Nea - Daughter of the Entity, Mrs. Volpe [graded readers .txt] 📗

Hjo, Crotus Prenn Asylum

"Shit, it's cold!", I thought. My fingers were stiff with cold, but I kept going. After all, this was going to be my biggest legacy before I moved out of here. What were my parents thinking? They couldn't just take away everything that was so important to me. Having to practice English all the time to keep up in America was really annoying. I preferred to concentrate on spraying. It was the middle of the night, but that was exactly my time. As I watched the image I was putting on the wall take shape in front of me, I looked around a bit. Everything was broken and half collapsed. There were huge holes in the floors and walls. I had heard a lot about this building, but a lot of it was probably just rumors from some crackpots. People told around that the former hospital had become an insane asylum. It was said that there had been a mass suicide there and over fifty dead patients had been found in their beds. No one had had an explanation, but one rumor frightened everyone: a woman was said to have still lived there, although the asylum was closed after the incident. There were probably witnesses who claimed to have heard heavy breathing and a painful moaning. However, no one saw the woman there. When the woods caught fire and set Crotus Prenn ablaze, no one cared and they simply let the building burn down. The woman who lived in it was supposed to have survived the fire as well, which is why still no one really dared to get close to the building and even the woods were mostly avoided. Well, be that as it may, all this did not frighten me. Places like this were made for me. "Done!", I announced proudly. I picked up my skateboard, which was leaning against the wall, and took a few steps back to look at my handiwork. It had turned out great. On the wall was now a large car on whose back seat a small crying boy sat next to packed suitcases. This grafitti brought out my feelings all too well. Satisfied with my work, I turned around, making my way home. I wasn't looking forward to tomorrow's move at all, but at least I could once again.... I was interrupted in my thoughts when I heard a loud crash from the building. Startled, I looked around until I finally saw a cat running out of the asylum. It stopped in front of me and preened itself frantically. A loud laugh left my throat. "Well, what have you been doing in there again?", I asked the cat in amusement, but then I heard another loud bang and not only the cat flinched. I took a few steps backwards, fearing that the building, along with my art, might collapse at any second. Instead, a huge shadow rose above the building and it stretched out its long arms toward me. Running was probably useless, but still I tried my best to escape this "thing". Then it grabbed me and my vision blurred. The last thing I noticed was the pain in my shoulder and how I was pulled into a black cloud of fog before my consciousness stopped.

  In the fog, survivor camp fire

My eyelids opened and instinctively I reached for the back of my head, which was pounding. Three pairs of eyes were staring at me. An athletic looking witch who looked me up and down, a dark skinned woman who put a bandage around my shoulder and a guy who sat on the tree trunk I was leaning against. I looked at all three of them in amazement and only then noticed that a fourth, trembling pair of eyes was watching me. A man in a shirt and tie was looking at me in fear, nibbling his fingernails briefly. What kind of weird troupe had I ended up in? "Are you feeling better? I put a bandage with an ointment of medicinal herbs around your shoulder. The pain should go soon, too." said the dark-skinned woman. In her hand she held a bunch of herbs.

"You sure took it!" the trembling man shouted from his hiding place. The red-haired witch turned and left. "I'm going to collect some new wood," she said. The man sitting on the tree trunk got up and accompanied her. I guess the two of them had had enough of me by now, but I was used to that.
Fortunately, the other two didn't continue talking to me and just kept looking around at the forest that was around us.
Both seemed to be quite tense and constantly in fear of something.

