“Pink?” she whispered, kneeling next to him. “Pink?”
He opened his eyes and held them on Michelle, panic shifting across his face. “What’s happening?” he said. “Can you hear that?” He wiggled his body toward Michelle, pushing his weight against her knees.
“What? What do you hear?”
“Voices,” he said. “People mumbling, groaning. Can’t you hear them?” His head swiveled on his shoulders, his eyes wide, his fingers digging into Michelle’s leg. “They’re everywhere. Can’t you hear them?”
Michelle couldn’t hear anything but the low grumble of thunder in the distance. “It’s thunder, Pink,” she said. “That’s what you’re hearing.” He squeezed her tighter, wedging his shoulder against her thigh. She wove her arms around him and held the pendant against his flesh until his body relaxed.
“Pink, we need to get up and run as fast as we can toward that light. Then we’ll be safe.” It felt like a lie. She wasn’t sure what would happen to Pink when they reached it, if they even could.
Pink stared up at her, his eyes hollow, glazed. She was helping him to his feet when she caught movement off to her left. The ground trembled. The branches above them knocked together, though the air was dead still.
Michelle set her gaze toward the thick hemlocks fifty yards beyond an old stump and saw something drift between the shaggy bows. Each time she caught sight of it her breath snagged. For a moment she thought it might be the panther again, but it was too tall. Whatever it was, it walked upright. That’s when it appeared in the opening between the hemlocks and came toward them. The figure was dark, moving unimpeded by snow or obstacles. Pink was shivering again, his face nestled against Michelle’s abdomen. She felt Pink jerk and was fairly certain he had yet to notice the apparition.
It moved closer, but now there were more of them, floating among the trees, shifting shadows. Michelle tried to convince herself that that’s what they were, just shadows of clouds and tree trunks tossed there by the moon.
“Get up, Pink, we need to go.”
Pink wouldn’t release her legs. She pulled the pendant from his neck and felt his hold on her tighten. The figures moved closer, and as they did, it seemed the snow began to disappear. Not melting but vanishing.
“Pink. Get up. Please.”
Pink held his hands over his ears, as if trying to block out some deafening noise, but there was nothing, no sound at all. The snow was gone, the ground dry, as if it were the middle of summer.
The figures stopped thirty yards away, figures that appeared wavy in the light-starved bracken. One came forward, a woman, moonlight flashing across her features as she drifted between the branches. Pink had rolled himself into a ball, his hands covering his ears. “Stop!” he yelled, scooting closer to Michelle, his body fully against her now.
“Come on, Pink,” Michelle said. “Get up.”
The woman came within a few feet of Michelle and looked at her, then down at Pink. She was young, beautiful. Her lavender nightgown was damp and clung to her body, revealing her breasts and the flesh of her tummy. Pink took his hands away from his ears and looked at the woman.
“Isabelle? What the hell?” Pink said.
Pink seemed to be listening to the woman, though her lips never moved. Now the other figures moved toward them. As they came closer, Michelle could not make out what they were doing. It appeared as though they were approaching backward; she could see no facial features. At first, she figured it was a trick of light, some undependable offering of the moon. But when they were too close for Michelle to deny what she was seeing, she had to look away. Their skin was craggy and wrinkled, but they had no faces. Michelle could not look back at them. When she tried, her chest tightened, the queasy current in her stomach pulsing. The woman Pink had called Isabelle turned and moved away through the shadows of the trees and was gone. Michelle couldn’t even tell if she had feet. It was as if Michelle were witnessing the scene through some restricted lens where peripheral detail would not register in her brain.
When the other figures surrounded Pink, he backed up toward Michelle. “What the hell is this?” he said to her. “Is this a damn nightmare?”
“Come on, Pink,” she said, grabbing his hand in hers, the pendant trapped in the nest of their pressed palms. “Move.” She pulled him forward. He stumbled at first, as if his legs would not function, but then fell into a trot behind her, telling her to slow down. Michelle fell into the rhythm of a skipping gallop to hop over fallen trees, using her free hand to swat branches from her face, the other hand holding fast to Pink. His grip grew stronger, not as if he was struggling to keep up, but more that he was gaining strength himself, until his pace finally matched hers. The light was in front of them, but still appeared as far away as when they’d fled the queer beings. She wasn’t sure if they were following, too afraid to look back and check. Pink ran beside her now, until he tripped over a decaying log, dragging her down with him. She flew headfirst and rolled, leaves and sticks crunching until she slammed into a tree trunk. Her ribs burned, sending a fire through her torso, into her shoulders. Michelle pushed up on one arm trying to tune her breathing, make it regular again, but she felt sick to her stomach, as if her organs were expanding, cutting off her air. That’s when she heard noises—a low keening, groaning. She tried to convince herself it was Pink, but there were too many voices. It seemed the rhododendron had come to life, all the leaves moving, rustling, in the perfect stillness. The ground shifted beneath her. She grabbed at the dirt, trying to hold on. Then she heard someone walking. “Is that you, Pink?”
She tried to get up, but her muscles were tight, constricted, like they were being twisted off the bone. A whining shriek rose in the woods, distant sounding at first, eventually growing so loud Michelle had to cover her ears. Even with her palms pressed to the sides of her skull, the noise felt like a torch cutting through her hands, burning into her brain. That’s when she realized she’d lost the pentacle.
She groped the ground, the piercing trill like the sustained scream of a hundred sirens. She had no idea where Pink was. The faceless beings appeared from behind trees, forming a circle around her, coming closer. She could barely move, her stomach rising into her throat, her arms, legs, and chest congealing into one lumped mass. She scratched her fingernails through the dirt and dead leaves. The smell of something spoiled and moldy and dead rose from the earth. Her bones tingled, growing numb, as if dissolving. Her throat closed when one of the beings touched her shoulder. Another grabbed her ankle. She couldn’t breathe, then felt the grip of another, their touch like cold gel. A high-pitched tone emanated from the center of her forehead, burrowing deep into her neck, her back. Michelle clawed the ground, grit and mud catching beneath her fingernails—then something hard and cold. She closed her fingers on it. It didn’t register at first. The pendant. Michelle felt something grip her shoulder, grab her foot, begin to drag her away. She squeezed the pendant into her palm and held it tight, shutting her eyes. The nausea dissipated slowly, the ache leaving her arms and legs, until the buzz was gone from her head.