The Wildman - By Rick Hautala Page 0,83

glowed with an eerie purple iridescence that seemed not to have a distinct source.

Danger is approaching.

He knew that much.

It was a palpable presence in the night, as if the air and the forest were his skin, and something was pressing against it, applying slow, steady pressure.

Moving swiftly and quietly, Jeff darted off into the woods, circling around but always staying no more than twenty or thirty yards away from the path. After he had gone a hundred yards or so, he doubled back toward the trail, knowing the threat was getting closer and was coming toward him.

The night crackled with tension. The wind hissed like angry snakes in the branches overhead. But beneath all of these sounds, Jeff heard something else … the slow, steady tread of feet on the rain-soaked ground.

You don’t stand a goddamned chance, he thought, anticipating that it was Ben. He clenched his fists and waited patiently, barely breathing as the footsteps came closer and closer. After a few tense moments, with the night vibrating all around him, Jeff saw a dark figure. A solitary dark silhouette was making its way slowly up the trail without the aid of a flashlight, feeling his way through the darkness like a blind man.

Moving forward silently, Jeff prepared to attack as soon as the person—it had to be Ben—walked past him. The person rounded a turn in the trail, walking past where Jeff was hiding. As soon as his back was to Jeff, Jeff struck. Barely making a sound, he moved up quickly behind the person. When he was only a few feet away, he leaped at him. His arms encircled the man’s waist, and the forward momentum propelled them both face-first onto the ground.

Growling savagely, Jeff hooked his right leg around the man’s lower body, scrambling to hold him down.

The man thrashed wildly to free himself. His grunts of desperate struggle were muffled by Jeff’s weight as it pressed his face down into the mud.

“You son of a bitch,” he said softly, surprised that he wasn’t filled with insane rage. Instead, a cold, calculating cruelty filled him. He was as heartless and as detached as a snake striking its prey.

The man beneath him continued to struggle, but his resistance quickly drained away. Before he killed him, Jeff wanted to stare him in the face and watch the light of life expire in his eyes as he clamped his hands around Ben’s throat and squeezed the life out of him.

“You really thought you were gonna win?” Jeff whispered in a cold, merciless voice. “You thought you’d get the better of me?”

Feeling Ben sag in his embrace, Jeff shifted his weight off him. Still holding him down with his legs, he yanked his shoulder and flipped him over.

Jeff was stunned when he saw Tyler staring up at him with fear-widened eyes. His tongue protruded from his mouth, and his breath made watery, hitching sounds.

“What the Christ?”

For just a second, Jeff wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him.

What if Ben had learned the magic of the forest and was tricking him with this illusion?

But Tyler groaned as he shook his head.

“What the fuck are you doing out here?” Jeff said. He kept his voice down because Ben could easily be within hearing distance.

When Jeff released him, Tyler tried to sit up, but his hands and feet kept slipping in the slick mud, and he fell. His throat was still making funny gagging noises as he flopped onto his left side and assumed a fetal position.

“For Christ’s sake,” Tyler gasped. “You don’t … you don’t have to … fucking kill me …”

“I will if I have to,” Jeff said as he got slowly to his feet and brushed his hands. Bending down, he helped Tyler to his feet. Once he was standing, Tyler started to wipe the mud from his clothes but soon realized how futile that was and stopped.

“What are you doing out here?” Jeff asked. “How’d you get away?”

Jeff’s senses were still honed as he turned and looked up and down the trail, expecting to see Ben nearby.

“I came to find you,” Tyler said, still laboring for breath.

“How the hell did you get away? You know fucking killed Mike, right?”

Tyler took a step away from Jeff. The move was subtle, but it put Jeff on his guard. Something wasn’t right here.

“Yeah,” Tyler said. “I know. Mike’s dead … and Fred, but you … we have a real problem here.”

“No shit, we do. We have to kill that motherfucker