The Writer by Amy Cross Page B

morning you’ll be feeling different. Just stay here, stay calm, and try to get some rest. I’ll be back soon.”
    I stare at him, desperately hoping that he’ll change his mind. At the same time, I definitely trust him. With my life, if necessary.
    “I’ve never let you down,” he adds, “and I never will. Just hang on in there, and I promise you, everything will be okay.”
    With that, he heads outside. I make my way over to the window and watch as he gets into the truck, starts the engine and finally drives away. As he disappears into the distance, I’m left standing alone in the small cabin, with nothing around but absolute darkness. Slowly, I start to feel as if something is watching me, but when I force myself to look back across the room, I’m relieved to see that there’s nothing in the shadows. Nothing except the darkness that’s threatening to engulf my mind.
    ***
    “I’ve only been gone an hour,” he says over the phone a little while later. “I’ll be at the house in about thirty minutes and I’ll call you when I get there, I promise.”
    “This was a bad idea,” I tell him, still staring out the window at the trees that I can just about make out in the night. I’m starting to wonder how I let him talk me into staying here. “I don’t like it, John. I’m miles from anywhere and…” I pause for a moment as I try to decide whether to tell him about all the little creaks I’ve heard since he left. I’m sure they were just natural sounds, but still, my senses are on high alert. “Maybe I should call a taxi and get out of here,” I continue. “I could check into a hotel and wait for you there. Why did you bring me here of all places?”
    “You’re completely safe. Would you really rather be here with me, heading back to the house?”
    “No,” I reply. “Maybe. I don’t know, I -”
    Suddenly he says something, but static hisses through the phone with such force that I can’t make out a word. I pause for a moment before the call is dropped completely, and when I try to redial I’m put straight through to his voice-mail, which I guess means that he’s out of service range. I try a couple more times, with the same result. Suddenly I feel much more isolated, as if my last link with the real world has disappeared. When I try Jason’s number, it’s still unrecognized, and finally I stare at the phone as I realize that there’s no-one left for me to call.
    “Great,” I mutter, turning and heading back over to the table. “Just -”
    Before I can finish, I hear a distant thumping sound, like some kind of collision. Turning toward the window, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I listen to the silence that has fallen once again. This time, however, the silence feels different, as if it’s the kind of hush that falls after something terrible has happened. There’s a part of me that wants to dismiss the sound I just head, but I know it was real, I know it was something out in the -
    “Mummy!” a voice shouts from far away.
    I freeze, as if all my blood has turned to ice. My mind is racing as I tell myself over and over again that the voice was just in my imagination, just some kind of trick that I’m playing on myself. There’s no way it can be her, not here, not now. John promised that I’d be safe here, and John has never let me down.
    “Mummy, help!”
    Still staring out the window, I try to stay calm.
    “It’s not real,” I tell myself. “None of this can be real.”
    “Mummy!”
    She’s far away, well beyond the line of trees that surrounds the cabin, but it’s definitely Hannah. Checking my phone, I bring up John’s number again and try to call him, but he’s still out of range.
    “Damn it,” I mutter, hurrying to the window and looking out at the darkness. “Please, please, not here, not -”
    “Mummy!” Hannah shouts from a few hundred meters away. “Mummy, please! Help us! Something’s wrong!”
    “I…” I start to say, before checking