The Last Witness

by Claire McFall

  She still wasn’t moving. “Emma!”

  I started to make for the fire and Dougie, but without turning I knew, I just knew, she wasn’t following. I managed to go six steps before I had to stop.

  She was right where I’d left her, facing the rocks. “Emma!”

  She didn’t even flinch when I called her name. I stood my ground, waiting, hoping, just for a few more seconds, before I gave in to the fact that she wasn’t going to come and I couldn’t leave her.

  “Dammit!” I said under my breath. I dropped the wood to the ground and half walked, half ran back across the sand. “Emma!” I repeated as I reached her side. I grabbed for her arm, folding my fingers tightly around the fabric of her cardigan. “Come on, I want to get back to Dougie.”

  Nothing.

  “Emma!”

  Impatient and still trying to swallow the panic I felt that the situation was getting quickly out of my control, I took another three steps until I was in front of her, right in her line of vision. She continued to stare straight ahead as if she were seeing right through me. My stomach dropped. I’d hoped she’d been getting better, slowly coming back, but she’d never been as far away as she was at that second.

  She opened her mouth to speak. “I told you we weren’t leaving here.”

  My lips popped open in a silent O, but I gathered myself quickly.

  “Yes, we are! Emma, come on!” Putting both hands on her shoulders, I started to force her backward. She didn’t resist, but she still refused to move of her own accord. Slowly, I shoved her back until we were level with the logs again. Now I had to let go; this whole excursion had been about getting the wood for the fire, after all. “Don’t move,” I warned as I released her.

  She blinked, looked at me, right at me this time. The expression on her face stopped me from reaching down for my bundle of logs. “It’s here,” she said.

  Any doubts I had over whether I believed her story, whether I believed in the “wraith,” were dispelled as my body went into total and utter shutdown at her words. My brain froze; my lungs were too tight to breathe. I’d stopped shaking simply because my muscles refused to move. Panic and fear immobilized me. I couldn’t even feel confused that Emma didn’t look scared. She seemed…peaceful. Relieved.

  But then that changed.

  Emma looked up, staring at the sky directly above my head. In the space of an instant, her eyes widened and her mouth stretched open into a horrifying parody of a mask-like scream.

  I whirled, searching the inky heavens to find out what had frightened her so entirely. I saw nothing, but then Emma started to scream.

  The noise went on and on and on. Longer than Emma had the breath for, and I realized it wasn’t Emma’s screaming I was hearing, not anymore. It was the creature. Wailing at us.

  And then I saw it.

  Black on black, that’s what it was. No face, no form, just a deeper, darker, more sinister shade than the murky clouds behind. Raven on charcoal. My eyes could hardly make out an outline; it just seemed to bleed into the inky sky. What I could tell, though, was that it was moving. Fast. Plummeting toward us, silent yet shrieking. It had no eyes, but it was staring right at me, dark pits in the center where its eyes should be, drinking me in.

  I backpedaled. Tripping and falling, I didn’t dare take my eyes off it. I pushed past Emma, our shoulders connecting. My searching fingers brushed the soft wool of her cardigan. Feeling frantically down her arm, I grabbed a firm hold on her wrist. Squeezed tight. Then I turned, and together we began to sprint back toward the fire.

  “Dougie!” I shouted. “Dougie!”

  But the wind was back. Swirling around us in a turbulent gale, it ripped my voice away and I knew he hadn’t heard me. I couldn’t even hear my own ragged breathing, or the gasps of Emma running beside me. At least she was fleeing with me. I tightened my grasp on her arm, determined not to lose her. My eyes were fixed ahead, drawn by the dying flames of our campfire. There was no point in looking at my feet; the ground was covered in darkness and the flashlight was back with the pile of firewood. Besides, there was nothing underfoot but smooth sand. Nothing to trip us, nothing to make us fall.

  So why was I sinking? Why was I tumbling to the ground, gravity claiming me with terrifying speed? Instinctively I flung my arms out to cushion the impact, letting go of Emma as I hit the cold silk of the beach.

