Read Online Out of The Woods by Patricia Bowmer - Free Book Online Page A

Halley grew desperate to shift her position and move her rapidly numbing legs, he cocked his head slightly, like a bird of prey.
    “I don’t believe you,” he said.
    The words stretched out long, an elastic band that threatened to snap. He considered her. “You’re so small,” he said, with something like kindness that was not kindness in his voice. “You can’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into – you’re a little sparrow, in a large and dangerous wood. I can show you the way out.”
    “But what about the baby?” she said. She covered her mouth with her hands, but it was too late.
    With a wave of his hand, he dismissed it.
    “The baby. Its mother ran out of formula. I showed her a shortcut back to the trailhead. They’re safe now. And, more importantly, that baby is quiet.”
    “Oh.”
    It was a small word to express the heartbreaking sense of loss she suddenly felt.
    He seemed to mistake her expression. “Forgive me, I’ve been terribly impolite. I haven’t even introduced myself. I’m Trance. Trance Darkling.”
    Halley felt she was hearing him from some great distance. The baby was gone. It had had nothing to do with her. She would not be the one to save it. She looked across at the man before her. He could lead her out of the woods, back to her real life. It had not been a new place to begin after all. “Oh God,” she whispered aloud.
    Immediately she regretted it. The man shifted the torch, and she could almost see his face. In the half-light, his eyes had narrowed. Her despair over the baby was quickly replaced by a renewal of her fear of this stranger. Trance Darkling? The air left her lungs. What kind of name is that?
    She shook her head again, harder this time; his sing-song voice and his words had dulled her senses. She tried to calm herself. Spots of light swam in front of her eyes. The words this stranger had spoken swirled around her. He said he won’t hurt you, Halley. He saved the baby. He knows the way out. You need his help. You’re imagining things – it’s only the darkness that’s making him so scary.
    Letting go of the tree root, she held one of her hands in the other and felt how cold and small her hands were, felt her pulse thudding fast in her veins. Oh stop it Halley – just let him help you! You don’t know what you’re doing and you need help!
    She watched as the stranger leaned forward, as if easing himself. The movement narrowed the distance between them. He smiled, and the familiarity of the smile was disconcerting.
    Tentatively, she asked, “Can you really show me the way out?”
    All her instincts said to run, but she didn’t. If he could help her, she could get out of the woods and never come back. To be free of the darkness, to be in the light again, the thought was lovely. Enticing.
    The steel in her voice had melted away. She sounded small and weak, as he had described her. Halley shifted uncomfortably on her thin buttocks. The air in the shelter was heavy and close. She stared hard at the man before her, felt the familiarity in his mannerisms with simultaneous attraction and aversion.
    As the torch burned lower, Trance stared back. “Of course I can show you the way out,” he repeated smoothly. “Please, have some of my water – you must be desperately thirsty.”
    Invitingly, he held out an old canvas canteen, but though her eyes watched it thirstily she didn’t move to take it.
    I am so thirsty. Her very cells were crying out for water.
    She leaned forward and took hold of the canteen, took his offering. Drinking in long, hungry gulps, some of the water spilled out, dripping down her chin and along her neck and even intrusively down, down below her queen t-shirt and onto her breasts. It reminded her of the rain during her long unsheltered night, of her longing for death. She shivered anew.
    Even with her vast thirst, the water was not refreshing. It tasted metallic and foul. Hurriedly, she passed the canteen back.
    “Look – you’re