The banging on my front door was loud. Oddly loud. I check the time on my phone. It’s almost midnight. Eleven forty-five. My parents should be asleep by now, so there’s no way they’re expecting any visitors at this hour, and I’m certainly not. I slide out of bed and make my way downstairs. I open the door. Nobody. Nobody’s there. Thinking I just imagined or dreamed it I shut it. When I turn away I hear three taps. Quieter than the knocks. I hesitate before looking through the peephole. Nobody. Again. I open the door and search the stairs and driveway to see if anybody’s playing a stupid prank on me. Nothing. I shut the door once more and lock both the deadbolt and the lock on the doorknob. Before I walk away I listen for more knocks. There aren’t.

I turn again and begin to walk away until I hear what sounds like heavy boots walking up to the door. This time there is only one knock. I can hear and feel my heart beating like a drum inside my chest, knocking against my ribcage like it’s trying to run away. 

“Who is it?” My nerves make my voice quiver.

“You picked up the amulet. Child.” A deep voice echoes from the other side.

A chill runs down my spine. “Who are you!?” I call out. I back up to the kitchen to grab a knife, and feel for my phone in my back pocket. It’s not there. I must have left in my room. Shit.

He doesn’t answer. Instead—without warning—he smashes through the door and reaches in, unlocking both locks from the outside. I run to the kitchen and snatch a knife from the counter. By the time I turn back around he’s less then five feet from me. 

“DA-!” I start to scream. The man slams his hand on my mouth and throws me to the ground, knocking the wind from my lungs. The shock debilitates me. Before I can catch my breath he wraps his long fingers around my neck.

He lifts me from the floor by my neck and brings my face close to his. I can see the small scars freckled across his face, his eyes so brown they almost look black, and his greying hair, beard, and mustache. “So this is where you’ve been hiding for the past three hundred years you slimy little bug. You have no idea what we’ve gone through to find you.” He growls. “You and that little band of idiots really thought you could hide from all this did you? It’s funny, though. I don’t remember you being this weak.” 

I pry my fingers between his to prevent him from crushing my windpipe and grip the knife in my other hand. I hold it as tight as I can and swing it as deep as I can into his stomach. He lets out a deep monstrous cry and loosens his grip. I drop to the ground and pick myself up as fast as I can and bolt toward the back door. For a moment I contemplate running to get my parents, or maybe even my phone, and those may have been the smart ideas, but my fight or flight instincts and adrenaline had other plans. I burst through the door and down the deck into the lawn, holding on to the bloodied knife for dear life. I run to the forest thinking I can hide in the trees or somehow distract him enough to run and get help. Or maybe even find a phone. The houses in my neighborhood are so far away, though, so I might be screwed for a while. Before too long I can hear his heavy footsteps pounding against the frozen forest floor behind me. 

I’m not too sure how deep I got into the forest before stopping. I was running too fast to possibly gauge that. I find a dip in the ground almost like a ditch that leads to an open area lower in the forest and I jump down and scooch into a small crevice between the ground and the ledge I spotted from the corner of my eye. If I’m quiet enough he should suspect I got away and look somewhere else. When he leaves I’ll get out of here and run like hell to get help. I just hope he doesn’t go back for my parents. I hold both hands tight against my mouth to stifle the cries. 

His footsteps halt overtop me and shuffle around as though he’s looking around. After a few moments of silence I start to think he had left, and almost peek my head out to check, but instead he jumps down from the ledge. I hold back a gasp and sink deeper into the crevice. My heart pounding harder than earlier. The man’s boot heel is so close to my face I could breath on it. 

All of a sudden he turns and reaches into my hiding spot, grabbing me by the hair and dragging me from it. A blood curdling scream escapes my mouth like an uncaged wild animal. A sound that had never come out of me before. 

“You maneuver like some child. What happened to your tact the past few centuries in hiding, Cardinal? You’ve lost your touch.” He drags me to the middle of the open area and throws me down. “It’s almost like you’re not even trying. It disappoints me.”

Cardinal? What the hell is with this bird? Porter was somehow fixated on it now this asshole mentions it too. “I have no clue what the fuck you’re talking about you bastard!” I yell.

His face twitches. “YOU have no idea what I’m talking about? You of all people. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten all about it? After everything you’ve done?”

I clutch the knife harder and swing for his throat. He catches my arm before I can make contact. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I screech. Tears run down my dirty face.

He knocks the knife from my hand and kicks it away. The blade clashes with the boots steel tip and makes a pitiful clanging noise as it flies away from my shaking hands. He grabs me by the hair on the back of my head and studies my face. A wicked laughter leaks from his disgusting face. “You really don’t know a damn thing! You don’t have a single memory of it. How fantastic! How did they do it?” He contemplates for a second. “I just can’t figure it out. What kind of magick did those devils perform that made you loose every memory you had? How could they make you so annoyingly vulnerable? That doesn’t matter though, because no matter what I’m going to end your miserable existence.”

He pulls a large hunting knife from a belt on his waist, swings it upward, and plunges it deep into my chest right under my heart. The pain shoots through my body worse than anything I had ever felt in my life. It’s so severe I can’t even find my voice to scream. He swings it high in the air once more and stabs it deep into my left shoulder. I grab the blade in a desperate attempt to keep him from stabbing me again, but he just tears straight through my hand too.

“Ple-please! Why-!” I start convulsing and coughing up blood that had leaked into my punctured windpipe. 

Once again he swings his knife up high and goes to stab my writhing body once again, but something rips the knife from him and throws it with so much force it flies deep into the dark forest and disappears. He’s then picked up by the back of his neck and is chucked across the forest following the knife and lands fifteen feet away from me. I gasp for air only to taste blood coming through my lungs and out into my esophagus. My vision fractures and glazes over and I can’t make out the new figure standing above me. Through the spots and blurs I see black hair and that’s pretty much it. I convulse once more before the pain overtakes me and my vision cuts in and out before going away completely.