Page 53 of Haunted

Her chest rises. There’s a long gap. It rises again.

“They said that they’re coming,” Tom says. He stares at her, dumbfounded. “I told them to come to this entrance.”

Her breath comes like it’s through a sieve. Then it stops.

“She’s not breathing,” I say. “Tom! Tell them she’s not breathing.”

He tells them, and his voice goes on the last word of it. “They say that they’re almost there. They want someone to meet them at the trailhead. I have to secure Maggie,” he says.

I look at Alice’s body. I don’t know CPR, and even if I did it wouldn’t stop the bleeding. I’m working out the drive time from the hospital at this hour of the morning.

Tom hasn’t moved. He’s on the same plank he stopped on, phone against his ear, staring at her. Maggie is turning circles at the end of the leash and pulling him half off his feet, and he doesn’t seem to notice that either. He couldn’t find the trailhead right now if I drew him a map.

“They’re going to miss the turn,” I say.

He looks up at me.

“The access road comes in behind the trees and there’s no sign on it. In this fog they’ll drive straight past. I’m going to go and get them. Tell them I’m coming to guide them.”

He nods, still staring at Alice. His knuckles are white on Maggie’s collar. Maggie backs away from me. I run up the boards and onto the trail. The fog is worse under the trees. I can see about twenty feet in any direction, and somewhere inside that twenty feet, or just outside it, is the man who did that to her.

I’m most of the way to the road when something comes at me out of the fog—fast, and big, and coming straight down the trail. I feel it connect to my shoulder like a linebacker taking me out. I sprawl onto the hard ground and make a sound like an injured bear as we go down together in the leaf litter.

He’s on top of me. I get one arm free and claw at whatever I can reach, because if somebody finds me out here I want this asshole’s skin under my fingernails. One hand curls around dirt on the ground. If I can throw it in his eyes, I can blind him. That’ll give me enough time to survive. I can’t shout but that doesn’t mean I can’t go down fighting.

“Stop! Jonny! Stop!” the man says, pinning me neatly to the ground. He’s shouting at me. Lance Broussard is lying on top of me, and I’m scared to death.

Chapter nineteen

Lance

The man who comes around the curve of the trail hits me at a dead run. We both go down.

He’s up on his hands before I am. I get hold of him because that’s what you do, and that’s when I find out he isn’t trying to get away. He’s trying to fight.

He rakes at the sleeve of my sweatshirt, clawing at it. I take both his wrists, cross them, and put him down as I shout at him to stop. It costs me almost nothing. He stops writhing when he hears my voice and breathes deeply. His eyes are round in terror.

“Jonny. It’s me. It’s Lance.”

He doesn’t answer. I look down at him. There’s blood on his hands, on his shirt, on his scarf, on both forearms, and on his face. None of it appears to be coming from him.

“Jonny! Look at me. What’s happened? Are you hurt?” I snap out the words like I’m expecting a recruit to give me a report.

“It’s just my hands.” His voice is a wreck, even for him. “It’s nothing, it’s my hands—”

“You’re covered in blood.”

“It’s not mine. I need to guide them.”

“Guide them where?”

“The boathouse.”

The sirens have already stopped. That means they’re out of the vehicles. That means they’ve been down there some minutes already.

“What happened?”

“It’s Alice,” he says. “Somebody killed Alice. I was ten feet away, I was walking back up the boards—” He gets a hand under himself and it doesn’t hold. “I was going for the road. To bring them in. And then somebody came at me out of the trees and I thought—”