Shades: Eight Tales of Terror (18 page)

Her throat hurt from the effort, and she clawed at it in an instinctual effort to free up her airways. The pressure on her windpipe tightened. The girl thrashed and scrabbled, her vision turning red around the edges.

Then her fingers curled around the rough hemp of a noose.

Somebody had put a rope around her neck!

Her eyes bulged and pain flared in her throat as the noose jerked tighter. Somebody yanked on the rope, hard, and she felt herself pulled up into the air. The world spun crazily…a whirling panorama of branches, dead faces, and shifting clouds of flies.

Her feet kicked the air with dying futility. The rope bit deep into her neck, thwarting her feeble attempts to get her fingers under it. She was dying, her life running from her body like water from a broken bowl. Her hands fluttered then fell limp. Her flailing feet slowed to a spasmodic twitch. Somewhere nearby, a choir sang a hymn she did not know. The buzz of flies became a roar, filling her universe as blackness overtook her.

And then she woke up.

“Aughhhh!”

Janie doubled forward from where she slept against the tree, retching in agony. 

Her stomach heaved, causing her to gag as she struggled to breathe. The girl wavered on her hands and knees, her fingers clawing into the dirt.  She felt panic begin to set in. For a moment she thought she would lose consciousness again, the victim of her body trying to throw up and draw breath at the same time.

At last, after a few more seconds, respiration prevailed and she drew a long shuddering breath. A thick rope of spittle hung from her mouth to the bare ground between her hands.

“Oh god!” she gasped, “What was that? What the hell
was
that?”

Janie grasped at her throat, where it still ached as if the dreamed abuse it had taken were real. It really hurt. A second later her eyes widened as she felt the red welt where the noose from the nightmare had closed around her neck.

“What the
hell
!”

She pushed herself up to her knees, massaging her wounded windpipe. The dim light coming in under the edge of the tree had an orange tinge, letting her know the sun  already sat on the horizon somewhere behind the park’s tree line. The overall silence suggested the other park goers must have left while she slept.  She straightened and reached for her cell phone, then froze at the sight of the figure standing a mere ten feet in front of her.

This time, she did scream.

It only took Janie an instant to match the apparition to th
e story Jacqueline told her—even though it wasn’t the one she would have expected.

Standing at about her height, it wore canvas bib overalls and a rough cotton shirt. They had the look of something bought at a general store over a century ago. Rough lace-up boots covered feet that were probably a size or two smaller. A thick thatch of short ebony hair contrasted with corpse white skin, but even its hair wasn’t as black as its eyes…

For it had no eyes at all.

Deep shadowy sockets stared back at her, dominating the thin face.

Oh Christ! It’s the kid!
Janie scrambled back against the massive trunk.
The one that died in the tree!

The figure tilted its head, following her movement with it
s skullish sockets. The darkness seethed in their depths like something alive. It studied her for a moment, fingering a coil of rope it wore over one shoulder, then a horrid grin split the pale face. Its teeth were shiny and black like the shells of beetles.

“I smell Danford blood,” it hissed in a voice that buzzed like a thousand flies.

“No!” she protested. “I wasn’t there! I had nothing to do with that!”

Janie snatched up her bag and clutched it in front of her. Desperate looks to the left and right confirmed the emptiness of the dimming park.

“Yes!” the buzzing hiss confirmed. “I do smell Danford blood…and blood must answer for blood.”

Oh shit! This messed up kid was up in the tree
and heard his Dad’s dying curse. Only he took it as an order!

The revenant stepped forward, clenching and unclenching its pale hands. Its face contorted and a line of flies started to crawl down one cheek from a dark eye socket like a ghastly tear trail.

“Blood must answer for blood,” it repeated. Not even the buzzing distortion could mask the hate that now clotted its voice.

“This is a mistake,” Janie whimpered and started to edge around the trunk of the tree
. “I’m sorry about your dad. I don’t even know those people! I never met them before today!” She realized the futility of the words as she said them.

The thing that had been Andre Puscasu wasn’t listening.

She could feel the raw hatred radiating off the entity and suffusing the murky atmosphere under the tree. There would be no mercy or reasoning going on here. It could apparently tell who was or wasn’t a descendent of Solomon Danford, and her presence here meant she must have come to claim her inheritance—the land its father had died over. Janie grasped with horrified clarity the hopelessness of protesting her innocence. She had already defined herself to this being far beyond any hope of conciliation.

The specter clenched its black teeth in a snarl. It took another step
toward her, both eye sockets now beginning to weep vermin. This was definitely personal on its part.

Then it lunged with a distorted howl.

Janie shrieked and rolled sideways against the tree.  She heard the dead boy hit the place she had occupied a split second earlier as she fled around the massive trunk. Even in her panic she remembered the roots she tripped over in her dream, and this time she kept her eyes firmly on the ground. Her feet found spots between the roots with adrenaline fueled precision

What she didn’t remember was the low hanging limb projecting from the other side of the great live oak. Watching her feet, she slammed headfirst into the large branch at full speed.

The universe exploded and she hit the ground hard.

But even blinded by pain, she struggled to turn over and get to her feet. Fractions of seconds expanded to distinct instances…each one a possible last chance to escape, each one a possible end point of her life. She didn’t have time to think but operated by pure survival instinct alone.

“Blood for blood.”

