The Gloaming - Part 4

... Continued

The Gloaming

There were people in the village. As alive as they were before the… ‘they’ had come. And these people were going about us as if nothing had happened. What was going on here? Did we dream this whole thing? These questions swam around my head but I didn’t have the energy to utter them.

The man and the boy brought us to their home instead of taking us directly to their home and this confirmed what I had been expecting. That she was still dead. My mother hasn’t miraculously come alive as they seem to have. And both of them walking ahead whilst whispering about us but I didn’t bother to comment on this either.

The man’s wife took us into their house but not before appraising the miserable state of us. She fed us and showed us the ‘gifili’ and gave us fresh clothing. She, unlike her husband, didn’t ask any questions.

It was hours later that I remembered about the plan we made to return before high tide. I whispered this to my sister and she surprised me again by shrugging. Seeing my look she softly added that maybe things were back to normal. That what we witnessed was maybe an illusion or maybe just a figment of our imagination. And before I knew it, the dreaded time was upon us. This time there was no reddish ting across the sky. There was nothing eerie or foreboding about this sun set. But still…

Dusk time came and everything was normal… One hour after twilight; everything was still normal. Two hours, three hours went by without anything happening. Finally it was time for bed. After dinner the woman showed us to a vacant room in the house where a makeshift bed was made. And we slept, reassured that maybe... just maybe that everything has gone back to normal. And we did sleep on, till the smell woke us.

They were here. I should have known that it was a trap. I lay still afraid to make a noise, afraid to move. It had been an illusion. No one had survived. They made the illusion to bait us. The last surviving victims in their murderous rampage.

The stench grew stronger and a deathly cold bony hand clasped around my mouth roughly and I heard my sister gasp before I knew that they had her too. Then I remembered something. I should’ve noticed before… there still weren’t any animals on the island.