Page 85 of Haunted Prey

“Not a snake!” she cried. “A turtle!”

Emery snickered. “Oh, yeah, that’s right, a turtle.”

“You can camp here!” I claimed, patting the ground. “We can have a fire and tell ghost stories and have smores!”

“Oh, Smores! Smores!” Nina cried.

“And the river is right nearby, we can swim by the beach,” I added, excitedly. “But Daddy says not too far out otherwise the current might take you.”

Emery grinned. “I’m a pretty good swimmer. I’m not scared.”

“He can swim like a shark,” Nina said, laughing.

We all laughed, pretending our hands were sharks going in and out of the sand.

It started to grow dark as we played and finished the moat. When the light of the sun slipped down past the tree line, we heard someone calling our names.

“Come in!”

I looked around. Just up a small incline, past a few trees, I saw Andrea, looking like herself, only she was wearing a nurse’s outfit. She stood at a doorway of a large building, one where my house might have been but it didn’t look like it. The windows were boarded up and the roof was made of metal.

“Come in, kids, it’s time to take your medicine!” Andrea called.

They groaned. Emery and Nina got up from the sandbox, looking dejected. Their shoulders slouched, heads slumped forward.

“I don’t wanna,” Nina said. “I want to keep playing.”

Emery took her hand. He glanced at me, his eyes seeming to glaze over. “Sorry. We have to go now.”

They started to leave. I watched them, my heart sinking.

“Wait, don’t go,” I said, standing up. They didn’t seem to hear me. They walked on toward the house, toward Andrea.

“Don’t go. Don’t go!” I shouted. I stumbled out of the sandbox and started to run after them.

I was too slow, they were disappearing into the house one by one. Emery and Nina didn’t look back as they slipped inside.

Still, I ran, even as Andrea looked back at me and smiled, turning away into the dark house.

The doorway seemed to grow larger the closer I got and I could hear their cries, I could hear their screams.

“No!” I cried. “No!”

Before I could follow them inside, Emery appeared out of the doorway. Adult Emery with his skull face smiling back at me.

I tried to stop, dirt flying as my feet slid. I fell back, landing hard on the ground before him as he stood towering over me, blocking the doorway. He tilted his head at me as he took a step toward me.

My mouth opened in a silent scream as I tried to crawl back, trying to get away from him.

“We lost ourselves. We all died inside,” he said, his voice like gravel grinding together. One by one, the kids reappeared, first the twins, then Micheal, then Cassidy, but this time, they didn’t appear like themselves, just ghosts of what they once were, their bodies thin, their faces gaunt, their eyes like glass. “Look what your father did to us?” he said. “You couldn’t save us. But you could have saved her.”

Nina broke from the doorway to complete the circle the kids now made around me. She looked as I had remembered that day in the warehouse. Hair gone, pale and boney. She stared at me with the saddest eyes I ever saw. Those same pleading, scared eyes from when I first encountered her.

“You let her die with us. You buried the secret with her. Tell them what you did.”

Tears streamed down my face. “I didn’t know,” I stammered. “I didn’t know it was her.”

“But you learned.”

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