Notes:
Hey guys!
A huge thank you to nickaroos, MimiMiami, sailorjules and twilightstuff for your lovely comments on the previous chapter - I hope you like this one.
Chapter 11
"Shit, shit!" Esme breathed as she barrelled over the wet earth, feeling her pursuer like a shiver behind her.
She ran as fast as she could through the forest - her life depended upon it.
She'd had experience with panic attacks before, of course she had, (thank you, Charles), and each seemed more like real peril than the last. Except this time it was real.
This time she would die.
In the thick of the trees, the sun did very little to relieve the slipperiness of the rain and so Esme's boots slid over the ground, sweaty as her own clammy palms.
She scrambled through the undergrowth, slashing at branches with her hands but barely feeling the sting for her fear.
It was only when her foot pulled on a tree root and she felt pain rip through it that she gave a cry of torment, though still tried to run.
By the time her ankle buckled under her and she fell, Esme was crying in earnest and, panicked, she turned her head to face attack.
Nobody arrived.
"Wha…?" Esme whispered to herself.
The invisible eyes had vanished, there was no tingle down her spine. Her shadow was nowhere to be seen.
She would have breathed a short sigh of relief had something worse not happened.
There was a violent rustle in the trees and a snap which sounded like an tree being flattened.
The sound emanated from maybe a hundred yards from where she stood and was followed by a piercing howl made by an enormous pair of wolf lungs.
Dread washed over Esme, head to toe, like the seventh wave and she started to judder with a terror she had never felt outside of the Phoenix home.
A squeak escaped her as she tried to stumble to her feet, the right one trembling with injury.
The beast howled again, only for its hideous cry to be overlapped by another howl…to be overlapped by another…and another.
There were an entire pack of the things on the forest.
Before Esme could pass out with fear, there came a second noise, a worse one, like a hissing viper.
And that did it.
Whimpering, and not caring if any of the monsters heard her, Esme ran again, feeling her foot sting and crunch more and more with each desperate step.
"Help me, help me," she sobbed, like a child, as she tried to see the path ahead of her through her tears.
Esme's brain was so numb with adrenaline that it was mostly by chance that, at last she managed to break the tree line and end up somewhere at the end of her street.
Esme cried out loud with relief but carried on moving, agony buzzing like electricity up her right leg.
Feeling a little like the FBI, Esme rammed her weight against Charlie's front door after she had wept her way up the steps and all but sprawled into her home.
The door had opened freely, luckily unlocked, and Esme slammed it behind her. She dead-bolted it, realising then that one of the other two must be home.
"Charlie? Renée?" she called horsely.
She paused, breathing ragged as she decided what to do next, hoping against hope that the snake monster and the wolves hadn't seen where she had gone,
"Charlie?" Esme called, dragging herself down the hall with clenched teeth. "Renée?"
The silence was eerie.
"Charlie?" Esme repeated quietly, voice a small sob.
A draught hit Esme as she got to the kitchen. Her blood turned to lead in her veins.
They had found her.
They were already here.
The back door was open.
Shuffling herself backwards, Esme reached for the knife rack and pulled one of them out, feeling a harrowing familiarity in the need to protect herself. At least she could arm herself this time.
Slowly, slowly, Esme limped to the open door.
Taking a deep, and perhaps even her last, breath into her lungs, Esme stepped outside to see-
"RENÉE!" Esme sobbed, hobbling out to the woman who was knitting in one of the garden chairs.
"Esme?" Renée said, surprised, trying to turn her enormous mass to see her. "Is everything alr-… Oh Jesus!"
The creature that stood where Esme should have been was sobbing, streaked with mud and tears, clothes ripped and brandishing one of Renée's own filleting knives.
"You have to get inside!" Esme garbled staring wildly into the trees that served as a garden fence, where Esme could still hear the echoes of what had chased her.
She advanced upon Renée, who was more worried about the knife than any giant monsters.
"Esme drop the knife!" she said in a flurry of alarm.
"We need it!" Esme hissed, eyes darting across the trunks of the trees before yanking Renée up by the hand, (which was easier said than done seeing as she was so heavily pregnant), and dragging her friend towards the door.
"Now! Please!" she wept. "They're coming!"
"Esme…your foot!" Renée said in horror, eyes still trained on the knife in Esme's other hand.
Esme didn't care.
"Hurryhurryhurry!" Esme shouted.
She all but pushed Renée through the back door and slammed it shut, locking it with shaking hands. She then slid brokenly to the floor, crying.
"Esme!" Renée shrieked. "What the hell is going on?"
Esme just kept crying, great wracking sobs.
"Es, Essie," Renée said, kneeling uncomfortably and slowly beside Esme who's eyes looked unfocused. "What happened in there?"
