Der Schädelring: Thriller (German Edition)

She raked her hand again and grabbed the cloth of his hood.
    She yanked the cloth away and this time it was Mitchell who was on top of her, his hands groping and pinching, his expression simultaneously desirous and wicked. He laughed at her struggles, smug in his power. She closed her eyes against the intensity of his red stare and slashed at his face.
    More skin and muscle came away, and a voice at her ear said, "He owns you, whore," and it was Snead's voice, a voice she knew from 23 years ago.
    Snead. The man in the hood. The monster with the knife.
    Julia opened her eyes to look at him, but now it was Walter who was above her, his cheeks burning with hate, saliva leaking from between his sharp teeth, the hands gripping her now even more powerful and cruel, bruising, twisting, taking what he wanted. The face shimmered, the features bulged and became the decapitated goat's head of her childhood.
    "You're mine, Judas bitch. And I take what is mine."
    She screamed as the sinister animal face pressed close and flickered its tongue across her lips. Its foul breath poured into her, burning her from the inside, arousing agony in her scars, awakening every bad memory and switching on the circuits so that pain spasmed through her body. She moaned in disgust as the creature's feverish flesh pressed against her.
    "Julia?"
    Walter's voice, from somewhere behind the goat-thing.
    But Walter was in this thing, wasn't he? Part of it. All of them the devil.
    Fingers clutched her ankle, shaking her. She kicked and clawed blindly.
    "Hey!" he called again.
    She opened her eyes. No darkness, no twin red specks, no goat-creature. The room was suffused with orange light, the fire down to embers.
    Walter stood on the ladder, looking at her. "You okay? You were yelling out in your sleep."
    She tried to blink away the nightmare. But her nostrils held the memory of the hellish stench and her flesh was warm from the imagined assault. "Are you one of them, Walter?"
    "Shhh. You were having a bad dream, that's all."
    "Tell me you're not one of them."  She pulled the blankets to her chin.
    "No, I'm one of us ." He patted her leg. "You're safe here. They won't get you."
    "I'm scared." She felt almost as helpless and lost as she had felt as a four-year-old.
    The ladder creaked, and then his body lay alongside hers. "It's going to be just fine," he whispered.
    His arms went around her. She accepted the embrace, snug in the blankets, and drifted back to sleep. This time, no Creeps stalked her dreams.

 
     
    CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
     
    The morning light trickled through the small windows, indicated the storm had passed. Julia left Walter sleeping in the loft and kindled another fire. She rummaged in Walter's backpack, found some tissue, and went outside to relieve herself. The sky was clear, and Julia's breath made a mist in front of her face.
    The view was spectacular. The cabin stood in the clearing between two stands of hardwood, and a sheer rock cliff rose behind the trees. The ridge was the tallest point for miles. The blue mountaintops rolled out in the distance like the waves of a gentle sea. The clean, brisk breeze brought Julia fully awake, and she welcomed the forest smells.
    Walter was right. The Creeps couldn't get her here. This was the final outpost, a majestic castle, a place where trouble and danger had no business. The woods weren't threatening. Instead, they formed walls that kept enemies away. Being out under the big sky was like being paroled from the cramped prison of her head.
    She went among the trees into the hush of forest. A gray squirrel skittered along the treetops, gathering its winter stores. As she squatted behind an oak, she thought of the night before. Walter had come to her rescue yet again, her very own knight in shining armor. Just like in the bedtime stories her daddy had told her—
    "And what else did Daddy do, there in your bed? " came Dr. Forrest's voice, as if from nowhere.
    She stood, pulled up the baggy jeans she had borrowed from Walter, and hurried back toward the cabin, afraid more voices would slip from the shadows beneath the oak and hickory. The sun was like the bloodied yolk of an egg over the eastern horizon. A few wisps of pale clouds were all that remained of the storm. Julia looked down the old logging road to make sure no one was approaching, and then went back inside the cabin.
    Walter was up, his clothes rumpled, his chin and cheeks bristled by faint stubble. "Morning," he called cheerfully,