~Chapter one~ The Walk

"You know what… screw you", the man yelled as he smirked, slammed on the breaks, and watched as his passenger was thrown forward into their seatbelt screaming.
He wished he could do it again. Start the car and slam on the brakes. It felt good knowing that he had the power to decide if he wanted to let her walk out of this car alive, or tumble out dead.
Oh how he wanted to make her hurt, just to show her that he, for once, was the superior in this relationship… he could make her scream if it really came to that.
His face twisted into a dark smirk as he began musing all the things that he could do to her.
Dragging her lifeless body to grave in the middle of nowhere seemed to be a favourite.

It was drudging into the early minutes of midnight, and Tony and Rachel had been coming back from faking a happy marriage in front the family.

"Hey it's not my fault that you can't even drive us home without getting us lost" … continued the poor excuse for a civil human.
Rachel was a tall, thin brunet babe in Tony's eyes. Her lips were a full soft pink, and her eyes a hazel brown with apple green freckles. An image of true beauty to him, unfortunately, it was also an image that was quickly slaughtered when she opened her mouth. Tony still had no idea how he had gotten his first date with Rachel.
He wasn't outstandingly smart, passing all his subjects on a B-C average, and his looks were in no way the reason. He wasn't ugly, but most people don't rate a red haired, chocolate brown-eyed man as poster worthy.
Yet after three years of dating, Tony only knew one reason why he had married her!
His smirk quickly left his face as he realised that she was yet again complaining to his unresponsive shell of a body. Us. He shuttered as the word left her lip. The word it's self, when said by Rachel, made him want to kill something, anything. Hopefully her one day, he thought to himself.
As Tony tuned back into Rachel's screaming, he realised, that what he had been thinking, could no longer a fantasy, but would from now be a goal for him. It's like hunting illegally, he thought to himself, except if you get caught…the punishment is far worse. But he didn't plan to get caught.

"If I point out a sign that says, "town centre next left", Rachel spoke in a sickly sweet voice filled with poisoned innocence. Her whining now penetrated his skull, and fuck how it hurt.
"Why the hell would you take the next bloody right?"
Rachel's screaming had once again snapped him out of his dream world and back into his increasingly hated reality.
She knew why he took the next right. He couldn't help being dyslexic, yet Rachel seemed to think he could.
She loved using his weaknesses against him. To suck what little happiness he possessed out. Well, as usual, it had worked without a doubt.
"And guess what", she continued; "now we're lost in the middle of nowhere".
"Well", Tony breathed in a tone colder than the fog, which had begun to cover the road ahead of them. "If you know your way around so well…Then you can get the fuck out and walk home", he said firing up again.
Rachel looked as he'd just slapped her. Never had Tony actually done something to show that he had a backbone. He'd always put up with her and accepted the job as a human stress ball. But never had she expected him to say no more.
As she snapped out of surprise and back into reality, she said the only words that would come to her mind.
"If that's what'll make you happy" she whispered. The same words the she herself had trained Tony respond with, and as he heard this a flame of pure evil sparked behind his lifeless eyes.
Rachel herself was now questioning what she was doing as she edged herself towards the car door.

Tony's face remained still. No expression of surprise or even relief crossed his face…just one stare that forced their eyes to connect.
She couldn't stand his eyes on her any more. There was a glint in Tony's stare that looked like something a predator's eyes would contain before it stopped toying and snapped its prey's life line, causing it to hang limp and motionless.
Well whatever it is, Rachel thought, it makes me feel like I'm in a horror movie.
Forcing herself to break the connection, Rachel grabbed her things, slid out of the four-wheel drive and into the crisp night air.

As Tony watched her feet hit the gravel, he made a silent prayer that there would be the last place her body would stand…while it was alive anyway.

The wind toyed with her hair as she slammed the door and watched the car rev to life and speed away. He'd come back. She knew it. He couldn't stand a day without her.
Every one loves me. She thought to herself, and Tony is no exception.
She hugged her jacket tighter around herself, making sure that it covered as much of her waist as it possibly could. As she turned into the direction she had cried bloody murder was the correct way home, she looked down the moonlit road and finally realised how far away from home she really was. Breathing in the cold stale air, she lunged her weight forward and began to walk.
Listening to the gravel crunch beneath her feet, she began to go through the series of events that had led up to her walking home alone in the dark.
The family's party. The alcohol. Being caught with Tony's brother. There was no amount of alcohol that could help her forget tonight's drama. It had been both the most fun she'd had all year round, and the reason they started fighting that night.
If only Tony were that good with his hands, she thought to herself.
She wished she had someone with her right now. It didn't matter who, just someone to walk with.
As she continued listening to her footsteps on the gravel, she began to imagine a second pair walking behind her. In her mind, they belonged to a man that she didn't know, but she wanted to.
She shuddered. She couldn't feel the cold seeping in through the gaps in her jacket, and yet she was shaking because of that. She was more use to the cold than most people in England. No she was shaking due to fear. Not fear of the dark, but the fear of not knowing what was out there and fear of not knowing if there was something waiting in the woods.

