Recognition

“Thanks a lot, mister!” the kid shouted excitedly, eyes shinning with what David could only imagine was wonder and admiration. Despite the clear trails of tears glistening with the light of his torch, whatever sadness and desperation that once caused them was now long gone. 

Before he knew it, his hand was already reaching out to pat the kid’s hair reassuringly but quickly pulled back upon realizing, his hand aching and burning as the lingering feeling of flames was still in his palm. “It’s fine… really.”

David tried to sound as confident and reassuring as he could be with the kid, yet the pain of overexerting himself quickly caught up to him, making even breathing impossibly hard. Without, he was quickly falling to his knees, his head spinning and pounding as if something was knocking from inside, yet instead of painfully meeting with the cold stone beneath, he was surprised at the feeling of weak little arms trying their best to keep him on his feet.

“Are you alright, mister?! Did they get you?!” Something about how the kid, one who by all means be a stranger to him despite risking his life to save them, seemed to attach himself in every sense to him pulled at his heartstrings. David knew better than to divulge much into the matter. 

Pushing the kid aside gently, he merely sat on the dirty floor of the abandoned building, hands massaging his head in an attempt to fight off the coming headache before putting a rest to the boy’s worries.

“I’m fine, it just makes me tired trying to push them away.” He started, the loud thumping inside his skull finally ceasing. “And also, you don’t have to call me mister all the time, it sounds weird, just call me David.”

“ Oh, okay mist- David!”

The genuine smile and giddiness of the small child was slowly rubbing off on him that he almost forgot about how they had come in contact with the other. Almost. 

“So, mind telling me what you are doing all alone in the woods? Hiding from monsters in an abandoned house?” 

There was no immediate answer at first, and David knew that he should never hope for things to be easy, they never were when they revolved around the ones beyond reality. Yet it was no more than a few seconds after he asked that the kid seemed to gather enough courage to speak up, staring right into his eyes, not as a challenge, but more so as a way to prove himself before the person who had saved him. 

Had it not been for the years of torture and maddening visions of the cruel things that reside in the abyss, he would have commended that as bravery and not dismissed it as ignorance to the true horrors of the cosmos. 

“I was looking, for my dad.” 

His dad? That answer had completely caught him off guard. Why would a kid no older than six be out in the woods looking for his missing dad? And how did it lead to being so feverishly hunted by so many lesser?

The more he thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense, and would very much like to get to the bottom of all this mess he’d stumbled upon.

“Your dad, what happened to him?” Being tactful wasn’t really his specialty, but with Clive and the others trying their best to keep those things from getting to him that meant that he would have to try his best for now. 

“They took him…” The boy said, voice meek and soft not unlike that of a mouse. 

Knowing fully well who it was the kid was referring to, David merely pointed to the scorched mark where he’d burned the beast attacking them. When he saw how the boy seemed to stare carefully at the black ashes and slowly shake his head in denial, part of him started to grow curious about the kid. 

“N-no, it wasn’t that… monster.” That seemed to make the boy pause, like being thrown without warning into a cold lake, his body tensed in repulsion. “There was another.”

“Can you describe it to me?” 

Whatever it was that David was expecting to be told, whatever monster his mind tried to hypothesize was still lurking under the shadows of the night inside that cursed forest, it certainly wasn’t what the kid told him. 

It was obvious that remembering every single detail of the beast was extremely taxing to the boy, yet he still pushed himself to tell his savior everything he could. 

“It was pale, very pale, I-I almost couldn’t see them in the snow…” As each word was spoken, more and more the kid made himself smaller out of fear. “it hid near the trees too, almost as tall as them. And just being near it made me feel very cold.” 

If David were not aware at the fact that any and all gods have long since been claimed by the primal dark, then he would certainly be praying to as many of them he knew of. Every single trait the kid listed just added to his stress, the fear of a beast he wished with all his might wasn’t lurking in the shadows of the forest only grew, making him paranoid of every corner from he knew the nightmare would spring out of. 

Still, he needed to hold out to the possibility, regardless of how slim it was, that what his gut was telling was not true. For their sake, they’d better hope that thing wasn’t there.

“Did you see if it had… a face.” David wasn’t aware just how pale he was starting to become, nor how his grip on the book tightened with every passing second, but it all rested on whether or not his worse fears were confirmed or not. 

And with the way the kid’s face scrunched up as if deep in thought, his heart felt as if it would burst out of his chest at any given time. 

“No, no! It didn’t! It had no face, but instead there were these deep scars across.”

Oh fuck… shit! 

Out of all the things that could lurk in those goods with them, of all the horrors cradled by the abyss, the one hunting them was none other that a lesser similar to the native American tales of the eternally starving wendigo. Despite his mind tried to comprehend how a kid managed to escape the grasp from such a terrifying apex predator, his main concern was getting himself and the kid out of there as soon as possible.

Filled with adrenaline and utter fear, David rose to his feet, and without saying much, took the kid’s hand as he desperately sought the decrepit building’s exit. It seemed as if that fear and worry were easily picked up by him as he slowly started to pick up the pace. 

The moment they were out in the open, David would have to scream for his friends to get as far away as they could from the area and fall back to their set perimeter. Whether the monster would come back at any given moment or was already stalking them, ready to pounce, he wasn’t about to leave it up to chance. It was obvious they would be torn to pieces if they didn’t get away from there, specially since none of them were prepared to deal with such a threat. 

They would deal with the beast and the building later, but for now, their main concern was none other than getting out alive. Specially since a wendigo never gives up its chase once it grows fixated on its prey. 

The kid was his biggest priority now.