by Shirl Anders
***
Beth heard a blood-curdling scream split the night air. It seemed to come from the woods behind the Valtimer mansion.
"Ariel!" she cried, lifting her skirts to begin running down the patio steps into the garden and beyond toward the woods. She'd lost her, and then she'd lost Adam too. He'd never returned to their rendezvous spot inside. She'd considered the gardens outside. It was the only place she hadn't searched.
"Ariel, where are you?" Beth cried, darting her gaze back to the closed ballroom doors. No one would hear her cries with the music and the doors closed. She would be all alone. "But I cannot ignore her need!" Her gaze returned to the hag-shaped woods as she ran toward them. Did she really intend to go in there?
A wrenching scream split the cold night air in front of her from deep within the haunted woods, and her steps faltered. "Adam, oh God, Adam, I wish you were here."
Beth clutched the small pearls on the necklace at her collarbone as she tried not to cry out in fear. On the scream’s heels came a more frightening sound. It was like no sound she'd ever heard, and it brought her rushing steps to a halt right at the edge of the eerie, blackened woods. She couldn't tell the direction of the sound that was either terrible agony or heart-wrenching terror. Could it be an animal? She didn't know of any animal that could possibly sound like it had.
Her gaze skittered about the menacing woods. What did she know of night predators? Then thoughts rushed her. Except for Fanton. He was an evil creature of the night. She couldn't help herself; she called out, "Ariel! Ariel!"
Instantly, she wished she'd not cried out her presence. Her eyes leaped to the right, turning her body, then to the left. "I'm not going into those woods," she hissed with a frightened whisper.
She tried to assure her quaking conscious that by daylight the woods before her would look harmless and innocent, perhaps even inviting.
"Not as if haunted by demons," she whispered on a fierce note. Then, the sound of a woman's wretched weeping crept from deeper in the woods. It was to the right of where she stood in her dew-soaked dancing slippers — or was it straight ahead?
"Ariel?" Beth hissed with a louder whisper as though some evil wouldn't hear her lowered voice, as opposed to the high-pitched pressure seeking release as a scream. Her entire body trembled with more than the cold night air against her bared shoulders and arms in the sheerness of her now damp ball gown. She shuddered with the need to go into the woods, but the fear to do so pulled her back.
Suddenly, something rushed toward her through the woods, breaking branches to the right of where she stood. She screamed in terror, grabbing up her full skirt and fleeing into the woods toward the left. Instantly, her long hair lost the battle to stay on top of her head. It tumbled down, like a black shawl, over her shoulders as her full skirts hindered her attempts to run through the underbrush of the forest.
A malevolent sound barked out of the night air, making her gasp. An evil chuckle followed. The threatening sounds seemed to be right behind her as she shrieked and ran to the left. Her gaze jerked over her bare shoulder trying to see. She thought she saw a hulking, dark shape rushing toward her and she panted in fright, turning to the right, trying to evade it.
Something snatched at her gown, tearing the silk easily. The attack was like icy talons of evil intent, ripping silk. She screamed, stumbling to a halt with tearing material all around her. Her dark, heavy hair was as wild as a swirling shroud everywhere she turned in a frantic circle trying to evade the malevolence attacking her.
"No! No! No!" she screamed with each turn as she tried to clutch pieces of her gown back.
She felt the charged breath of death fill her nostrils with a blast of heat singeing her throat.
"Run," an ungodly voice roared.
Beth screamed and cried as she ran forward, clutching her pale, naked breasts. She'd seen fangs and red eyes as the animal attacking her howled with inhuman potency. It was a harrowing nightmare she prayed to live through as she ran with terror, and the monster chased closely behind her.