The second pair of footsteps continues in their hypnotic rhythm.
The woods reached across the complete right side of the road like a giant body strangling the surrounding atmosphere. She began to wonder about them.
Why was there a complete forest to her right, and nothing but gravel and flat dying ground on her left?
Also, why were all the trees leaning away from the road? Was the forest trying to conceal what was hidden beneath its twisted limbs?
As she continued to walk, the second pair of footsteps she had been imagining began to speed up. The lonely clunk of her shoes continued and she suddenly stopped. She hadn't imagined the other person's footsteps speeding up. Come to think of it her imagination was shit. How was she making them sound so realistic?
Her blood went cold as she felt a warm breeze much like breathe on the back of her neck and a brush against her gloved hand.
Thousands of disturbing images raced through her head, she turned, not quite knowing what expect.
Her heart was pounding so hard that she could feel it inside her ears. It pounded with no mercy, and almost increasing as pain joined the game inside her head.
Listening to the gravel crackle together underneath her feet she pivoted. What she found behind her scared her more than any of the previously images that had ran through her head and caused her feel fear to the point of nausea.
Nothing.
Mocking herself for her foolishness, she turning to the front finding an entirely story. Her heart skipped a beat and then felt as if it had stopped cold. A small child had appeared from where she guessed could only have been the woods.
Had this been the big, "scary" secret that the forest had tried to hide from her?
The child coxed its head to the side and stared straight in to Rachel's eyes.
It was almost as if she had heard her thoughts, and was questioning them.
The child continued to stare making Rachel feel as if her eyes were examining her very soul and wrapping their pure blue colour around her like the waters during a storm.
As the thought of cold water crossed her mind, she shuddered.
The child's voice was like a wave of razors and ice water against her skin.
"Are you lost?" whispered the girl.
Why did she not speak up?
"Um… yeah I guess you could say that" Rachel replied. "Where are your parents?" She asked attempting to distract the girl from herself.
"Dead" the girl said shrugging as if she were reading from a checklist. "But they'll be here soon." She continued whispering again.
"I. I. I have to go" She stumbled over the words.
Her whole body was now contained in a steady shake and her chest began to tighten.
Feeling anything like that hadn't happened since she ran for six hours for a health charity.
She didn't know what trick this kid was pulling. But as far as she was concerned, it was working.
As she turned to leave, the child took her hand.
She quickly jerked it away as if she'd just had it stabbed and thrust it inside her jacket pocket.
The child's skin was almost colder than the wind that was racing around them.

No what was she thinking, it was far colder.
She looked back at the small child and noticed that the girl's eyes had changed colour. Instead of the pure sky blue, they now stood a dark black.
Possession? Rachel asked herself.
The child looked her dead in the eyes and smiled.
She'd seen kids smile before… but not like this! This was the smile a killer gave there victim before they took their final breath.
Finally she spoke in an almost sing song voice,
"They're here"
I wish she never spoke, thought Rachel.
Before she knew it, the atmosphere around her was filled with the sound of children singing. Gaining volume and speed as the wind around them grew with intensity. Then suddenly it died away without warning revealing a man standing to the left of the child shoulder. They both stood motionless staring through her as if she were glass in a shop window.

She hesitated then took a slow step back. Seeing no reaction she stepped back again pivoting, and ran. She must have gotten three steps away before she felt an arm wrap itself round her throat and around her waist, keeping her in an almost head lock stance.

His brown shaggy hair covered his eyes and brushed the side of her face as her brought her back towards himself.

"I love it when my prey runs" He whispered licking the underside of her ear, "but I prefer it when they scream".

Without warning his muscles flexed und she screamed as the sound of three broken ribs drilled into her mind. She saw red, then black, then nothing. She only felt and that she wished she couldn't. Pain ran through her veins like hot razors. Time seemed to go on forever, stopping only when what little blood she had left, run down her neck and wrists in freedom.

"I'll get you home" he whispered into her eyes dulled.
"He wanted this to be the last place you stood…while you were alive".
Her world was plunged into darkness and she welcomed the state of unconsciousness.