Read The Amulets (An 'Amulets of Andarrin' tale) for Free Online

something came out of the tree-line immediately in front of them. They stopped suddenly with absolute fear overpowering them, rooting them to the spot. It stood over eight feet tall and wore a long thin cloak which concealed its entire body. A hood, seemingly attached to its large cloak, or was it its skin? Jack couldn’t tell, hung on its head and darkened its face, concealing its features. It was the scariest thing they had ever seen and it seemed to be staring towards them. It tilted its head to the left and Frankie and Lily gasped in terror.
    “What do you want” Aaron shouted to it as Frankie, full of tears, shook behind him.
    Whatever it was it didn’t respond. It just seemed to gaze at them. Jack stepped in front of Lily eyeing the unresponsive figure in the dark. “Look we are just trying to get home, ok? We don’t want any trouble.”
    The figures head tilted back and the moonlight shone revealing its face. They saw its huge chiseled face crinkled and dark, almost as if it was burnt. Its pin-like eyes glistened scarlet in the moonlight. Its nose was nothing more than a lump under its eyes.  It seemed to be staring at Jack now. Jack was nervous and took a step back. As he did so the dark figure tilted its head back so that it was looking up.
    “What’s it doing” Lily said with a tremble in her voice.
    “I don’t…” Jack stopped his sentence as the dark figure’s jaw dropped all the way down to the top of its chest. Its mouth was enormous.
    “What the hell is it” Aaron shouted unable to hold his fear in. The girls were crying and shouting “Leave us alone” at the top of their voices in hope that it’d obey. Instead it let out a horrible shriek like the one they’d heard up the road. It echoed right through the forest as they huddled together paralysed with fear. This wasn’t natural and definitely wasn’t friendly. As it screamed something dark silver began flapping within its mouth. As more of the dark silver became visible in its mouth the more Jack thought it looked like tentacles, tens of them growing out of its mouth, seemingly protruding from the back of its throat and engulfing its tongue, if it had one, and resting on its wide thin lip. The creature continued to shriek. Jack looked at Aaron, horror on both their faces. They both knew they had to get out of there and fast. The tentacles gripped the creatures lip as if to spring. As the shriek became louder Jack saw that the tentacles belonged to another creature now resting in its mouth. It was now or never. Aaron turned to the group.
    “Run! Now, everyone run!” the rest of them didn’t need telling twice as they ran at full speed past the dark figure. The figure slowly turned as they passed following them with its head, its body unmoved. Jack was running at the back hurrying Lily forward. He turned quickly to see if it was chasing them and he saw with horror the silver tentacles in its mouth shooting out towards them. Jack spun round to face the creature as it scuttled down the road towards him. The dark figure’s shriek was dying down and Jack fell backwards to the floor as the creature leapt at him, tentacles stretched out towards his face. Falling he brought his left hand round in an attempt to grab the creature. “Whoa!” he shouted as he hit the floor with a thud and felt something big and slimy in his hand.
    “JACK!” Lily shouted as she came to a stop twenty metres away from him.
    Jack gave her a quick glance as he struggled to keep the creature away from his face. “Run! Get out of here”
    “We can’t leave you” she cried
    “GO!”
    Aaron came back and grabbed Lily. “You and Frankie run. Find help. I’ll go back for Jack.”
    “Please” Lily didn’t know what she was saying but she couldn’t leave them.
    “Lily, come on! We need to get help!” Frankie pleaded with her.
    Aaron started back towards Jack. “You two need to go, now!”
    Watching as they ran down the road Aaron turned his attention back to