ONE RED NIGHT (III)

As though they were transfixed at the spot by an invincible force, the three boys stared at the outlandish creature as the gap between them shortened.
"Run!" Joshua's voice rang out almost at the same time he took to his heels. As if the spell holding them had been broken, they all took off into the darkness as the creature leapt after them with a devastating speed. In an instant, the boys scattered in different directions with little or no knowledge of where they were running to.
Taiwo, the biggest of the group had been running half-blind as a tremendous wave of panic engulfs him, his fears heightened when he heard the shuffling of feet behind him. Taiwo relentlessly ran into the darkness hardly feeling the pains caused by the dry twigs and thorns that mercilessly tore at his face and arms.
As the approaching sound behind him increased, Taiwo also increased his pace frantically as the sound of his heartbeat seemed to fill his ears until he made a grave mistake, he turned to look back and lost balance and concentration in the process. His ankle twisted and he fell to the grassy carpet with a thud wincing in pain. He tried to stand up but was deterred by an excruciating pain on his badly dislocated ankle. With his lungs screaming for air and an expression mixed with abject fear and pain, he looked up in time to see the devilish creature closing in menacingly with its saber-toothed jaw bare.
"please... Don't..." he was saying when it pounced on him. Taiwo knew it was over for he felt like a hot metal was plunged into his stomach as the creature sank its strong canines in his lower abdomen. A painful and death-like cry was all that escaped his lips when the creature violently shook its head with its teeth still imbedded in its victim. Within seconds, his warm bowels spilled out with a dark pool of blood (the moon had just risen and this made the blood look dark).
While Taiwo was dying slowly, the twins faced a different fate as they were both lost. Still concealed under the thick brush flanked by shrubs where he had taken refuge, Joshua cursed himself for ignoring his brother's pessimism earlier but most troubling was letting him out of his sight. With a feeling mixed with regret and determination, he stepped out of his hide-out and started a dangerous search for his twin brother Caleb.
"Cal" he kept calling quietly as he thought about the other two boys who had walked into the gully. Paul and Emeka, had they been attacked also? For the latter, he felt no pity but anger and hate for leading them into danger.
His brother's pessimism would've checked out if they had the slightest idea of what transpired in the gully when the two boys went in, for lying precariously in the belly of the pit is the lifeless and mutilated body of Paul- he had faced a similar fate to Taiwo but the master-mind behind the whole plan to sneak out for a fictitious night party was nowhere to be found.