The Lost Soul (English Version)

CHAPTER 03

Rayna moved away from the window as if the last one was on fire. When she heard the downstairs door open, her brain told her to do only one thing: run.

Luiza's house didn't have two floors, but three, and the pull-down staircase, in the same corridor where the stranger was hiding, led to the top floor. She climbed quickly, feeling her hands almost slip on the wood from sweat.

When she reached the top floor, she closed the small door that isolated her from the pursuit below. She took this time to do breathing exercises. If she overdid it, she would pass out and then be found. She looked around the attic. It was big. It could easily fit her entire apartment. In the corners there was a shelf with cloth bags tied to it. The woman ran to it, trying to ignore the heavy footsteps that resounded downstairs.
 
Canned goods. Medicine. Gardening tools. Rayna didn't understand why these things were hidden in an almost inaccessible place, but she threw a piece of rope into her backpack and her penknife into her boots, occupying her hands with a pair of pruning shears. She looked around the attic. An opening seemed to play the role of a window. Even if she was quick, it would take too long to get down from that floor on the rope. 

Reluctantly, she opened the little door again and tilted her head. There was no movement downstairs, which meant that her pursuers were still on the second floor.

I can't stay in this house any longer. I need to run somewhere less predictable

Rayna took an asthma bottle out of her backpack and pressed it to her mouth, then carefully went downstairs. She walked to the nearest room in short steps. The voices outside ceased, leaving the stranger in the company of her own heavy voice, her own fear. The window between the single bed and the headboard became her escape point in seconds. She had an idea.

Her nimble hands attached the rope to the headboard, then threw the other end through the window. If she was right, the bed would be able to hold onto the wall, even with the weight of her body. As she climbed down, she looked around to make sure there was no company.

Her legs were put to work as soon as she reached the floor. The air became colder and every breath felt like a struggle. All she cared about now was running out of the village and not looking back.

As she passed a hut, she heard something hit a tree, forcing her to run into the church. 

“Shit, shit”, Rayna repeated. She crouched behind a bench. She used her asthma pump and took her pruning shears out of her backpack. The ground creaked under the weight of heavy footsteps. They sounded like low boots.

Abruptly, the outsider felt her body being driven against the wall, and countless tools gripped her body with inestimable force. She held back a scream.

“Look who I found, the foreign fugitive”

The man left the hammer on the floor and approached her.

“I didn't think you'd go this far. I must congratulate you on that”

“Stay away from me!”

Rayna pulled her face away from the man's hands. One snatched the scissors out of the woman's hands, the other her backpack, all the contents of which were thrown onto the floor. The stranger looked at the map mixed in with her clothes, then at the man.

“What's your problem? Doesn't it cross your mind that you could damage something important?!”

“Like that pepper spray? Very cunning, for a fifteen-year-old girl”

“I don't give a damn about what you think!”

The man put his hand to his lips.

“Shhh, be nice”