Ghouls Gone Wild (19 page)

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I gasped.

“If you’re thinking we should get the freak out of here, then yeah!” Heath said, and without another second’s hesitation we took off running as fast as we could.

Behind us we heard what can only be described as a series of cackles—high-pitched and terrifying like a pack of hyenas mocking our flight.

Heath was faster than I, and he began to inch away, which sent an added shiver up my spine because if he gained too much ground, I knew the spooks riding those brooms would focus on attacking only me. At least with Heath beside me they’d have to split up and we might have a chance to make it out of the woods.

“Wait up!” I tried to shout, but I was so terrified that the sound was barely above a whisper. Something long and slender whizzed by me and cracked me on the head and I nearly tumbled to the ground.

When I’d regained my footing, I saw that Heath had slowed enough to grab me under the arm and pull me forward. I risked looking over my shoulder and saw that the brooms and their shadows were still chasing us, weaving in and out among the trees, but just then one of the brooms caught a branch and it skidded to the ground.

“Heath!” I said as I pulled him to one side to avoid getting hit by an oncoming broom. “We’ve got to zigzag! If you go right and I go left, and we move in and out of the trees, I think we can lose them!”

He looked at me with large, frightened eyes, but he didn’t question me. Instead he let go of my arm and took off to the right. I headed left, ducking under limbs and looking for trees that were smaller with branches a little lower to the ground. I figured if I could cut a path through the smaller trees, it might slow the witches down. The tactic worked brilliantly as was evidenced by the series of thwacks that sounded behind me when the brooms encountered the foliage and got tangled in the branches.

The only problem was I’d lost complete sight of Heath, but I knew if I stopped to see where he’d gone, the spooks would only gain ground on me. I wanted to call out to him, but it was all I could do on this mad sprint to keep focused as I wove through the trees and tried to keep my footing. I knew I had to make it out of the woods as fast as I could. I doubted the witches would chase me through the streets of Queen’s Close. At least, I hoped they wouldn’t. I also hoped that Heath had the same plan and that we’d find each other once we cleared the woods.

And I’d almost made it out when I darted around a tree and nearly ran right into one of those brooms. Somehow the spook riding it had managed to get ahead of me and double back. A loud crack behind me told me that at least one more of the ghosts was still chasing after me from behind, which meant that I was now trapped between them.

I stopped dead in my tracks, my chest heaving and my back up against a tree. The first shadow and her broom hovered about four feet off the ground as if she was waiting for me to make a move. Very quickly she was joined by a second spook, who’d cleared the trees and come around to hover about three feet away from her sister.

My mind raced through options. The last threads of dusk did nothing to help me and only made the surrounding woods murkier. In mounting panic, I shouted out Heath’s name. There was no response. The ghosts seemed to notice my desperation and took that as a sign to frighten me a little more.

They began to spin their brooms in place, side by side, slowly at first, then building in speed like horizontal tops until the black spiky tails were just a blur. They were twirling so fast that they started to hum, then buzz, like two enormous wasps, quivering menacingly on the edge of the wood, ready to attack.

My heart was hammering hard inside my chest, and my cheeks and hands stung where my bare skin had been scraped by foliage. Tears sprang to my eyes and blurred my vision as a well of fear and panic bubbled up from inside. I blinked rapidly and willed myself to think of a way out. I thought my best chance might lie in darting to my right, as the brooms were crowding my left side, but just before I was going to take that option, there were several loud thwacks and the violent rustle of leaves, and out of nowhere, the third witch riding a broom with a long crack down its middle appeared.

Immediately, I wondered what had happened to Heath, and my pounding heart skipped a beat as I thought about how the fracture had gotten into the wooden broomstick. I thought maybe it could have happened if it’d struck something—or someone—very, very hard.

