I was trapped. And it was like a giant déjà vu, only that I couldn't place where I'd been locked up before. However, I knew that this was scary on a whole different level than anything I'd ever experienced. It was like my worst nightmare, and I didn't even know if it was real or not. Would I wake up screaming in a pool of sweat or was I in real danger?

I stumbled through the room with my arms in front of me, reaching blindly for something that would guide me to the door. If only I could find a wall, I would eventually find my way back to the door, even though it meant that I would have to walk through the entire room if I chose the wrong direction. But what else could I do?

"Hello?" I called out, and I actually scared myself, hearing the panic in my voice. "Is anyone there?"

Suddenly there was laughter. And it wasn't laughter from one or two people. It was from a whole crowd. It was like I was standing on a stage in front of hundreds of people and had told a hilarious joke to the audience.

"Stop that!"

I stared into the darkness and tried desperately to figure out my surroundings, which was hopeless. I didn't even see the contours of the furniture I kept crashing into as I stumbled around in search for a wall. Somehow the tiny cabin felt bigger than a football field, with obstacles that made me trip and even fall a couple of times. There weren't any floorboards anymore. The ground was slippery like moist dirt, and even a bit slimy. Still, that wasn't the most disturbing part. It was the fact that I wasn't alone. And the company wasn't the kind I wanted. Not the least.

"Skylar?"

I gasped and froze in my tracks.

"How do you know my name?"

I got no answer. Instead I finally reached something that felt like a wall and used my hands to guide myself through the darkness. Now and then I collided with old furniture that was falling apart, and I forced myself to move slower than I wanted. Fighting my instinct to flee was intense, and I groaned when the front panel from a cupboard fell down and hit my toe. Then I screamed when I felt a hand brush over mine.

"Get away from me!"

"Skyyyyyyyylar?" someone called followed by a giggle, and the voice sounded far away and close at the same time. It was a different voice this time and not the mousy, squeaky voice of the little girl. No. This was more mature, like from a young woman, but it was hard to tell when I couldn't see. Then another hand stroked my lower back, but before I managed to push it away it was gone and replaced by two other hands touching different places of my body.

"Don't touch me!" I shouted and slapped after nothingness.

"SKYLAR!"

I screamed, because the voice was so sudden and sharp, and it was aimed so directly into my ear that I felt the breath against my skin. It smelled like cold death.

"Boo!"

That voice sounded like it came from a man, who chuckled from my reaction. Then there was more laughter from several people before they started talking. It was difficult to tell the different conversations from each other, so I couldn't understand any of it. It was almost like they were speaking another language, and it sounded like a constant humming as from a giant swarm of wasps. There were young voices, old voices and voices coming from adults, both men and women, and there was even a voice that didn't sound like it came from a human at all.

"YOU'RE NOT REAL!" I screamed in terror, then repeated it like a mantra afterwards, only as a whisper to myself. I frantically searched for the door again, unable to think rationally, and crashed into both furniture and people of different heights. And every time someone touched me, my anxiety level increased until I had a full-blown panic attack. Then I screamed and screamed until my voice failed and my lungs were empty. I even had to stop and catch my breath to keep myself from fainting. That's when I noticed a stench of rot and decay like from long dead corpses slowly filled the room and attacked my airways.

The undefined, inhumane voice was stronger now, and it scared me to the point that I was sure I was going to die from anxiety. I was hyperventilating and felt dizzy, and my breath started changing into wheezing. It literally felt like I was breathing through a straw. I desperately tried to make whoever they were stop touching me. But there were hands on my legs, on my arms, in my hair, around my throat... Even in my face! And I couldn't do anything about it.

"You're not real," I whispered and choked because my throat was so dry.

Their voices increased in volume now, until it got unbearable. But somehow it still continued to grow and turned into a high-pitched long drawn shriek that was so intense that it was tearing my head apart, and I was absolutely sure I was bleeding from my ears. Then it got ultrasonic and left my body shaking from the vibration in the air.

