by Alex Smith
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, venturing forwards again. “Let’s get away for a bit. Let’s just take some time and go somewhere.”
A twig snapped beneath his foot with a sound like a firework. His heart just about exploded and he clamped a hand to it, massaging his chest.
“Sally?”
There was another noise ahead, but this one didn’t sound like Sally. It didn’t sound human at all. It was a low growl, almost animal-like. Maybe somebody was walking their dog through the woods. It wasn’t a common route—they’d hardly met anyone in all the years they’d been crossing the fields—but new people were moving this way all the time thanks to the big new estates they were building.
He pressed on, using the huge trunks to steady himself as the ground got rougher. Every now and again he’d catch a glimpse of Sally’s coat, closer with every step. She was sitting down. Lying down, maybe. Waiting for him, he hoped. Maybe they’d hug, tell each other they were sorry, then head home. Maybe this really could be the start of something new between them, a kind of freedom. Roger stepped into a puddle of sunlight as he had the thought, feeling a powerful surge of relief—one that almost bordered on joy.
It didn’t last.
He climbed down from the torso-thick root of another tree, and suddenly there she was.
At least, there was part of her.
One arm, clad in white, stuck out from behind a clump of bracken. It twitched, the hand bouncing on the ground like it was beckoning him. Now that he’d stopped walking he was aware of a sound—something wet, something crunching.
He opened his mouth to speak Sally’s name but found nothing in his lungs except dust. Keeping one hand on the tree he took a step to the side, then another, and every time he did more of his girlfriend slid into view—her elbow, her bicep, her shoulder, her neck.
At first he couldn’t figure out what it was all over her skin, because in the darkness of the forest it looked like ink. It was only when he took another step that he saw the blood on the lapel of her coat, so bright and so red that it looked fake. And that’s the first thing that came into his head, that this wasn’t real, that it was a trick, a prank. Even when he stumbled towards her and saw her face, her eyes open and pleading and desperate, he couldn’t believe it.
Because what he was seeing was impossible.
There was something sitting on her. Something big, hunched, its body covered in clumps of matted hair, so dark that it looked like it was made of nothing but smoke and shadow. The deformed lump of its head lifted for a moment and it sniffed the air through the ragged holes of its nostrils. Then its muzzle plunged down into Sally’s chest, making her grunt.
No.
The fear was unlike anything Roger had felt in his life, it was a living thing inside him, cold and dark. Sally stared at him, her mouth opened, and even in the gloom of the forest Roger could make out the word on her bloody lips.
Please.
She lifted her arm and the creature pinned it back down with its enormous paw—almost gently. She tried again, as if expecting Roger to grab her hand and pull her away.
He didn’t. He couldn’t.
The creature—a dog, surely, a hound—lifted its head again and looked back through the trees. Its eyes were two silver pennies, full of nothing but hunger and death.
But beneath them, its grinning lips were almost human.
It sniffed the air. It stared at Roger. And beneath its bulk Sally reached for him with the very last of herself.
I’m sorry, he said. He screamed it inside his head, hoping that she would hear him even though he was silent, even though his back was to her, even though all he could do was run. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!
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