Amy Cross - The Purchase

“Back in a moment,” she told him under her breath.

As soon as she opened the door, she felt the cold outside air and she saw her breath. The battery-powered light in the cabin had actually made the interior fairly warm, but now Chandler stepped outside and felt just how cold the night was becoming. She glanced around, to make sure that there was no sign of anyone or anything nearby, and then she took a flashlight from her belt and switched it on, casting the beam in every direction. Still, she saw nothing, but she closed the door and then began to make her way around the side of the cabin. Her fear was evaporating now, and she told herself that she just had to prove that those two brief noises had been no cause for concern.

Once she’d walked all the way around the cabin, she stopped and shone the flashlight out across the clearing. There was clearly nobody out there, but after a moment the beam caught a smudged patch of darkness on the ground, and Chandler immediately knew what she was seeing.

It was the body of the man who’d been brought down from the tree.

The body hadn’t moved, not so far as she could tell, but Chandler felt distinctly uneasy as she kept the flashlight trained in its direction. For a moment, she almost expected the dark shape to shift slightly, or perhaps for a wolf or some other predator to hurry over and start chewing on the meat. The flashlight’s beam shifted slightly as her hand began to tremble, and for a few seconds she looked at the distant forest. There was still no sign of any kind of wildlife, but in that moment she desperately hoped to see perhaps a deer or even just a bird. Anything, to show that there was life out there.

She shone the flashlight around a little further, still watching the forest, and then she turned back toward the cabin.

Suddenly the beam caught a figure standing far out across the clearing. Gripped by fear, Chandler realized that it was the dead man, with the chain still around his neck. He was leaning heavily to one side, and after a moment he took a slow, stumbling step forward.

Gasping, Chandler turned and hurried around the side of the cabin, and then she stopped and tried to regather her composure.

That wasn’t real , she told herself. You’re just losing your mind .

Panicking and starting to feel out of breath, she continued for a few seconds to try calming herself, and then she realized she had to look again. The man from the tree was definitely dead and there was no way he could have been standing just now, and she knew that she just had to prove that to herself. She’d never expected that her mind would play these kinds of tricks on her, but she figured that it was imperative now that she regain control. She counted to three, then she hesitated, then she counted to three again, and then finally she managed to force herself to step back around the cabin and shine the light across the clearing.

There was no-one standing there.

She felt an immediately rush of relief, but then she looked at the dark smudge on the ground. At first, she told herself that this was the dead body, in its proper position. Slowly, however, doubts began to creep into her mind. Was the smudge as large as it had been before? Was it definitely the body, or could it possible just be a disturbed patch in the mud? She swallowed hard as she waited to understand the truth, for sense and sanity to be re-established, and then she took a step forward, hoping to get a slightly better view.

Her hand was trembling more than ever, causing the flashlight’s beam to sway this way and that, but she was just about able to keep it trained on the dark smudge. And the more she looked, the more she struggled to determined whether she could actually see the body on the ground.

She began to turn, casting the beam wide across the clearing. When she finally saw that there was nobody out there, she felt a huge rush of relief, although this was tempered by the realization that – even if it had only been for one moment – she’d definitely imagined seeing that figure standing all the way out there with the chain around its neck.

She took a step back.

“There’s no-one here,” she said out loud, trying to calm herself down.

She took a deep breath.

She listened.

She heard nothing.

Checking her phone again, she tried to call her parents, just to hear their voices. Shivering slightly in the cold, she brought up her father’s number and tapped the green circle, and then she waited as the phone emitted a series of faint crackles. She desperately wanted the call to connect, but after a few seconds she began to realize that she wasn’t going to be so lucky. Finally the call was dropped, and she told herself that she’d been dumb to even try. Far better to tell her parents about her exciting new discovery in person, when she could dump it all on them at once.

They’d be so proud.

And then, suddenly, she realized she could hear something. She could hear a chain rattling nearby.

Clenching her teeth, she turned and shone the torch back toward the far end of the cabin, and to her horror she found the dead, hanged man standing right behind her.

“Hmm, what?”

Startled from a deep sleep, Doctor Jack Levant opened his eyes in darkness and – for a moment – had no idea where he was. He blinked a couple of times, aware that he was in a strange bed, and then he saw the red display of a hotel bedside clock, and he sighed as he rolled onto his back and remembered all the business about driving out to check on a site that a student had uncovered.

Reaching up, he wiped sweat from his brow, and then he remained on his back for a moment as he tried to understand why he’d woken. He had a vague idea that he’d been dreaming, and that the dream had been rather unpleasant, but beyond that he was unable to recall any details. This in itself wasn’t particularly unusual, of course, since he never slept well when he was away from home. Nevertheless, his mind was alert and he could feel a little pressure in his bladder, and he knew he’d have to make the long journey to the bathroom before going back to sleep.

He waited a few minutes more, going over a few matters in his mind, and then he hauled himself out of bed and began to shuffle over to the en-suite.

As he reached the door, his phone suddenly starting vibrating on the nightstand.

Furrowing his brow, Levant turned and saw that the screen was flashing. He didn’t remember setting an alarm, and he certainly wouldn’t have set one for 2am, but it wouldn’t be the first time his difficulties with technology had manifested in this manner. Figuring that he couldn’t be bothered going all the way over to turn the alarm off just yet, he muttered a few curse words under his breath as he turned and resumed his slow journey to the toilet. And then, as he began to pee, he heard the phone fall silent again.

“Some alarm,” he said out loud.

Or had it been the ringtone?

For a moment, he really wasn’t sure.

He began to pee, but a moment later the phone began to vibrate once again.

“Oh, come off it,” he sighed, feeling that familiar flicker of irritation that came any time one of these wretched devices displeased him. “I am not a slave to these things,” he continued, for nobody’s benefit but his own. “I shall not run to switch you off, just because you demand my attention.”

He continued to pee, and the whole process took rather longer than he would have liked. Still, at his age, he supposed that he wasn’t doing too badly. After flushing and washing his hands, he began to make his way back to the bed, just as the phone once more stopped vibrating.

Sighing as he felt another twinge of pain in his back, he plopped down on the side of the bed and picked up the phone. His annoyance at the bright screen was quickly wiped away, however, as he saw that he had two missed calls from Catherine Chandler. He tapped to take a closer look, figuring that perhaps these calls had been from earlier but that he’d simply missed them, but then he saw that the calls had both been within the past few minutes.