This is the last piece so I hope you've enjoyed the story and if you have any suggestions or comments feel free to post them. There are some parts of this chapter that I'm unsure about. Thanks
“Father will come looking for me,” Alyssa spat.
Her uncle raised his eyebrows. “There won’t be much left to find soon. I must say, you’ve helped us quite a lot. Without you’re clumsy stumble, we might never have found them.”
Alyssa scowled. “Murderer.”
“Oh shu’ up you little twit,” the fat man squeezed her arms painfully. “What should I do with her cap’ain?”
Lyle looked at his niece. His breathing became heavier. The restrained air he usually presented faltered a bit. She looked so much like her mother, so small, so delicate, so breakable. He didn’t want to kill her, not yet.
“Do you have any rope?”
Alyssa started squirming. The fat man held her tighter but shook his head. “It’s back in the shed. I could go get it, tweny minutes tops.”
“Good,” her uncle said.
The fat man waited for him to take Alyssa’s arm but instead he reached for her throat. She gasped and fought as his hand squeezed slightly.
“Now go,” he hissed.
The man let go of her arms and stumbled away. He didn’t spare a thought for the life of this strange little girl. It was his he was most worried about. Lyle listened as his crunching footsteps grew faint.
“See Alyssa,” he said quietly, squeezing harder. “This is what happens to little girls who go wandering around the woods.”
Alyssa scratched at his hands but he didn’t let go. New tears formed and started rolling. He squeezed.
She couldn’t breathe. She was going to pass out. She was going to die.
All at once he let go. She fell and felt her head clear. Rubbing her throat she looked up at her uncle. He was smiling.
“Not yet.”
He took out the dog tag and threw it at her feet. John’s name glinted in the last rays of the sun.
“What did you do to him?” she demanded, trying hard to stop the tears.
The smile widened to reveal slightly yellow teeth. “You were a lot alike Alyssa,” he said. “Too curious for your own good. Mr. Smith over here –” he bent down to pick up the scull. A few flowers had already grown through the eyeholes and mouth, but they were savagely ripped away as he straightened up “– got lost in the woods, looking for your father. He stumbled upon me doing something, well, rather naughty.”
Alyssa swallowed. Her uncle chuckled lightly and turned the scull in his hands, letting the dirt sift over her. Then he sighed.
“He interrupted what could have been extremely enjoyable,” he muttered. “I had no choice.”
Lyle hurled the scull against a tree. It split and splintered, pieces flying in all directions. Alyssa shrank back from her uncle.
He was breathing hard, like a winded animal. A beast, ferocious and every bit as dangerous. He stood with his back to her for a few seconds. She was too petrified to move.
Then he seemed to compose himself. He ran a hand over his hair again and swallowed, turning
around. “His disappearance was in the papers, but they forgot about her. They always had.”
Alyssa’s breath came in short gasps as he advanced. It stopped in her throat and refused to go any further. His fingers curled around the front of her dress and he pulled her up until she was lifted off the ground.
“Please,” tears streamed down her cheeks. “Let me go uncle, I won’t tell anyone.”
He smiled, yellow teeth glinting.
“Neither will I.”
A shot tore through the twilight. Her uncle jerked and let her go. This time she landed on her feet and
ran. She could hear her uncle behind her but she had a head start. If she could just outrun him there might be hope…
Another shot filled the air. She knew it’s sound; she’d heard it echoing through the woods countless times. It was her father’s hunting rifle. They were looking for her.
Lyle grabbed for his niece’s dress but missed it by an inch. He stumbled forth, sprinting after the dastardly little girl. He’d thought John was bad but this one ruined everything. There would be no going back now.
Alyssa still couldn’t breathe. She felt her legs tiring, felt her lungs screaming in protest to what she’s been through.
But she was almost at the tree line; she could almost see the moon that had gone up so suddenly. A few more yards and she’d be out, she’d be saved.
Fingers closed around the back of her dress and she was jerked back violently. Her head banged against a nose and a loud curse filled the air. She dropped to the ground only to be ripped up again, pressed against a tree, a familiar hand against her throat.
The crazed face of her uncle was inches from hers. Blood ran thickly over his nose and chin, between his teeth, over his tongue as he licked his lips. His mouth opened and his face loomed closer. He was going to bite her, bite the lips from her mouth.
“LYLE!”
One last shot tore through the woods. The hand around Alyssa’s neck slacked and fell away. She fell again as her uncle keeled over, mouth muttering silently. The bullet had gone straight through his brain, missing her head by what could have been a centimetre.
She got up and ran to her father. He let the gun fall, face pale, eyes wide. He pressed his daughter’s head into his chest and tried to keep her from looking at his brother.
A servant appeared and said something about finding the other man. Nicky was right behind him, skidding to a halt in the dirt and leaves.
“I told you she was here father,” he said, eyes big. “What happened to Uncle Lyle?”
Their father turned his head slightly. “He’s where he belongs now,” he said quietly.
He let Alyssa go gently, took his children’s hands and led them back home.
In the woods everything was quiet. Flowers curled and twined around Lyle’s body. It pushed through his flesh and separated it from bone, just like it had done to the others. Further on the flowers were doing the same to John Smith’s broken scull. It twined through the eyeholes, between his teeth, and spread
to the bones lying next to it.
These bones were smaller, much younger. They were the bones of a little girl; one Lyle had snatched from an orphanage.
That night the woods were quiet. They didn’t call to Alyssa, as they had before. For years, the trees didn’t beckon and the wind was silent.
Alyssa never went into the woods again, except once the following night. She walked through the trees gingerly, holding her father’s hand. When they found Lyle’s body, Alyssa bent down and rummaged through his clothes, retrieving John Smith’s rusty dog tag.
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