Tom spoke as if there would have been a right way to force me to commit murder. As if the problem was timing, not the fundamental horror of what he’d made me do. As if we could rewind and try again with better results, like a failed experiment that just needed adjustment.
He was moving slowly, checking behind trees, peering into shadows, searching with the patience of someone who had all the time in the world. Someone who knew his prey had nowhere to go.
He stopped maybe ten feet from where I hid.
I could hear him breathing, ragged from exertion and his broken nose. Could feel his presence like a physical weight, like gravity had shifted to orient around him.
I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, so loud that I was certain he must be able to hear it too. Each beat like a drum announcing my location.
Then he moved on. His footsteps receding, his voice calling my name growing fainter, swallowed by distance and trees.
But I didn’t trust it. Didn’t trust that he was really gone, that this wasn’t a trick, that he wasn’t waiting just out of sight for me to reveal myself.
I waited. Counted to one hundred, then two hundred. Made myself stay still even though every instinct screamed to run, to put more distance between us.
When I finally crawled out from under the log, my entire body was shaking—from cold, from fear, from adrenaline crash.
The night air had a bite to it that I hadn’t noticed while running, and I was wearing only thin cotton pants and a t-shirt. No shoes. I’d been barefoot in the basement, and I was barefoot now, my soles already torn and bleeding.
I looked around, trying to orient myself.
The woods were pitch black, no moon visible through the thick canopy. I couldn’t tell which direction led deeper into the forest, or which might lead to civilization.
I picked the one that felt most right and started moving. Slower now, placing each foot in front of the other, trying to make as little noise as I possibly could.
The forest floor was treacherous, soft in some places where leaves had piled deep, hard and uneven in others where roots broke through. My bare feet were already cut and bruised, each step sending sharp pains shooting up my legs. The cold seeped into my bones, making my muscles ache. The darkness pressed in from all sides, heavy and suffocating.
The fear that Tom was still out here, still coming for me, refused to loosen its grip. Every sound snagged my attention. A twig snapping somewhere nearby. Wind rushing through the leaves.
My foot came down on something that moved—something alive, coiling and writhing beneath my heel. I jerked back instinctively, and pain exploded in my ankle.
There were two points of fire where something had bittenme, two burning pinpricks that flared hot and immediate.
I stumbled backward and fell hard, landing on my ass, scrambling away from whatever I’d stepped on. My heart was hammering so hard I thought it might break through my ribs, might tear itself free from my chest.
In the darkness, I could just make out a shape slithering away, disappearing into the underbrush.
“For fuck’s sake,” I whispered, grabbing my ankle.
Was it venomous? Were there even venomous snakes in this area? Did it matter? I was in the middle of the woods in the dark with no idea how to get out, being hunted by a serial killer. Snake venom was almost beside the point. Just another problem added to an already growing pile.
I forced myself to breathe. In through my nose, and out through my mouth.
Keep moving. I had to keep moving.
I pulled myself up using a nearby tree, bark rough against my palms, putting as little weight as possible on my bitten ankle. The pain was immediate and bright, radiating up my leg.
I started walking again, limping now, using trees for support. My vision was starting to do strange things—or maybe that was just the darkness playing tricks, the absence of light making my brain fill in details that weren’t there. Shadows seemed to move independently. They stretched and folded in on themselves, detaching from the trees that cast them, slipping across the forest floor like something alive and hunting. I blinked hard, more than once, but it didn’t help. The edges of the world felt unstable, as if reality itself were just slightly out of sync, like a film reel skipping frames.
I kept walking. One foot in front of the other. That was all I had to do. Just keep moving forward. Distance and time—theywere my only allies now.
I heard Tom’s voice again, calling my name. But it came from everywhere and nowhere all at once, impossible to locate. Maybe he was close. Maybe he was miles away. Maybe he was in my head.
My foot caught on something and I fell again. This time I lay there for a moment, cheek pressed against the damp ground, tasting soil and rot. I considered staying down. Just letting the forest take me, let it pull me down into the earth until I became part of the soil, until I dissolved into the ecosystem and ceased to exist as Shay Sawyer.
It would be so easy. So much easier than continuing to run, continuing to fight against impossible odds with a body that was falling apart and a mind that was fracturing.
But somewhere deep in my brain, a voice spoke up—small but insistent, stubborn as a weed.
