Moving through the woods, Melody repeatedly calls out Rebecca's name, looking around to see any sign of her young student. Now the wind has grown in depth and rage. It is pushing its way between the trees; an invasion of sorts from the outside world. The woods can no longer hold off its onslaught. Melody can feel it throwing her hair around, and as it catches her white coat in places, it pushes against her body with such force that she nearly falls on the uneven ground.
Looking down, she notices that the further she moves into the woods, the ground is changing. It is getting wetter, and for a second she thinks she can hear the sound of rushing water before that too is gobbled up by the roaring clouds above.
“Rebecca!”
Another crash. This time closer. Through the dim light, Melody thinks she sees something collapse. But she cannot be certain. In her mind, it was a large shape moving, almost like several trees at once being pulled down into the earth. She does not understand what is happening.
“Rebecca! Come out this instant! It's not safe! The game is over!”
That is when she hears it. Carried between the darkness of the evergreens, a shrill thing weaving into her mind through her ears. The unmistakable sound of a young girl screaming.
Melody rushes trying to find the source, but the wind swirls, and with it, so too does Rebecca's voice. It appears from in front, from behind, left, right, above. Echoes of cries, reverberations of crashing and tearing surround her world, an explosion of noise and violence. Water drips in momentary streams sporadically from the canopy above as the rain makes its way insidiously inward.
“Where are you!?” Melody screams in every direction she can muster.
Finally, she knows she must get help. But she will not leave Rebecca to whatever is in those woods. Putting her hands into the pocket of her white coat, raindrops stream down them inside as she finds her lifeline. Pulling out her cell phone, she dials Tam the grounds keeper.
No signal. A constant curse of the island. Roaming around, slipping on the wet ground, she holds the phone high above her head. She paces furiously back and forward until... Yes! A single bar of reception. Quickly, she hits “Call”. It rings and is almost immediately answered.
“Tam! Are you there!?” she cries.
“I cannae hear you, Lassie. Where are ye?”
The sound of the wind is brushing against the phone's speaker, creating a wall of relentless static and white noise.
“Tam! We're in the woods! I can't find Rebecca!” Melody repeats this several times in the vain hope that he hears.
Tam says something in return, but it is garbled before the signal finally drops and the connection is lost.
“Please no...” Melody pants to herself.
Something roars up ahead, and Melody is confused by it, unable to determine if it is the sound of rushing water or an unforgiving wind.
“Rebecca!”
She moves again, darting between the trees. But there is no sense to this place. It feels as though the forest is playing tricks, shaping itself purposefully to obscure Rebecca's locations. But Melody knows the truth. This is disorientation brought about by panic. The trees are not her enemy. They do not change their shape, but as she moves around and between them, her perspective does shift. And that is what alters everything. Now she is not sure which way is North and which is South. Which way leads deeper into the belly of the beast or back to the safety of Deacon House.
“Miss Winter!” A shrill cry rises up above the malevolent wind.
Melody searches. And she searches. She first, second, and third guesses herself, moving back across terrain that she has already covered, then more that looks unfamiliar yet familiar. The shapes of the forest blend together to create an uneasy blanket around her of contorted wood and green. She stumbles over the uneven ground, her ankle twisting slightly, catching her coat on the sharp broken branch of an oak which pierces a hole in the material.
And yet she continues to move relentlessly through the woods. She must find little Rebecca.
Rebecca's cries continue from somewhere. They reach a crescendo. They are of pain. They are of fear. They are anguished and pleading. A cry that to a parent is a cut to the heart. But little Rebecca has no parents. They are gone. She only has Melody at this moment, and she is coming.
A blink of red catches Melody's attention as she passes a fallen tree, one of several crashes in the woods she no doubt heard at the hands of the unrelenting wind. Melody steps forward through a wall of leaves. The ground falls away from her as an enormous gaping wound in the earth lies ahead. It is a depression that, on a summer's day, would have been gentle and easy to traverse. But now, there is a sheet of water ahead, pouring into it from the mountains above, and the rain has conspired with it and the wind to erode the soil, to cast trees aside like nothing, and to wrench away at the very fabric of the earth.
Somewhere in the gloom down that sharp depression in the ground, Rebecca is holding on for her life. Another crash occurs somewhere in the woods, and it is as though the very ground is shaking with anger from the storm.
Melody climbs over the broken branches of another fallen tree and heads down the incline. The ground is a wet mess of rock and dirt, congealing together to make each footstep uncertain. At any moment, the ground could fall away beneath Melody's weight. To her horror, at the bottom of the mountain, the water that is
