Theo ran.

  He couldn’t remember how long he ran, but it must have been a few hours at least.

  In fact, him running was an exaggeration. By now, it was night, and Theo rather walked. Exhausted. Breathing heavily. The forest was quiet. The scent of resin and oak was in his nose. He didn’t know what to make of the other things that came through the air, swirled into his nostrils, and expanded his palette in a way that made him… curious?

  The picture was still on his mind. How he just wanted to buy some fresh herbs for cooking meat pies. He went to the market, tried some food, smelled some herbs, until he had met the new merchant who had promised him fresh ingredients from other countries. Something different from the usual stuff. He followed her around her stall, brought his nose over a giant kettle, took a deep breath in, and woke up in the middle of nowhere.

  He filled his lungs once more, then he exhaled quickly and turned his head around, looking for the origin of the sound that made him wary again. His gaze went from left to right. Trees. Trees everywhere. It was hard to see a lot more under the dim moonlight.

  Theo stood for another moment, taking everything in. The light breeze on his skin made the needles dance and brush against each other with a soft sound and then again. Footsteps. Small feet. Tiny steps. He looked at another tree and saw a small silhouette appearing from behind. It was a child.

  “Got lost as well?” Theo asked while his shoulders dropped.

  The child came closer. It walked in a strange fashion with bow legs and moved slowly. Then, Theo noticed something else. “What’s with your ears?”

  Small pointy ears adorned the child’s head on both sides as it put an arm behind its back and held something long in its hand. Like a heavy stick. One more step, and the moonlight glanced at its skin.

  Theo’s stomach tightened. Its skin was a mixture of green and brown. Almost like mud after a rainy day. The ears looked leathery, like the wings of a bat. And in the middle of its muddy face was a wide, open smile that revealed sharp yellow teeth from within. He could smell the earthy, rotten scent even from a distance.

  One more step. Faster this time. It was a strange way of running. The child pulled its arm back, striking at Theo. He ducked aside. “What the fuck?”

  Then, he could hear more steps. His eyes loosened from the one in front of him and met other eyes that came closer. Each child held a stick, and the group circled in on him. Whatever they were, they did not get lost and most certainly were not here to make a new friend. The air around him smelled of earth, something rotten, and cold sweat. He couldn’t tell whether the sweat was his.

  The first ones started hitting and stabbing in Theo’s direction. He got hit several times before he finally understood what was happening here. He pushed a few sticks to the side without needing too much force and made a run for it.

  These… creatures followed him, making dull sounds as if they were speaking to each other. Theo’s muscles tightened up. Sweat dropped down from his forehead, keeping him cool, and the places where he got hit hurt.

  He looked behind to see into a group of yellow eyes that were still on the chase. He turned around again, looking at the front, trying to make his body follow his instructions of just running as fast as possible. “Fuck, fuck, FUCK!”

  His body was obedient, his legs followed, and his breathing rhythm increased. After a while, the sounds were more distant, and Theo looked around once more. No eyes. No… things that wanted to hurt him.

  He slowed down and then stopped. His legs were cramping and while inspecting his body, he saw that the sticks hit harder than he had noticed. He was bleeding in a few spots. Not heavily, but still bleeding.

  Fewer trees, no eyes, no sticks. He allowed himself to breathe deeply while resting his hand on the branch of another tree. For a moment, he just breathed. He then wiped the sweat from his forehead and stretched his legs before he continued walking.

  His legs became weaker when he finally saw it standing there under the moon.

  A wooden building, standing in the middle of nowhere.

  It must have been quite some time to reach it, but at least there was something. Somewhere to rest?

  He took the last few steps and stood before the building. It appeared larger now. Not gigantic, just comfortably large. It was worn from wind, weather, and years of standing. Theo walked around it. There used to be more buildings around. Other houses. Some were gone completely, leaving only a pile of wood and stone behind. Others were mere ruins. Wooden beds and shelves could be identified. This place had been abandoned a long time ago.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  But this one building still stood above the ruins. Like it ruled over them. The wood smelled old and of history. At the side of it, a small garden patch was growing wildly. He knelt down and let his senses do the work. Dark mushrooms smelled of moisture and earth. Other plants looked like herbs he hadn’t seen before. The scent was pleasant. Like Thyme and Rosemary.

  Theo got back up and looked through one of the windows, but there were curtains. No light apparently. Back to the front then. His mind was tired, and his body still hurt. With a softly shaking hand, he knocked on the door. Once. Twice. No one opened.

