Chapter 26. Simon paced the house as if in a daze, weighted down with grief and sadness, his mind whirring with thoughts of Kate’s death.

S imon paced the house as if in a daze, weighted down with grief and sadness, his mind whirring with thoughts of Kate’s death.

His parents were locked in their room. Through the door he could hear his father’s heavy boots on the floor, his mother weeping and wailing for her daughters.

Elizabeth, too, was shut in her room. Simon put his ear to her door. He heard her scurrying around.

What could she be doing? he wondered. He was afraid she had lost her mind.

Evening fell. No one prepared supper, no one thought of eating. Simon’s grief gave way to uneasy restlessness.

I have to get out of this house, he thought, or I will go mad!

The sky was still hovering over the trees as Simon made his way out of the house, but once in the woods the darkness surprised him. It was midsummer, and the leaves were at their thickest. They blocked out most all of the fading sunlight.

Simon found the woods unusually still, The daytime animals had already hidden away for the night. The nocturnal creatures had not yet crept out of their dens to hunt.

Simon walked on, deeper and deeper into the woods. All he wanted was to put his house and family behind him.

He found himself at the clearing with the two flat stones. The woods were almost completely dark now. Simon sat on the bigger stone, the one that had once been his throne. He patted the smaller stone beside it. That had been Kate’s.

Kate was dead now.

Kate is dead.

He realized he could not escape from his grief.

Simon peered through the darkness, staring at the spot where he had found Kate’s body. A cold chill ran down his back as the ugly sight returned to him: Kate’s eyes, so glassy, so empty. The needle poking out of her chest. The blood had spread across the front of her dress.

The blood had spread like evil, Simon thought. And now there is evil everywhere. It lives inside my family’s house, right now. Evil lives inside Elizabeth and Frank. It lives in these woods, in the air around me.

He took a big gulp of air, then exhaled.

It lives inside me, too, he thought. I feel it. There is evil living inside me.

Then the deep silence of the woods was broken. Simon heard a noise. The snap of a twig, somewhere nearby.

Simon froze. He listened.

Was it an animal? A deer?

Snap. The noise was behind him.

How had it moved so quickly, so quietly?

Simon wanted to turn, to look. But he was para. lyzed with fear.

Something grabbed him from behind.

A claw!

Pain shot through his shoulder. The claw dug deeper.

Simon turned at last. He took one look at his attacker, and the blood drained from his face. He screamed.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20