Bludnička

When half of his face enters the moonlight, the other still in shadow, he looks confused. Scared, even.

She sees herself in him before the fear is cast away as easily as a pebble. Surprise, now that he's noticed her.

“Oh.”

She meets his eyes for a bare second before casting her gaze down upon the warm forest floor, where her toes sink into the moss. She frees them every few seconds or so, a silent dance.

“I’m sorry, I saw a light – what are you doing here, I mean, uhm, are you okay?” He looks around, as if looking for an explanation: a companion who will emerge from the treeline, a dog who’s run off for a stick. But there is nothing but her, and when she looks at him, all distrust and fear, he raises his palms up, as if he could ward off any suspicion with those two large, white-lit, clean hands.

How clean, exactly? She looks for smudges, blisters, scars.

“I got lost,” she says simply. It is the truth: not long ago and too long ago, and now here she is, wandering in circles and brushing pine out of her hair with her fingers.

He nods, once to acknowledge her words, twice to empathise, thrice to agree. “Me too.” He scratches his chin, his eyes searching the small meadow again before settling on her.

And there it is now: those hairs raised on her arms, that stiffness in her bones, as if hardening in preparation for a blow. Her feet are itching to move far, far away.

Her face, her white dress that falls from her shoulders down to her ankles, her toes brown from the soil – he inspects it all in one sweeping look, as if she were oh so easy to take in and understand. All he needs is a second that stretches into eternity.

“You’re all alone out here?” he asks, and is it something low and guttural that could hide behind his words? Is there a rough secret in the smoothness?

“I’m not alone,” she says in an unconvincing voice.

He raises an eyebrow.

“My friends are just over that hill, near the river.” She points above the treeline.

“Well,” he says, “let’s go find them together?” It sounds like a suggestion, not an order; it sounds like he is giving her a way out.

But there is no way out tonight.

She leads him through the trees and feels his eyes on the back of her neck, like a doe does an archer. The blood in her ears pounds not safe, not safe, not safe.

“Why aren’t you wearing any shoes?”

“What’s with the dress? Have you run off from some kind of medieval fest?”

“Ouch! Is this really the way you came? I mean, this isn’t a path. Jesus, these branches are something, huh?”

“How long until we're there? My girlfriend’s waiting for me at the trailer park; I went for a walk and got lost, can you believe it? I’ve never gotten lost before. It’s kind of exciting when you think about it. Scary, though. There could be ghosts.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

 “You don’t talk much, do you?”

She leads him down a hill. “What is your girlfriend’s name?”

“Klara. Hey, what’s yours? I forgot to ask.”

“That’s funny. I’m Klara, too.” She looks at him over her shoulder and watches his lips spread into a white grin, like a wolf baring his teeth. “Well, Klara. It’s nice to meet you.”

She stops then. He is so caught off guard by it that he almost bumps into her.

She takes a step toward him. He does not move.

She looks up into his eyes, her own widened and fearful and inviting. He frowns.

A hand on her arm, firm like stone; a single breath knocked out of her chest as her back meets the ground; a silence rushing through her ears to shut out the sound.

She kicks and she screams and she bites, but to no avail.

The two ghost figures on the ground are locked in their violent dance, and before her, the man whose girlfriend is named Klara is scratching his head. “Eh, I don’t see your friends anywhere. Besides, we’re downhill. Isn’t this where the swamps begin? We should really get back.”

She reaches out and ever so slightly brushes his hand. He moves away, taken aback at first, but just as he is about to push her away, realisation dawns in his eyes.

Yes! There it is, she has lured the secret out, it is out, out, out, and now she must do it, she has no other choice but this.

Smooth fingers wrinkle up and bright eyes sink deep into the skull and an upright back arches and white straight teeth narrow into sharp ends, and it hurts to be back in this old, wrecked body, hurts to shed the pine hair and the mossy toes, but it will be over very, very soon.

She drags him in, drags him far, drags him down into the swamp with her.

He screams and thrashes, but she is strong as both ghosts in one, and soon, she begins to push his head under.

In his last breath, he screams her name. But then Klara stops, and he comes up for air.

It is not her who he calls. It is not her who he wants. It is not her who is in danger. Not anymore.

In a maddening moment of clarity, she lets him go. Frightened, he begins to drag himself to the shore, where he stands up, a figure made of mud and flesh and bone.

The ghost of her killer stands up from the ground and blends in with him for a moment. The killer’s eyes are dead, and the man’s are alive.

It is over.

“Thank you,” she breathes out as the man runs away.

As the swamp swallows her into its warm underbelly, she looks up at the dark sky, imagining better futures.