The Beast on the Tracks by Amy Cross

Author:Amy Cross [Cross, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-22T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty

Milly

“Hello?” Debs shouts again, as she continues to hammer her right fist against the door. “Is anyone home? We're lost and we need help!”

“There's some kind of lantern in there,” I say as I spot what seems to be an old-fashioned gas lamp on the other side of the window. I lean closer, but the light from the lantern makes it impossible for me to see too much of the cabin's interior. “I don't know how long these things last, exactly, but I'm pretty sure that someone must either be here right now, or they're close.”

“Hello?” Debs bangs on the door again, before letting out a frustrated grunt. “Well, either they're not here or they're being incredibly rude.”

“Should we be here at all?” Richard asks cautiously. “I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting a really weird vibe from this place.”

“A cabin in the middle of the forest, that wasn't here before,” I whisper, as I take a step back and try to make sense of this mess. “Or at least, one that I didn't see before, like it was being hidden.” Looking up at the cabin's roof, I see a chimney poking out at one end, and after a few seconds I begin to realize that maybe I was wrong to describe this place as a cabin at all. “It's more like a cottage.”

“The door opens,” Debs says.

I turn just as she pulls the door wide open and steps inside.

“Hey!” I call out. “Maybe you shouldn't do that!”

“Why not?” She turns to me. “This is an emergency, right? If I had a shitty little house in the forest and someone needed it while I was away, I wouldn't mind. I've got no signal on my phone out here. Maybe these people have a landline.”

She steps into the cottage, and after a moment Richard comes over to stand next to me.

“You look shocked,” he says, keeping his voice low. “Is it safe to say that this place has come as something of a surprise?”

“I've walked past here a thousand times,” I reply, as the slow sense of dread continues to twist and turn in my chest, “and there was no cottage. I thought I knew this entire forest, down to the nearest tree, but now I'm starting to think that maybe I only knew what I was being allowed to know.”

“You sound like you think someone's trying to fool you,” he suggests cautiously.

“Someone,” I reply, my mind still racing as I try to come up with an explanation. “Or something.”

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