And that made the unbidden tears stream down my cheeks with earnest, but another emotion surfaced almost as quickly. I got mad. And by mad, I don’t mean just a little pissed. I mean
royally
ticked off. My eyes darted to the ground and right away I spotted a long thick stick. Without thinking it through clearly, I dived for the stick, snatching it tightly as I rolled to one side just in time to avoid being speared by one of the brooms.

Another came at me and I managed to block it by gripping the stick firmly in both hands across my chest and knocking the attacking witch and her broom out of the way. I then sprang to my feet and used my weapon like a sword to knock the third witch-riding broom down to the ground. The smoky spook riding it tumbled away, and in the meantime I stomped on her broom with both feet, holding it pressed against the earth.

The other two witches attacked again and I had a hell of a time beating off their brooms while keeping my balance on top of the third broom, but I managed to land a really good blow to the cracked broomstick that sent it spiraling into a tree, where it hit hard enough to break the broom right in half, and the smoky spook riding it vanished into thin air. I was stunned to see both halves of the broom then fall to the ground, lifeless and still. But I didn’t have very long to dwell on it, because the remaining broom ratcheted up the attack, coming at me with a fury and bombarding me with pokes and prods until I finally lost my balance and fell forward off the trapped broom.

The witch who’d been riding it sprang from the ground to reclaim it and she and the broom both rose up quickly and she got her revenge by swinging hard against the backs of my knees. I cried out in pain and sank to the earth, barely getting my stick up in time to block the first broom, which was aiming right for my head.

By now I was exhausted and the muscles in my arms ached from swinging my weapon and using it to block the brooms’ blows. I knew I couldn’t keep this up much longer. I had little doubt the brooms were being controlled by Rigella and two of her sisters, and I also believed she would kill me if she could.

And if I couldn’t fight, then I might as well run for it. Turning around to face the witches, I raised my stick and feigned a forward attack. The ploy worked; both brooms backed away, which allowed me just enough time to turn and bolt out of there.

I still held tightly to my stick, just in case I should become trapped again, but pretty much all my remaining energy went into zigzagging wildly through the trees. I could hear the spooks give chase as branches split and broke behind me. It was hard to see now—there was very little light left from the setting sun—but I still managed well enough to avoid slamming directly into a tree. One of the brooms was not so lucky.

I heard a tremendous crash, followed by two more thwacks and then the sound of splintering wood. Chancing a glance over my shoulder, I clearly saw one of the brooms crash to the ground in three pieces, and I silently thanked God that two were down and only one more broom threatened me.

By this time I’d lost all sense of direction and wondered if I was running in circles, but abruptly the woods ended and I found myself dashing straight out into the open.

It was a little lighter here, and I quickly assessed that I had stumbled onto a huge well-tended lawn . . . with no cover.

I thought about darting back into the thicker forest, but then my eye caught a mammoth-looking tree on the far side of the lawn, and tucked just behind it—a house with the lights on. I knew instantly that if I could make it to the tree before the broom cleared the woods, I could use it as cover to race for the house. And if I made it to the house, I might be safe.

Tossing aside the stick that would only slow me down, I gritted my teeth and called up every ounce of reserve energy I had. I tore as fast as I could across the open grass, using my breath and pumping my arms to help get me there in time.

I also pricked my ears, listening as the witch and her broom struggled to get through the remaining foliage, but very quickly my own breathing and the distance I was creating obscured the sound.

I couldn’t very well glance back—that would only slow me down. So I focused on the trunk of the tree, closing the distance as fast as I could. And then, I was there and I hurtled around to the other side, using the tree to hide from the approaching spook. I dropped to the ground and crawled to sit in between two massive roots. I pulled my knees up, making myself as small as possible, and just focused on breathing quietly. It was really hard because my chest was heaving while I took great gulps of air.

I was also sweating profusely, and my hands were slick from both nerves and exertion. I kept waiting for the witch and her broom to round the tree and find me, but the seconds ticked by and nothing happened. I wanted to take a peek on the other side of the tree, but quickly dismissed that idea, reasoning that it would be difficult in this dim light to pick the broom out and I’d have to expose part of my head in order to take a look. Too risky.

