The Pale Woman

Sam ducked, narrowly dodging a low hanging tree branch. She couldn’t look back, not if she wanted to escape whatever the hell that was that had just grabbed her boyfriend. They shouldn’t have stayed out so late, forcing them to cut through the woods trying to make her curfew. They were just walking and joking around, troy acting like he had disappeared and then jumping out from behind a tree to scare her. It was all just fun and games, until the pale woman dropped out from the last tree troy hid behind. She had been waiting up there, waiting on them to finally pass under her tree, to finally fall into her trap. she screamed just before leaping down, the scream piercing through the silence of the night as if it were a trumpet blowing directly into your ear. When her feet hit the ground, a series of sickening cracking sounds replaced the scream as she bent and twisted all the way to the ground. Frozen in fear, both Sam and Troy were trying to process what had just happened, when she started to put herself back together. Troy didn’t even have time to turn around and run before she reached up with a long and mangled hand and grabbed him by the top of his head. She let out a horrifying scream of excitement, then bent her knees and leapt back into the trees, taking Troy with her. Troy, finally breaking through his paralysis, began screaming in fear realizing what was happening. His screams, stopping suddenly and everything went back to complete silence. Then, something fell right in front of Sam. It was troy, his head and face twisted in horror and missing a part as if it had a bite taken out of it. His chest had been torn open as if he were having open heart surgery with a few ribs taken out. Skin and muscle removed from his left femur, leaving only the bone down to his knee then there wasn’t even any bone left. Her body, now on autopilot, picked a direction and took off running as fast as possible. She had no idea where the woman was, she was to scared to attempt to find her. She could feel her though, she knew wherever she was, she wasn’t far behind her. Finally, an old barn came into view in-between the trees up ahead. It was in an open field, at least a hundred yards from any tree line in any direction. Perfect! She could hide there, there was no way the woman could get close without her seeing her first at least. Maybe she could find some kind of weapon in there, a pitchfork or something to help keep the woman at bay. She had to try at least. With everything she had left, she headed towards the barn, fear slowly being pushed out by hope. She had just broken through the tree line when she heard the woman scream again. She stopped and turned to see the woman flying through the air, she had jumped to make a desperate attempt to catch desert. Luckily, she missed her target, crashing to the ground twenty feet to Sam’s left. Sam didn’t stick around to find out what happened after that, she turned and dashed to the barn. She didn’t even bother to slow down to open the doors, she just ran into them using them to stop her. She checked again to see where the woman was and saw her closing the distance between them quickly. Sam turned backed to the doors and pulled them open. She stepped through and turned to shut them, the woman less than thirty yards away. She pulled with all her body had left, closing the doors right as the woman reached them. She threw the locking mechanism through the handles. The woman screamed her displeasure and slammed against the doors for several minutes. Sam just stared, she was to tired from running and had no plan b for if the woman busted through the doors. The siege stopped suddenly, almost as if Sam had just snapped out of a dream. Sam looked around the barn, straining her eyes in the dark so she could see. There wasn’t really anything in there, some old hay and rotten boards mostly. Something moved past a hole in the wall to Sam’s left, or at least she thought something had. There still wasn’t any noise, maybe her mind was playing tricks on her. An old, tore apart tractor was over in the corner maybe whoever worked on it had left a screwdriver or something. A bump to her right sent Sam into a nervous frenzy, eyes darting around the area she thought she had heard it come from. A rat scurried out from behind a barrel. For the first time, Sam was thankful it was just a rat, sighing in relief at the sight of it. It made its way over to a dark corner in the back of the barn and was about to disappear out of her sight, when it lowered itself in alert and started hissing at the pitch-black corner it was just hurrying towards. A mangled hand came out of the darkness and slammed down on the hissing rat, turning hiss to cries of help, as the hand wrapped around it and brought it towards the darkness. There was a squishy crunch sound, then its back legs, butt, and tail came hurtling back out of the corner. Sam screamed as it bounced across the floor towards her. The woman’s face leaned out next, smiling evilly at Sam before disappearing back into the shadows. Sam, in tears now, sank to her knees. This was it, there was nothing she could do now. Even if she tried to make a break for the doors, the woman would be on top of her before she could even unlock them. She started praying, she wasn’t religious so she just prayed to whatever would listen. Still silence, Sam slowly looked around wondering where the woman went. Had she just left? After a few more minutes, she started to get hopeful, but this seemed to be what the woman was waiting on. Just as Sam was getting to her feet, the woman put her hand on Sam’s shoulder, swinging her around to face her. Sam’s face went pale, almost matching the woman’s almost transparent hue. The woman grinned, showing her sharp, tiny, blood-stained teeth. Sam closed her eyes, knowing this was where her story ended just like Troy’s. The woman started to open her mouth, when a bullet came ripping through her eye causing her to release Sam. Sam fell backwards, catching a piece of sheet metal with her side on the way down. She screamed in pain as blood came gushing out of her wound. She hit the ground and immediately pushed herself with her feet under the tractor. Another shot rang out, followed by another scream then a thud as the woman hit the ground. Angry, the woman screamed louder than any other time that night, stopping only when she seen Sam. She twisted over and pushed of a support beam close by, soaring across the floor in a final attempt to get Sam. As she closed in on the tractor, something knocked her straight down back into the floor. Then a big boot came down on the back of her head, crushing it completely and splattering Sam’s face with the inside mixture of brain, blood, and skull fragments. Someone reached under the tractor and pulled Sam out by her shirt. It was a man that was dressed like someone out of a bad spy movie. He looked Sam up and down, wondering what to do with her. Sam, thinking the man was there to save her, smiled a thank you to the man. The man smirked as if to say, “don’t mention it”, before reaching both hands up, one on her chin and one on the back of her neck and twisting sharply. Sam heard a loud snapping noise, and everything went black.