Elliam stared after her, confused and surprised then slowly made her way through the now illuminated passage to her room and when she laid down on her bed, she thought about the monster and where it had gone, she had always heard it go down, never up.
She thought about the figures and the orange lights, she thought about Mother Moth then thought about what all these could mean and how they interconnected one another.
••••
December 15th.
On that day, it was sort of a special day, five children of the orphanage who had been taken away for 'treatment' for the last 3-4 months had returned. Excepting one who was to return the next day or two. The details weren't really explained to the children, the returnee kids were only introduced in the early morn and that was it.
Elliam was looking at the other tables for Ramone, when she caught a whiff of a very strange smell.
She tilted and turned her head to sides to locate where it came when she realized it was coming from her plate. She lowered her head to the plate and sniffed some more, then frowned and shifted her head away.
The smell was almost nauseous, and she was surprised to discover that she had smelt it from the food before, infact all the times she had eaten here she had smelt it, but it seemed like the smell wasn't as strong to her before and even if she could smell it before, she had smelt it so often that it wasn't noticable any longer.
"Don't sniff, just eat,"
Moriah sat down in front of her just then.
Elliam looked at her and noticed just then how awkwardly Moriah ate her porridge. She took the spoon into her mouth quickly and made an uncomfortable face before swallowing, signifying that she held her breath.
Elliam looked around, they all ate their porridge normally, not noticing the smell.
When she left the hall, she could still smell the odor, she could still smell it in the passages, the classrooms, the bathrooms, the pantry, her room everywhere.
The smell made her feel dizzy and nervous, a ghastly vile noisome foetor, that entered into the depths of her nostrils and remained even when she went out to take fresh air. The smell seemed to have been around for a long time longer than she could imagine, that it had rubbed onto the walls and no matter what, couldn't be washed off.
The only place she could escape the vile malodor was the backyard, she didn't go to the swing this time, she went to the lake which was frozen this season.
December 16th
Christmas was getting closer by the hour and by the day, there was a festive air in the orphanage as the children under the supervision of the staffs, decorated the halls.
The orphanage was very strict, and so if there were not visitors visiting the orphanage every Christmas and giving the children gifts, they wouldn't have bothered as they only decorated to keep up their frontage.
Every now and then, the children would run through the front yard, playing with the thick snow.
Ramone watched as Elliam and two of her friends cornered a little kid.
She really wanted to get involved but a few monks were watching and since the unspoken rule says not to disturb in any way the 'golden' kids, she stayed put, but was a little relaxed as she expected that Elliam wouldn't do much harm to the little boy.
Now that she thought of the it, ever since the winter came again, Elliam had been getting more wicked, pulling up pranks, bullying more and more of the 'found' kids.
A loud shout of pain interrupted her from train of thoughts. She looked to find the origin of the sound.
It was the small boy. He was the floor, curled up in pain on the cold ground, near him was huge splat of hot red blood, soaking into the snow and showing a stark contrast to the white cold snow on the ground.
Elliam and her two cronies were walking towards the building, the surrounding adults disregarded the predicament of the child, the child's peers around continued their play.
Ramone sighed and shook her head, then walked inside.
....
December 17th.
Today, the staffs of the orphanage started to clean out the entire place.
Strangely enough they didn't order the children some chores to do. Instead early in the morning at 5 o'clock, they woke and sent all of the children into the courtyard in the cold and locked up the large building, including the windows and all.
As early as 5 in the morning, all children of the orphanage and children of the school were ushered out of the the castle, given orders to avoid trouble and left there.
There weren't a lot of boarding children as most of them had gone on holiday so their numbers were greatly reduced.
Elliam was confused, why would the staffs locked themselves in the building just to clean the place?
Most of the children went away in groups, either to the backyard of the shed to take shelter from the falling snow or under the trees in the yard. It seemed like they were used to this.
She turned and ran to Moriah whom was trodding through the snow to the side of the castle.
