Erica woke with a start for the fifth time that night and, for the fifth time, crawled out of bed and slunk to the floor. Yes, the spring was still locked and yes, she was going to check again to be sure. If there was a reason why her father had such a very large spring, one with which you could very easily catapult a very small girl out of a medium-sized window at very high speed with, just lying around his workshop, she would have loved to hear it. She liked to imagine it was for a good reason, but she realised it was just as likely meant for firing small girls out of windows as it was anything else. For every invention she found in his workshop that served a use, there was another that would explode or fall to pieces at the push of a button. She thought that he probably would have been quite proud of this morning's test flight.

As she began to slip into a deep and well-earned sleep, she felt a gentle but persistent nudge to her shoulder. After thirty seconds, any pretence of gentle had, much like herself previously, been thrown out the window, and she was dragged out of bed by her arm.

“Hello, floor,” she slurred, as she felt her brain try to climb back into bed and pull the covers over it.

“You have to get up. Look!” urged Sarah with the kind of desperate intensity that would have surprised her, had she not been asleep at almost the exact moment she hit the floor. Sarah went to her night-stand and filled a glass with water, which she then carefully set down. She took the jug, and without walking the few feet back to her sister, threw the entire thing over her. Erica sat bolt upright with a gurgling inhalation of air.

“You little bitch!” she squealed. Before she had time to gather her thoughts and get to her feet and strangle her sister, Sarah had already grabbed her under one arm and had directed her stumbling, groggy form to the window.

“Look,” she repeated. The night air swept in through the window and hit Erica in the chest, causing her to shiver and splutter violently. Her eyes slowly focused on where her sister was pointing, but she could only make out the where, not the what. Her lips were about to form the words of something quite uncharitable that she’d need to apologise for later, but as a cloud passed across the moon, there it was. There, in the middle of the woods, shone a faint light. “He's back!” Sarah bounced up and down in the boots she hadn't yet fastened, hastily trying to zip her coat up in the intermittent light of the moon. “We have to go.” Sarah brought Erica her coat and tried to get her arm through the sleeve with minimal success.

“We can't, it’s the middle of the night. If it's him, he'll come to us, sweetheart. Just listen, please,” Erica wearily pleaded. Sarah hadn't paid heed to a single word, and was now sprinting out the door, her laces flapping behind her.

“Oh, you little sod,” Erica yelled out the window as her sister's shadowy blur raced into the distance. She slipped her dress over her second favourite pair of pyjamas and scrabbled around for her boots.

***

Sarah’s pace slowed as she reached the mouth of the woods. The flickering light drifted through the trees and painted a sickly yellow glow at her feet. It wasn’t as warm and inviting as it appeared from her bedroom window, but it was just a lantern light. She took a deep breath and continued running. More than once she fell to the ground, her foot catching a rock or an unseen tree root, or even her own laces. She rubbed her hand across her forehead and winced in pain, her fingers were slick with blood. It was that brief warmth upon her skin that suddenly made her realise how incredibly cold it was. She hadn't fastened her coat, she hadn't had time. She shivered and fumbled with the zip again, her fingers too cold to grip it.

She wasn’t sure where she was or exactly how far she’d run. Time and space and distance hadn’t been working quite the same as she remembered since she hit her head. That was when she saw the light again, this time it was coming to her. “Daddy,” she called tearfully. “Is that you?” The light flickered and, as it did, a pair flickered into existence next to it. Again and again, until there were so many pairs of lights that burned so brightly that she was unable to tell them apart. Sarah turned and raised her arm to shield her face and in doing so, she brushed against the gash on her forehead. Blood trickled into her eyes and returned the woods to abject darkness. The lights hummed in unison and rose to a high-pitched whine that seemed to come from all directions at once. That wasn’t it. Her heart sank into her stomach. They were surrounding her. She screamed, drowning out the sound around her. The lights moved closer.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

***

Erica stood at the mouth of the woods, doubled over, her hand clutched to her throat – the cold night air burned in her chest and nostrils. She cupped her hands over her face and slowed her breathing to at least try and warm the air a little before it could enter her lungs. It was as her breathing began to take on a normal, only slightly painful rhythm, that she heard the sound – a high-pitched electric hum. She raised her head and cupped her ear to see if she could pick up the direction it was coming from. She couldn’t – the noise sounded like it came from half the woods at once. The scream that followed, however, came from straight ahead. Erica stumbled forward in the dark, her sister’s name repeatedly forming on her chilled lips but the sound always getting caught in her throat.

