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Except for moments of crackling white light from the heavens, the darkness was absolute. Cornstalks stood up to whip at her, slapping her face, biting at her legs, tugging at her wrists. She fought them away as she ran, battering her way through the fields, running nowhere and anywhere.
She ran and ran and ran.
Her strong legs propelled her with great force, and her muscular arms crushed a path for her slim body as she surged forward. Then her sneakered foot came down on something wet and slippery and suddenly she was flying forward, hands coming up to meet the ground that rushed at her in the darkness. Her palms hit hard, sooner than she had expected, and the jolt raced up her arms
and into her shoulders and something hot and white and loud seemed to detonate in her left arm just below the deltoid. The arm buckled, refusing to bear even an ounce of weight, and she twisted as she fell, landing with all her weight on the white-?hot shoulder.
She didn’t want to scream, but she couldn’t help it. The pain was a storm of knives whirling around inside her. She had no idea how long she lay there, stunned to breathlessness by the sheer weight of the pain. She tried to roll off the arm, but the pain came with her. Her left arm absolutely refused to work. She could feel the fingers opening and closing, but from the elbow to the shoulder blade everything felt as if boiling oil had been poured over it.
“Crow!” she cried out into the swirling darkness. “Help me!”
But Crow wasn’t there. Only the darkness and the pain and the madman with the gun were in her part of the universe. The deep voice of the thunder mocked her pain. Val knew that she had to—absolutely had to—get up.
Get up and run or lie there and wait to be slaughtered.
That was when she heard the single sharp, cold gunshot. It was a small sound, almost lost in the moan of the wind.
It took half a second for her to process the sound, and then she screamed, “Dad!”
That got her up. How, she could never explain, but somehow she was on her feet. Her shoes were wet and sticky from the ears of corn she had slipped on, but she stayed steady on her feet, as steady as waves of nausea and vertigo would allow her to be.
“Dad…” she said, looking back into the utter blackness the way she had come.
She didn’t know what to do. Indecision born of terror polluted her resolve.
If she kept running, then the maniac might kill her father. Might already have killed him!
If she went back, she might be killed, too. What would happen to Mark and Connie?
Seconds burst around her like firecrackers and she didn’t know what to do.
She felt something brush against her cheek and she used her only living hand to try and brush it away. Her fingertips touched lips, a nose, a cheek.
Val screamed and spun, backpedaling and almost falling, flailing out with her good hand.
“Valerie…” said a soft voice.
Val froze. She had a vague impression of a shape, black against the blacker shadows of the field.
“Go back,” whispered the voice.
“Wh…what?”
Lightning flashed overhead, and Val had the briefest glimpse of a tall man, gaunt and sad, stooped beneath some terrible weight, dressed in dirty black clothes, gray face streaked with mud. A guitar was slung down his back, the strap crossing his chest.
“Go back,” he whispered.
She knew this man…but she couldn’t place where from.
The lightning flashed again and for just a second the small silver cross that she wore around her neck burned as if it somehow had suddenly flared with inner heat. Then as quickly as the sensation had come, it was gone.
Val was alone.
She stood there, head swimming with pain and shock and terror, her fingers touching the cross, the skin over her heart still tingling from the burn.
“Go back…” she murmured to herself.
Then she turned. Limping, her damaged arm swinging painfully, tears streaking her face, she started back toward the house.
