by C. J. Anaya
Chapter Three
I quickly turned around and glanced behind me. The hospital lights were blazing from within, and there was quite a bit of activity visible. No one other than medical personnel was within walking distance from where I was standing, and yet I was certain that someone was shadowing me. It was completely different from the feelings I’d experienced over the last two weeks. I wondered if the creepy presence I felt was coming from a hospital room window.
The fog rolling in muted the lights from the hospital, making them and everything else look smoky and a bit out of focus. It was definitely upping the creep factor.
I turned around and continued on my way, counting the cracks in the sidewalk as I had since I was a little girl. I was fairly certain I had those cracks memorized. I told myself this was slightly less pathetic than my intense dislike of social outings and my virgin lips status. Two blocks later, and I had almost managed to distract myself from my own irrational suspicions.
Then I heard the footsteps.
For every step I took I could have sworn another person was taking one behind me. The footsteps were soft though, almost padded it seemed, and stealthy. I decided taking time to look behind me was probably a bad idea. My best friend Angie had made me sit through enough horror movies to know that when the girl turns around to see who is following her, no one is there, and when she turns back she smacks right into the very thing she’s running from.
So I kept my focus straight ahead as I began jogging across the street and onto the next block. The footsteps kept pace with my light jogging.
That’s when I began to freak out a bit.
I took deep breaths and continued on, wondering if it was such a good idea to lead the psychopath to my doorstep. I mean, my father wouldn’t be home for another hour. I should have been running to Angie’s house.
I was only two houses away when I felt something hit my feet, causing me to lose my balance and slam roughly to the sidewalk. A hot wind brushed past my face as I went down, my hands and knees taking the brunt of my weight. I barely registered the pain it caused due to the loud explosion that ripped through the silence of the night. I looked up in time to see the tree ahead of me explode into a brilliant blaze of fire.
What the he-
Footsteps rushed up behind me, and I forced myself to my feet, turning in time to see…a cat.
No, wait.A cat?
The cat skidded to a halt, turned around and made a mad dash back the way it had come. I couldn’t believe a cat had made all that noise, and it certainly hadn’t lit a tree on fire. I looked around the street to see if there was anyone else in the area. Hadn’t anyone heard the explosion? My neighbors were old, but they weren’t deaf. Not yet, anyway. I looked at the tree blazing a few feet in front of me. For a minute I stared at it, mesmerized, knowing that the bright orange flames licking the sides of the tree would have been consuming me if I hadn’t tripped on...what had I tripped on?
I bent my head down and searched for the hard object that had bruised me while simultaneously saving my life.
A tree branch. It was thick and long, at least two feet. There was no way I wouldn’t have noticed it on the sidewalk if it had been there in front of me. No, someone had definitely thrown it at my legs, but whether it was to help me or hurt me I simply didn’t know.
And what was up with the flame thrower? What idiot was running around chasing teenagers with fire balls?
I tore my gaze away from the flaming tree and made it to my front porch without further incident. I turned around and began scanning the neighborhood again which was probably a stupid thing to do. Someone had just attacked me. I should have been running inside the house, hiding under my bed and dialing 911 on my cell.
I hadn’t really expected to see anyone sticking around after that noisy explosion, so imagine my surprise when I actually saw someone standing in the shadows of the house across the street from me. I immediately felt a strange kind of magnetic pull and caught myself taking a step toward the stranger. The creaking of my porch step snapped me out of my strange trance long enough to make me realize what I was doing.
Mind racing, I whirled around, opened my front door and slammed it behind me. I leaned against the door and wondered if the events of the last ten minutes had really even happened. I could explain away the footsteps and the figure standing in the shadows. After all, I wasn’t the only one living in the area. I could even talk myself into believing that the tree branch I had tripped over really had been there before, and I had just been clumsy while escaping danger. What I thought was danger, anyway.
Okay, so how do I explain away the exploding tree?
Yeah, I had nothing. Another thing that was hard to wrap my brain around was the way that cat had looked as it ran away from me. I was pretty sure my feline stalker was wearing two tails.
