Page 34 of From the Darkness

Sterling kept going, picking up speed so that he was rushing along the seaside path in an awkward run. Recklessly, she charged after him, her hair streaming behind her in the breeze blowing off the ocean, her pants legs catching against twigs and thorns that overhung the path.

She came face to face with her foolhardy behavior when Sterling suddenly stopped short and turned to confront her. She stared at him, seeing his face screw itself into a contorted mask.

“Why are you following me?” he shouted across the hundred feet of space that separated them. His hands were clenched, the way his wife’s had been earlier. Only, compared to him, Nola had seemed restrained. Abner looked like he was about to explode.

“You . . . did something to my car,” she said lamely, suddenly wondering what she had planned to do if she caught up with him—beat him to a pulp? Yeah, sure. He was at least a hundred pounds heavier and a head taller than she was.

His voice sounded outraged as he answered, “I did not! Where do you get off saying something like that?”

“You were watching to see what happened,” she shouted back.

“I was outside. I saw you go to your car. I wanted to see what you were up to.”

“You can assume I was going to drive it!”

“I’m not going to assume a damn thing. Not anymore! Not with what’s been going on around here.”

“What does that mean?”

“You stay here long enough, and you’ll find out what it’s like living in an insane asylum—with the inmates on the loose.”

She stared at him, trying to work her way through his statements, starting with his comments about the car and progressing to what sounded like paranoid fear.

As she stood in the middle of the path, he started back toward her, his features distorted, his skin flushed. His jaw was working; his arms were rigid. His eyes were slitted. He looked like a little kid about to have a tantrum, and she had no idea what he would do if he caught up with her.

Turning swiftly on her heel, she began to run back toward the house. But, behind her, she heard his footsteps gaining on her. He was going to catch her, and she was pretty sure he wasn’t planning to give her a warm handshake.

Real fear grabbed her by the throat. The headlands were like a wild, open meadow, with steep cliffs on one side.

The house was too far away. If Abner wanted to pitch her over the edge of the cliff, he could just go back home, and nobody would find her—maybe for days.

As she tried to decide what to do, a voice suddenly called her name.

“Bree. Over here!”

Her head swung toward a stand of trees about twenty-five yards away.

Was that Troy?

It seemed like his voice, but she couldn’t be sure. Not out on the headlands where the wind blowing off the sea distorted all sound. And not just the wind. Almost below the level of consciousness, she realized she heard a deep, rhythmic drumming. A throbbing sound that increased as she altered her course and headed for the trees, detouring around a decaying fallen trunk.

A little while ago she’d questioned his motives. Now she didn’t hesitate at the edge of the grove. Without missing a step, she dove into the shadows below the branches.

Immediately, she was plunged into a world quite different from the open headlands. Leaves hung in curtains from the branches overhead. And smaller, compact moss and lichens clung to the tree trunks, creating a place that might have been an old Druid grove.

It was dark here. And mysterious. The forest primeval. But more than that, a kind of charged energy seemed to gather in the air—like a current of electricity building up from a storm.

The humming sound increased, swelling like the beat of a giant drum—or a human heart.

It competed with the sound of the wind, which was blowing in the grove—not the steady flow of air coming off the ocean—but a circular whirlwind, that moved among the trees, picking up bits of moss, pine needles, bark, and plants that grew under the trees.

Bree shaded her eyes, gawking at the small tornado that never moved beyond the confines of the grove.

Was she hallucinating? Or was Sterling seeing the same thing? Looking back over her shoulder, she realized that the man had stopped short about thirty yards away. He was staring fixedly at the whirl of debris.

She heard a gasp escape him. He backed away—slowly at first and then more rapidly. Turning, he began running along the cliff again—in the direction of the house.

Bree watched him retreat, breathing out a little sigh. Then she turned back toward the darkness under the trees.

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