Spook_me 2020 - Haunted - Chapter 19

[m_findlow]

Title: Haunted
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Gwen, Ianto, OCs
Author: m_findlow
Rating: M
Length: 50,847 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for spook_me 2020 Prompt - Ghost
Summary: The team investigate rumours of a haunted house in rural Wales.

Gwen might have sworn if there was any air left in her lungs from running. Her shoulder was aching terribly from her fall out through the window. It felt like perhaps part of the upper bone was broken and she grabbed it with her other hand, pressing it tightly to her side.

She hated herself for fleeing. There was a monster in that house and she had no idea what it was or how to fight it. But she'd also known that if she hadn't it would have killed her.

Branches whipped out and scratched her arms and face as she kept running. She slammed into an unseen tree that arrested her movements completely and knocked her flat on her back. The jolt sent a fresh wave of pain down her shoulder and she cried out from frustration as much as anything.

Her chest heaved up and down as she lay there on the forest floor, straining her ears for the sound of anything pursuing her. She heard nothing. Nothing but the sound of her own laboured breathing and the view of the tree canopy and starry sky above her. Were it not for the life threatening danger, she might have considered it quite pretty.

She gently pushed up with her good left arm, using it to diagnose just how bad her right shoulder was. It was perhaps just jarred, or a muscle torn, but she kept it clutched across her chest all the same. She had no idea how far she'd run, but she knew she had to go back. The others were back there somewhere. Her blood ran cold at the thought she'd left Ianto in the house with that thing.

She tried to get her bearings, but she felt like she'd been turned around five times. She hadn't taken much notice as she'd made for the tree line and then just kept going. It was the only place she thought she might be able to hide from that shadowy monster if it came after her. She started off in what she thought might be the right direction, always keeping an ear and her eyes open for any signs of the creature.

As she ploughed through the trees her mind turned to work. Where had it come from, where had it been hiding whilst they'd been in the house and around her grounds all day? Did it only come out at night? Was it afraid of light? Could they use that as a weapon against it? God she hated it when all she had was questions and no answers.

She wandered for about for several minutes, feeling no less lost than before, until she spotted a dim light somewhere off between two trees. ‘Hello?’ she called out, hoping it was someone with a torch, hoping it was Jack. The light didn't reply. It didn't move either. She tried navigating towards it but it seemed to remain a fixed distance from her. Then she noticed a second light further off to her left. ‘Hello?' she called out a second time.

Wind rippled through the trees, almost hissing as it moved between the crackling autumn leaves. She tried to get closer to the lights but they were moving now. Where there'd been two there were now four, then six. The wind whistled again and she imagined the sound was forming into words. “Must go. Leave.” That was what it sounded like, which was ridiculous.

“Must go. Leave. Leave, must go. Leave.”

The wind picked up and so did the voices. They were more distinct and yet had begun to overlap and blend together.

“Leave go must go leave…”

The lights began to flank Gwen on one side, herding her away. She no longer wanted to get any closer to them now that she knew she wasn't imagining the voices. The wind grew stronger, tugging at her hair and her clothes as she stumbled back through the trees, putting more distance between them and her. Even the trees began to menace her as the wind tore through them. Branches cracked and snapped, leaves fell and bits of twig got caught up in flurries of gale force winds, flicking her with their debris. More snagged at her clothes, trying to pull her in different directions, anywhere except where she wanted to go.

She turned on her heel and tried to wend her way through the woods as quickly as she could in the opposite direction. Every now and then she checked over her shoulder but the lights weren't following her. The wind too had died down and was now barely a light zephyr. One thing she knew for sure however was that they hadn't been driving her towards the house. She was even further away than before and hopelessly lost.

She purposefully changed direction, heading ninety degrees right from where she'd been going. She'd just keep going in this one direction as much as she could, praying that there had to be a point where she ran into rural farmland and with luck some actual people.

After what felt like an age, the trees began to thin, revealing more of the clear night sky. She found a break in the tree line and a low drystone wall. She climbed over the wall and her feet met something harder than grass. She nudged it with her toe and realised it was bitumen. A road. Against the backdrop of the night sky she could just make out the dark outline of a small silo on the opposite side of the road. It looked like the road they'd traveled in on.

‘Amazing,’ Gwen, she muttered to herself, ‘couldn't run three miles for charity last year but you've managed to run halfway to the nearest bloody town.’ At least now she knew where she was. Pulling her jacket tighter around her, she began the long march back up the road towards Abercrafen House. She didn't care what strange lights in the forest told her. She wasn't leaving.

Next chapter...