“We should go,” he said, still scanning the crowd.
“No one’s looking at us.” At least, the people closest to us weren’t. But I was just short enough that I supposed someone could be looking at Holden right now and I wouldn’t be able to see it.
“Fuck, this was a bad idea,” he said, his voice tense. “We have to go.”
“Okay, okay.” I didn’t want to fight. Holden looked desperate to get away. He wasn’t going to calm down till we were back home. “Let’s go.”
I didn’t take his arm as we made our way across the square that time. He probably wouldn’t have wanted that, and anyway, he was walking fast enough that it was all I could do to keep up with him.
There was another crowd around the bonfire, and Holden seemed determined to avoid people at all costs now, so he darted to the right, hugging the side of the street with storefronts instead. I didn’t even realize his path was taking us back past the unlit store until we were just a few feet away from it.
The two guys were still there, talking to each other in the shadows. Holden didn’t seem to notice, and he crossed right in front of them, his footfalls slightly muffled by the thin layer of snow still on the sidewalk. The men looked up, though, tracking Holden with their eyes, then looking over at me.
I froze.
I recognized them. One of them, anyway. The one closest to me, who was pushing up from where he’d been leaning against the building, was the hatchet-faced guy from my dream. The one who strangled me every night.
“Vince, it’s him.” The hatchet-faced man’s voice was low and ugly, and so, so familiar.
The second guy pushed forward too, and they began advancing towards me. I needed to run. I knew I needed to. But I was frozen. Couldn’t make my feet move. All I could do was watch them approach in dumb horror.
And then Holden’s hand was on my arm.
“Gus, come on!”
I looked up at him in surprise, and his presence cut through the ice that had locked me in place. One look at his eyes and I could move again. With a final look at the men coming towards us, I took off in the other direction.
I knew Holden didn’t want to go back to the square, so I took the first turn I saw, down a side-street that led God knew where. I didn’t honestly care, as long as it was away from the guys behind us.
I tripped halfway down the side-street and sprawled onto the pavement. The palms of my hands burned with ice and gravel as I skidded across the asphalt. My shoulder ached, and my knees were on fire, and I had a fleeting worry about ruining Holden’s clothes before he was at my side, pulling me up again.
We set off down the street once more, my breath coming out in short gasps as I tried to shake off the pain of my fall. Holden’s feet pounded next to mine, and behind us, I heard shouting. It grew fainter with each step we took though, and after a few more turns, all I could hear were our footsteps and the beat of my heart.
“Here, through here,” Holden said, tugging on my coat sleeve and pulling me down a shadowed alley.
I was hopelessly lost by now, and I hoped he had a better mental map of the town than I did. We ghosted down the alley as quietly as possible and at the end of it, Holden put a finger to his lips. I nodded and held my breath as he peeked out into the street. With a quick motion of his hand, he gestured for me to come forward, and we dashed across the street and back into the alley on the far side.
Two more turns and one final alley brought us within sight of the library parking lot. Holden’s unassuming car sat there, unmolested, and as far as I could tell, nobody was waiting for us. We sprinted across the street, Holden unlocking the car with his key fob, and dove inside.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” I said as soon as we were in, hitting the automatic door lock next to me.
“It’s okay,” Holden said, taking a deep breath. “They didn’t follow us.”
“I don’t care,” I said, panic rising in my chest. We should have been safe now, but I couldn’t stop it from bubbling over. “Just go, just