Chapter 5

Mirko screamed and cried. He screamed for his mother. “Let us go back to look for her.” He screamed everything that I howled inside my mind. I gritted my teeth almost as much as I walked, trying to see something in the closed darkness of the mountain. The noise would certainly guide the black monster onto my trail easily, but I didn’t want to stop and tell my son to suppress those feelings, because I felt them too. I couldn’t think of anything else except that the beast would get us sooner or later. Or not. Maybe not. Maybe he wasn’t as fast running as that feline being, nor could he see at night, but he had one advantage: he knew that forest. I knew very well where to sneak, and where to hide.

So I just ran. Bleeding out, leaving everything behind.

The cold cut my cheeks, but like the pain of gunshots, I didn’t feel it.

After going through the window, I fell onto the roof and descended onto the roof of a shed. I ran across the backyard and without hesitation jumpe