  “Emma?” Had she fallen with me? I looked to my left, where she should be, but I could see almost nothing. The night seemed thicker, like a black fog. The wind was roaring in my ears, and the two combined robbed my senses. “Emma!” I felt out in front of myself, hunting for her.

  Two hands grabbed me, fingers interlocking with mine. Emma’s touch was cold, but it flooded me with warmth. I pulled myself over toward her, so close we were almost cheek to cheek, her frightened face emerging from the darkness. It was ghostly pale. “Where is it?” I shouted. I should have deafened her, but my words only just reached her.

  She shook her head. Her eyes were darting over my shoulder, though I doubted she could see much. I know I couldn’t.

  My breath was slowly coming back to me, lungs expanding gratefully. I sucked the air in, practically hyperventilating.

  “We need to get back to Dougie,” I yelled.

  What was happening where he was, less than a hundred yards away? For some reason, it felt as though Emma and I were trapped in a bubble, caught in a vicious storm that existed only where we were.

  Emma nodded at me, stood up. Still with her fingers hooked into mine, she pulled me to my feet.

  “I can’t see it,” she shrieked in my ear. “I can’t see anything.”

  The wind picked up even more. It was tugging and pushing at us, pinning us in place. My hair was in wild disarray around my face, and I had to snatch each breath before it was plucked away. I turned in the direction I thought our campsite lay, looking for the firelight, totally disoriented.

  “That way?” I asked, pointing with a finger. It was hard just to hold my arm away from my body.

  I saw Emma lift her shoulders in a shrug. Then she let go of me. Reached up. Grabbed her shoulders. Opened her mouth, lips moving to form a question, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

  Then she was moving. Up. Away from me. Up.

  I realized what was happening at the exact moment she did. I reached for her as she reached for me. I screamed as she screamed. Our fingers fumbled against each other, scrabbling for a grip. I felt my skin tear as Emma’s nails hooked into my knuckles, dug in. They wrenched deep, bloody gouges as they were torn away.

  “No!” I threw myself forward, grabbed handfuls of her cardigan, her jeans. Still she continued to slide away from me. In a last desperate bid to hold on, I jammed her foot under my arm, clung to her leg. She was lifted higher and higher until my own feet were struggling to feel the sand beneath them. I held tighter as I was hoisted into the air, but Emma was writhing frantically, and it was almost impossible to hold on.

  Then something warm and wet sprayed my face. Startled, I jerked my head back, loosened my grasp just for a heartbeat. Emma’s kicking foot slipped through my grip, and I was falling again. Crashing back to earth as she soared unnaturally into the sky.

  Twenty-Two

  I don’t know how far I fell, but I hit the ground with a dull thump. The impact drove the air from my lungs for the second time in just five minutes, and for several moments I could do nothing but lie there, stunned. My face was pressed into the sand, and tiny grains clung to my eyelashes, my lips. I didn’t notice.

  Emma. Still breathless, I forced myself to my feet. Then I spun on the spot, hunting for her. I knew, though: she was gone. The wind was back to a gentle breeze; the darkness had receded. Dougie’s fire was easily visible just half the beach away; the clouds churned above me, steely gray. Emma was nowhere to be seen.

  “Emma!” I called her name over and over agai
n, but I was talking to empty air.

  “Heather? Heather, what’s going on?”

  Dougie. I saw his silhouette framed by the fire. I watched as he took one, two, three steps. Away from the flames, into the dark.

  No! I took off, running. I didn’t want him to leave the safety of the campfire. He paused, catching the movement of me hurtling toward him.

  “Dougie!” I didn’t even try to stop myself, but crashed into him. He staggered, then steadied both of us, his hands automatically coming up to grip my arms. “Dougie, it’s real!”

  “What?” He gazed down at me, forehead furrowed in confusion. “What’s real? Heather, where’s Emma?”

  “Didn’t you see it? Didn’t you feel the wind?”

  He ignored my questions but shook me gently. Dropping his face lower to mine, he looked deep into my eyes.

  “Heather, where is Emma?”

  I choked out a sob. “She’s gone!”

  “Gone? What do you mean, gone? Heather, you’re not making any sense!”

