BooksBarbecue
Back Gallows Hill Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45

She’d heard no car motors, though, and it was a long walk to anywhere of significance. The employee accommodations were the closest buildings she’d seen, and even they were a hike away.

But that still didn’t mean she’d actually seen something at the stair’s base.

She tried to make herself move, to take even one step forward, but her body had locked up. Flight or fight, her psychology roommate would have said, except she’d entered the third possible state: freeze. Her mouth opened in a bare-toothed grin that didn’t extend to her eyes. She was being ridiculous. Her light didn’t reach far enough to show her the stairwell’s base, but there couldn’t be a person standing there. There just couldn’t.

And yet she still could not step forward.

Just go. Do it quickly. Run for the door and worry about everything else after you’ve reached it.

Her leg muscles ached from how tightly they were locked in place.

A horrible sense developed: that her focus was fixed on the wrong area. That, while she was staring down the fading stairwell and into the pit of darkness below, something was emerging from the glut of darkness behind. Inching out of the shadows at her back, moving on silent feet, its unblinking eyes fixed on the back of her head as she stood ignorant at the top of a pit that would drag her down to certain death should she be tipped forward.

She couldn’t breathe any longer. She wanted to turn, to confront the darkness behind her, but the faster her heart pounded, the tighter her muscles clenched. She couldn’t even take her eyes off the space below. In her peripheral vision, she saw her phone’s battery hit 4 percent.

The bells started ringing again.

Harsh, clattering tones rushed around her as rusted metal beat out a warning. There was no longer just one but a dozen, chiming from every corner in the house simultaneously—inside rooms, along hallways, ahead and behind and below. The sound assaulted her ears, the clashing peals dizzying.

But it broke the spell. Margot lurched forward, her sneakers hitting each step with a heavy thud as she raced for the ground floor. Her light jarred with each bound, no longer fixed steadily on the stairwell but glancing across the walls, the steps, the ceiling, and occasionally flashing in Margot’s eyes and blinding her.

She hit the ground hard, sliding on the old floor, before catching herself on the wall.

The bells were louder. She tried to place them, but there were too many, coming from every direction, and she no longer knew where she was in the house.