Helltown - Jeremy Bates Page 0,41

man is going to take a stick-and-bones woman for a wife. Men want femininity, fertility, and that means breasts, hips. Even a nice round tush wouldn’t hurt. Now, eat up.” Whether it was from eating more, or family genes (her mother had been a buxom, curvaceous woman—until the last stages of the cancer, that was) Mandy had definitely developed the breasts, hips, and tush. But in those younger days, as a twelve-year-old girl, it wouldn’t have been hard imagining a strong gust of wind picking her up and blowing her halfway down the block.

Healthy on the outside…rotten on the inside.

Nevertheless, Mandy had gotten away from Cleavon and his brothers. She was safe. As long as she remained still and didn’t make any noise, they wouldn’t find her—

She made out a distant yellow light arcing back and forth in the fog. Her lungs shucked up in her chest.

For a few moments the light seemed to be angling away from her. Then, to her horror, it bee-lined back in her direction. It came closer, growing larger and brighter.

Mandy watched it, hypnotized. Her muscles stiffened as she prepared to flee. She eased herself onto her knees but froze when the leaf litter crackled beneath her weight. It sounded as loud as a gunshot in the still forest.

She couldn’t run, she realized. The person with the flashlight was too close. He would hear her, then see her. He would catch her.

The light came closer.

She pressed her back flat against the rock wall. The person—Floyd? Earl? Cleavon?—was now so close she could hear him. He was stepping heavily, batting branches, making no effort at stealth.

Abruptly he stopped. An unbearable silence ensued. Mandy was sure he had spotted her. But then he aimed the flashlight into the canopy. Maybe he’d heard an animal, a raccoon or possum, or maybe he thought she’d climbed a tree.

He lost interest in the leafless boughs a moment later and started forward once more, sweeping the flashlight beam to his left and right, methodically searching the mist-shrouded night. He couldn’t be any more than twenty feet away. If he kept his path he would spot her. She was certain of that. A few more steps and he would cry out in triumph and charge her. She should have run when she had the chance. She should have ignored her exhaustion. What were a few minutes of discomfort when your life hung in the balance? Surely she could have pushed on, gotten a second breath—

“Cleave?” the man who was now only fifteen feet away shouted. It sounded like Earl. Mandy’s stomach dropped as she waited for him to say, “Found her!” Instead he added, “She’s gone!”

There was no reply for a long moment. Then Cleavon’s voice, gruff and distant, told him to come back.

Mandy said a silent prayer of thanks even as Earl bounced the flashlight beam back and forth a final time. It stopped directly on her, blinding her. She felt as lit up as a fly on a television screen.

If she could have worked her lungs, she would have screamed. If she could have moved her limbs, she would have fled. But she could do neither. She was paralyzed with fear—and it was this instinct that ultimately saved her. Because Earl hadn’t seen her after all. The beam moved off her, the footsteps started away.

Mandy expelled the breath she’d been holding and shook uncontrollably.

Mandy remained where she was for another five minutes, making sure Earl’s departure wasn’t a trick to lure her out of hiding. When she didn’t hear or see anything more of him, she decided she was safe.

She sagged with relief. She had never contemplated dying before. But while frozen there, pinned in the flashlight beam, she’d been convinced it was the end. She was going to die.

Mandy—no more.

She couldn’t get her mind around this possibility. She couldn’t grasp the concept of not being. Maybe older people could. Maybe the longer you lived, the more familiar and understanding you became of whatever awaited you. You came to accept it, the way you came to accept aging.

Nevertheless, Mandy was too young for all this. It was as alien to her as the starving African children on those TV infomercials. She’d watched the LiveAid concert with Bob Geldolf and Michael Jackson a couple years before. She knew about the famine and disease over there. But she hadn’t been able to relate to the images she saw. Babies were supposed to be chubby and gay, not emancipated and buzzing with flies.