“Tara!” he calls out, shattering the silence. “I can see everything, Tara. If you try to run again, I will shoot you.”
He’s lying. There is no gun in these woods. He says this to increase her panic. He’s accelerating her fear response, strong-arming her amygdala into sounding the alarm that something threatening is nearby. He has to wait only a few seconds before her hypothalamus will trigger her sympathetic nervous system into giving away her hiding spot. Her heart is beating faster now, lungs opening to suck in as much oxygen as they can, increasing her alertness but creating much more noise as her breathing quickens. He focuses on that breathing now. He begins to follow it. He imagines her crouching in the muddy forest, trying to ignore the creatures that make their way onto her bare legs uninvited. It’s got to be torture for a girl like her. She’s been ripped completely out of her element and fully immersed in his.
He gazes at his surroundings through his glasses. Everything in his view is cast in a sickly green hue, but to Tara it’s as dark as the inside of an executioner’s hood. He moves, called by her breathing as it becomes choked and frantic. She can hear him coming toward her, but she can’t see him, no matter how hard she tries to focus her eyes. She can feel the fear take over her body like it’s replaced the blood in her veins.
He hears her stumbling through the branches and underbrush and pauses momentarily to listen. The bayou will do its best to help him, but it will try even harder to trap her. She runs toward the dirt path they came down earlier, splashing water as her feet pound into the earth below. She has no idea that she’s running farther into his cage.
He runs toward her now, bursting from the tree cover into the open expanse of the dirt path. She hears him and turns to digest what little the moonlight reveals. Her face is lit with terror. Jeremy smiles widely, stalking toward her with the knife unsheathed. And Tara, now exposed, screams as she breaks into a clumsy run. It’s like she’s running through sand. He seizes the opportunity to gather two tennis-ball-sized rocks from the ground.
“Duck!” he yells out, startling her enough to stop and cover her head instinctively.
He throws one of the rocks with as much force as he can muster. It connects with the back of her leg, making her crumble to her knees in an unnatural way. She wails in pain and shock, frantically reaching for the source of the blow. He throws the second rock. It ricochets off her skull with a sickening crack. She falls to the ground, now clutching her head.
“Stop! Please stop!” she cries out.
But he doesn’t. He slowly walks toward her broken body in the middle of the path. As he crouches down next to her, she swats at him aimlessly. He catches her hand by the wrist, holding it up to the blade in his. He feels her pulse racing under his fingers and then drags the blade across her palm. She screams, trying to pull her hand back with everything she has left. As her screams turn to sobs, he smiles. He’s in control again.
“Is someone out there?” A man’s voice echoes out through the night, snapping Jeremy back to attention. Flashlights appear at the far end of the dirt path.
“Are you hurt?” a second voice calls out.
Jeremy can see the shapes of the two men entering the path. He claps his hand over Tara’s mouth before she can cry out for help, but panic starts to creep into his veins. They heard Tara. He didn’t scout out this location ahead of time tonight. He had acted on impulse, and he didn’t consider the hunters sitting in the very same ground blind locations that he had once occupied with his father.
“We aren’t here to hurt you. We’ll get you help,” the first man continues gently, swinging the beam of his flashlight toward them.
Tara’s eyes are wide, silently screaming out to these men, but they can’t see her. Not yet.
A pang of frustration rings through Jeremy’s chest as he weighs his options. In the end, there is only one path forward.
Still muffling Tara’s mouth with one hand, he lifts her chin to look at him. He takes one final second to relish in the moment when their eyes lock before hearing her would-be rescuers rush closer. He quickly brings the bowie knife across her neck, slicing deeply from ear to ear. As soon as the blade releases from her flesh, he drops her to the ground and takes off running. She sputters and gurgles behind him, and the men rush toward the sound. Deep, disjoined breaths heave from her tattered larynx as they arrive at her side. The wound spans the entire length of her neck, and it’s deep. They bark orders at each other, one of them calling for an ambulance and the other frantically trying to slow the bleeding. It won’t do much good though. Jeremy is sure he cut her carotid artery. She will be gone within minutes as her body forcibly pumps its own life force from her wound into the dirt.