The Ruin of Delicate Things by Beverley Lee

Author:Beverley Lee [Lee, Beverley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Delicate, the, of, Ruin, Things
Publisher: Amazon Corporate
Published: 2020-04-06T22:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-FOUR

Faye’s hip hit something solid and she yelped, a shooting pain vibrating along her spine. Her fingers scrabbled for grip but the porch roof slid underneath her grasping hands.

She slipped to the edge of the weather-worn tiles, legs swinging out into thin air. A glance towards her bedroom showed the spider creatures swarming on the sill, some already descending on silken threads that glinted like steel in the moonlight.

Faye ground her teeth together and let herself dangle over the porch. She let go. Her feet hit the ground in a bone-shaking jar that did nothing to ease the ache in her hip, but already her legs were stumbling down the garden path, the sunflower petals brushing against her hair.

She reached the gate and yanked it open, staggering out on to the patch of land before the forest. Wild-eyed and with a cold sweat prickling through her pores, Faye realised that she had nowhere safe to go.

Looking down the deserted track she prayed for a car, for Robert McCallum, even for Albert Jenkins, but nothing moved in this terrifying reality that had swallowed her whole. Everything everyone had told her came rushing back, the veiled warnings now crystal clear.

She had one choice and one choice only.

Sliding her phone from her pocket, she clicked on her torch and sprinted into the forest, gritting her teeth as the pain in her hip bit hard.

Everything looked different in the dark. The press of the trees seemed nearer, heavier, the pathway meandering in too many directions. But Faye knew the way. Knew where she was heading even though the thought of it was a pendulum blade, severing her sanity thread by thread.

She could feel its presence as she ran, its silent call as it pulled her forwards, until all that remained was the unstrung hammer of her heart against her ears and the bouncing pale beam of the phone, creating monstrous shapes out of fallen trees, leering faces alive in their bark. Tangles of undergrowth snatched at her feet, spindly branches caught in her hair, tearing strands out by the roots.

She refused to look back because none of that mattered anymore.

The stump of the lightning tree passed by in a blur and she veered right. A couple of times she fell to her knees over hidden tree roots, but always up on her feet in an instant, despite her lungs crying out for rest.

Something screeched above her, an ear-splitting sound, and Faye raised her head, catching a barn owl in soundless soar, its eyes as dark as ink against its pale plumage. On and on, past the tree where she had found the hapless rabbit, fear vibrating in her throat as her mind catapulted an image of herself caught in the trap, helpless and bleeding, as the spider creatures swarmed over her.

Her shoulder banged into something dangling from a low sprouting branch. A cold liquid splashed over her face and she shrieked, the sound eaten whole by the darkness.

On her lips a taste she knew. Sugar.

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