Emma felt her eyes sting. “No,” she whispered, “No, no, no...” A twig snapped across the clearing, and Emma flattened herself against the chair’s tall back. It occurred to her that she was just another small animal, running from hiding spot to hiding spot to get away from some hungry predators.
There was no further sound in the clearing. Slowly she looked around the edge of the chair. The clearing was a confusion of shapes and shadows in the night, and any of the squat shapes could have been someone crouched in wait for her to come out. Or they could have been dwarf palms, their wide leaves reaching out with hungry, needled fingers.
Emma scanned the edges of the clearing. If she could find where they came in...
A shadow moved against a pale tree. Emma didn’t move. She could barely breathe. She watched the shifting shadows caused by the campfire, thinking those were probably what she had seen in the first place. After what seemed like an eternity the figure against the tree moved again, and she could tell that it was tall and lanky. She couldn’t see what was casting the shadow, only that it seemed to be patrolling around the far side of the clearing.
As she watched the thing seemed to turn toward her, and Emma let out an involuntary whimper. Against the pale trunks of the trees behind it the thing seemed completely made of void. Its outline shifted and changed, and it looked like the poorly-drawn cartoons she sometimes saw on YouTube. The two held each other’s gaze - Emma’s hurt and scared, and the shadow’s dark and mysterious.
It bent over and, though nothing seemed to touch them, the wall of green leaves parted. Slowly Emma rose to her feet. Now, outside of her hiding place, she faced the thing straight on. It had no real body that she could see, and had she not paid attention it would have only been another shadow in the woods. It was holding the way for her, like a doorman.
“Are you...” Emma’s voice cracked, and her throat hurt. She cleared her dry throat, swallowed a few times, and tried again. “Are you Cete Tate?” The shadow didn’t answer. She took a step forward. “Are you…” she swallowed again, “Xan?” Again it didn’t answer. She took another step. “Where does that go? Will that get me out, or does that lead to them? Caroline and Kayla, I mean.” Again there was no response. A breeze blew through the clearing, and in it Emma thought she heard whispering behind her.
Did she trust this – whatever it was – to help her? Caroline seemed to think Xan was on her side, but this might be her only way out.
Emma shook her head. There really was no choice. She crept to where the leaves were parted, watching the shadow-thing all the time. It didn’t move. Slowly she stepped into the greenery, glancing back every few steps until her view of the thing was lost. Before her the green departed, behind her it closed. No roots grabbed at her, and no leaves cut her. She was in her own pocket of protection.
She stepped out of the claustrophobic green and looked around. There were a dozen trees ahead of her, and through them was the sun-lit pathway they had come from. She walked to it, feeling relief and pain and weariness all weighing her down. When she stepped out of the trees she breathed deep.
The ground rose gradually above her, and she was back at the hill where they had first gotten off the trail. Emma fell to her knees and started to climb the grassy embankment. Her strength gave out halfway up, and she fell onto the grass. Though the ground was wet it was not the dead, rotten wet of the woods; this was the wet of fresh grass in the late afternoon.
The world began to grow gray again. Emma idly wondered if the girls were still chasing her. She wondered if they would find her here, laying in the grass, and decide this was close enough to the chair to kill her. Her eyes drooped, and it took all of her strength to open them again.
Far away she heard voices.
Her eyes closed a second time, and again she fought to open them.
“Oh my God,” someone said from somewhere above her. “It’s a little girl!”
She couldn’t turn over, couldn’t even raise her head. She was utterly spent.
“Call nine-one-one,” the voice said in a panic. There were hands on her, but the world was swimming away. “She’s alive, get an ambulance!”
She thought of the girls she had wanted to be her friends luring her into the woods. She thought of the roots twisting themselves around her ankle. She thought of the shadow showing her the way out. The voice above her was asking something over and over, but she could barely make it out. She thought it was “Who did this to you?” but it could have been “Who saved you?”
She sighed, the word coming from her almost without effort. “Xan.”
On the edge of unconsciousness, somewhere deep in the woods where she shouldn’t have been able to hear, two girls started to scream.
Emma Charles passed out in the stranger’s arms as the sound of a siren approached.
Brian Duncan
About the Author
Brian Duncan is a writer and artist in Florida where he resides with his wife and two sons, Ben and Michael. As a student of English and Journalism he explores many styles of writing, focusing mainly on suspenseful fantasy horror. When he is not writing he can be found sitting around a table playing board games or iceside at a Lightning game. Currently he is training for his first half marathon.
Brian can be contacted at the following:
www.Excessiveramblings.com
www.Facebook.com/authorBrianDuncan
www.Instagram.com/S.BrianDuncan
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