The glade stretched out before me, bathed beneath a dappled azure sky. Flowers blossomed in the high grass, crimson poppies and sunshine flares of dandelions peering through thick tangles of green. The day was warm and the air was full of the scent of the forest, which waited, cloaked in shade, through a gap in the thick-boughed oaks ahead.
The dead girl walked beside me, saying nothing.
The grass that hid her legs from the knee down did not move as she passed through it. That was how I’d worked it out. Her hair hung loose about her shoulders in rich chestnut waves, shifting lightly with every silent step. Her blue pinafore was cut for the summer months, a light but substantial cloth covering a long-sleeved shirt that had once been white, now scuffed with dust and earth. She walked at a slight distance from me and seemed to move a little closer with every step.
Once, only once, she turned her face halfway towards me. That was how I knew she knew I was there. That was how I saw the ligature marks at her neck and the bluish purple tint of her lips. Her hair fell forward before I could see her eyes.
I had not yet decided what to do when we reached the edge of the glade.
My phone nestled deep in the pocket of my tunic, gripped tightly in my hand. I hadn’t checked it for at least a mile, not since the path had drifted inland from its circuit around the lake and I’d found myself suddenly and unexpectedly alone. I’d had one bar of signal then, and could still hear the chatter of other walkers by the water’s edge. So I let my feet find their own way and by the time the unfinished path beneath me scattered into stones and brush, it seemed I’d been drifting from the track for longer than I’d realised.
Stupid. And as the silence closed in around me and I strained my ears for a pointer back towards the lake, a flash of colour in the thickets to my left caught the edge of my vision and I saw that I was not alone.
At first, I wasn’t sure what I’d seen. That’s why I didn’t call out to her.
I expect that’s why.
By the time the path gave out onto the glade, she’d fallen into step beside me and I was faced with a choice: circle back the way I’d come, at least an hour’s walk, or push on ahead. I could feel the dead girl’s presence beside me like needles in my skull and I didn’t think my nerve would hold. Already my skin itched with the need to get away.
We moved through the grass, footstep after footstep. The trees ahead were close and densely packed, but on the other side I was certain I’d find the lake again. Beneath the lonely cries of the birds far above, I thought I could hear a hum of distant voices, and I gripped my hidden phone more tightly, picked up my pace.
The dead girl matched me easily and began to close in on my path.
Terror speared me. Ahead, the shadowed depths of trees were all that stood between me and safety – a half-mile, I thought; no more. A quick, panicked dash through the lichened hardwoods and I’d find the trail again, find the voices, find the families and hiking groups, the dog walkers, the cyclists. The sun was barreling towards its midday peak and heat lanced my uncovered arms, my lungs on every rapid breath. Cool warmth waited for me beneath the trees, but the dead girl’s course flowed ever closer.
Almost. Almost. Almost there – and then, in the seconds before I reached the edge of the glade she wheeled around before me so that she faced me on my path. I scrambled to catch my feet, fell backwards into the grass. Blood-red poppies spackled the greenery, dandelions looming like jaundiced eyes, and she lifted her face to me.
And I saw what had happened to her. I saw it written in bloodshot whites and ash-grey skin. In bruises and broken nails. In the torn skin of her knees. And I picked myself up and ran.
I didn’t look back. For a moment, I thought I heard heavy footsteps thundering on the hollow earth of the forest floor behind me, but I did not look back. I ran, my heart hammering hard enough to choke me, every laboured breath like acid in my throat. My legs churned the ground beneath me, though my thighs felt like cotton billowing in the wind, and when I finally staggered to a halt on the edge of an asphalt track by the iron-blue waters of the lake, I could do nothing for a moment but gasp and wheeze and scramble to fill my aching lungs.
Dimly, I was aware of concerned faces and words of care; of hands helping me unfurl my body, holding my elbow and guiding me towards an old wooden bench set back from the thoroughfare. My vision had narrowed to a tunnel, so it took me a moment to register the flash of colour as I sat, and a moment longer to recognise that it was out of place against the greens and browns of the forest edge.
I’d been close, I thought. The woods loomed dark and empty here, tumbling down towards the water’s edge; the glade could not be far away. And yet…
A sapling stood by the edge of the trees, a young birch; no more than ten or fifteen years old. Its difference marked it out as separate from the older oaks and elms that flanked it, reaching wizened arms towards a dappled azure sky.
And to its narrow trunk, some unseen hands had tied a bunch of wilting flowers, and a weather-beaten teddy in a faded blue pinafore.
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