Tap Tap Tap

His fingers wouldn’t work.

When he got shirt and jacket pulled from the lump of his stuff sack and struggled into them, he realized he could have run naked from the waist up. His trembling fingers found his BVDs and he pulled them on just as the next thought came, I could have pulled on just pants, I didn’t need underwear

. Precious seconds that might make the difference?

He couldn’t get his pants on right, he was forcing both his legs into the same pant leg. He moaned and whimpered and cursed and got them on at last, but the zipper jammed and he left it unzipped.

Now the socks and boots, the most important part, fast fast fast. Scratchy, stiff wool over his bare feet, one foot, then the other. Boots now, just boots to go. Oh, hurry! Solid, comforting, musty leather. One foot slid in with a slumph

. Clumsy fingers could barely manage the lacing. Breath filling his ears. Other foot now, just one to go. Foot in.

A quick terrified glance around: he was still alone. Lace up the other shoe … the lace slipped over the top of the hook and he had to start again. Pull tight, oh God, lace, don’t break now, don’t choose just this moment. But it didn’t.

He staggered to his feet. Flashlight, that was the only other thing he had to have. He felt along the side of his pack … was the flashlight pocket on this side or that? Panting, he remembered one side had 3 pockets and one only two; the flashlight was in the middle pocket on the side with three. There, he found it.

But the pocket was unzipped, he’d left it unzipped

! You should never do that, and of course of course

the flashlight had fallen out.

He was going to have to run in the dark, wasn’t he? He felt around for the flashlight, hyperventilating in a frenzy of terror. He was aware of time dragging on; on some level he hoped the vampire would just come back and make a quick, clean end.

He’d put the flashlight in his pocket last night, that was where it was! He patted his pocket and felt the squarish lump.

He lurched to his feet; he had to

run now.

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The feeble light from the Durabeam was just strong enough to show him the trail. He had to press the sides to get a steady beam, otherwise it wobbled and dimmed.

Still he stood unmoving, breath coming in hitches, crying steadily.

Nobody in the world had ever been so utterly and finally alone. Staring up into the sky where the cold, baleful face of the moon was stuck in a feathering spine of branches, he poured an agony of hate at the only visible face of God he could see. Fuck you, fuck you, you terrible old bastard!

But God might be the only thing that would keep him alive now. If he wanted to live.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to live and that scared him so bad that he started moving.

Feeling only partially less naked without his pack, he lifted his heavily booted feet, lurching into the terrible unknown and cold. Even without the pack, his heels hurt like always, as if iron bars pressed into them. And he felt no surprise, only an angry surge of something like pleasure as a root hawked his foot out from under him and he fell in a heap. Of course, of course

.

But he had to push himself to his feet and keep going, aching now with a bruised shoulder and knee. Was he running away from the vampire or right to it? Was it gliding silently beside him? Full of dread, he looked to either side, just a quick darted glance, he needed to keep his eyes and his flashlight on the ground. Shifting shadows, dim trunks, a thousand places for a monster to stand unseen.

It was easiest if he kept his head down. If he lost the trail, he would never find it again.

It angled off to the right a bit. And downhill, that was right, wasn’t it? And what was that shadow ahead???

His heart slammed into his mouth again and he froze. The very trees seemed to whisper and reach out bony fingertips.

With desperation, he lifted the flashlight beam, cringing. But it really was just a man-shaped old trunk with outstretched arms that seemed to move in the shifting light. He hurried.

Just a few hours ago he could have known that no matter how scared he was, the shape in the shadows would really always turn out to be a tree or a squirrel or a fox or something. He could never think that again.

Even if he made it out of these woods, he would never feel safe again. For the rest of his life, anytime he heard a noise in the dark or saw a shadow across a darkened room, he would know that it really could be

a vampire. Or something worse.

Unless he could get indoors? A vampire couldn’t enter a house unless you invited it, that he knew for sure. He craved a home around him like a starving man craves food. Never safe, never safe, never ever again.

And once the illusion that the trees themselves were evil had started, it never stopped. Branches seemed to swipe at his eyes more often, the trees leaned into the trail, and always they tap-tap-tapped on his head, his arms, his shoulders…