Chapter 15
It was cold. That was the first thing Olivia noticed.
The ground squelched wet and gooey beneath her bare feet, but she paid it no mind.
The freezing air seeped into her skin, raising tiny little bumps along the exposed flesh of her arms and legs.
The icy wind tugged viciously at her thin nightgown and danced down her spine, yet she continued on beneath the canopy of jagged tree branches and starlight.
She couldn’t say how long she’d walked. It didn’t seem important.
She seemed to be a long way from her house.
Something about that should have concerned her, and her brow momentarily creased into a frown, but the thought disappeared like a skittish animal as quickly as it had come.
Was she looking for something? She couldn’t quite remember, and the thought disappeared before it could cause her any distress.
Wandering further into the woods, she thought she saw something up ahead—a person in a dark cloak, a hood drawn up over their face. She wondered if that should concern her, but the idea slipped away as thin and insubstantial as a wisp of smoke.
A mist closed in around her, grasping at her ankles like ghostly hands.
She stared down absently at the transparent fingers winding around her legs.
It seemed wrong somehow, but she couldn’t quite place why.
She couldn’t concentrate; every time she had a conscious thought, it tattered and fell apart before she had the chance to grab onto it.
She continued to wind her way deeper into the woods. The part of her mind that still retained some form of consciousness gradually began to realize she was no longer following any kind of path.
She was now much deeper into the heart of the wood, ambling through gnarled ancient tree trunks.
Glancing down she noted vaguely that the thin mist had now thickened into a greasy fog that had a strange hue to it, a sickly phosphorescent glow.
The unnatural fog seemed to surround her, undulating in whichever direction she chose to move.
It should have scared her, but her emotions seemed to have switched off.
She tried to focus, and her thoughts became slightly clearer, although with that clarity came a curious sense of numbness.
She caught a glimpse of a tattered yellow ribbon flapping ponderously in the ghostly breeze.
Crime scene tape, she mused as it slowly disappeared behind the thick curtain of fog.
For a second, she glimpsed a cloaked figure, and then it flickered out of sight under a fresh swathe of fog. Was she following the figure? Or was the figure following her? She couldn’t quite tell. It seemed something about the figure should alarm her, but she couldn’t say why.
She adjusted her direction.
Her mind slowly began to stir and thoughts came a little easier. She paused and tilted her head. Had she heard something, a whisper on the air calling her name? It came again, louder and more insistent.
Adjusting her direction once again, she followed the whispering voice.
Was she following the voice? Had that been what she’d been doing all along?
She listened harder. It was a sibilant hiss that lulled, cajoled.
It was a siren’s call, and she was unable to resist. She quickened her pace, heedless of the sharp twigs underfoot that scratched and tore at the soft, exposed flesh.
Suddenly, her foot caught in a shallow hole in the ground, and she stumbled.
Throwing her hands out to save herself, she dropped to her knees, grazing her palms.
She raised her head slowly. The tree line had opened up, and she was in a circular clearing.
The clouds above her had burned away, and the sky was blazing with stars.
The waxing moon glowed pure white, filtering down through to the clearing.
The fog had settled along the ground, bobbing and churning like the surface of a stream, broken only by one dark, twisted, solitary tree.
No longer a living, breathing tree like the others in the woods, it was little more than a hollow. It writhed and speared up painfully from the ground, as if it were trying to escape something deeper and darker below.
A flicker of dread began to coil in her gut. She knew this place. Something inside her was telling her she wasn’t supposed to be there.
She climbed painfully to her feet, the newly forming bruises on her knees throbbing as she wiped her blood-smeared palms against her nightgown.
She wavered and tried to take a step back, but something had hold of her.
It pulled at her. The whisper came again, and she unconsciously stepped forward.
Her torn hands stretched out as she moved closer to the corpse-like hollowed tree.
The whisper grew louder in her mind, building with each step.
The whole clearing spoke to her now, building to a vast crescendo.
