Sarah was running for her life.

She’d never thought she would genuinely be in this position, but as she raced through the woods, the severity couldn’t be more apparent to her. She had no idea where she was and no way to see where she was going, the moon barely providing enough light for her to see where the trees were in time to avoid running straight into them. Alex and Taylor were somewhere behind her, far enough to not quite see her but close enough that she could hear their footsteps clearly, the sounds of dead wood and plant matter breaking with the regularity of a running pace.

She was fearing for her life.

She knew that if they caught her, that was it. They’d kill her and drag her body back to Brad, to show her off to get a better job or fix a failing grade. To turn back or slow down meant death, dismemberment, whatever they deemed necessary. So she ran further into the woods, where the trees began to grow thicker, the moonlight consumed by the deepening leaves.

There had to be an escape. No part of town stretched past the forest, not in the direction she was running. It was a dead end that stretched on forever, full of animal dens and shallow graves. If she kept running, she’d be caught once the trees got too thick to run past, or get lost and never be found. She had to stop, but she couldn’t be caught, and her window to stop was shrinking.

Sarah wasn’t thinking. The branches whipping against her raincoat, the burning in her throat as she gasped for breath, they barely registered as she kept running. She knew that she had to stop and escape or hide the same way she knew she was being chased; a pounding at the back of her skull, blaring at her mind without words or conscious processing. Her heart pounding in her chest, up her throat, and behind her eyes as she ran, frantically looking around for a solution without truly seeing anything.

She dared to glance back over her shoulder, and saw the scratched, stark outline of a cleaver catching one of the moonbeans breaking through the treetops, one of an increasingly smaller number. A gasp escaped her, stealing more breath than she had to spare, and she began running even harder as she looked back to the yet darker woods ahead.

They were in too deep. She had mostly gone in a straight line this far, trying to use the fact the woods didn’t have any landmarks somewhere in the adrenaline, but it was getting too far. She couldn’t see the roots in her path anymore, and every few trees that she passed would be too close for her to go between and she would have to dart around, stumbling over rocks and the ground’s uneven surface. She had to go back, before it all went black while she was still alive.

Her foot landed on a fallen branch and it didn’t snap, rolling away underneath her step. Sarah fell forward into the ground, catching herself with sore hands and scrambling to press herself into a nook where the trunks of two trees met. The raincoat rustled against the bark and she clamped her mouth shut, desperately trying to catch her breath without giving herself away. Alex and Taylor’s footsteps got closer and closer, slowing from a sprint to jog as they got closer. One of them was panting hard, but the other was constantly shuffling around, making far more noise in the debris filled dirt.

“She–can’t be further,” Taylor gasped out. “It’s getting too thick. We’ve just lost sight of her.”

Alex grumbled something she couldn’t make out, drowned by the rapid movements and his own exhaustion. “Yeah,” Taylor replied. “She can’t go that far. We’ll just run her down and bring her back. Even if she gets lost, we’ll…whatever. Who gives a fuck. We’ll find her.”

They never stopped moving, the jog breaking back into a run as they continued on past her towards the deepening woods. Sarah waited, hearing them fade and stiffening as their shadows passed by her from meters away, shifting deep gray visible against the deep black accented by pale skin and gleams of metal. They grew distant, dwarfed by the sinking shadows, and Sarah slowly peeled herself off the tree and began running back in the opposite direction.

It felt more lucid this time around, without them following behind her. She had to get back, to find out what could possibly be going on to make Brad think this plan would happen. She had to find out, now that she had come this far.

She hadn’t gone more than a handful of steps before she heard one of them shout something from behind her, and knew exactly what they were saying.

Her legs burned, every movement needing more effort than the last, but she kept running towards the light, weaving around trees to try and break the line of sight. She could feel herself faltering with each step, but forced herself to maintain speed as she ran for what she thought was safety.

She was still between a rock and a hard place. She had faith in Michael, but she didn’t know if the cops had caught him or if Brad would still be waiting for her, and Taylor and Alex were still close behind her. They would keep chasing her, even if Brad had stopped. She needed an escape that would actually keep them away from her.

