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Jordan woke with a scream on her lips. Rolling over, she stared into the darkness, befuddled with sleep, not knowing what had woken her. Out there, the darkness was complete, looking back at her with black eyes, an unnerving stare that had her struggling to get out of the sleeping bag, muscles straining, eyes wide, hands fumbling.
It was coming.
She could feel it, a building presence in the darkness. In a moment, the scream threatened to burst out, but she pressed her lips together, clamped down on it. On hands and knees, she groped around in the darkness, the coals of the fire out, not knowing exactly what she was doing, but desperate to move, run away. Hands fumbled over her brother.
Karel sat up, his face a pale smear in the darkness, eyes two black holes. ‘What is it?’ This voice was high, clogged with sleep.
‘Wake your sister.’
‘What?’
‘We have to move. It’s coming.’
Karel’s response was immediate. Kicking at his sleeping bag, mewling deep in throat. He fell onto his sister, shaking her, desperate for her to wake up too.
And she did, with a cry. Turned her head back and forth, fastening onto Jordan. ‘What’s going on?’
Jordan was already swinging her pack onto her back. ‘Grab your bags, we going.’
Bree whimpered. ‘It’s the middle of the night; it’s dark.’
‘It’s coming,’ Karel hissed. ‘Jordan says it’s coming.’
Bree shook her head. ‘It can’t be, she said we would be safe.’
‘I hoped we would be,’ Jordan said, from where she was standing looking out into the darkness feeling something, feeling it coming closer. It was moving, moving fast. They didn’t have much time.
Karel was clutching at his twin. Almost shaking her, panic just beneath the surface. Bree surfaced from her sleeping bag, shedding it like a second skin, and Jordan grabbed her.
‘Where’s your bag?’ she asked. ‘Put it on. You too, Karel. We don’t have much time.’
Bree whimpered, but did as she was told, while Jordan squinted into the darkness, trying to get her eyes to adjust, thoughts tumbling over each other in a panicked jumble. She sucked in a deep breath, willing her heart to calm its pounding so she could hear over it, hear the monster’s approach.
Karel edged closer to her, his small hand searching out hers. ‘Where is it? Is it right here?’ Bree backed up, away from the trees until the pack on her back was touching Jordan.
Knees weak, Jordan peered into the darkness clustered between the trees, trying to get a bead on the demon. ‘It’s coming,’ she whispered. ‘That’s all I know. We have to go.’
‘What about our sleeping bags?’
‘Leave them. We don’t have time.’ She could feel it – something black, evil, moving through the trees, running along the forest floor one moment, leaping up into the trees the next, swinging from branch to branch. And it was grinning, she thought. She could feel its dark glee, but even more, she could feel its hunger.
For a moment, her legs were paralysed. Rooted to the spot, she was powerless except to watch in her mind as the beast came closer. A deer in headlights, a rabbit in a spotlight, she was helpless, eyes wide, watching the oncoming horror, knowing in a moment that she would be caught, snatched up, tossed high, caught, and her bones would snap and crunch in the jaws of this thing, this black, evil thing.
Bree tugged at her. ‘Come on!’ she said. ‘Let’s go! I’m scared.’
That was enough. Shaking her head, Jordan felt her sister’s hand in her other, and the touch brought her back to her senses.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We have to go.’
But where? What chance was there to outrun this thing? It could see in the dark, for starters. What could possibly stop it? What could even slow it down?
Snatching her hands back, Jordan shrugged back out of her backpack and dropped it at her feet, fingers pinching at the buckles. ‘Take your bags back off,’ she commanded, and got the flap open on hers, rooting around until her fingertips touched the diary, the one written by her great-grandfather.
‘Why?’ Karel and Bree asked together, but they were already dropping their bags back on the ground.
‘Because we’re going in the river,’ Jordan said between clenched teeth. She could feel the twins gaping at her, heard their strangled cries. ‘I don’t know what else we can do,’ she said. ‘It’s the only thing that might give us some time.’
