The Bachelorette Party by M. I. Hattersley

Author:M. I. Hattersley [Hattersley, M. I.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

Jess spoke first, her usually wavering voice now stern and resolute. “That’s it!” she said, finding her legs at the same time, and backing out of the clearing. “We need to get out of here.”

“Wait!” Chloe called after her. “We should stay together.”

But Jess was already on the move. Leaving the macabre wedding dress hanging in the clearing the others chased after her, pushing through the tangled undergrowth as it lashed at their legs and low branches scratched at their cheeks and foreheads.

It was Alison who reached her first, grabbing her friend’s arm to halt her frantic escape. “Jessica! Wait!” she snapped. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“I’m walking into town,” Jess replied, her eyes wild with emotion as she took in all three women. “Or at least until I find a main road and get a signal on my cell.”

“And who are you planning to call?” Keren asked.

The question seemed to faze Jess momentarily. She stepped back and shook her head. “Well…the cops.”

“The cops!” Alison repeated, a faint smirk playing across her face now as she looked at Chloe. “And tell them…what, exactly?”

“That we just saw… That there’s a…” Jess pointed back the way they’d come, into the clearing, at the hanging dress. “It’s not normal…. It’s….” She trailed off and wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand, leaving dirty smears on her cheeks. “Fuck! I just want to go home!”

Alison pulled Jess into a comforting embrace. “I get it, hon. It’s terrifying. I have no idea why that dress was placed there but I do not like it - at all.” She held Jess at arm’s length to look her in the face. “But you can’t go marching off on your own like that. You could’ve gotten lost.”

“She’s right,” Chloe patted the trembling Jess on the shoulder. “We’re all shaken up by what we just saw, but we need to stick together while we work out what to do. It also doesn’t mean Jerry is going to harm any of us. He’s a strange old man with even stranger…interests, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to hurt any of us.” She thought of the newspaper clippings in Jerry’s cabin, of what he’d said to her about the poor dead hiker and the land developer. He was certainly a paranoid person, perhaps with an axe to grind against those who’d tried to ruin him, but that didn’t make him a deranged killer.

Did it?

“We need to call a mechanic, at least,” Jess said, her tone leveling out as the adrenaline subsided.

“I’d say we need to get out of these damned woods first,” Keren sneered, stepping past them. “Get back to the cabin and lock ourselves inside until Chloe’s boyfriend arrives.”

“Hey, he’s not my…” Chloe started but stopped herself as Keren strode off through the trees.

And didn’t we just stress the importance of staying together?

The earlier buoyant mood of the group was now fracturing into fear and bitchiness once again. Paranoia and self-perseveration taking over. It was understandable, perhaps, but it certainly wasn’t helpful.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.