Page 23 of The Woman in the Hollow
Somehow, though, he only looked more real to me, the light catching on a slight bit of wetness still in his mouth, the glassiness of his eyes, the imperfect, uneven eyebrows.
I carefully pushed again at his side with the tip of my boot, finding him almost immovable.
Decorations weren’t that heavy.
You had to be able to move them.
And they definitely weren’t so… squishy.
Only people felt like that.
Soft.
Springy.
Real.
A strangled cry clawed up the back of my throat but died before it reached my tongue.
I had to get out of here.
I needed to get somewhere safe.
Then call the police.
Lead them to the body.
Give a statement.
Then try to wipe the image of the poor man’s unseeing eyes from my memory.
I was just about to reach up to turn on my headlamp when there was a loudsnapbehind me.
Then another.
Then a crunch.
Someone was still in the woods.
With a strange, choked yelp, I flew forward, leaping over the body, and charging away from the sound, the leaves crunching and twigs snapping beneath me.
The only problem?
In my panic, I reacted like every girl in a horror movie. I lost all common sense. And flew deeper and deeper into the woods, further away from the path, from the safety of the garden center itself, and from my car.
My pulse roared in my ears as my heartbeat drummed against my ribs, desperate and wild.
My head kept swiveling over my shoulder, trying to scan for whoever had made that noise.
And that was how I ran face-first into a low-hanging tree limb.
The pain screamed through my cheekbone as a hot trickle of blood dripped down my jaw.
There was just a second that I paused, too stunned to remember why I was running.
I couldn’t hear anything over the whooshing in my ears as I tripped back into a run, this time circling back toward the path.
My chest was burning, my lungs in an ever-tightening vice grip as I forced my legs to keep pushing harder, faster.