Esme gave a juddering shake of her head.
"Esme, give that to me, okay?" Renée asked gently and almost cried with relief as she smaller woman's grip slackened on the knife handle so Renée could remove it.
"Thank you, Esme," she said softly. "Now Es, tell me what happened."
"W-wolves," she whispered in reply.
"Wolves?" Renée repeated.
"Wolves, huge wolves," Esme panted. "And a snake."
Renée peered out into the woods, hearing and seeing nothing. She pursed her lips.
"And they're following me," Esme said horsely. "They have been all week."
"Following you?"
"Yes!" Esme gasped. "Are they out there right now?"
She jabbed a shaking finger at the garden behind the door.
The empty garden.
"No…Esme they're not," Renée said, a note of hysteria in her own voice. "Snakes don't live anywhere near here and wolves would never come so close to town."
"They…they did," Esme said weakly as Renée turned to what she thought was the most pressing problem.
"Esme, we have to get that foot seen to," she said, voice rising an octave. "W-we have to take you to the hospital."
"No!" Esme shouted. "We can't go outside! They're waiting for me."
"Esme," Renée sighed sadly.
"You…you don't believe me, do you?" Esme breathed, horrified, as comprehension dawned. "You think I've lost it."
"No, I totally do believe you!" Renée lied, not knowing how to deal with Esme's episode and perhaps even a little afraid of her sister-in-law. "So you…saw a wolf?"
"No, I didn't see a wolf!" Esme snapped. "I heard loads of wolves…and a snake! I was chased by a…by a thing!"
Renée bit her lip. She looked fairly tearful too.
There was a moment of silence as Renée considered her companion.
"Esme, I don't know what to do," Renée confessed at last, sounding much younger than usual. "I don't know if I can look after you properly, like this."
She gestured to Esme hopelessly.
"I don't know how to help you. This is way beyond what the psychologist told us to expect."
"I'm not crazy!" Esme shouted, slamming her hand against the floor.
"Jesus," Renée said under her breath.
Esme's head fell into her little hands.
"Look, I think…maybe you need to see someone about this," Renée said slowly. "I'm serious. See a professional."
Esme started to shake her head. She was shivering.
"Esme?"
"At least…at least can you call Charlie?" Esme said in a small voice, peeking up at Renée. "And ask him to keep everyone out of the woods?"
She looked at Renée beseechingly.
"Renée, please just do this for me," Esme begged. "I can't bear the thought of anyone else getting hurt."
"Okay," Renée said, thinking that Charlie might know what to do about his sister now she'd gone psycho. "Es, you just take some deep breaths, alright? You're safe here and I'll get help."
Leaving Esme, wide-eyed, to quiver prettily like a little Victorian doll, Renée heaved herself to her feet and went into the living room to make her distress call.
"C'mon Charlie, pick up pick up pick up!" she chanted, crushing the phone to her forehead as after the twelfth ring it went to voicemail.
His mobile was the same.
"No answer?" Esme asked, worried, from her heap on the floor.
"No," she said. "He's probably on patrol."
Renée shuffled back into the kitchen.
"Es, we have to take you to the hospital," she said in her best 'mom voice'.
"No…" Esme moaned.
"Yes," Renée told her sternly. "And Dr Cullen or somebody can get you put back together."
Esme started to cry again.
Renée, who many would say drove like a maniac at the best of times, floored it to the hospital with her sobbing emergency. However, when they got there, it seemed pandemonium had already taken root.
The mystery of Charlie's not answering his phone was solved quite satisfactorily by the flock of police cars and ambulances littering the back entrance to the hospital.
The chief himself looked taut as he spoke to one of the medics, though his face twisted into surprise as his wife's car pulled up wonkily in one of the few free spaces nearby.
"Renée?" he called, as she struggled to raise herself and her bump out of the car.
Esme lunged forward to put the parking break on, which she had forgotten.
"Is it the baby?" he asked urgently.
"No, it's Esme," Renée whispered quickly. "She says she was chased by a wolf, like…something happened in the woods. I think she might be having another, y'know…"
Charlie's eyes widened and he dashed towards his sister.
"Esme!" he half-yelled. "Are you okay? Did you see what happened?"
Before Esme could answer, those close enough to overhear were swarming towards her.
"Chief's got a witness!" a nearby officer hollered.
"What happening?" Renée asked Charlie frantically, as Esme was removed from the car by a sea of people.
"Animal attack in the woods," he said grimly, as someone shone a light in Esme's popping eyes. "A bunch of kids. It was…"
He turned towards the ambulances, which hadn't in the end been needed.
"…It was a slaughter."