The voice had her on her feet
before she knew it. But now things were worse. Once again the drone of flies seemed to fill the branches above, just like in the dream. The smell returned as well. This added to the disorientation caused by her collision with the branch, confusing the elements of the dream with the reality of the present. Janie stumbled forward, her hand running along the low limb as a guide.

Gasping for breath, Janie shook her head to clear the cobwebs as she floundered along the limb.  It dropped down to waist level as she got further from the trunk and she used it for support as the staggered onward. She didn’t dare fall again. At the same time, she was no longer sure of her situation and risked a glance back at her pursuer.

That’s when it caught her.

She found herself looking almost straight into those black sockets, as the dead thing reached across the limb and grabbed her sleeve. It hadn’t ducked under the branch, but had been pacing her from the other side! And now it had caught up.

Janie screamed and tried to jerk away but the fabric of her blouse turned out to be made of sterner stuff than she thought. The sleeve held without tearing.

A black grin of triumph spread across the horrific visage. It had her. The revenant pulled a loop of rope off its shoulder while tightening its grip on her blouse.

“Blood for blood,” it intoned with savage finality.

Janie struggled against the wraith’s surprising strength with despair. She knew a horrible end loomed only seconds away. It didn’t matter whether she considered her sharing of the Danford guilt to be fair or not. That verdict had already been rendered. Whatever she did next would be her last chance to survive.

In one last desperate burst of effort, she swung her foot up and put it against the branch separating her from her would be executioner.

“Let…me…go!”

She strained, pushing against the limb with her foot for all she was worth. It felt like she was pulling against the tree itself. Nothing gave, and she screamed at the sight of the phantasm leaning over the limb toward her. At this range she could see its eye sockets were deep wells full of flies, and its mouth now drooled them as well. The stench of it gagged her. The girl clenched her eyes shut, turning her head away from the leering horror.

Then suddenly she was stumbling backwards from the branch, the bles
sed sound of ripping cloth in her ears.

Janie didn’t hesitate, but sprinted for daylight. She covered the distance to the edge of the tree in a couple of seconds. The low foliage parted before her and the gasping woman burst out into the brighter twilight of the park.

Freedom!

The park spread empty around her, but she didn’t slow down. Panic fueled her legs. The girl shot away from the tree, letting instinct guide her way.

Janie realized she had emerged on the side away from Magnolia Rise and wasted no time in altering her course to race around the tree in that direction while giving it a wide berth. She wanted to have the mansion at her back to retreat to. Besides, Jacqueline said the old graveyard lay back in the trees on this side and she had had quite enough of historical landmarks for one day.

But her main priority was to put space between her and this hellish tree.

She didn’t stop running until she had reached a point halfway between the mansion and the great oak, and only then because she finally ran out of breath.  Her lungs heaved like bellows as the girl doubled over and fought to replenish her air. Even then, she kept a sharp eye on the mass of foliage that dominated the center of the clearing.

It now brooded about seventy yards away, the space under the branches shrouded in gloom. But even as her breath began to steady, Janie spied
the pale face staring back at her from the murk beneath the tree. She shuddered at the pure hate she could feel directed at her, even from this distance.

A second later her cell phone rang, causing her to shriek again in surprise.

To her amazement, the half hysterical woman realized she still clutched her shoulder bag in one hand. Sometimes the habits of civilization overrode even the most primal of situations. She tore into the bag, spilling items due to shaking hands before fishing the ringing phone from its depths.

“Hello?” she panted.

“Miss Galtz! You need to…”

“Jacqueline!” Janie gasped, turning to look up at the mansion
’s balcony across the treeline. “It’s real!”

“I suspected that, but you need to get back here…”

“There
is
a ghost!” Janie rushed on. “But it’s not Anton Puscasu…it’s his son! It’s the boy!”

“I already know that, Miss Galtz! Now listen to me, come back to the mansion. It won’t come in here, but you’re not safe yet!”

“Wha…?”

“Janie, be quiet and listen! You stopped running so I’m guessing it hasn’t
followed you from the tree yet. But…”

“YET?!” Janie shrieked and spun back
toward the distant tree.

“…it will! It’s not confined to that tree!”

At that moment the dead monstrosity exploded from under the branches, howling straight for her at a dead run. Its black mouth hung open, far wider than a living man could ever manage, and if possible the dark sockets seemed wider as well. A stream of flies flooded back from its head as the nightmare sped toward her, like long locks of ebony hair flowing in the wind.

In one hand it held the loop of rope, now fashioned into a noose.

Janie wasted two precious seconds, frozen in pure horror, before turning and fleeing toward the tree line. The wraith had almost halved the distance between them by then. This time the girl couldn’t help herself and used valuable air screaming as she plunged into the darkness of the trees and toward the footbridge crossing the creek.

She didn’t need to look back to know the phantom gained on her. It had been
running faster than she ever did in her life. And she could hear its droning howl drawing nearer. All she could do was put every last thing she had into increasing the tempo of the crunch of pea gravel underneath her shoes.

The girl raced across the small wooden bridge and her heart quailed at the sound of the horror’s boots hitting its boards just as she reached the other side. And she was so close to sanctuary. The gate lay just around the upcoming turn in the path, but it seemed like miles and Death now dogged her very heels.

Janie realized she had no hope of reaching the gate and getting it open before the foul thing drug her down. Still, she had to try.

The young woman scrabbled around the bend in the trail. She cried out as she saw her ghastly pursuer reach for her out of the corner of her eye. Directly ahead, the side entran
ce to Magnolia Rise awaited—with a surprised looking Rosaline holding the gate open.