The laughter
A dirty, rotten, humid smell invaded her nostrils.
Sally felt the forest riping her skin, blowing its icy breath on her goose bumps. Blaming her for stepping on its land without the Sun’s protection.
She gulped down air, failing to relieve her sore throat.
In sight, only darkness. Had she closed her eyes, it would have been the same.
A storm of bats skimmed by her, an ululation echoed farther away. Or at least she hoped it was farther away.
I’m okay, she muttered to herself, I’m just imagining things.
Something cracked in front of her. A dry branch.
Fear made her retreat, her leg found the sharp edge of a protruding rock, her side, the floor.
She was not okay.
Holding her ankle, the woman tried to sit up.
“May I help you, Miss?”
Two big eyes appeared in front of her.
Sally’s cry was not human. It was terror in its purest form.
The clarity of the lantern forced her eyelids shut.
When she opened them again, sweating madly, convinced that she was hallucinating, there was a face hovering in the dark.
Sally’s second scream got strangled in her throat.
“May I help you, Miss?”
The pale face’s body appeared, as the woman’s sight ajusted to the light. There was a white neck, two skinny arms, two skinnier legs, covered by a gray dress. And two long, pitch-black braids.
“May I help you, Miss?”
The kid’s eyelashes fluttered, and Sally felt ridiculous. She had gotten so nervous, while the little girl seemed at ease.
“What’s-” Her voice was a croak. “What’s your name, sweetie?”
Silence.
The kid seemed to ignore the question. She looked offended.
Sally tried again, “Surely, a pretty little girl like you-” She was not pretty. Not at all. There was this thing about about her hollow traits that made the woman’s anguish multiply. “Has a name?”
Silence again.
Sally wondered if the child had read her thoughts.
“Could you get your parents here to help me?”
Nothing.
This absence of answers was gnawing the woman’s patience. But-
“You’re lying.” The whisper, delivered through tiny gritted teeth, shocked Sally. “You’re lying. I am not pretty.”
Skeletal fingers covered the kid’s face.
Afraid that she would start to cry, Sally reached out to touch her shoulder, but the kid yanked it away.
“Don’t touch me!” She shrieked. Sally could swear the temperature had dropped. “I am ugly, and old! Nobody wants me, only my parents!”
“You’re not old a-”
“You don’t know anything about me!”
The wail pierced Sally’s eardrums.
“Please don’t-”
But the woman’s comforting words were stopped by the swing of the lamp.
Something cracked inside of her. A broken bone.
“I am old, ugly, but my parents love me! And you know what they love more?” The mad eyes reflected Sally’s horror-struck face. “Fresh meat.”
Before the lamp hit her a second time, before she collapsed in a sea of infinite darkness, Sally heard it.
A screeching, hysterical sound.
Suzie Slasher’s laughter.