Branches whipped at her face and the bracken ripped at her legs, but she couldn't feel it. All she felt was the pounding of her heart in her chest as she increased her pace towards the source of the scream. She crested a small hill and gazed towards the clearing, it was illuminated faintly by the unnatural yellow glow of what looked to be a dozen or so lanterns. The lights surrounded Sarah in a semi-circle and slowly advanced on her. She lay curled in a ball, her forearms tucked over her face. Her body rocked gently in a soundless sob.

Erica barrelled down the hill towards the closest light, screaming whatever invectives tore from her lips. She smashed into it with a heavy crunch that sent it spiralling into the one next to it, and that into the one next to that. They connected with a clank and the lights fell to the ground. She scooped up the still form of her sister and ran back towards the hill. Fingers brushed her leg as they made a grasp for her ankle, but she was too quick. For a time, the lights seemed to be following them, not really in a rush to catch up to them but staying close enough to be on her in seconds if she tripped. But she didn’t. The lights behind them trailed off into the darkness only to be replaced by lights ahead of them. At the mouth of the woods, a crowd had gathered. At the front of it stood Mr. Tirren. He still wore his nightshirt, but the biting night air had decided it would much rather risk sinking its teeth into someone else. He stood with a burning torch in one hand and a large metal pole in the other, and dropped them both when he saw Erica stumble out of the woods carrying a barely-conscious Sarah. He scooped her up in much the same way she had scooped Sarah up and carried them both effortlessly back towards his house.

An aged simian hobbled from the crowd in a pair of silk pyjamas and a dressing gown. He passed the metal bar up his using his tail, then tucked it under his left arm like a newspaper. This was followed more carefully by the torch which he held out in front of him as he hobbled after them. Mr. Tirren nudged the front door open with one hip, carried the girls through to the lounge and set them both down on the rug by the fire. The crowd, which without Bosco or himself, now consisted of Tobias and a crane named Isla, had followed the old man to the door. He shooed them off as politely as he could manage at whatever ungodly hour it currently was and dipped the torch into the water butt by the door before he disappeared inside.

He dropped the pole into an umbrella stand that contained everything but umbrellas and headed through into the lounge. The girls were tightly wrapped in as many blankets as Mrs. Tirren could find, including a couple of half-finished ones from her sowing room.

“Thank goodness you’re here, Rasmus,” she said.

“You’ve already done most of what can be done, Bridget. I can treat their wounds but the exposure has done the worst of it.” He washed his hands in the bowl that had expectantly been laid out for him by the fire, produced a fine needle from the first-aid kit that sat on the table next to it and began threading it by the light of the fire. He set the first-aid kit down on the armchair next to the girls and knelt beside them. As he swabbed Sarah’s forehead with rubbing alcohol, her face contorted in pain but her eyes remained firmly closed, even as he stitched the wound shut. When he was satisfied that he hadn't done a job he'd have to explain away when she woke up, he taped a gauze pad over the stitches and propped her head up on a pillow, facing her away from the fire and towards her sister. Harry sat by with his supply of emergency blankets and emergency cake. He was trying very hard not to cry but he was doing a very bad job of it. Whenever Sarah would cough or show discomfort, he would reach out and squeeze her shoulder to let her know she was safe, followed by his own shoulder for much the same reason. Rasmus cleaned Erica’s wounds with warm water and rubbing alcohol and watched dejectedly as she didn't flinch at all. Her wet clothes had been removed and she lay in one of Mr. Tirren’s nightshirts, which in a pinch could have doubled for a tent.

“What are we going to do, Bosco?” Mrs. Tirren wiped away a tear and slid her hand down to her mouth to stop herself screaming from shear frustration. She rocked herself gently on the edge of the armchair, one hand across her mouth, the other tightly squeezing her chest.

“They're our little girls,” he said. “We do everything.”