The party pressed on. Deeper into the woods. Following a nine-year-old girl. Following just another hunch. Another person's blind hope. Not Layla's. Never Layla's.
The young girl looked up, wordlessly, to the gray tree canopy that hung above. Searching for the vibrant hues of life she knew weren't there. Just darkness. She clenched her eyes tight and fought the urge to run away. To run home. Anxiously grasping the back of her neck now, Layla made every effort to slow her increasingly panicked breathing. She thought of the Hillary, and of her mother. She remembered a song her mother used to sing to her when she couldn't sleep.
Five little ducks went out to play,
Over the hill and far away.
Mother duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack,"
But only four little ducks came back...
Layla brushed the dripping locks of hair out of her eyes and behind her ear, and turned her gaze upward, as the gray sky opened up.
The torrential rain was falling straight through the trees now, showering the group in a steady curtain of moisture that seemed to block out all other sounds. Layla still walked on, shivering, but unphased. And though the stinging rain pummeled her cheeks relentlessly, and nearly blinded her. Though each breath now hangs in the frigid air in front of her. She kept moving forward. Kept moving, because despite being chilled to the bone, Layla found she was getting warmer and warmer by the second. That strange, familiar warmth that drew her towards the truth, and could only mean one thing.
And then, she just stopped.
Layla rigidly stood, unmoving and unfeeling. She blinked, lazily, and looked down at her pink tennis shoes, caked in mud, and stained a sickly tinge of brown. As she looked, the pale, washed-out red and gold bands of a kingsnake slithered over the tops of her shoes. Layla froze, despite its behavior feeling a bit strange, and its appearance in this setting seems out of place. It looked back in Layla's direction and locked on her gaze for a long moment, before winding its way into a burrow at the base of a dead tree, and out of sight. No one else seemed to notice this intruder, and in a moment, Layla's mind, too, was back in the moment, dismissing the snake from her thoughts. She could, however, hear the hushed scramble of feet from behind her, and a flurry of scattering flashlight beams, as the search party behind her had noticed the hesitation.
Layla was still dripping wet and shivering, but no longer from the cold. She felt warm again, though there was little comfort in this for her. This was a familiar warmth, that slowly wound its way up her small frame, and coiled itself around her, refusing to let go.
Layla removed a hand from the pocket of her jacket, and slowly pointed downward, to the soil beneath her feet. In an instant, a woman broke from the search pack behind her, screaming, frantically, "David?! Is it David, my little boy?!" Layla said nothing, but stepped back, as the sheriff whom she'd spoken with earlier grasped her by the shoulders, protectively. The woman lunged forward and began desperately clawing at the muddy soil, as the relentless rain rendered her efforts futile. Two or three men were trying their best to hold onto her and pull her back up off the ground, as she angrily waved them off. All the while sobbing uncontrollably.
The whole scene made Layla feel sick, and she clenched her eyes shut, and turned into the sheriff, searching for an escape. The man did the best he could to reassure the child, though hid sad eyes betrayed his real emotions. "You... You did a good thing here today, Layla. That woman can finally lay her son to rest and move on with her life. Her, and the two families before her... they owe you a lot. I know it doesn't feel like it, but you have a gift. I don't even rightly understand it myself, but you're helping people, Layla. You're helping people."
To Layla, it didn't feel like it. All she saw was a string of sorrow and death. All in her wake. All because of what she could do. And no matter what all this was putting her through, no matter how much she might have wanted to shout it to the trees that surrounded her, she couldn't seem to find it in her to tell them no. After all, how could she?
Chapter 9
No Time to Waste
Layla didn't sleep soundly all night. The dreams wouldn't allow her to. She was finding it was becoming increasingly more and more difficult to piece apart the bits that were just dreams from those she knew were from her own messed-up childhood memories. She'd been trying to run away from all that for so long, she didn't even really know anymore, herself. It didn't matter, she supposed. But between the painful dreams, one moment, and the torrent of images of monstrous snake beasts and black dogs that flooded her consciousness every other moment, any sleep she had managed to get over the course of the tumultuous evening was far from what anyone would consider restful.
Layla sighed, staring blankly at the wall of her tent. Watching it slowly turned from black to blue, blue to gray, gray to gold. As the ever-living and visceral unseen noises of the jungle night were replaced by a mixture of muggy humidity, the drip, drip, drip of dew, which had collected on the outside of her tent, as well as nearly every external surface, and the strange, multi-tonal calls of tropical birds and howler monkeys that Layla knew
