Riverstone | Teen Ink

Riverstone

December 14, 2022
By Anonymous

My name is Robbie and I gotta say Nothing has been the same ever since I moved. I’m not talking about the normal issues with moving like making new friends or getting used to the new home. They still exist and they're watching us and I have a feeling they never left. When I moved to this new town called Riverstone I wasn’t expecting to make so many friends right off the bat. Turns out there are nice people in this town like Jacob, Anthony, Jessica, and David who were my closest friends at the time. Then there were people like Nolan and Brad who just wanna make you punch them in the face. I remember heading home to unpack my boxes as even though I had made friends and enemies at this time I was still settling in. When I went to sit on the porch with my Sister Wendy I saw something moving through the tree line by our house. My dad was a hunter so I figured he was just hunting but then I saw his rifle leaning next to the screen door. I grabbed the scope to look through the tree line and I could see something dragging an animal across the grass. I saw that it was no ordinary animal as it was a black bear and it was huge. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. The thing  set the bear down and started eating its neck. I was about to puke and then Wendy started making fun of me which is one thing I don't like about older sisters is that they always make fun of you even in weird situations like this. When I showed her the creature in the woods she looked confused. “What are you talking about, there's just a puddle of blood,” she said. “ what!?” I grabbed the scope only to see a puddle of blood and some fur next to it. Later that night I couldn't get any sleep as all I thought about was that creature in the woods. When I finally got out of bed at 3:56 AM to get some water I looked out my window to see a creature with a wolf’s head and antlers next to its ears. I was frozen solid as the creature started scratching the window like it was trying to get in. I immediately thought it was my sister Wendy so then I said “ Alright knock it off Wendy, that's not funny”. It  just stood there continuing  to drag its claws  across the glass and then without warning it darted for the front door but the lock restricted it from coming in. It then started pounding on the door as I went to grab my baseball bat to defend myself in case It came. After the pounding changed to banging I was ready for him to break in but then it stopped. After a few moments I heard movement upstairs by my room and thought it was Wendy or my dad so I went up to check. When I got to the stairs I felt my heart punch the inside of my chest as the creature stood there at the stairs now inside the house. When I stood there ready to be killed by the creature as it walked down the stairs I could feel my heart skip beats and my adrenaline was spiking. As the creature got closer I could now see a monstrous looking face behind the wolf’s teeth. What happened next was surprising as it just walked past me and looked around the house. It eventually just walked out of the house and when I got the courage to move I ran to my dad who was loading his hunting rifle. “Robbie got with Wendy into the basement while I went to call the cops'' He said “Dad you're not going to shoot that guy are you?” “That thing is not a man”. My dad went out of the house to chase after that thing while me and Wendy hid in the basement. When my dad came back the cops arrived and I explained everything to them. They inspected the property and found scratches on the side of the house leading up to my room window. After 4 hours and I was sitting in class my friend Anthony started asking me questions like “why were the cops at your house” “why did you dad wave a gun around like a lunatic on his front lawn”. I didn’t want to lie to him so I told Anthony about the creature I encountered the night before. “ Wait, did you get attacked by a skinwalker?” he said, “ I don't really….know,” I said in response. When lunch ended I went about my day and focused on getting through my classes. I drank a redbull and hoped it would get me through the day, especially with Jessica constantly asking me about the thing who many are calling a skin-walker. When I got home I went into the forest even though Wendy told me not to but I didn’t care or better yet I wasn’t thinking at the time. The further I went into the forest the more I started seeing things and I swear Someone was following me as I could hear other pairs of footsteps crunching the twigs and leaves around me. My walk in the woods came to an end when I saw the heads of different types of animals and people alike on top of pikes. I barfed instantly when I saw them and as if it weren't bad enough I saw a sign saying “ The end is near '' and “Riverstone will fall and your minds will break ''. When I took a picture of the signs I then saw three other creatures appear out of nowhere and they started chasing me. I ran until I got out of the forest until I felt something grazed across my back causing me to fall to the ground. Luckily my jacket provided some sort of protection but I was still hurt and even worse is that the skinwalker was now standing over me like it was going to eat my throat. That's when I closed my eyes only to hear a gunshot from a distance penetrate the creature's abdomen. I kicked it off of me but grabbed a piece of clothing off of it and ran to Wendy who was holding dad’s rifle. We ran inside the house and I decided to examine the clothing I got from the creature. My heart sank as I saw Brad’s initials on it which makes me think that the skinwalkers already got them too. I called all my buddies to my house and told them everything that happened. '' I told you it was skinwalkers, they must be nesting in the woods,” said Anthony. “Bro I've only been suspended from school for like a week and when did all this stuff happen?” asked Jacob who is still trying to grasp all this new information. David pretty much just grabbed one of my dad’s coca colas like this wasn’t the most weird thing he's heard of. Then all of a sudden There was a knock on the door and when I opened it there was Nolan standing in the doorway with a Book in his hands. He started talking about the skinwalkers and even mentioned The Alpha which I'm guessing is their leader. We all eventually came to the idea that we should go into the forest and kill the alpha. It sounded stupid but if these things decided to go through the town as a murderous herd it wouldn’t be good. We started getting hunting gear together from my dad’s garage and went into the woods. We got to the cave and when we got inside we saw the skinwalkers all gathered around. They were holding different types of wooden figures in their hands and they looked dormant as they weren’t attacking us. Just then the alpha came out of the wooden hut in the corner of the cave and it looked like a bear with red eyes, Goat horns, and it had the physique of a bodybuilder. When paying close attention to it while hiding I could see it dragging out Brad and throwing him into a pit below as other skinwalkers started chanting in some sort of language. Without thinking I ran into the pit pushing away any and every skinwalker that was in front of me. When I got into the pit I grabbed Brad and tried to get him up on his feet. When he started glowing black however he started turning into a husk and then he fell back to the ground. I looked around the cave covered in dead vines and branches to see one of the skinwalkers crawling towards me. The way it moved made it look like a wolf until it stood on its two legs. As it reached its arm out to try and grab my throat Jacob shot it in the neck. As the loud noise echoed through the cave the other skinwalkers woke up and they started running at my friends. They looked crazed and unrestrained but they quickly fell to the floor as they were either shot, stabbed, or cracked in the head with baseball bats and other tools from my dad’s garage. When I went to join my friends the alpha then grabbed me by the throat and lifted me up in the air. I was starting to black out as it choked me out and then all of a sudden it asked where the book was. I spit in its eye to escape and ran to my friends. I grabbed the book from Nolan and started flipping through it until one of the pages caught my eye. There was only some weird gibberish but for some reason I understood it and started speaking the gibberish. When I finished The skinwalkers stopped including the alpha as they all ran out of the cave and scattered everywhere. We could all feel the ground shaking beneath us like an earthquake as the ground split open. We ran out of the cave to see the ground cracking open everywhere. As I continue to write in my journal I need to mention that we all got out safely. Some of us were injured as Jacob lost an arm and David couldn’t speak due to his vocal cords being sliced by a skinwalker. Riverstone was long gone however and nobody knows why the ground is still splitting open. I just hope we don't have to stay in this shelter for another three months. Even though I've never seen another skin-walker since that day in the cave I still think there is out there. What still bothers me is a specific page in the book. Their alpha may have disappeared but their beta still lives. I just don’t get why it had to be me.


The author's comments:

This is just a classroom project. 


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