  He shook me again, getting agitated. Rather than calming me, his actions just accelerated the tears forming in my eyes. I started to cry, gasping and mumbling. My hands were clawing at his chest, pathetically seeking comfort. I wanted him to hug me, but instead he pulled away. I knew what he wanted: an explanation. But I couldn’t speak.

  I tried anyway, blubbering incoherently, my words a mush. “Emma’s gone, she’s gone. The thing…the thing she talked about, it’s real. I saw it. It came down and it…it…grabbed her. I tried to stop it, but it was too strong.” Dougie just stared at me, openmouthed.

  I looked across the beach, now quiet and still. I could just make out the pinprick beam of light from the abandoned flashlight, where our collection of logs lay discarded. The menacing atmosphere was gone. The panic, the urgency, the horror. It was just a beach. An ordinary beach.

  I turned back to Dougie.

  “Didn’t you see it?” I asked again, a little more composed now. Having the light from the fire, having Dougie beside me, the whole thing almost seemed impossible again. But I’d seen it. I’d felt it. And Emma was gone.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Dougie said, his face troubled. “I watched you guys walk over, then I saw you coming back really fast. Then it all went dark, and I figured the flashlight had run out of battery. I waited and waited, but you didn’t come. Then I heard you screaming.”

  “What about the wind?” I pressed.

  “What wind?”

  The air was now still but for little breezes that barely lifted the tresses from my shoulders.

  “The gale that was blowing about three minutes ago?” I insisted.

  The beach was small. How could that have happened just a hundred yards away and Dougie not have felt it?

  “Heather, there wasn’t a gale,” Dougie assured me. “Where’s Emma?”

  I’d already told him. Twice I’d told him.

  “She’s gone. It took her,” I said. “Dougie, this thing appeared out of thin air and snatched her. Just like she said happened to Darren. It’s the truth!” I shouted the last words, seeing the disbelief written all over his face.

  “Okay,” he said, putting his hands up in surrender. “Okay.”

  But he still wasn’t convinced. He was probably just worried that I’d start screaming and crying again. Aggravated, I spun away from him and started pacing around the fire. I ran my hands through my hair, feeling the wild tangles conjured up by the swirling winds. Though I thought I would be past caring about my appearance, I suddenly felt embarrassed. Flashing Dougie a glance, I pulled a hair tie out of my pocket and swept my hair up into a messy knot. Then I resumed pacing.

  What were we going to do? The beach wasn’t safe. That thing could come back at any time. How much protection would a dying fire offer against a creature that was able to conjure winds, pluck up a person, then vanish into thin air?

  But leaving… Leaving meant going out into the dark.

  Every inch of me screamed against that option. Out there, out there was unknown, hidden. We’d be totally blind, even more so now that I’d lost the flashlight. I tried to imagine it: feeling our way to the parking lot, fumbling up the hill, wandering aimlessly in the dark. Waiting for rescue. Waiting for dawn. Waiting for attack. I shuddered.

  We were going to have to stick it out.

  I turned back to Dougie. He was standing, arms folded, watching me. The expression on his face was hard to read. It took a moment for me to realize that that was because the light was fading. The fire was dwindling fast. I looked to the left where we’d stacked our reserves. Nothing.

  “I’m sorry about the wood,” I said, my voice husky. “I had it. I had it in my hands, but then—”

  “Forget about the wood,” Dougie said quickly.

  “But the fire…” I gestured to the pathetic remains of our blaze.

  Dougie looked toward the spot of light where the flashlight lay. “Where did you drop it?” he asked. “Is that it?”

  “You can’t go out and get it,” I said, skipping a step and answering the question I knew was coming next. “You can’t. We’ve got to stay here, by the campfire.”

  While the flames remained…

  Dougie fidgeted on the spot, his gaze still drawn by the pinprick of light rather than our smoldering embers, a murky mixture of red and black.

  “It’s not safe out there,” I said. “Dougie!” I waited till he looked at me. “It’s not safe.”

  Now that there were just two of us, there was no way we were splitting up. And I wasn’t going back out there.