  He carefully placed his hand on the door and pushed it open. It was dark. It smelled old. Dried herbs, old paper, dust, and under all of it lay a scent of something that should have been thrown out, but was left there to rot. The moon’s light shone through the door frame, as if it were marking the path for entry.

  Theo followed carefully. He couldn’t see a lot, but through the room filled with a table, a few chairs, shelves, and a lot of other things he couldn’t identify, he could make his way toward the window and move the curtains. The room brightened up. It looked like a medieval common room. There was a counter with a variety of mugs, jugs, flasks, and bottles, horribly organized in a shelf right behind. The table in the middle was filled with books and papers that looked like they would turn into dust any moment. Bundles of dried leaves and herbs hung from the ceiling. There was a staircase leading to a second level.

  “Hello!?”

  No one answered Theo’s shouts. “Anyone there?”

  The building stood without giving him an answer.

  “Well, I might stay for the night then…” Theo muttered while organizing the chairs around the table. The paper smelled like the old newspaper from 1945 he had found in his grandmother’s attic. Old ink and lifeless fibre.

  He took a closer look at the shelf with the containers. Just looking at them made him shiver. They weren’t sorted by size or color, and were not labeled at all. Through some of the glass, he could still see liquids of different colors. Theo opened a bottle and smelt the inside. A burning sting hit his nostrils, and he had to watch out not to throw the bottle away. He quickly closed it and put it back on the shelf.

  Then he noticed a small door next to the shelf, behind the counter. He slowly pushed it open and knew where the rotting smell came from. It was a kitchen. Abandoned like the rest of the area. A small oven still had ash inside, and a small kettle stood over a fireplace. Upon walking closer, Theo had to squeeze his nose to prevent his stomach from emptying. What was once food had now become its own ecosystem. White and green fibre grew out of the kettle and sent the urge to vomit.

  Without thinking too much, he grabbed the kettle by its handle with one hand. It was heavier than he had expected, as if it wanted to restrain from being removed. But with a bit of force, it was possible to squeeze his nose with the left hand while holding the kettle with his right hand. Theo took it outside and placed it inside a ruin further away from the building. When he returned, he let the air run through his body once more. His shoulders loosened, and he fell down on one of the chairs.

  A moment of silence and relief. “I need a bed…”

  Theo pushed himself up and felt like he had gained double his weight in a short moment. He hoisted his body up the stairs to look for a bed, only to find himself in a corridor with five doors. The rooms all looked similar. Like small guest rooms. A single bed, a stool, and a small table. Everything was either covered in dust, eaten by termites, or straight-up broken.

  He moved his way to the last door. It was at the end of the corridor, and it looked somewhat stable. Something was carved into the wood. Something like a sign, a sigil, or a rune. Theo couldn’t tell. He pushed the door handle and pulled the door open. It was a larger room. A larger bed, a shelf at the side that was filled with books, a round table with two chairs, and, to Theo’s surprise, half of the bed seemed to be intact, although heavily covered in dust.

  A wardrobe stood against another wall. When he opened it, he could still find clothes. White shirts, dark shirts, pants, and a pair of shoes.

  A small night table stood next to the bed. It had a mug made out of wood on top of it that endured the years. The water that was once inside had found its way out and left a dark spot on the table where the wood had swelled up and expanded a bit.

  What surprised him as well was the fact that it did not smell old here. It didn’t smell good either. Nothing rotten, nothing intense, no old papers aside from the one that lay on the table.

  Theo yawned while moving toward the bed. A blanket covered in dust lay on the intact side. He took it and shook it in the room, leaving a swirl of dust behind in the air while he coughed. “Fuck… I hope… I hope these things don’t find me here.”

  He cleaned the rest of the bed as best as he could with his hands and sat down. A small cloud of dust appeared when he sat. Some of it entered his nose and made him sneeze several times. It creaked as he lay down. But it stayed intact.

  It was far from comfortable. His right leg stood on the ground while the rest of his body tried to fit into what remained of this once large bed. The straw that filled it itched where his skin touched it, and the light that came through the single window hit him directly in his face.

  Theo coughed once more when he pulled the dusty blanket over his face and turned away. He closed his eyes and thought about meat pies. The ones he always made to counter a hangover. What he would have given to bite into one of them right now. The scent of meat mixed with thyme. The juice that came out when you took your first bite. The crunch that you could hear when the puff pastry was eaten…

  But I guess, no meat pies for me anytime soon, he thought while his mind came to a rest and the tension escaped his body. The exhaustion took him over and sent him into the land of dreams.

  He slept so fast that he didn’t hear the glass shatter from downstairs.