Her hand touched the crumbling, diseased-looking bark and then. ..
Silence.
The whispering, the wind, the thousand tiny little voices and sounds of the wood were suddenly gone. The silence was deafening.
For one terrifying moment, she could have sworn she’d seen a face in the bark of the tree, its mouth hung open in a silent, timeless scream.
Suddenly she was hit with a punch of power so strong it forced the air from her lungs and took her feet out from under her. She was thrown backward and hit the ground hard, jarring every bone in her body.
Then reality flooded back.
Whatever sleepy, dream-like trance had been woven around her was gone.
Everything crashed in on her, sharply and painfully.
Her heart hammered in her chest as she tried to drag in a lungful of air.
Her feet and hands stung from the dozens of cuts and grazes she’d sustained from making her way through the woods.
She was freezing, and her arms and legs felt slow and sluggish from the biting cold.
She rolled over, drawing in a shaky breath.
Hauling herself to her feet, she glanced back at the foreboding tree.
She knew where she was now. Boothe’s Hollow.
The one place in the whole of the woods that had always been forbidden to her and her friends.
The place she’d seen only once as a child.
How the hell had she gotten so far from her house, and how long had she been outside?
Stupid, stupid. She shook her head and backed away from the clearing, her eyes darting nervously about.
Someone or something had led her there, and she had followed blindly.
She was such a moron, so arrogant and sure nothing could cross the line that she hadn’t considered being manipulated into stepping outside her own protective boundaries.
She’d been so focused on trying to protect her home that she hadn’t thought to protect her own mind.
A sudden growling behind her kicked her already frantic heartbeat up another notch.
She spun around and caught a glimpse of red eyes through the trees.
The growl came again, and Olivia ran. She darted back into the woods, running as though her life depended on it.
It was close, snapping at her heels as she was once again enveloped by the fog.
Whatever the hell chased her, it sounded huge, and its growl was deep and somehow wetter than it should be.
It was too close, and it had her scent. There was only one way to lose it. Praying she was right about where she was, she veered off and plunged through the trees toward the shore of the lake.
She burst through the edge of the woods and realized a second too late she’d miscalculated.
Stumbling at the edge of a sharp embankment she lost her footing.
Her ankle twisted sharply, leg collapsing beneath her as she lost her balance and plunged down a steep incline.
Her head cracked sharply against a protruding rock, and her limp body tumbled into the freezing water of the lake.
* * *
Theo shot up in bed drenched in sweat, damp sheets twined around his body like vines.
Breathing heavily, he glanced over at the clock, which showed 2:47 a.m. in blinking red numbers.
Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he fumbled for his phone.
He retrieved it from the pocket of his discarded jeans and scrolled through the menus the way Olivia had shown him.
Praying that he remembered how to use it correctly, he found her number and hit connect.
It rang and rang.
His jaw tensed painfully as it went to voicemail.
He tried again, and again she didn’t answer.
He knew something was wrong, deep in his gut, and he cursed himself for leaving her in the first place.
Dragging his jeans on he dressed quickly.
He’d had a bad feeling as he left her house earlier that evening, and it had only gotten worse as the hours had passed.
Dread churned deep in his gut. He pulled his boots on and yanked a sweater over his head before trying her phone again.
With a growl of impatience, he shot into the hallway and then into Jake’s room, hurrying over to the bed to shake him awake.
“Whattimezit?” Jake mumbled as he rolled over and looked up through half-open eyes.
“Jake, Olivia’s in trouble.”
“What?” Jake’s eyes cleared. He sat up and kicked the covers off.
“We have to go, now!” Theo hovered impatiently as Jake grabbed his clothes off the floor and yanked them on.
“What happened?” Jake hurriedly retrieved his weapon, checked it was fully loaded, and tucked it into the back of his jeans.
“I don’t know,” Theo snapped. “She’s in the woods, and something is chasing her.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t just a dream?”
“I’m certain,” he replied agitatedly. “I’ve been trying to call her, but she’s not picking up.”