Once my breathing had calmed a bit, I switched my focus to the house. It was maybe thirty yards away and several of the lights were on. As I looked at it, I saw a figure move across the window, and I knew someone was home.

Gathering a little more courage, I eased myself to my feet, but remained low. I’d have to be careful to keep the tree directly at my back until I made it to the house. I was just about to go for it when something right over my head made an eerie creaking sound. I froze. And waited.

A gust of wind pushed across the lawn, rattling the leaves and bringing that creepy creak again. The sound was right above me, making a long unsettling noise, like rope rubbing against wood. Slowly I tilted my chin up and stole a glance. Right over my head was a pair of shoes. I leaned slightly to my right and saw the shoes were attached to feet and legs and a torso . . . and then another gust of wind caused the object above me to swing back and forth.

And then it hit me. Literally. Out of nowhere a broom struck my shoulder and sent me crashing sideways. I cried out as I hit the ground and put my arms up defensively, my eyes swiveling wildly between the dead person hanging from the tree and the broom coming in for another attack. “Stop!” I screamed right before closing my eyes and turning my head away.

I braced for the impact as a loud
THWACK
resounded in my ears, and something large and heavy fell right next to my head. I lay there shivering for a few beats until someone gripped my shoulder hard and asked, “Miss! Are you all right?”

 

 

 

“M. J.!” a familiar voice spoke next. “Jesus! Are you okay?”

I opened my eyes and saw Heath hovering over me, looking terrible. His face was a crisscross of angry scratches, his nose looked bruised, and one of his eyes was completely swollen shut. He also appeared to be gripping his left arm tightly. I sat up quickly and glanced around. Two halves of the remaining broom lay on either side of me, and a man holding a large ax hovered near my feet.

“I’m okay,” I said, trying to get my bearings. The man at my feet looked really familiar, but before I could place him, he turned and walked around the tree to the side to retrieve a ladder. I watched him for a moment as he placed it against the side of the tree and climbed quickly up to the lowest branch.

“I found him about five minutes ago,” Heath said. I looked at him and saw him staring up at the terrible sight of a middle-aged man with a blue face, a protruding swollen tongue, and bugged-out eyes. His body swayed grotesquely from side to side as the wind hit it.

I turned away from the awful scene as a wave of nausea threatened to make me lose my lunch, and focused on taking deep breaths. When I could talk again, I asked Heath, “What happened?”

“One of the spooks got me. I ran all the way to the edge of this lawn and I thought I’d lost her and started to double back to find you when one of the witches bashed me pretty good with her broom. She swung at my face first, which is how I got the shiner, and when I put an arm up to defend myself, she whacked me hard enough to break the bone.”

I gasped, looking up at him. “She
broke
your arm?”

Heath nodded. “I heard it crack,” he said with a painful grimace. “And that got me on my knees. That’s when she hit me on the back of the head hard enough to knock me out for a few minutes. When I came to, I managed to make it here and saw the lights on in the house, so I was on my way there when . . .” His voice trailed off and he didn’t finish his story.

“And that’s when you saw the dead guy?”

Heath nodded, his eyes darting up to the swaying figure, then quickly away. “I came around the tree and was leaning against it to catch my breath when I saw him. I felt his ankle and it was stone cold and stiff, so I knew there was nothing I could do for him. That’s when I went up to the house and got help.”

There was a loud thump, like someone dropping a sack of potatoes, and reflexively I glanced over to see the hanging victim crumpled into a ghastly heap. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” I groaned, closing my eyes tightly again and taking deep breaths.

“The police will be here shortly,” said the man from the ladder. And as he spoke, I realized who he was and my eyes snapped open again to stare at Fergus Ericson while he carefully descended the ladder with the ax he’d used to cut through the thick rope. “I called them right before we came out to cut poor Joseph down.”