Night Sweats: A Novel by Beau Savage

Author:Beau Savage [Savage, Beau]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grim Heart Publishing
Published: 2024-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SIX

KYLIE

The woman, Barbara, tells her to run before vanishing back inside the attic, and all Kylie wants to do is scream ‘Where?’

She understands Barbara can’t follow. But Kylie is aimless and knows it. She looks around herself, at the surrounding trees, at the ten-foot drop to the ground below. She feels the lightest sprinkle of rain from the storm clouds overhead.

Behind her, something rattles onto the shingled roof. She turns and sees it—the screen from one of the upstairs windows, pushed out by her captor. He emerges there, clambering out one leg at a time.

With nowhere to go but down, Kylie goes to the roof’s edge. She sits, dangles her legs over, and like before lowers herself down from the ledge. The man’s footsteps hammer the roof, thumping madly in her direction. She glimpses him drawing upon her, a dark hulking shadow in the storm. She lets go.

The drop is fast, but it feels like she’s suspended for ages, her belly quivering with the fall. Her feet hit the dirt. She allows herself to fold, rolling back onto her butt, her back. She lays there for a moment, scattered and jarred from the impact. The man leans over the edge of the roof, peering down, once again unable to follow.

Kylie picks herself up. Standing between the property and the woods, she peers toward the clearing, the lake beyond. Then she peers into the trees, the darkness within them. Lightning strobes in the sky, fragmenting the woods into pillars of light and dark. With nowhere else to go, she bolts into the trees.

The dirt is hard but cool on the undersides of her feet. She runs aimlessly, dodging through the easiest gaps in the trees, over exposed roots, going as fast as she can, blind as can be. She chances a glance over her shoulder and sees nothing. No one in pursuit. Not yet, anyway.

Where am I going? she thinks.

What will become of Barbara, whom she’s left behind?

Kylie can’t think about that right now. Truth be told, she’s not entirely concerned about Barbara. She hasn’t the bandwidth to worry about such things, to worry outside herself at this moment. She runs hard, panting and gasping. Even after swimming across the lake, she’s still somehow got energy to burn, a second wind, perhaps. Maybe it’s adrenaline—her sheer will to survive, wherever the hell that came from.

She keeps going, with nothing but the night and the intermittent flash of lightning to show her the way.

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