“Chandler!” he shouted, stopping for a moment in an attempt to get his bearings. “Over here!”
And then he saw her.
The flashlight was shaking in the darkness, but it seemed to be not too far away. Filled with the need to get to her, Levant stumbled onward through the forest, pushing against his own exhaustion and against the pain in his knees and back. He almost fell several times, and he stumbled almost constantly, but now the flashlight seemed to have stopped moving and he was steadily getting closer until, finally, he was able to hear a series of loud, gulping sobs in the darkness.
He had to climb up a small, muddy embankment, but eventually Levant clambered over the edge, only to find himself almost blinded by a flashlight aimed straight at his face.
“It’s me!” he gasped, holding his hands up to protect his eyes. “Chandler! It’s Doctor Levant!”
The flashlight was lowered.
Levant blinked a couple of times, trying to get rid of the patches of light in his eyes, but suddenly he felt somebody slamming against him. He was just about able to see Chandler’s anguished, tear-stained face as she grabbed the lapels of his jacket and started trembling violently. She was trying to speak, but her mouth was shaking and she couldn’t get any words out properly as blood ran from cuts on her face and mixed with sweat and dirt.
“Whatever is happening here?” Levant asked, before looking around and seeing only dark trees. “Who did this to you?”
She tried to answer, but again her words were jumbled and incomplete. A moment later she grabbed his arm and tried to pull him back.
“You’re freezing,” he said, before pulling off his jacket and placing it around her shoulders. “You’re going to get hypothermia if you carry on like this.”
She turned and looked around, her eyes wild with fear.
“I’m taking you to my car,” he said firmly, holding his ground, “and we’re going to find the police. They should already be on their way.”
He took hold of her hand and tried to lead her down the slope, toward the cabin, but she dug her heels into the ground and refused to follow. Her teeth were chattering.
“You’re safe now,” he told her. “Try to calm down and—”
“Run!” she screamed suddenly.
“Catherine—”
Before he could finish, Levant suddenly felt something slamming against his back. He tried to turn, but in the darkness something cold and metallic bumped into his face and then slipped down around his neck. As Chandler screamed, Levant reached up and tried to free himself, but instead he felt himself being pulled back as the chain tightened around his throat. Chandler tried to pull him away, tugging desperately on his arm, and then she stepped back, still gripping him tight and struggling to get him away from his assailant.
At the last moment, however, Chandler stumbled in the darkness and fell down a sudden drop in the mud. She landed hard with all her weight on her right leg, causing the ankle to instantly snap and sending her thudding down to the ground with an anguished scream.
Levant could feel the chain pressing harder and harder against his throat, cutting off his windpipe as he struggled desperately to get free. His legs were scrabbling in the dirt, and he could smell the stench of foul, decomposing flesh as he heard a faint snarling sound from over his shoulder. He let out a pained grunt, but already he was starting to weaken as he struggled to breathe and he began to reach out desperately into the darkness, hoping to find something – anything – that he could use to free himself. Before he had a chance, however, his legs buckled and he dropped down onto his knees, and the chain tightened around his neck with such force that his skin began to tear.
His eyes started bulging in their sockets and blood began to run down his face. In the darkness, he was turning a shade of purplish-blue as he reached up and tried one final time to pull the chain away. As he struggled, the chain cut into his throat, unleashing fresh torrents of blood, and a snarling face leaned down and stared into his own, fixing him with a furious stare. Levant managed to look up and, although he could see nothing in the darkness, he could feel a presence staring back at him as the chain cut deeper and deeper and finally severed his neck.
Suddenly the chain pulled back and Levant’s head toppled from his neck. His body fell forward, spraying blood from the stump at its top, and chains rattled in the dark as a deathly figure stumbled past the corpse and headed after its next victim. As Levant’s head rolled down a slope and then stopped against a tree, a flicker of consciousness remained for a fraction of a second, thinking that this was all a joke and that everything would be alright. Then the consciousness was gone, and Levant’s dead eyes stared out into darkness.
Twenty-Five
Catherine Chandler screamed as she stumbled out past the tree-line. Trying not to fall, she inadvertently put all her weight on her right leg, and her broken ankle – with a section of bone poking out through the side – immediately sent a burst of pain coursing up through her body with such force that she fell and landed hard on her hands and knees.
The pain was intense, but she pushed through and immediately forced herself to get up and start limping away from the forest, heading out across the clearing.
Although her right ankle was badly broken, she had to put at least some weight on it as she hurried toward the two cars that were parked close to the cabin. She’d intended to run as far from the cabin as possible but, in the darkness, she’d managed to double back on herself and now she knew that her only hope was to get away quickly. She’d heard Doctor Levant’s cries in the darkness, and she’d turned just in time to see his dead body fall to the floor. Now she was running for her life, and she knew death wasn’t far behind.
Looking over her shoulder, she immediately spotted something moving in the forest, coming after her.
She forced herself to keep running, putting as little pressure as possible on her broken right foot, but after a moment she stumbled slightly and – once again – it was her right foot that bore the weight of her attempt to remain steady. She screamed and fell, landing hard on her knees and elbows, and then she tried to get up again, only for a fresh burst of pain to jolt through her left arm. She had no time to check the damage, however, so she forced herself up and this time she managed to resume her agonizingly slow limp toward the cars.
Reaching into her pockets, she tried to find her car keys, but they were gone. She then started searching through the pockets of Doctor Levant’s jacket, desperately hoping to perhaps find his keys. There was no sign of them, but her hands did fumble against what felt like two large coins.
Forcing herself to keep going, she was now almost halfway across the clearing and she actually began to think that she might reach the cars. She vaguely remembered leaving her keys in the ignition, figuring that it didn’t matter since nobody else was around, but she couldn’t be sure. Were they there, or were they inside the cabin? Still, getting to the car seemed like her best bet, so she stumbled on until finally her left foot slipped and her right foot crunched against the ground, and yet again she screamed as she fell down.
Taking a moment to catch her breath and to deal with the pain, she forced herself to turn and look over her shoulder, and then she gasped as she saw the dead man relentlessly making his way closer, swaying slightly as he walked and almost tripping over his chain as he edged toward her. Barely able to walk properly, possessed by some relentless hidden force, the corpse of Stuart Munver would not stop.