Silent Footfall (part 2)https://writeyouwriteme.com/short-stories/the-hidden-sanctuary-part-2/
Galvanized by fear, her manic screams sending the nesting birds out of the trees into flight, she pelted down the track dragging Chalkie after her.
She couldn’t be sure but she thought the forest path followed a loop back on to the main road. Idiotic thoughts pumped through her mind. Had she remembered to take her medication this morning? Max usually brought it in to her with a cup of coffee before he went to work “But Max is in Belfast and you are in a forest in Tyrone,” she screamed out as she fell headlong over a stump of a tree.” He can’t help you now,” she sobbed. The smell of dry leaves and the taste of earth assailed her senses.
Memories washed over her like angry waves over sand. She’d hidden in the thickest overgrowth she could find, her arms scratched and bleeding from the thorny fingers that reached into her hiding place. But the chase only seems to excite him more. “And he always found me,” she whispered.
A rasping sound filtered through the blood pumping in her ears. Chalkie’s eyes were rolling in his head; his tongue lolling out of the corner of his mouth. In her panic she’d forgotten she had the dog on a choker. She grabbed him into her arms. She could feel his long trailing legs beating against her hip and the back as she ran blindly on. Finally, she staggered out of the forest.
On the bend of the road the house’s windows gazed at her dispassionately. Somehow, her feet had brought her to the house. She leaned against its perimeter wall too exhausted and freaked out to run anymore. Gasping, she tried to draw air into her burning lungs. Stumbling through the wooden gate she dropped to her knees. Kneeling in the long grass and tangled weeds, she let Chalkie roll out of her numb arms. Shakily she got up and hammered repeatedly on the brass knocker. What would be said or left unsaid about this house was of no consequences now. Her sole concern was for her beloved Chalkie.
Shakily she looked at his motionless body almost invisible in the overgrown front garden. Once it had been a blaze of summer colour, she thought foolishly. Was Chalkie dead? Had he been drawing his last breath as she released him from the leash? She had choked her protector to death as surely as if she had placed a hangman’s noose around his neck. She had killed him.
She balled her firsts and pummeled the brown wood of the front door. “Let me in,” she screamed. There was no response. Frantically she cupped her hands over the curtainless windows and gazed in at the familiar wooden floored room. At one end was a black iron fireplace with a rusting firebox as if it was waiting for someone to come in and set a fire in the grate. “Too posh and successful to live in the old house now,” she roared all sense of caution gone.
A set of thick black wires below the upstairs windows made their way around the house. Had they always been there? Not something a city child on holiday would notice, she thought. Were the electricity wire? Could one of them be a phone connection?
She cursed the fear that had made her drop her phone. Why hadn’t she held her courage and searched around for it. That was always your problem, her inner voice mocked her. .She leaned over Chalkie’s still body. She thought there was a faint dribble of moisture on his whiskers, as if he had breathed again.
A sob caught her throat. She backed away. She’d find a way to help him. She wasn’t a killer. This old house had a well. She spun around and hurried around its white washed corner. She was surprised to see that the grass on this side of the house was cut down. Swathes of it were stacked in rows. “Like little sun worshippers,” she murmured. Her skin prickled and she knew without being told that this house was still a place of danger. She’d get a drink for her dog and get out. Whatever this house and its owners were about it would no longer be any part of her.
The thought was so mind blowing it still her step.
She was finally free of her past. Yet, for some reason the phase ‘the silent footfall’ a phase she had read somewhere crowded into her mind. She shook her head as if to dislodge it. She’d never be free of this house. Already she could feel it drawing her in…
Gemma Hill 2014 ©
Part 3 will be posted Wed 20.08.14
Gemma Hill Writeyou Writeme 