The Nightmare (The Mist Book 2)

Iwanted to run away screaming, to find a dark place to hide in. How had he found me, so far away from my house? Why return now when he’d been quiet for so long?

He can’t get me in here. If he could, he already would have.

Those words only partially reassured me. He’d never spoken to me before. In fact, I didn’t know of anyone having ever been spoken to by one the way this Walker just had. It then struck me that the other Beasts and Walkers in the Mist were giving him a wide berth, like they had done at my house all those years ago. How could they not in light of such a display of power? Inside the Observatory, too, people were giving me a wide berth.

Frazzled, I started moving again, more out of need to distance myself from the Walker than out of any real desire to proceed with the ‘interview’ process. At this point, I was entirely fine with not being selected. I wasn’t as strong as I had presumed, and I had not as thoroughly recovered from that traumatic experience as I’d thought. But the wretched creature immediately followed suit, his shadowy claws raking the surface of the window with an aggravating sound, only to resume his tapping whenever I stopped walking.