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“I don’t want to play this game! I want to go home.”
“Home?”
I shake my head. “My house. Away from you!”
He shrugs a shoulder. “I’m even going to give you a five-minute head start,” he says, turning his wrist so I see the face of his watch. See the timer counting down.
“That’s not… I won’t play.”
He shrugs his shoulders and moves to pick up the dead roses on Kimberly’s grave making a show of consulting his watch. “Four minutes and thirty seconds.”
I look at his broad back, his muscular shoulders. The rain makes his sweater stick to him soaking his dark hair, turning it black. I take a step back, look around this haunted place with its grave markers, its eerie chapel. To Nellie Bishop’s grave separated from the others by a rusted, rotting fence and grass so high you almost don’t see the stone. She’s all but forgotten. Although I don’t think forgetting is the point. I think remembering is.
Nellie threw herself into a well and drowned? Or was she thrown in? Maybe killed before that. I take a step away from him as he straightens, wipes off his hands. He glances at me, then at his watch. And I don’t need another reminder of the time I have left. Because this game is going on whether I want to play or not.
I turn and run out of the cemetery gates. I’m tempted to backtrack to the path we came from and go to the house to burrow in my bed. But I know he’d easily follow me. And going to the house? His house. To my bedroom to which he has the key? No, I can’t go back there. I have to find the well.
So, I run away from the cemetery into the dense woods, the sound of rain all around me, the light that of the moon through the cloud cover. I can only see a few feet ahead of me. I stumble over fallen branches and thorn bushes scratching my bare legs. I run deeper into the woods, my only thought to put some distance between us.
I think back to when I’d surveyed the property from my window. I hadn’t seen the cemetery or the roof of the church from there. The path we took curved, so I guess they were around the corner and not behind it. But I did see a stone structure. A circle within a circle. It looked crumbled from my vantage point, but the trees weren’t as dense, and it was to the east of the house. I don’t know if it’s the well he’s talking about but it’s all I have to go on, so I slow my step and try to get my bearings. I don’t have a horrible sense of direction but it’s not great either. And I need to find the house in order to know which way to go.
I stop and listen for a few moments. I listen for him. But the rain muffles all other sounds. A part of me wonders if this is some sort of trick on his part. He could easily have gone back into the house, to his warm bed and left me out here to search for a non-existent well all night. But I don’t think he’d do that. I think he truly wants to play his little game of chase.
I think, looking back at the path I came from. Walk back and head in the direction I think is the house. If I can just get a glimpse of it, that’s all I’ll need. But it’s the middle of the night and it was so dark when he came for me. The gray stone will only stand out if the clouds clear the moon.
A branch breaks nearby. I gasp and sprint away making too much noise. I glance behind me relieved when all I see is darkness. By the time I turn to watch where I’m going, I’m too late. Although I’m not sure I’d have seen it anyway on this forest floor. I catch my foot on a root and pitch forward, the shoe slipping off my foot as I land heavily, the ground knocking the wind from me. I cry out, I can’t help it and it takes me a moment to sit up, to register the throbbing pain on my right shin.
I touch the spot, feel the wet warmth of blood.
I push myself up to stand and am grateful that I can put weight on it. It’s a cut, just a cut. I haven’t sprained my ankle. But I have lost one shoe and when I can’t locate it after a quick search, I keep moving, my eyes on the ground scanning as best as I can in the darkness.
I don’t know how long this goes on. How long I run. At one point I find I’ve circled back to the cemetery and am briefly horrified, but I force myself to breathe. To calm down and just breathe.
From here I can find the path to the house. From here I can get my bearings. Keeping to the cover of trees, I locate that path and walk alongside it. Then, it’s not long until I see it. A light. A light going on in one of the upstairs bedrooms of the house.
Relief floods me, filling me with a new energy. I know where the house is. And from the location of the cemetery, I think I can find that clearing. The collapsed wall.
I pick up my pace and run. Aware now that the rain has slowed to a mist. I don’t know when that happened but suddenly, I feel like things are working in my favor. My leg hurts, as do my feet, but I see that light and I can find that well. I know it.
I’m feeling a little more confident. A little stronger. But then, in the sudden and utter stillness of the night, I step on another branch that breaks underfoot. I swear the sound echoes for miles and miles throughout the forest, giving away my location. I think I hear him stalking at a steady pace. Unrushed. Confident. Because he knows he’ll win.
I turn to where the sound is coming from and that light that had gone on is suddenly out. And at the same moment, a thick layer of clouds closes over the moon pitching me into complete darkness.
Another branch breaks and I spin to look for it, for him, sure he’s going to be right there. Right behind me. But he’s not. Just more darkness. Never-ending darkness. More trees. More night. And I’m disoriented again. I’ve lost the path. The house. All I know is I need to move, and I walk and walk and run and run. I swear I hear him behind me. I’m not even sure if I’m moving in circles anymore. I am exhausted and freezing cold and scared. So scared.
And then somehow, some way, the trees become less dense and the moon shines again. I stop. Because I see it. The crumbling stones I glimpsed from my room in the house. But they’re not crumbling. They’re laid in a pattern. A circle surrounding another, smaller circle.
The ground feels colder here, I look down to find I have lost my second shoe somewhere during our chase. But it doesn’t matter because I’m here. I made it. It’s the well. And I’m safe.
Except that the instant I think I’m safe, there’s movement from the shadow of the ancient structure. I gasp because there, emerging, is Jericho St. James, hands in his pockets, a grim look on his face. But not satisfaction. I don’t know what it is.
“Boo!”
I scream, back away. I hear the words he spoke at the cemetery.
It’s time to spill the first drops of Bishop blood.
“I made it. I found it,” I say as he stalks toward me. I should run again. I should. But I can’t I’m so cold and my feet hurt and my shin throbs. “I’m safe. You said—”