A tree sat in her path, wide and full of branches to the point where she had given in a very far berth on her first time through. She darted around it and threw herself onto the branches, scrambling her way up the tree as fast as she could. The smaller twigs poking off it broke off as she climbed, trying to give away as few glimpses of herself as possible, and she reached down to snap a few off in her hands and threw them as hard as she could, creating some distraction of motion in the distance. She climbed, wrapping herself around a thicker branch and taking slow breaths, holding as still as she could.

Taylor and Alex ran past her and slowed, Alex bent over and pressing his free hand to a tree. He was groaning, his chest heaving with every breath, but Taylor was constantly spinning around with a manic energy, as if hunting for something. She was muttering something under her breath, the cleaver clutched so tightly in her hand that it was shaking.

They had missed her. They weren’t looking up at her, and weren’t likely to. That was the one thing she had known before Michael had begun teaching her, that nobody ever looked up, and she was holding to the hope that they wouldn’t be looking up. They didn’t see her.

She had them. This was her chance. They were unaware, not paying attention. Even if they kept on going past her and looking for her, she could sneak up on them. If she wanted the answers, then she could make her move.

Sarah slowly, as slowly as she could, reached into her coat and wrapped her fingers around the handle of the push dagger. Brad hadn’t noticed her tucking it back into her coat, as trapped and pinned as she had been, and she felt the metal on her fingers freezing in the sunless cold.

She wanted answers. She wanted to know what’s Brad’s plan was. And now she did, but the questions were still burning a hole in her head. She had to know more. She had to know what Michael meant, what Brad planned, what it all meant. The truth of Ravenville was so close.

It was just on the other side of the two kids beneath her.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Sarah took a deep breath, keeping her gaze fixed on Alex and Taylor. It wouldn’t…be hard. They were right there. Oblivious and tired. She’d had more time to catch her breath than they had, had the opportunities to figure out where she was and establish the setting. She had the advantage. She was watching their backs.

She wanted the answers. She would get them.

Her hand trembled.

This had to be the way out. This had to be the shot. The answers she had wanted for so, so long, they were right there and so close to her grasp. She could reach it. It would take something cruel, something violent, but she could reach it.

Her hand trembled.

They were arguing now, below her, about where she could have gone and where to pursue her. They weren’t paying attention. If she wanted to find out why Brad planned out what he did, she had to get them. They wouldn’t know. They were only minions. They probably didn’t even care about the plan once they heard that there was the chance to kill people, especially Michael. They had to die if she wanted to know more.

She wanted to know more.

The metal was heavy in her hand.

That was how she had gotten into this. She was hiding in a tree and had spent the entire night running, hiding, or scared because she had wanted to know more. She had gone looking for truth and it had put her right in death’s way.

She had bit her tongue and played by Ravenville’s rules, and she had ended up where those rules were meant to go.

Her truths were so close. If she wanted to reach out to it, she could. Through a wall of flesh and bone and blood. The forest was dark, but the moonlight shone down on her through the barest gap in the treetops, and she saw the cuts in her sweater, the nicks through her gloves. She could see the dark spots on her sleeves where her own blood had splashed down at some point.

She hadn’t even felt it.

She could see them so clearly. Slowly creeping forwards, so certain she was hiding on the ground around them. They were hunting for her, and going in the complete wrong direction. Oblivious. Unseeing. They would never see her coming.

But they could. Brad hadn’t seen her coming, but he’d still seen her. They didn’t need to not be surprised to be able to fight back. Just because she might have the upper hand didn’t mean she would be set for the entire time.

Matthew had seen her coming. He had wanted to get his answers. And that had killed him.

She wanted to find the truth. She wanted to live to leave Ravenville.

Wanting to find the truth had gotten her there, in the tree, holding her breath and her dagger.

Taylor swatted at Alex’s arm, pointing at something in the distance. He shrugged, mumbled something about foxes that earned him another swat. Any movement out in the woods was hard to see so late at night. They were looking for her. They wanted to kill her.

