The wind gusted, and when it did, a strange scent prickled my nose. Sickeningly sour and slightly sweet — the stench of rotten meat.
The smell of something dead.
Goosebumps prickled up my back. I’d smelt that before. It was the same sickening odor I’d smelled when I’d seen that strange statue. Unbidden, the memory of its eerie bone face and long black tongue filled my mind.
I forced it away before I truly terrified myself. That wasn’t the thing to be thinking of as I walked the woods alone.
But what was that smell?
I kept walking, my ears straining for any sounds of being followed. It was just a forest, the same forest I’d walked through earlier without an issue. Creatures died in the forest all the time…
Except I hadn’t smelled that on the way in. Logical or not, my brain was sounding the alarm. Move, move, move. Don’t stop. I wanted to run, and I felt the tension up my back and down my legs, adrenaline demanding I sprint. But part of my brain told me otherwise.
When I was little, an overly excited dog had scared me in the park, and when I’d run, its big body had slammed into me from behind, sending me sprawling into the grass. As I’d cried, my mother had told me gently, “Dogs like to chase. Don’t run. Don’t give them something to chase.”
Don’t give them something to chase. I didn’t know why I remembered it now. I didn’t even know if that advice would do me any good. But I forced myself to walk, quickly but as calmly as I could manage. I walked until finally, with a gasp of relief, I saw the gate ahead and my Subaru parked beyond it.
Sitting in the driver’s seat, doors locked, gripping the steering wheel, I flipped on my headlights and stared into the trees. I must have sat there for five minutes just staring…waiting…watching. The rain poured down on the car, and the heater and seat warmers finally began to chase away the chill in my body. I was dripping wet, tired, shaken; I wanted to go home.
I wanted to go home and see what the hell I’d just managed to capture on video.
Back home, the first thing I did was turn the shower all the way on hot and melt under the scalding water. The heat eased away the cold, soothing the tension in my muscles, and washing away the dried blood on my hand. I let it pour down my back, eyes closed, steam rising around me.
Usually, the unexplained was exactly where I flourished. I wanted to see something I had no logical explanation for. But this was different. This wasn’t just a disembodied voice, or a vague apparition. This was a living, breathing man of flesh and bone — a man whose very presence seemed to reach deep into my inner darkness and draw out every secret shameful lust.
Why had he been there? How?
His eyes were burned into my soul — the way he’d looked at me as his fingers traced over my lips. The vicious gravel tone of his voice still echoed in my ears. He’d threatened to hunt me down, threatened to make me scream. Yet I knew if he caught me — when he caught me — it wouldn’t be to hurt me.
No, he’d do something far worse.
He’d make me give in.
All those lustful thoughts he brought up in me? He knew they were there. He could see them, somehow, as if my skull were made of glass. I had no doubt he’d exploit each and every desire until there was nothing left of me but raw, carnal lust.
He wouldn’t even need to take control from me, I’d simply hand it over. Hand him the grimoire. Hand him whatever the hell else he wanted. That wasn’t natural. That wasn’t normal.
I grabbed a bottle of cheap wine from the fridge, poured a large glass, and lay in bed, naked beneath the covers. The rain tapped against the window above my head, the trees outside creaking and swaying in the wind. I put on music to drown out the howling, and lay there until the wine and sheer exhaustion forced me into sleep.
But not for long.
It seemed as if I’d only just shut my eyes, but the playlist I’d put on had ended, and my laptop’s screen had gone to sleep. The rain had slowed to only a few little droplets occasionally smacking against the window. I lay there for a while, groggy, trying to figure out why I’d woken up.
What had I heard?
I sat up slowly, frowning. I was still in a dull state of half-sleep, trying to remember if I’d been dreaming. I shuffled out of bed, pulling my blanket with me and tugging it around my shoulders. Regardless of what I’d heard, I needed water. The wine had left me with a headache.
In the kitchen, I filled a glass at the sink and gulped it down, then filled it again to take back to the bedroom. But when I flicked off the kitchen light, I paused.