Shadowlands (Shadowlands 1)
“Rory.” My sister leveled me with a controlling stare. “It’s fine. I’m just going to tell him we want to get the eff out of here.”
“Don’t,” I said, shaking my head. “Something’s not right.”
And that’s when I heard it. The low, mournful whistle, as clear as day.
It was the Beatles song “The Long and Winding Road.”
“Darcy,” I gasped.
Darcy’s eyes widened, and she sat up straight.
“Oh my god,” she breathed. “Mr. Nell always whistled that in the hallways.”
She reached over to the driver’s side and flicked on the headlights with a decisive snap. The yellow glow of the headlights caught in the misty air, illuminating the grassy expanse next to the embankment, the looming thicket of trees, and…
I inhaled sharply, blinking rapidly. It couldn’t…it just couldn’t be.
“Is that…Dad…?” Darcy said, her voice barely a whisper.
Our father lay in the middle of the off-ramp, his neck bent at an unnatural angle. His mouth frozen open in a scream. His dead eyes staring straight at us.
Before I could process what I was seeing, before I could put a name to what was happening, a rock came careening through the back windshield of the SUV, shattering the glass and spraying me with debris.
Darcy and I screamed.
It was happening again. Again. Again. Again. Only this time Darcy was with me. And my dad…I drove my fingernails into my thighs, willing myself to act. Mr. Nell was out there. My father was dead. And in seconds, we would be dead, too. It was time to move.
“Darcy, we have to go. Now,” I said through my teeth, shoving open my door.
She didn’t move. My feet hit the pavement, and I dashed around the car to her side.
Don’t look, I commanded myself, angling my gaze away from my father. I tore open the passenger-side door and yanked Darcy from the seat.
“Come on,” I urged, but Darcy just sat there, a horror-struck expression on her face.
“Darcy! We have to run, do you hear me?” I said, grasping her hands. “Run!”
Finally, my sister snapped to focus. She grasped my fingers, and together we sprinted toward the thicket of trees separating the southbound traffic from the northbound lanes.
“We have to get to the other side of the highway,” I told her through gasps for breath, a plan crystallizing in my brain. Our side of the highway was dead—but maybe there were cars going north. “We have to flag down a car.”
Darcy nodded, keeping pace with me step for step.
The woods pressed in thick around us. It wasn’t raining anymore, but fat droplets from the earlier downpour dripped off the leaves overhead, plopping onto my shoulders and hair. My breath was jagged in my chest. Branches tore at our skin, tattooing our flesh with angry red marks. I looked briefly behind us, and a tree branch snapped into my cheek. Instinctively, my hand went to my face. When I pulled it away, it was sticky with blood.
“Rory Miller,” a sickly familiar voice called. “Where did you go?”
The sound of footsteps thundered behind us, next to us, in front of us. They were everywhere and nowhere, bouncing off the trees with the same disembodied echo as the voice.
“Rory,” Darcy panted, her eyes wide. “What if he catches us?”
“He won’t!” I insisted.
I thought of my first cross-country race in fifth grade. Of my mom’s smiling face, already thinned out from the treatments, as she waited for me at the finish line. I’d slowed my steps as the final marker came into view, letting the person a few paces behind me pass me and pull away. I didn’t want the spotlight, even then. I wanted the shadows. I didn’t run to win. I ran to free my mind.
But now I had to win. We had to win. Because if we didn’t, if we didn’t get away, if we let fear take over, we would lose everything.
A huge tree loomed ahead, and Darcy broke her grip on my hand so we could run on either side of it. I sprinted forward, but when I reached out to take her hand once more, all I grabbed was air.