after the death of old man Tobias everything went downhill, important people died, business went into bankrupt and crops failed, atmost as if it had been cursed. Overtime the number of visitors dwindled until the number became zero. Another rumour spread which said that due to the curse the people of Tobias’s valley became unnaturally pale and had sticky yellow eyes. My town of Mistbury was separated from the cursed town by a huge mountain and due to the believed curse the road around the mountain fallen into decay. It had been a lifelong desire of mine to visit the town but it had always been forbidden but when my parents said that they were leaving for a week. I decided to make my move.

When Friday morning rolled around, I rushed over to my close friend Kendricks house. He shared my desire to visit the town. We spent the entire day gathering supplies for our journey like canned food, drinks, matches, extra clothes and a knife incase stuff went south.

Under the cover the nightfall me and Kendrick quietly left Mistbury without being noticed and down the path around the mountain although the path was covered in overgrown weeds, the only thing we encountered was mosquitos. After what seemed like an eternity we saw the faint lights of Tobias’s valley. Me and Kendrick shared a glance and nodded as we both knew that we had come too far to turn back now and with that understood we marched towards the town but when we reached there our march turned into a slow creep at best. It was like we had been taken back 200 years in time. There was no electricity as the lights we saw earlier came from Kerosene lanterns and all the buildings were made of wood that was rotting by the second. The streets were empty but as we crept along we could feel the eyes on us. We crept around until we saw it.

A massive mansion made up of limestone it would have been beautiful in its day but they had long since passed,it was now covered with fallen pillars all around and the engraving on the wall had faded but we both knew where we were.We both simultaneously said ‘Tobias Manor’ but no sooner had we uttered those words. When we were violently pushed into a nearby alley, we both scrambled backwards and screamed but a voice called out and said that it meant us no harm.

We stood up. Knife in hand and soon we were face to face with an unnaturally pale fingers with yellow eyes. Mastering all my courage I held my knife to the figures throat and ordered it to introduce itself. The figure chuckled and introduced herself, saying that her name was Jasmine and long ago she came here with her friends . She then said how her companions went into the manor and never came out again. She said that she tried to leave but once in the town you couldn’t leave until the curse was lifted.

She then launched into the story of what truly happened .Tobias lost his daughter to an illness and he couldn’t let go so he went hunting for the scroll of Solomon which was rumored to contain instructions on how to bring back people from the dead. After many years of searching Tobias found the scroll but the ritual went wronged a demon was unleashed that killed Tobias and put the curse down on the town.

Realizing that we had no choice we teamed up with Jasmine and slowly walked up to the manor and slowly walked in. Cobwebs lined every corner and the wood cracked with way step we took .We unanimously decided to go to the basement as it was the most likely place for a ritual to take place. We walked down pushing the webs out of the way and then we saw it ,a fountain with a scroll on top and a chair to the left.

Jasmine rushed towards the scroll but got thrown back by an invisible figure, a blood run horned man. The demon cackled it swatted us around like flies laughing about how he couldn’t be killed without the blood of another.

A rusted sword on the floor caught my attention and it all made sense. To kill the demon someone needed to kill themselves first. I rushed towards the sword and picked it up, I looked up and time froze. The demon was chocking Jasmine with one hand and was about to impale Kendrick with a blade. I mustered my strength and ran and at the last moment pushed the sword through my chest and into the demons. It howled and shrieked ,my vision swam and with my last thoughts I hoped if I had.

done enough and then a loud bang was all that was heard. I awake in a panic next to Kendrick. I looked around and I was in Mistbury near the road and the travellers were flying down the road almost as if they had forgotten about the curse and that’s when I realized that we had done it.

-Ryan Jeevan Joseph