Expecting to Die

CHAPTER 13
H
urry, hurry, hurry!
Bianca was running, faster and faster, though her legs felt like lead. Her heart
was racing, fear driving her forward, the feeling of impending doom surrounding
her. The forest was dark. She couldn’t see where she was going, but she kept
running, slogging through thickets and weeds, brushing the spider webs from her
face, knowing she was about to die.
She felt the breath of the beast upon her. It snarled and snapped, growling and
thundering through the woods. Was it a bear? A cougar? A massive wolf, or a
rabid Sasquatch?
Or a monster? The stuff of horror movies.
She didn’t wait to find out, just kept racing through the night-shrouded
timberland, over rocks and stumps, avoiding the edge of the cliff that fell sharply
to the creek below.
Run! Don’t stop!
Heart in her throat, she tried to make her legs respond.
The thing behind her was getting closer, its giant strides sweeping over the
rough terrain, its booming voice echoing through the canyon.
Where were the others?
Where was Mom?
She felt a huge claw brush her shoulder and she screamed, but no sound came
out of her mouth.
Again, the thing took a swipe at her and she shied away, her ankle twisting
painfully, her arms flailing wildly as she pitched headfirst over the lip of the
ridge and fell into the yawning dark abyss.
Help! she tried to scream. Please, someone help me . . .
She landed. Not on the hard pan of the canyon floor, but in a lake, the water
breaking her fall as she slipped beneath the surface, where a light glowed
brightly. For the briefest of seconds, she thought she would be safe, until she saw
it: the grotesquely distorted and rotting body of a girl that twirled in the current,
her dress and hair swirling around the moldering flesh.
Destiny Rose Montclaire, the pretty little mouse who had been in her class at
school.
Bianca screamed, air bubbles rising as the light dimmed, the water darkening,

---

her voice gurgling, her words indistinct. Help me, please! Help! Struggling for
air, she kicked upward, toward the surface, trying to get away, desperate to
escape, but her legs again were useless. As she gave a final kick, she felt a hand
on her ankle, bony fingers clenching hard, dragging her down.
No, no, oh, God, noooo!
Another hand grabbed her thigh, and the thing that had captured her climbed
up her body, rising with her toward the far distant surface. Another hand on her
arm. Another on her shoulder, pulling her downward, scaling her torso.
Let go of me, she tried to scream, attempting to kick the thing off of her.
Destiny stared at her through the black pits in her skull where her eyes had
been.
“Help me,” she cried, echoing Bianca’s own desperate pleas. “Help me,
Bianca.”
No. Oh, God, no. This can’t be happening. It can’t.
Bianca pushed and pushed, desperate to get the girl’s remains off her. The
bones fell apart, floating downward, being carried by the current, the ghastly
skull following after but staring ever upward directly at Bianca and whispering,
“Please, please . . . help me . . .”
Bianca woke with a start.
Her heart hammering, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps, she clutched
the covers. Oh, God, she was safe. At home. In her bed. She let out a relieved
sigh and saw that her bedsheet was twisted around her legs, the coverlet having
slid off. Her ankle ached, and if she let herself, she could still feel the steely grip
of the bony fingers encircling the spot where her foot joined her calf.
She shoved her hair from her face with fingers that still shook. She glanced at
the clock. The digital readout told her it was one-seventeen in the morning. Not
exactly the witching hour, but close enough.
Forcing herself to a sitting position, she tried to shake off the dream, but it
clung to her, embedded in her mind. She knew she was safe here. Her mother, a
cop, and Santana, as tough a cowboy as you’d ever want to meet, were both in
the room down the hall. Jeremy, probably, was in his own room over the garage,
and three dogs would sound an alarm if anyone or anything they didn’t recognize
should wander too close to the house. So, okay, Cisco was pretty much useless
as a guard dog, but he could sure make a racket if he wanted to.
So she and the rest of her family were secure.
Still . . . she looked around her darkened room, zeroing in on spots where any
kind of monster could lurk.