They had nowhere to go but the Mission Street Woods.
They ran off the cul-de-sac. Across the field. The clouds made a thick fog, glowing in the blue moonlight. All visibility died. Christopher’s mother heard the voices getting stronger. People pouring into the woods from every angle.
“Where do we go, Christopher?” she asked.
Her son held her a little tighter. Terrified.
“The Collins family parked near the construction site,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Mr. Henderson entered the woods from the north with the doctor and Nurse Tammy. The car that picked up Jerry just stopped. Jerry just ran into the woods with a gun, Mom.”
Christopher’s mother rushed on with her son in her arms. Ambrose and the sheriff at her side. The trees whipped by at a staggering pace. She couldn’t see where they were going. But she knew Christopher could. All the eyes. The people watching. The woodland creatures. The birds. The nice man had eyes everywhere.
It would take a miracle for them to escape.
Chapter 118
Ambrose looked through the halos in his eyes. He saw the frozen path ahead of him. His feet pounded the snow with every step. Something compelled him to run. Faster. The smell of baseball gloves. The voice in his mind.
My brother went into these woods fifty years ago.
I can still save my brother.
The fog was unworldly. He could barely see an inch in front of his face. But the old soldier knew that camouflage works both ways. If he couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see him, either. He finally caught the silhouette of a child running up ahead. Ambrose turned back.
“Sheriff, did you see that?” he asked.
But the sheriff was gone.
“Sheriff?” he repeated.
Ambrose stopped. He could hear nothing but his own heart pounding. He searched the halos in his eyes, but he could see nothing but fog all around him.
“Mrs. Reese? Christopher?”
It was dead silent. He couldn’t see Mrs. Reese or her little boy. Somehow, Ambrose had run too far. Too fast. He had lost them. He was all alone. Suddenly, he felt the wind on his neck.
“Ammmmbrrroooseeee,” the wind whispered. “ittt’ssss daaaavvviiiddddd.”
Ambrose listened to the wind, his heart gripped with terror and hope in equal measure.
“David?” he said.
“yesssSsssss,” the wind whispered.
“Where are you?”
“hhhheEeeErrrreeee,” the wind said.
Ambrose felt a chill on his skin. The mist of the clouds danced down the path, the fog floating like smoke from his father’s old pipe.
“hheelllllppppp meeee, ammbrrosseee,” the mist pleaded.
Ambrose followed the voice. Even with the halos in his eyes, all he could see was the fog in every direction. He heard whispers around him. Something was in here. He didn’t know what, but he could feel it. This little whisper on the hairs on the back of his neck.
He heard a footstep.
“thhhheyyyy’rrreee cominngggg ammmbrrrosssse,” the wind wheezed through the branches.
Another footstep.
Ambrose picked up his pace. He moved through the fog as the wind got louder around him. It sounded like the woods were taking a deep breath through lungs filled with paint.
Another footstep.
Something was running straight at him.
The branches suddenly disappeared. There were no more trees above him. Just the blue moon, lighting the fog like a lantern above a massive clearing. Ambrose saw a trace of something. The outline of a body. It could be a deer. One of those people. He squinted through the halos in his eyes and finally saw what it was.
A little boy ran past him.
“David!” he screamed.
But the little boy did not stop. He was not David. Another boy ran past him, chasing the first and screaming.
“It’s ours! We built it!”
The boys sprinted through the clearing. Right past a giant shadow in the fog. At first, Ambrose could not make out the shape. It seemed too impossibly big. He took a few steps closer and finally recognized what it was.
A tree.
Every instinct in Ambrose’s body told him to run away from that tree. But his feet kept going toward it. Toward the voice.
“David?” he said.
“iii’mmm upppp heeerrreee,” the wind howled.
He knew he could be walking into an ambush. He knew it probably wasn’t true. The voice wasn’t David. But something compelled him to take the next step. The thought Christopher had planted in his mind.
I can still save my brother.
The wind whipped through the branches. Ambrose could make out the faint outline of a rope ladder leading up to what looked like a tree house.
“heellllllppppp! helllllpppppp!” the voice whispered from above.
Ambrose began to climb. He looked up into the trapdoor above. The light glowed inside the tree house.