Page 173 of A World of Curiosities

Harriet stopped screaming. She had none left. She had nothing left.

Harriet Landers was finally gone. The last sound that came out was a whimper.

A pathetic little moan as she lay in the fetal position on the forest floor.

In that moment she heard herself. She saw herself. Reduced to a tiny, filthy, weeping and sniveling mass. The world, her world, really would end with a whimper.

Numb. Silent. Paralyzed. Hollow.

As she’d lived, Harriet would die.

Though in that void, something stirred.

A small fuck-it. Then a fuckitfuckitfuckit. Louder and louder. Fuck it.

She got shakily to her feet. If death was coming for her, as it came for this man, she would not die sniveling on the ground.

She heard a sound. Something plunging through the forest toward her. The creature had finally found her. Harriet’s newfound courage withered.

She fell to her knees, and as she did, she felt beneath her torn palms a thick branch. Clasping it, she stood back up and turned to face it.

Fuck it.

The light in her hand swung wildly as Amelia ran, so that she only caught glimpses of something horrific up ahead. A nightmare image of a body suspended between trees, as though crucified.

All her instincts told her to stop, or at least slow down. But she kept running toward the creature.

Something equally horrible was standing in front of it. Holding a weapon. A rifle.

Now Amelia did slow down and brought out her gun.

“Drop it!”

The creature, who looked like a part of the deep forest come alive, raised the weapon further. It was not, as Amelia had first thought, a rifle. It was a tree branch.

She walked forward slowly, gun still out and pointed.

“Drop it,” she said, in French and then in English. “I’m with the Sûreté du Québec. Drop your weapon.”