She had no idea if she was right, but all along she’d felt a compulsion to cross the river. That’s why they were walking beside it, instead of heading back through the trees to where her father had parked the car, a shorter trip. Clinging to the hope that the water would be a barrier, she tugged the diary free, and tucked it in the waistband of her shorts. It was a useless gesture – the book would get wet, the ink would smear, but she couldn’t stand the thought of leaving it behind.
A moment later they all heard it. A howling, screaming cry that shook the tops of the trees and made the sleeping birds startle awake, and the lizards and beetles burrow deeper into the undergrowth.
Bree screamed, and Karel, and Jordan would have, if her jaw wasn’t clamped tight. Snatching up their hands, she backed away from the trees, then turned to face the river, frantically deciding how best to go across. She couldn’t carry them both. Could she?
They stumbled down to it in the moonless night, hearing the river grow closer, louder, and Jordan wasn’t sure her legs would hold her up. Her mind was a screaming panic of static. Heart beating, pounding, threatening to buckle her ribs. And behind her, in the trees, a shock wave of pressure moving closer, the demon, the Chemei, pushing closer every minute.
The pressure was too much. Something had to give, and Jordan loosed a scream across the river, and sank to her knees. It was thinking about her, this foul and dirty beast. She could smell the stench of blood on its skin, see its claws glint in the darkness. Even the shadows were afraid of this thing. Even the trees tried to stumble in the dirt away from it, and every branch it touched wanted to crack and break, just so it would let go. None dared though; all cowered.
The twins were sobbing now, as Jordan wrenched her hands from theirs, and covered her face, heaving in great whistling breaths as she fought the panic, fought to turn away from the thing coming after them, the thing that wanted to climb inside her and eat her from the inside out.
She was falling, swirling into the dark mind that chased her. It was so close, she could touch it, sending out its dark, blood-soaked desire to snare her, bind her so she couldn’t move, just sit on her knees on the riverbank waiting for it.
It sucked her in, and the blackness was more complete than she’d ever known. She groped around in there, the stink of rotting flesh in her nostrils. It laughed, and the laughter surrounded her, telling her she was trapped.
No!
No! She would not let it consume her like this, first her mind, then soul and body. She was just a speck in this dark mind, but while she had life she would fight!
She kicked out. Thrust herself to the surface, pushing back at the groping, suffocating mind; and then she broke free, panting, terrified, but back to her senses, on her knees by the river, Karel and Bree either side of her, crying. She shoved the beast away from her and got to her feet, head swimming, teeth clenched, hands in fists.
In one movement, before she could be afraid, she wrapped an arm around each of the twins, pulled them into her sides, and leapt into the water.
They went under, and for a moment the cold, the shock, threatened to catapult her back into the mind of the beast chasing them, but she shook her head, kicked towards the surface, hands clamped around the skinny waists of the twins. They surfaced with her, gasping and coughing, but they weren’t done yet.
The river carried them further into the night, water in their mouths, metallic, cold. It swept them along, turgid, pressing all around them. Jordan kicked, legs scissoring underneath her, flipping herself onto her back, bringing the twins gasping with her, leaning back into the water, keeping them above the surface as best she could and then she kicked more, feet weighed down in the hiking boots she’d refused to take off before lying down to sleep.
It could have been an hour, a day, maybe even a month before the river let them go. She felt the rocks under her feet, then the push and shove of the bank at her back. The twins turned, twisted, scrabbled at the mud and grass, crab-crawled out of the water, and flopped onto the bank, mouths opening and closing, sucking in the night air. Jordan clung to the bank, the river dragging at her legs, and waited to find the strength to heave herself free. Her face was pressed into the ground, soil in her mouth, but anything was better than the taste of the beast, the rotting stink of flesh and rage. She spat, water and bile, and then the twins had her arms, and she kicked out, launching herself onto the bank.