Watching us.
20
Kat
“Oh my God,” I cry out at the figures standing in the woods, standing there, facing us and not moving.“Who are they?”
What are they?
I start to panic, straightening up, but then Crane is grabbing me around the waist and holding me back against his chest.Somehow his cock is hard again, the hot, slick length of him pressed along my bottom.
“We’re supposed to see them,” he says into my ear.“It means it’s working.The ritual is still in play.”
I gape at the figures in horror.Some of them are clearly human, ghosts, perhaps, with chest wounds, some with their heads caved in, others looking intact except for black eyes and mouths stretched open in a silent scream.Others are dark and shadowy with red eyes and sharp teeth and…
I look down at where Crane is holding on to me across my waist.
His arm is just shadow now.
“Crane?”I cry out, and I try to look at him over my shoulder.
His face is gone.Instead, he’s just darkness personified, a moving, smoking abyss with two crimson dots for eyes.“Kat,” the shadow monster says in an inhuman voice.
“Help!Brom, he’s—” I cry out, twisting around to face Brom, to get him to save me, but Brom isn’t there anymore.
Instead, it’s the headless horseman kneeling in front of me, in his black leather armor and cape and that festering wound that used to hold a head.
“No!”I scream.“No, no!”
“Kat,” the shadow hisses in my ear.“I told you this would happen, you’re fine, we’ve got you.”
“He’s the horseman,” I manage to say.“He’s the horseman!”
The horseman reaches for me with his black gloved hands, and I scream again.I bring my elbow back and jab it into the shadow’s ribs.I don’t even feel it make contact, but it lets go of me and I get to my feet, trying to run.
“Grab her!”the shadow yells.“Don’t let her break the circle!”
I’m screaming, running toward the edge of the clearing, away from the gathered ghouls, my feet slipping under me on the wet grass, but I’m almost there, I’m almost—
I yelp as powerful arms wrap around my calves, slamming me down to the ground, my hands breaking my fall.
“Pin her down,” the shadow commands, and I’m kicking, trying to get away, but then the horseman is turning me over on my back, holding my arms above my head and pinning my wrists in place.The shadow man comes at me with a knife raised, his thighs on top of mine, the weight keeping me from bucking.“Easy, Kat, we’re trying not to hurt you.”
“Kat, Katrina,” the thing with no head says.“It’s okay.It’s okay.It’s Brom and it’s Crane.”
“No, no,” I cry, tears spilling out as I shake my head, my heart feeling like it will burst from my chest and run away because I can’t.“You’re not them, you’re not them.”
“We are us,” the shadow says.“Sweet witch, please, you have to choose to see us for what we are.We are not what you’re seeing, that’s fear.There are a lot of creatures around us right now sending you this fear, playing with your mind, because they love the way your fear tastes.You know us, you feel us.”
I struggle beneath them, but they’re too big and strong.
I am their captive.
I will die at their hands.
“Daffy,” the horseman says.“I’m not the horseman right now.I’m just Brom.I’myourBrom.Choose to see me.Look past it and see me.Please, Daffodil, do this for me.”
The lastpleasesounds so desperate that something inside me cracks.
