It's Not A Falling Tree

Chapter 8

The Voice is desperate.

The boy is lost to her, his mind too willful to coerce, his body too broken to mend. Without him, she'll have to take direct control of the chimera, make it feed on him and the two women here, then have it return to her prison where it will hopefully be strong enough to break her bindings.

Her plan is risky. With the human, she had an anchor to keep herself from falling back to sleep. Even though he didn't realize it, he was allowing her to share his body and whisper suggestions into his mind. In a sense, she'd drugged him. Made him give her his unknowing consent to not only host her spirit, but be linked with the chimera as well, to keep it from running off and to lead it to food.

But now, she no longer has his consent. Something about seeing his former teacher dispelled the haze that had clouded his mind. And so, she is on her own, forced to use what little energy she has and risk slipping back into sleep.

The situation is far from ideal, but it will have to do. There are no other options. She may be desperate, but she will not stop until she has freed herself. She will not sleep again until the world is plunged into eternal winter.

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Linda wants to scream, to cry out for somebody to come and save her, but she knows it won't do her any good. She watches helplessly as the monster chomps into Grace and the boy, and winces at the sounds of bones snapping and flesh being torn.

For a brief moment she considers giving up and allowing the monster to eat her once it finishes with Grace. It would be so much easier than running through all this snow, and probably faster than freezing to death. She thinks that she's lived a good life, that maybe now is as good a time as any to let it come to end.

The feeling of Charlie wriggling against her chest and the sound of his frantic yelps bring an end to these thoughts. She'll be damned if she lets her little dog suffer just because she's decided to give up. She's going to get them both out of here no matter what.

Charlie can't help it any more. He's trying to be good, but he's so scared that he can't keep himself quiet. This thing that's destroyed his house, that's hurt his mommy, it's so big and loud and foul smelling that he's completely overwhelmed by it. He can't fight the urge to run away and hide somewhere safe until it goes away. But he can't get free, he's zipped too tightly into Linda's snowsuit.

Suddenly he feels a gloved hand gingerly pat him on the head and looks up to see his mommy looking down at him. Feeling her stroking his ears calms him. He's still scared out of his wits, but he no longer wants to run away. He'll stay with his mommy until the very end, even if it costs him his life.

With a groan, Linda pushes herself into a sitting position. She'd been thrown up against the rocky ridge that separates her yard from the propane tank mounted at the edge of her property. Under normal circumstances, she probably would have broken something, but with so much snow on the ground, the impact she'd felt had been significantly lessened. Her back hurt like a bitch, but that was nothing that she couldn't fight through.

There's no time for her to regroup or come up with a new strategy, she doesn't even have time to process the grief she feels for her fallen friend. All she can do is shimmy up the ridge and hope that the creature stays busy for long enough for her to get out of its line of sight.

With her mind inhabiting its body, The Voice feels everything just as the chimera does. When she was with Andrew, she'd dampened his senses in order to keep him from experiencing anything that could interfere with his work. But with the chimera that was no longer the case. Now she can perceive the cold mountain wind rippling through its fur, and taste the bone marrow on its tongue.