As I turned to go, however, a strange cloud to my left caught my attention.
It hung low to the ground and looked to be much closer than the rest of the sky. I puzzled over it for a moment before understanding the deep gray cloud was not a cloud at all, but smoke.
The fading memory of my dream twisted my stomach. Even though I did not believe in the future predicting power of dreams, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d expected to see this smoke. And more than that, like I should discover what was causing it.
There was no danger of the fire spreading and overtaking the house. The ground was wet enough from the recent rain that the fire didn’t stand a chance of spreading, which begged the question of how it had started in the first place.
I looked back and could see the very top of my sister’s house through the trees. It was further away than I would have liked, and I didn’t have much time before full dark set in. Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to turn and walk back the way I’d come.
With a deep sense of urgency, I turned back around and walked straight for the smoke.
The ground was uneven, rising and falling hills that made it difficult to see too far ahead. Every time I crested a hill, I felt certain the source of the smoke would be revealed, but it was always just behind the next crest. And the next.
As I climbed up them, my legs burning with the effort, my lungs straining in my chest, a distant ringing began in my ears.
With every step, it grew louder and louder. Until I could tell it wasn’t a ringing at all. But chanting.
A consistent humming noise not unlike a heartbeat.
Hum-drum. Hum-drum. Hum-drum.
The hair on my arms raised beneath my coat, and I fought off a sudden chill, forcing myself to keep moving even when my instincts screamed for me to retreat.
Finally, after several hills, I struggled up the last one, my boots slipping in the mud so that I had to catch myself on my hands. I climbed to the top and immediately froze.
I froze outwardly and inwardly.
My body did not move, and I was cold through my entire core.
I could see a fire burning in the center of a circle of trees, and around it, a shadow danced.
Or shadows.
Through the small glimpses through tree trunks, I couldn’t tell how many there were or…what they were. Black dripped from them, pooling on the ground at their feet.
Catherine spoke of robes when she told me of her attack. She recalled seeing flashes of robes and movement before she was struck on the head.
Was this what she saw?
I crouched down on the hilltop and narrowed my eyes, trying to better make out the shapes to see if they were spectral or human, but I’d lost even more light during my trek to get here, and it was too dark to see much. The fire in the center of the grove illuminated the surroundings, but consequently, cast everything into silhouette.
If Catherine had truly been attacked—had truly encountered something strange or otherworldly—I owed it to her to find out what it was. Right now, she was locked away in her room under the constant care of a nurse because her husband believed her to be ill, but what if that wasn’t true? What if her story had been accurate from the start and everyone had simply chosen not to believe it, myself included?
Guilt rippled through me, and the sensation was powerful enough to override my sense of self-preservation. I took a deep breath and began descending the other side of the hill.
I’d taken no more than three steps, however, when a flash of movement at the base of the hill caught my eye.
My heart leapt in my chest, momentarily stealing my breath, and I stopped to examine what it was.
Aside from the distant chanting, all was quiet. Until a violent shrieking tore through the evening air.
The sound was accompanied by hurried movement only thirty paces away from me. It was a robed figure—the same one from the fire or another one, I couldn’t say—and it drew nearer to me and then away, repeating the movement several times, growing closer with each pass.
Horror gripped my soul and consciousness, and I turned and ran as hard and fast as I could in the opposite direction.
My curiosity had fled from me the moment the being had begun to scream, and now all I cared about was getting back to my sister’s house in one piece.
The ground was wet and pocked with footfalls that sent me sprawling face first into the mud again and again. Yet, every time, I dragged myself to my feet and continued my retreat.
I didn’t turn to see if the figure was pursuing me, I simply ran as though it was.
I ran back over the hills, through the trees, and up the path that led to the back door of the house, and I didn’t realize I’d been screaming until the back door opened.
Light shone out around the figure standing there, and I didn’t care who it was so long as they weren’t wearing a robe. I hurtled up the stairs and threw myself, mud and all, into the arms of the stranger.
Distantly, I heard Camellia Cresswell shout back into the house for her brother, but I couldn’t remember much else. Overcome with exhaustion and fear, I closed my eyes and slipped into darkness.
10
There was smoke. So much smoke I couldn’t see or think or breathe.
I blinked against the burning in my eyes and could make out human-like shapes moving around me, but I couldn’t see their faces.
I called out for them again and again, begging them to identify themselves, but they refused to say
