Sheriff Harrison stomped on the brake pedal and spun the truck around. Headed back towards town, he pressed the accelerator as far as it would go. Time was no longer a commodity he could afford to waste. Corey would undoubtedly make his final move soon. Sasha was like a rat trapped in a maze. The closer she came to the cheese, the fewer chances she had for survival. But Harrison intended to increase her chances. In fact, he planned to raise them to one hundred percent.
Too many people had died. Far too much destruction had been caused. Harrison had been unable to stop any of it. He would be damned if that trend continued. He figured it would be with his dying breath he stopped this madness. Either way, it would all end. The town would stop its manic witch hunt, Sasha and Tara would be safe, and Corey Hall would be arrested or dead. Of course, he preferred the latter. Considering he had taken so many lives, Harrison didn’t see the harm in killing Corey himse-
The truck smashed a dark figure in the center of the road, crushing in the front end severely. Something penetrated the windshield and pierced through Harrison's chest. The truck skidded down the road several more yards before coming to a stop; tires squealing on the pavement. Mangled bits of debris littered the grass and road about the area. Fluids leaked from the bottom of the truck and pooled in a dark circle. A crimson liquid ran from the grill of the truck where a large moose was embedded and pooled in the center of the road. Its antlers had gone through the windshield and struck Harrison square in the chest. He wriggled and pulled, trying to get free of the obliterated animal but it was no use. He was pinned to the seat behind him. Even worse, he could hear the wheezing sound of one lung desperately trying to keep inflated. Blood welled up in his mouth and poured into his neatly trimmed beard.
Through the pain and lack of functioning lungs, he was able to only utter one sentence. "Tara...are you...alright?" When he heard a faint yes come from the back seat and a quick check of the rearview mirror confirmed this, he allowed the darkness to take over his body and pull him down into the deep recess of death.
Chapter Twenty
Everyone had cleared out of the small patch of trees Sasha had climbed up. Once she felt it was safe, she climbed back down. A couple of times she lost her footing and nearly slipped off a branch. Luckily, she was able to catch herself before any real harm could be done. When her feet finally touched firm ground, she let out a sigh of relief. Anxiety shook her hands but she was relieved to have made it.
She was unable to revel in her accomplishment for long. She turned around to flee into the safety of the dark night but something seized her. A hand had shot out from the darkness and wrapped its long fingers around her throat and squeezed. She couldn’t scream. She could hardly breathe. She kicked and scratched but nothing seemed to subdue the assailant.
Like a creature surfacing on a murky lake, a face came into view. It was a face she was all too familiar with. One that still haunted her dreams nearly every night. Her knees gave way. She would have collapsed to the ground if not for the grip around her neck from the man she had remembered burying in the woods.
The familiar face of her husband sneered back at her from the darkness only there was something different about it. It was twisted and distorted, like someone wearing an ill-fitted mask. Deep dark sockets had formed around his eyes giving them the appearance of retreating into his skull. His cheeks caved in grotesquely on both sides like they had collapsed in due to lack of a jaw. A theory which he confirmed when he gave her a toothless grin. Only, it wasn't just toothless. The entirety of his mouth looked brown and rotten like the inside of a bad apple.
"Take a good look." He sneered. "You did this to me."
"Me? How?"
"Turns out your little trick hadn't been enough to kill me." He spoke with a hiss from the many missing teeth. Spittle ejected from his mouth with each new word. The scene disgusted Sasha to the verge of vomiting.
"I...I... buried you. You were dead. This isn't possible."
"Yes, yes you did bury me. But I wasn't dead. I clawed my way out of that pile of dirt. I escaped death but not without a few scars." He pointed to his face and laughed. "Ironic, isn't it? Your past is literally back to haunt you. Tonight, I’m burying you in the woods but you’re not coming back."
Sasha trembled in front of the man she had spent so much time trying to forget. He forced her to her knees and she considered begging for her life. She couldn't help but think about letting him have his way with her. Maybe it would buy her some time. Maybe he would let her live. She could only assume it was all part of his plan anyway. She was going to die right here.
"It's been you all this time, hasn't it?"
"I told you I would find you if you ever left me. I promised it would be far worse, didn’t I? It worked out far better than I could have ever imagined. These inbred morons