Number 667

Chapter Nineteen

Carrie let Josh completely take over.
She was being dragged through the forest by an invisible hand, or so it seemed. Her feet dragged as she tried to run across the slippery carpet of pine needles, and she feared she would fall. But she felt it, deep in the pits of her stomach, that she had to find Jackson.
She turned a sharp corner and beheld the crumbling house.
Jackson was there.
•
Maple reached after Vivian, screaming her name. She didn't know where she was headed to, but Vivian stumbling around in a dark pine forest, possibly coming scross the Snatcher Woman, made Maple nervous. That, plus the added difficulty of Maple's powers could get Vivian killed.
Maple couldn't let that happen.
Maple shifted her feet on the one space of ground that wasn't covered in pine needles and ran after Vivian, reaching out her hands.
That's when they heard the scream.
•
Macy felt something drop.
It was inside her.
She didn't know, she couldn't feel, what was happening, what was hapoening? The world was a spinning void of blackness. Was she dying?
But no, she could still hear the doctor's voices as they rushed furiously around. She could still hear them working their medical devices to frantically treat her.
She could hear them say that it wasn't a heart attack.
That they didn't know what it was.
That Macy was going to die.
•
Vivian jerked around, pointing her head to the scream. It sounded deep, terrorized.
It sounded like Carrie.
Vivian gave herself control, shoving the spirits away. Like she should have in the first place. She pushed them away in rage. Like she normally would.
She ran through the forest, pounding the pine needles under her feet. She wouldn't let anything stop her. Not trees, not the Snatcher Woman, not anything.
Because she was Vivian Long, and she could will herself to do anything.