The Lightkeepers

“Hurry, Eris!” a little girl screeched as she helped her twin sister up off of the muddy ground. The two nine year old girls, scraped by branches and covered in sweat ran hand in hand as something followed closely behind them.

“Eunomia, slow down! I can’t keep up!” the other little girl screamed, lagging behind as she lifted her skirt to glimpse her freshly skinned knees.

“There’s no time! It’s right behind us!” Eunomia yanked harder.

“I thought it disappeared!”

“No, it came back tonight,” Eunomia pulled her straggling younger sister along, “Dr. Faust couldn’t stop it!”

“Eunomia”, Eris panted and coughed as leaves from branches flew into her face and mouth, “I’m scared!”

“Don’t worry! Remember Aken said he’d help us. We just have to get to the Other Side. Remember…” Eunomia panted and tried to catch her breath, “….he said he’d take us there, to the Other Side.”

“Will it find us there?” Eris asked, gasping for air.

“No! It can’t touch us there!” Eunomia replied quickly before having to refill her lungs with more air. The two fair skinned girls continued stumbling through the brush of the seemingly endless woods.

An unearthly screech sounded behind them, and the two girls tried to double their speed. A boom signaled the fall of a tree followed by another and another. The forest was being torn asunder behind the fleeing children as that which they feared more than anything else gained on them.

“It’s coming Eunomia!” Eris cried, her eyes burning and tearing from sweat and frightful tears.

“Don’t look back at it, Eris!” Eunomia commanded her terrified sister, sternly. “It wants the Light…” Eunomia’s voice cracked and trembled under her fear, “...that’s why it hurt mommy!”

Trees continued to be forced aside and the ground split as the malevolent force continued its tirade through the dense trunks and canopies.

“Quick, in here!” Eunomia yanked her sister’s arm and the two girls sought refuge within the cavity of a hollowed out tree trunk. Eunomia beckoned Eris to go first and proceeded to push her little sister as far back into the trunk as she could. The rumbling sounds of the thing that hunted them grew louder and louder.
“Eunomia, I’m scared!” Eris whimpered.

“SHHH! Be quiet!” Eunomia covered her sister’s mouth with one of her sweat drenched hands and tried to slow her own breathing, fearing that any manner of noise would give away their location to the beast.

That was it…the beast. That was what Aken had referred to it as. “Eris…remember what Aken said about the beast?”

Crying terribly and sniffling, Eris nodded her head, her mouth still being guarded by her sister’s hand. Feeling her sister’s head gesture, Eunomia continued, “Well, I think that this thing is the beast. I think that this thing is what Aken was warning us about.”

“Wha Kurmon?” Eris gasped, still muffled by Eunomia.

“Yes, the Kur-Man.” Eunomia replied, understanding her sister’s muffled words.
“Buh…” Eris pushed Eunomia’s hand off of her mouth and tried to keep her whimpering to a low decimal as she talked, “But I thought Dr. Faust and mommy…(sniff)…said that the Kur-Man couldn’t come here.”

Eunomia shushed her sister as a boom declared the arrival of the beast to their location.

“Obviously, they were wrong.” Eunomia whispered through clenched teeth to her sister.

“Oh, my head. It’s hurting again.” Eris whined. Eunomia spun around and placed her index finger over her own lips with a wide-eyed glare. Eunomia knew what her sister was talking about, the pain in her head, as if someone was banging on it with a hammer. She knew it was because of the beast. It was calling out to them, but they had to try and stay quiet and still.

It was mommy that had told Eunomia that she and Eris were connected to IT. All three of them were connected with one another. All three of them came from the Other Side, the world beyond the Mortal Realm; a world of light and night.

A shuffling noise returned Eunomia to her predicament as the beast was thrashing about the forest near them. It knew she and Eris were near by. The thrashing came to a quick arrest as it reached the tree where the girls were hiding.

Nothingness was all that could be heard for what seemed to be an eternity of unsettling suspense. Eunomia could hear her heart racing within her; her chest was almost visibly pulsing.

“Such rapid heartbeats my pointy ears hear…dear me, two babies have been strangled by fear,” a serpentine whisper sliced the silence and raised the flesh of the two girls.

“It’s him!” Eris spoke to her sister’s mind.

“Don’t! He can sense us if we talk this way!” Eunomia sent a thought back to her sister.

“What are you whispering dear children of light…not fanciful thoughts of beating the night?” the slick voice spoke again. Footsteps shuffling the dirt near the outside of the trunk could be heard. “My, what a nice little hole you’ve found…no need for graves, you’re already in the ground.”

“HE FOUND US!” Eris screamed into her sister’s head.

“Eris! Stop!” Eunomia yelled back, but her sister was too consumed by her fear to let any other thought reach her.

“Please! Don’t let him find us! Please!” Eris prayed in her heart, reaching for the Light inside herself. The Light that mommy had said would always protect her. “Please! Save us!”

“Eris!” Eunomia yelled to her sister as Eris was diving into the pool of Light. “Eris, he’ll hear us!”

“Please, save us!” Eris could barely hear her sister trying to break through to her. Suddenly, a large hand grasped her ankle, the wicked touch was unmistakable. He had found them.

“Eris, stop!” Eunomia called to her sister, who was still reaching.

A white haired, pale-faced, red-eyed man with pearly white teeth smiled a devilish smile as he slithered further into the hole with a petrified Eunomia and a still pleading Eris.

“Nowhere left to flee little sprites…welcome to darkness and farewell to light!”

A shadow consumed the children and the Light within their little bodies was extinguished forever.