  He still looked unconvinced, shoulders half-turned away from me, one foot forward as if he was considering making a run for it.

  “Do you think I’m making it up?” I asked quietly. That got his attention.

  “No,” he said at once. “No, but… Heather, if there is something out there, how do you know it’s afraid of the fire?” I didn’t. Yet somehow I sensed it. It felt safer here, anyway.

  At least we’d be able to see it coming.

  “Please don’t leave me,” I whispered. “Please.”

  I sat down in one of the chairs, making it clear I wasn’t going anywhere, and looked at him pleadingly. He made an agonized face and gazed once more out to the flashlight, winking now as if it were calling him. Then he looked back at me. I kept my face calm, biting down on my lower lip to stop its trembling, blinking to keep any more tears from cascading down my cheeks. Begging with my eyes.

  “Heather…”

  “We’ll burn our clothes,” I said. “Our sleeping bags, whatever. Even the tents—” I certainly wasn’t going camping ever again. “Just… Just stay here.”

  Dougie took a step toward me, his face torn. He glanced over his shoulder, and the flashlight sputtered a few times, flashing like an SOS. Then it died. The beach was inky blackness, the pile of logs hidden. It was no longer a sixty-second mission. Not in the cloaking dark. Would that turn the odds in my favor? Dougie sighed, and I held my breath. I watched him limp over to the campfire, hold his hands over the last of the flames. The light was so low, his face was almost obscured by the night, hands glowing red.

  “We can’t burn the sleeping bags,” he said quietly. “They’re made of fire-retardant stuff.”

  He smiled ruefully when I grinned at him, momentarily victorious.

  “Clothes,” he said. “We’ll start with clothes.”

  It felt wrong to throw the others’ stuff onto the dimly glowing, charred remains of wood, but we did it anyway, promising to replace it all. I even joked that we’d have to check Emma’s labels before we burned them, make sure she didn’t bill us for anything designer. Pretending they were fine, pretending they were coming back, made it easier.

  The fire was so low we had to use lighter fluid to get enough life back in the flames for the clothing to c
atch. Once lit, it burned quickly. Dougie had to keep hitting it with spurts of clear liquid just to keep the flames going. I didn’t know how much was left in the can, but it sloshed ominously every time he tilted it to the fire.

  “You want to know something funny?” he asked, briefly illuminated as the lighter fluid sparked another flare.

  “What?” I asked, smiling slightly in response to the tight, embarrassed smirk etched across his jaw. I couldn’t imagine anything that could be funny right now.

  “I was hoping this birthday trip—” I coughed out a laugh, and he stopped. “What?”

  “I’d almost forgotten it was your birthday,” I said. “I got you a present.”

  He smiled. “Was it a good one?”

  “It was a book,” I said. “One of the course books, about fossils.” I chuckled blackly. “I guess we could burn it. It’s in my bag.”

  “Don’t burn it,” he said softly. There was a moment of quiet. I looked at the smoky flames, then up at Dougie. He was gazing at me oddly.

  “What were you hoping?” I asked to cover the awkwardness I felt.

  To my surprise he blushed.

  “I was hoping, maybe, under the influence of the stars or the fire”—he huffed a laugh—“or the booze or whatever, I was hoping maybe you and I…” He trailed off.

  I stared at him, astonished.

  “Or maybe not,” he muttered, embarrassed.

  I tried to rearrange my features, but they were frozen into whatever ugly mask had caused Dougie to take completely the wrong reading of my reaction.

  “Pity about the supernatural creature from hell, then.” I made my vocal cords work, though I didn’t quite manage the light, jokey tone that I was after. “That would have been nice.”

  More than nice. Much more.

  He flicked his eyes back to mine, smiled at me. I smiled back, wondering if I would go to hell for the glimmer of happiness that was trying to thaw the ice gripping my chest.

  “Give me your hand.” Dougie held out his right hand, palm up, and when I placed mine in it, he hauled us both out of our seats. We wobbled a little on the uneven sand, and I wasn’t sure if it was Dougie’s balance that was off, or mine. It didn’t matter. His hands were lightly gripping my waist, and suddenly that was all I could focus on.