"What's going on, Moriah?"
Moriah gave her a strange look.
"Well, like mother Essyher said, cleaning the place, they do this twice a year, today this month and today in January,"
" But why do they need to lock up the entire building just to do it?"
Moriah stop and looked at her disapprovingly.
" You're asking too much questions again, Elliam,"
"Oh, sorry," Elliam said nervously.
They continued through the snow in silence until they got to a small low shed. Both of them entered and Moriah sat and cuddled on the ground in a corner, her eyes were droopy, "Go to sleep, they'll open again soon,"
It was apparent that she wanted to have a bit of shut eyes.
Elliam followed suit in another corner, and since falling asleep during day was easier than doing so at night, she soon fell into a deep slumber.
....
A loud creak woke her up, she stood up crawled out of the low shed. Elliam noticed Moriah was still asleep, snoring silently in the corner.
Outside the low shed, Elliam looked at the sky, it was dark now, the moon was high up in the sky
Elliam lowered her head and walked to the front of the castle and saw, scattered under the back yard of the front house, under the trees on the snow were multiple children and from the white puffs of snow and air coming from their noses, they all seemed to be asleep.
She turned to looked at the castle, the castle which looked ominous and malevolent was locked up as it was in the morning.
She looked around in confusion, there was no way she could have slept that long?
Just then she felt a slight shiver from the ground. She stopped and stayed still, listening for any sound, but she couldn't hear anything, not even the 'woosh' of the cold icy air.
Suddenly she felt it again, the vibration from the ground, it only lasted 10 secs then seized. She knelt and put her palms to the ground to feel it more.
It came again, sending the shaking sensations up her arms. At first she thought it might be coming from the ground, but when the third came, it was accompanied by a heavy thunderlike sound from the distance, like a gigantic creature was marching through the forest towards where she was.
She stood up slowly as goosebumps spread over her as tense apprehension overwhelmed her, she stood frozen in fear as the familiar phenomenon played out.
She could smell a strong rotten and putrid smell.
Although she dearly wanted to run, her very legs were frozen from the cold temperature that had risen in the short amount of time the creature made its appearance, fear too had done plenty.
The creature was getting closer and closer with every step it took towards her, and her fear growing. Under the moonlight she could see a black monstrous skeletal hand brush the tall trees aside for passage like they were curtains.
The monster was so tall and ginormous that it's upper body was lost in the clouds up above.
The shaking and vibrations of the earth was quickly getting more intense the closer it got to Elliam, she on the other hand unable to hold herself fell from the shaking and crawled or made an attempt at crawling backwards, another futile attempt.
Elliam's entire body was shaking furiously from alarm and the effects of the shaking. She with all her might wanted to hide her face from this, she wanted to close her eyes and pinch her arm and wake up from this nightmare but her hands could not moved, they were frozen, literally. She couldn't move, she couldn't scream, she couldn't close her eyes from this, it was like an unseen force was forcing her head up, to look at the alarming scene before her.
The she saw, emerging from the forest, a large dark cadaverous foot stepping onto the snow, the other came out and landed heavily on the snow too, blowing cold air against Elliam's frozen face.
Elliam shivered, her teeth was chattering, the frozen air was slowing down her heart beat, and she could see the reddish spreading of frostbite on her skin.
Elliam looked around then and saw that all the children had disappeared.
All was suddenly silent except the intense chattering coming from Elliam. Suddenly a loud deep sepulchral roaring exploded from the creature, blowing a cold blizzard against Elliam.
It stopped, the snowing that had become intense had stopped.
Everything was suddenly calm and oddly quiet, Elliam looked up to the moon, but it was no longer there.
Abruptly in the sky, she spotted two very obvious monstrous bulbs of bright white.
But to her they didn't seem like bulbs, they seemed like eyes watching her intensely.
They seemed like the eyes of the creature, the eyes of a predator. Eyes of a monster.