I could feel it now. This was no hand. The rough, slimy tentacle that touched my cheek, and I immediately tried to pull away. But I was trapped in ten folds of hands, that restricted me from fighting. It was almost like my defense mechanism was beaten somehow. This was my destiny. I wasn't going to die from cold and starvation in the wilderness. I wasn't going to be attacked by some wild animal. I was going to be driven to insanity and die from terror by a ghost. No. Several ghosts! And now I could actually see something. Only, I wished I could have unseen it.

It was two glowing eyes in a sickening red color, and they were so close to my face that I struggled to focus well enough to actually see them. The stench was unbearable, and right now it felt like I was about to get consumed by rot and mold by the second. It was almost like my body turned necrotic and died while I was still alive.

I felt more than saw that the creature in front of me grew in size, and the glowing eyes told me that its neck was bent in an angle that should have been impossible to achieve. Not compatible with a living human, at least. A whirlwind of decay surrounded me, and it was almost like the cold hand of death itself was reaching out for me, squeezing until every spark of life got sucked out. The soulless, red gaze pierced my heart while I saw its face started glowing. It was just vague at first, but I could hear the haunted souls started chanting in their incomprehensible language around us. And the more it glowed, the more its jaws opened until it became a huge hole of something that looked like lava, only a lot brighter. It hurt my eyes that now were used to the darkness, even though it made me practically blind. Now I was blinded by the light instead.

It was like pins and needles prickling at my limbs now, stinging a little bit deeper by each passing minute, yet I somehow knew this was just a taste of what was about to happen. Then suddenly something got flung across the room with a bang like from a wild thunder the second the lightning strikes, and it left a crater that should have made the fragile house fall. But it didn't. Because this wasn't a real house anymore. It was a cage with walls painted with dried blood and scratch marks from nails, and the glow from the demon seemed to have spread to the floor and made it crack up like the earth boiling with lava just before an eruption.

I was trapped. Whatever this was, I was helpless in the claws of this inhuman shape, that was so far from any living beast as it was possible to get. But just as it was about to swallow me whole with its jaw unhinged like a monstrous snake, a blood curdling, primal scream formed deep within me and made me find a strength I didn't know I possessed.

I managed to rip my hands free and grab the nearest thing I could find. It was soft so I knew it wasn't furniture, but I didn't care. It wasn't like I had much choice. I just grabbed it and threw it into the gape of the demon, and the last thing I saw was a cat's eyes staring emptily at me before it disappeared into devastation, while I finally broke free and aimed for the nearest window.

I ran and jumped, and I didn't even notice when pieces of glass shattered around me. But I didn't care about that either. I just knew I had to get as far away from this place as possible, because the roar I heard behind me could kill. And even though I ran the fastest I could, the sound grew stronger until it reached a plateau. Then it got silent for a couple of seconds, until I heard a loud rumble that sounded like a giant earthquake.

I didn't register anything anymore. I couldn't think. I couldn't see. I couldn't breathe. And I continuously crashed into bushes and branches I didn't see on my wild escape to save my life. I hit trees and tripped over stones, but I didn't care because I needed to get away to save my life. And I barely realized that I had started to climb up a steep hill, until my lungs hurt so much that I coughed up blood and started vomiting from the metallic taste. It was first then I discovered that it wasn't just a hill. I was climbing a mountain. A mountain that rose above the fog, and it didn't take long until I could see the stars. And the closer I got to the top, the calmer I felt. They couldn't find me here, could they? And even if they did, it was a beautiful place to die.

Finally I sunk down on the top and clung to a large rock, wishing it could hug me back. Then everything hit me like a ton of bricks. The feeling of being trapped and the terrible image of the demon was the worst, but also the fact that I was out here all by myself was simply more than I could bear. And even more so; the feeling that I wasn't even missed since no one came to rescue me.

I tried to wipe my tears to no avail, and it was hard to breathe because I was crying so hard. Despite all that, exhaustion eventually overpowered me and brought me into an awake slumber. I didn't know if I would manage to sleep properly. Ever. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was going to spend the night here, close to the stars.

It was then I realized that it was almost full moon.