There's Something Out There by P.J. Night

Author:P.J. Night
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Spotlight

Jenna started flipping the pages. Not that she wasn’t interested in the earliest days of Lewisville’s founding … but a pressing sense of urgency forced her to skip ahead. In the middle of the diary, she came to several blank pages, and her heart sank.

Had Imogen stopped writing in her diary before the attack?

Some force compelled Jenna to keep turning the blank pages, and then, nearly three-quarters of the way through the journal, she found another entry, written in a shaky, unstable script.

August 30, 1767

With good reason I have abandoned my diary for more than a fortnight now, and I have left the preceding pages blank so that I might, at some later date, record all that has happened in greater detail. For now, an abbreviated account must suffice. It pains me to commit these words to paper. I am unwell and advised not to exert myself. But if I do not write it, who will understand what has happened, when Papa has forbidden me to speak of it?

I erred grievously when I set off to pick wild blackberries in the woods. I thought I would make a pudding for Papa, as a surprise, but I should never have gone into the woods. I was warned. We all were. I should never have gone!

My ramblings took me off the path, through the thicket, and I was so preoccupied by the plump sweet berries that I—stupid!—did not realize how close I was to the forbidden Square, and I was not even quiet, but hummed to myself, and surely alerted the creature to my presence. I must have lost all track of the hour as I suddenly realized it was later than I expected, and night was fast approaching.

I heard the scratching first, and stopped, fearing a bear.

I wish it had just been a bear, for well-fed bears are fat and lazy by the time the hottest days of August arrive, sated on all the bounty of the forest. A bear would not have troubled me so.

A chill of fear gripped my body and I stopped my humming, gathered my shawl around my shoulders, and made haste to return to the settlement. I know now that my fate was already sealed, and at that moment the creature was already watching me from the shadows.

The blow was so swift and so unexpected that I was knocked quite senseless and found myself sprawled on my back, most undignified, staring up through the gloomy pines at a darkening sky. My head was bleeding; I could feel the hot, sticky blood oozing over my left eye. Oh, WHY had I strayed from the path?

Then it appeared over me, the Beast, and so frightful that I cannot bear to write of it. It lifted one of its stumpy arms so that the claw, oh, the fearsome claws, glinted in the moonlight, sharp like knives, and one of them cut through my leg with such searing pain that I could not even cry out. I knew then that it would kill me and eat me.

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