Author: Eden Beck
Category: Paranormal
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/29741_17
“The doom and gloom, Sabrina, it’s got to stop.”
I blink down at her in shocked surprise. She’s started anxiously doing dishes. Her first victim is the kettle, which she snatches from its peaceful resting place and throws it into the sink.
“I’m just trying to make sure we don’t get caught. Not this time.”
My mother’s shoulders go slack, and she stops before she’s scrubbed a hole in the cheap appliance.
After a moment, she lets out a defeated sigh. “I get it. I really do. You’re scared, and so am I.” She stops and looks back up at me now. “But we’ve got to let someone in, sometime. Romulus is a good man. I’m sure of it.”
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She starts her scrubbing back up, her fingers working at the kettle until I’m pretty sure she’s going to snap the plastic handle right off.
I want to argue, but I’ve got no fight left in me. I flop back on my bed and stare out the skylight, up towards the stars.
I don’t know what kind of man Romulus is. All I know of him is this brief encounter, and what little I’ve been told about his sons.
That’s not enough, but it has to be. For now. For my mother, if nothing else.
I just hope she’s right.
I really do.
I have to take a trip to the outhouse in the middle of the night. My own stubbornness wouldn’t let me leave the loft until after my mother finally goes to bed. Then it’s laziness that leaves me drifting in and out of sleep, nothing but the dark silhouettes of trees and stars above my head, until my bladder won’t let me wait any longer.
Even then, it’s a task getting my creaking joints out of bed and out of the loft. I wrap a blanket around my shoulders and make a mad dash to the outhouse, where I wash the sweat and fear of the day from my body, watching as the soapy water swirls slowly down the drain in the floor.
Now, outside in the dark, damp air, I find I don’t want to go back inside.
It can get claustrophobic inside the tiny cabin, and tonight the night sky is so bright and clear that I don’t even need a flashlight. Here outside, there’s no glass boundary between me and the sky. Me and the forest.
Despite my own worries earlier, and despite Romulus’ warning, I feel no fear in the forest tonight.
Only freedom.
Not that it has anything to do with how much I despise being told what to do … especially by entitled men like Romulus.
If he didn’t want us wandering around his property—because it is his, not just an old friend’s—then he shouldn’t have rented us the cabin in the first place. I’m tired of people pretending to help when all they really want is to feel better about themselves.
The chill air awakens a nervous energy inside me. All around, the sounds of the forest make it feel alive. But try as I might to listen, I hear no made-up wolves. Just like I suspected earlier, it was just another figment of my imagination. Just another excuse to hole up inside and hide.
But I’m on the other side of the country now. This far out, on the edge of the Canadian wilds, it might as well be the other side of the world.
So, with that in mind, I set out into the forest away from the cabin.
I quickly find a narrow path almost completely overgrown with grass. I can still see the edges of it though, so I start to wander off in the direction it leads. At least this way I’ll be able to find my way back before I’m missed. No sense getting lost out here. There’s no telling how long it would take to find me, if I’m even found at all.
Just the thought of it makes that thrill race through me again, and if anything, my pace quickens.
It isn’t long before I start to wonder if the slightly worn path I follow is even a path at all. It winds through the trees in a meandering pattern, often doubling back until I think it’s going to loop back around on itself, only to turn sharply back up the hill. Always, slowly, heading up the mountain. During the day, it’s more like a large hill … but here, in the shadow of night … it’s more like an endless, yawning slope leading ever upward.
In some places the trees and underbrush grow so thick that I can barely make out my own hand in front of my face. At those times all I can do is reach my hands out to either side, feeling for the edges of trees and tips of bushes to guide me in what I hope is the right direction.
Though what direction that is … I don’t know.
All I know is if there’s a path, it has to lead somewhere. And I’m determined to find out where that is.
It’s as if a spirit has possessed me.
I didn’t set out to follow this path, but it soon feels like I did. Soon, there’s nothing but me, the soft-packed earth, and the breath of wind through the trees.