The Slaughter Man by Cassandra Parkin

Author:Cassandra Parkin [Parkin, Cassandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror
Goodreads: 45427696
Publisher: Legend Press
Published: 2019-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She’s in the woods, and she knows she’s dreaming because although it’s night and she doesn’t have her phone with her to use as a torch, she can still see. The trees open out in front of her like a strange corridor, and her feet skim over the ground without effort.

“I’m so glad you’re here.” Laurel is beside her, her face pale and her white nightgown stained with blood. “Please don’t leave me. We have to hurry.”

Where are we going? She can’t speak, but Laurel is her identical twin, and in this dream, they share all their thoughts and feelings. Willow’s chest aches where the autopsy saw opened Laurel up for inspection. The pain’s gone on for so long that she’s learned to live with it, but now it comes back to her, a brutal white flare that stops her breath and freezes her in her tracks. She’s afraid to look down at her own chest in case she sees the same wound.

This is a dream, Willow reminds herself. You never saw what they did. She was dressed when you saw her, they dressed her. You only know about the autopsy because you heard the funeral director talking to Mum about it. You don’t know how it happened. But she knows, of course she does. She’s seen a million autopsies performed on TV, the Y-shaped incision and the slow peel of skin just a part of the grammar of the entertainment landscape, so routine she used to look away and check her phone. It’s so familiar that by now she could probably do one herself.

“We’re going to see him,” Laurel says. “He can help us.”

Instantly her feet grow slow and reluctant, but Laurel takes her arm and urges her on. At the fork in the path, Willow tries to turn down the track to the farmhouse, but Laurel shakes her head and pulls her on.

“That’s the wrong way,” she says. “They’re nice, but they can’t help.”

And Laurel’s right, because when Willow takes a step onto the path, it’s like wading through deep water and quicksand, and Laurel is pulling at her arm and her chest hurts so much that she can’t stand it. She follows Laurel, taking the path towards the Slaughter Man.

“Look,” Laurel says.

The signs on the trees have been joined by the butchered head of a deer, flayed and eyeless and terrible, hung on its own nail at head-height so it appears to be watching for their arrival. Willow can smell it, a sweetly rotting smell that turns her stomach.

No, she tells herself. This is a dream. I don’t have to let anything happen that I don’t want. I’m dreaming. I can’t smell anything. She wants to will the deer head away too, but she only has a certain amount of control here, and that terrible pink-and-white face continues to stare at her, muzzle thrust forward, flat thick teeth exposed. Laurel lifts the barbed wire and Willow ducks beneath it. She wonders if Laurel is going to

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