She let go of the dagger, letting it fall into her pocket.

The truth was important. She’d promised herself that she’d find it before leaving Ravenville. But she needed to be alive to leave.

Sarah wasn’t going to fall for this. She wasn’t going to give the violence anything more than it had already taken from her. If that was what it took for her to find her answer, then she’d leave without it.

She wanted to get out of Ravenville.

She wanted to live.

Taylor began running ahead, and Alex slowly trudged after her. Sarah felt the window slipping away from her, and let it, returning her hand to where it was holding her to the branch. She would wait. She’d wait them out, and the cops, and go back to the site, or just stumble her way back home. If Michael hadn’t survived, she would just call the cops. She hadn’t done anything wrong. The carjacking was minor, and they’d probably understand. She would survive the night, and come out okay.

Glimmers of light broke through the darkness in the distance, casting silhouettes of craggy trunks and the dead things that dropped from them. A siren flashed past them, alternating red and blue. It was the first color that Sarah had seen in hours, unaltered by the low light. Taylor yelled something and began running back, deeper into the woods, and Sarah turned to press her face into the bark as a cloud covered the moon and the forest was shrouded in darkness.

She heard the two of them run past her, and the pounding footsteps of multiple police officers not long after. A single eye peered over her shoulder, tracking the lights, but none went high enough up to see her. A chorus of unintelligible shouts echoed off of the wood, andSarah watched as the flashlights turned back towards the safer parts, the police marching into view and escorting a cuffed Alex and Taylor.

“You’ll find them!” Taylor shouted. “Just–just that way! It’s Michael Jay and his little friend, they’re going to be surrounded by bodies! If you dig them up, you’ll find so many people, he did all of it!”

“She’s right, you know,” Alex muttered in a sing-song voice. “We can give you soooooooooo much.”

None of the officer responded, one of them just shoving Alex in the shoulder and urging them forward. Taylor kept yelling as the lights grew distant again. “There’s names you probably didn’t even know went missing! You could solve dozens of cases! Dozens! There’s so many little clues and–and hints! They’re everywhere! We can give you so many clues!”

Her entreaties faded into confusing shouts and then into mere noise, outside of Sarah’s earshot from up in the tree. She didn’t hear anything, and while the sirens remained in place, no more officers entered the woods. It was empty, apart from her.

She shuffled over to sit on the branch, looking out over what little bit of the woods that was empty. In all likelihood, she had just lost her chance at finding out what any of what Brad and Michael were talking about had meant. But she was okay with that. She was alive. It had been closer, so close, to her becoming the reason that she wanted to leave Ravenville so badly. So close to her falling in and then realizing that she couldn’t leave, that she had bought in too much and couldn’t stake herself on anything else. She didn’t want that. She wanted to leave Ravenville, and even if she left with questions, as long as she left, she was happy.

That didn’t mean she didn’t want answers.

She just wouldn’t sell herself out to do it.

In the future, maybe she could leave the payback jobs to Michael. This had opened up a rabbit hole that, ultimately, seemed to have some pretty bad results.

A flicker of movement caught her attention, and she jerked her head around to see somebody emerging from the darkness. She hadn’t even seen them approach, veiled by a level of skill she certainly hadn’t factored in. It couldn’t have been a fast pursuit. Maybe Brad had tried to sneak up on her.

“Sarah,” they whispered.

She sighed. “Michael. Are you okay?”

He stepped into the light, and she saw the large tear in his hoodie, slowly shifting with dripping blood down from his shoulder to his sternum. “He hit me. But I’m okay. I hurt him worse.”

“Is he alive?”

Michael nodded. “He took the SUV. I didn’t see where he went, but I stopped him from getting into his car. He took the keys.”

She paused. “He took the SUV?”

“Just in time to avoid the police.”

Sarah took a slow breath, calm for the first time in a long time that night.

“Do you know how to get back to town from here?”

He nodded again. “I know shortcuts. You want to go home?”

She shook her head.

Survival was prime. But truth wasn’t gone.

“I want to know where he’s going.”