Read Online Hemlock Veils by Jennie Davenport - Free Book Online

began walking away, but turned back. She took Elizabeth’s hand with a slight hesitation, letting her smile fall. Her voice lowered to just above a whisper. “I’ve been thanking the Lord all morning.” At Elizabeth’s confusion, she went on, “Bill and I pray for the safety of this town every night, and I’m just grateful you were included in His protection.”
    Elizabeth only smiled, squeezing Anita’s hand.
    “Are you…doing all right since…well, since last night?”
    “Really, I’m fine,” Elizabeth replied, trying to keep her voice light and her smile gracious. She hadn’t looked at herself in the mirror since her pit stop the night before, but the sight must be something awful since everyone treated her like the battered victim she wasn’t. It had been that way ever since she’d fixed up Eustace’s hand at the diner, ever since they’d learned about her encounter with the monster. And perhaps Elizabeth should be bent out of shape. Perhaps she was crazy, since the recent events of her normal life distressed her more than a deathly encounter with a beast from another world.
    “I just hope you realize how blessed you are to be standing here, Beth. And I know you probably want nothing to do with this place now, but you’re always welcome here.”
    Elizabeth nodded, speechless. Knowing she was welcome anywhere, even a place as small as Hemlock Veils, warmed her heart in a way she hadn’t felt in years. Anita gave one last smile and squeeze of Elizabeth’s hand before walking away.
    When Elizabeth closed the door and turned, her breath caught. The trees were fuller and more spectacular than she’d pictured, and the forest’s edge closer to her window, just a few yards. She could understand why staying here might be terrifying for someone who feared the monster in the forest.
    Especially since the twigs at her eye level—two stories high—had fresh breaks.
     
     
    ***
     
     
    Elizabeth walked the curve of Red Cedar Loop with her eyes upward, admiring the cedars that gave the street its name. They surrounded the narrow street on both sides, their branches draped with ropes of moss. And with the air crisp and the previously gray sky now clear, the beauty of nature moved her as it never had before. The storm had dampened everything, but birds squawked and sang all around as though life was always delightful. Even though the motel was behind her and the diner on the corner up ahead, she felt like the only soul atop the earth. In that moment, a thread of peculiar energy, palpable and hair-raising, tethered her to the environment. She liked to think it was the same connection her father had once felt.
    Surely that was why these people who lived in such terror stayed in the place they feared: it was simply too beautiful to leave behind.
    Upon reaching Clayton Road—the main street in town and the only way in and out, according to Eustace—she rounded the corner instead of crossing to the diner. A couple of people mingled outside it and stopped their conversation to stare at her. Did the blue-and-silver Maybach 57 at the curb also hold gawkers? What was such a luxurious and expensive car doing in a small town like this in the first place? Curious or not, she couldn’t go inside the diner yet, not when her locket was out here somewhere.
    The narrow pathway at the edge of the hemlocks—the same one she and Eustace had emerged from in the middle of the night—showed itself, and the moment she crossed into the damp and ever-so-green forest, the air changed. Like she’d stepped into another world entirely, a world where the normal cares of life didn’t exist and she could simply be herself. She could simply breathe. And in that moment, with dense vegetation brushing against the arms of her jacket and wet leaves beneath her boots, she knew she was destined for this place.
    The farther her feet took her, the more she felt it. She walked a narrow valley in the crevice formed by rising hills on either side