"Where am I?", I asked. To be on the safe side, in English. "We are here in the fog," the rattler answered me. "In the fog? What kind of place is that? Are we still in Hjo?", I inquired further. "Hjo? Where is that?" the woman asked me. Apparently we weren't. "Oh, forget it. Who are you guys anyway?", I asked instead. "I'm Claudette. I'm a botanist and I know a lot about different herbs," the dark-skinned one told me. "I-I'm Dwight. I'm...I'm the leader here," the rattler stuttered. "No, Dwight, you're not! You just wish you were!" laughed Claudette. Dwight just gave her a grim look. "The two who went to gather wood are Meg and Jake. Those two are always together. I think Jake seems to like her, however, she doesn't seem interested," Claudette explained to me. "Who isn't interested in what?" asked Jake as he emerged from behind a tree and sat back by the campfire. When Meg emerged from his shadow and sat down without a word, everyone fell silent and I looked at Meg curiously. She noticed my gaze and looked me straight in the eye. "Whoever you are. You can't leave here, so try to get along with us," she warned me. Friendly. "Who are you? You look...tough?", Dwight asked me. I guess now I had to introduce myself. "I'm Nea. I'm from Hjo and I was supposed to move to America with my parents tomorrow. I don't know how I got here, but I don't plan on staying," I said, even though I found it more exciting to stay here with these strange people than to move to America with my parents. "I told you. You can't leave here," Meg explained again. "We've tried many times. We can't," Jake said with a glum expression. "I think as a leader..." began Dwight, but was then interrupted by the others with a loud and annoyed groan. He acknowledged the others with a stern look and continued, "As leader of the group, it's my job to explain to you what this place is." Well, let's go! Now I was curious to hear what Mr. I-Would-Like-To-Be-Leader would tell me. Dwight waited a moment to make sure the others wouldn't interrupt him again and began to tell, "We are trapped here in the Fog of the Entity. Like Meg said, we can't leave here. You know, we've been here for quite a while. To be exact, so long that we don't even know how long we've really been here. In this world, we can't sleep. If you try, the Entity will stop you immediately." I decided to just keep listening before I declared him to have lost it. If he was going to tell me a fairy tale like that, I wanted to know the ending. Apparently he cared about his story. "This forest is our death and yet we can't die. Believe me, I've already tried." This sentence drew everyone's eyes to him, but he just kept talking, "I don't want to scare you, but you should know what will be coming at you over and over again from now on, because you will definitely have to take part in the next trial as well.", "That's good. Then she will take the trials in my place from now on!", Meg interrupted him, looking at me spitefully. "Meg, you're mean," Jake said, "You're all high, aren't you?", I asked. "What kind of hippie drug gang did I end up in?" Everyone looked at me angrily. They didn't really want me to know that they all really believed that, did they? "Don't believe us. I won't let you off the hook if one of the killers hangs you!" threatened Meg. I had to swallow. Apparently the four of them really believed what Dwight was telling me. Wait a minute. Did she just say murderer? I was getting more and more uncomfortable here. Maybe I should look for my parents after all. America couldn't be half as weird as these drug addicted people. At least my impression of Meg hadn't deceived me. She really was a redheaded witch. Since Jake and Claudette were the least confusing so far, I was going to stick with them. Of course, only until I found a way out of here. One thing I had to give these lunatics credit for. They could wince like little children. The smallest noise from the forest let all four frightened startle. Possibly that was also only because of the drugs, which they have probably smoked before. Maybe they were more helpful when their intoxication was over. For my part, I was pretty exhausted, so I lay down and put Dwight's statement about not being able to sleep here to the test. I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep, but in fact I couldn't. I blamed it on my chaos of thoughts that the four of them had instilled in me. Even after trying for a long time, I would not succeed in falling asleep, so I finally gave up. I didn't understand. As miserably tired as I was, I should have no problem falling asleep sitting up. I let it go and warmed myself by the fire instead.

Maybe there was some truth to Dwight's story after all. No, it was impossible. Thoughtful as I was, I noticed quite late that I was being watched. The staring gaze, however, did not belong to Meg or Jake, Claudette or Dwight. The four of them were sitting around the campfire with me, after all, but the stares were coming from the woods. I squinted my eyes to look through the bright light of the fire into the darkness beyond. Unfortunately, I didn't succeed, so I tried to stand up. Despite the wound on my shoulder, I felt no pain. Maybe because of Claudette's herbs. I walked a few steps away from the campfire to see better. Once again, I squinted both eyes and stared into the darkness as I was now being watched not only from the forest, but also from the campfire. "Nea, what are you doing?" asked Dwight. I was getting a little annoyed with our would-be leader. Instead of annoyedly ignoring him, as I usually would have, I answered him instead, "I thought something was looking at me from over there, watching us.", "That's the Entity