“Don’t think about that. Think about Pa.”
She shouted his name, over and over. But there was no answering call, and worse: no sign of him.
Worse still: the daylight was disappearing around her. Emeline needed to head back; she didn’t want to be in here after full dark.
Tomorrow I’ ll go to the police station.If she told the police she believed Pa was in the woods, they’d have to assemble a search team. Wouldn’t they?
But as Emeline turned to go back, she found the forest … changed.
The trees around her were diseased. The buds on the sumac trees were gray, not red, the hickory leaves were white and withered, and the trunks of the poplars were rotted.
Even the air was wrong. Cloying and moldy and wet.
Emeline turned again, but the lush green forest she’d just come through was gone. In its place was something sick and decaying.
“What is this place?”
The Stain,breathed the trees.Cursed territory.
“Cursed?”
But the trees said nothing more. And Emeline, realizing she was talking to inanimate objects, moved quickly on.
Head north,she thought, her skin turning to gooseflesh.Edgewood is north of the woods.All she had to do was walkback in the direction she came and she’d get there. Beneath her footsteps, shriveled leaves dissolved like ash. The forest—which had been creaking and moaning—had gone eerily silent.
Something’s coming.
Her skin hummed with awareness as she heard it: movement in the distance, scraping against branches as it went, air rattling in its lungs as it drew closer.
Go,said the trees.Run, Emeline!
But what if it was Pa?
Through the murky gray light, she saw it. Like a shadow, only darker. Black like a cellar with no windows or lights.
As its elongated shape slinked closer, she saw sinewy arms, oddly jointed, and shining white claws crusted with dried blood.
A chill spread through Emeline, like the winter frost sweeping through Pa’s garden, killing everything in sight.
She knew what this was.
A shadow skin.
She shook her head, backing away.It’s not possible …Shadow skins were cunning, ruthless things. Servants of the Wood King sent to terrorize Edgewood. It was a shadow skin that ate Corny’s horse last winter. A shadow skin that bled Abel’s cows dry two years before that. And when Maisie found one lurking in her shed, she locked it in, intending to burn the whole thing to the ground—only to watch the monster burst through the door and come forher.
If Pa hadn’t been there that day, hadn’t grabbed her and pulled her into the house, barricading the door, the thing would have torn out Maisie’s throat.
But these were only stories.
And if they’re not only stories?Emeline thought as the thing slinked closer.
The creature stepped into the clearing, only a dozen paces away. Staring straight at her. Or it would have been, if it had any eyes. Instead, there were just two slitted nostrils and a crack for a mouth. That crack widened, revealing rows of serrated teeth.
It stalked closer.
Run, Emeline!
But it was too late to run.
