Page 3 of Primal Hunger
During the last solstice, the one when I was too sick to get out of bed and set up my equipment, a boy was taken. A well-liked high school senior named Brandon Reese. There was even a modest search party to find him the next day, but very little information about the search was released.
All we knew was that he was gone. The central consensus: he was taken by the Grim.
Two solstices ago, it was an old woman named Ruth. The time before that, a girl named Amanda.
Whatever is happening, it doesn't discriminate. No one is safe from the solstice, and all we can do is follow the rules of the woods: don't stare into the trees, don’t go into them at night, and most importantly, never go looking for the Grim.
It’s always this area, too; a clear, arrow-straight path through thick woods, off trail.
“I’m not going to get taken,” I finally answer when my thoughts stop spiraling. “I just wish we knew more about what they found last time. Did they notice anything out of the ordinary? Surely someone sawsomething.”
I’m pressing him for more when he clearly doesn’t know any better than I do.
“Good luck,” Tyler scoffs and crosses his arms over his chest. “You’d have better luck getting information out of the secret service.”
I frown. Surely not. If they know we’re searching for the Grim so we can potentially stop it from taking more people, I hope they’d be willing to help. At least give us a tiny bit of information that could aid in our search.Right?
“I say we try to talk to them,” I say defiantly, knowing he’ll go along with anything I decide if I’m adamant enough. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“We’ve been over this already, Erin. They don’t want to be bothered. They’ve been through enough.”
“They might be willing to talk to us since we’re close to the solstice,” I argue, my desperation for information buzzing through my veins.
I want—no,need—to know more. Anything at all that will give us an edge and help increase our chances of snapping a photo of this thing.
I have one shot, tomorrow night, to get this right.
I can’t wait six more months for another opportunity…
Tyler glares at me, his mouth working back and forth and making his whisper of a blonde mustache wiggle. “Fine. But don't say I didn’t tell you so.”
“I won’t.”
A voice in the back of my mind says that Tyler is right, that this is a terrible idea and a waste of time, but I’m too hopeful to relent. I want answers, and if this is the only way I have a chance at getting them, then I have to try.
It’s in my nature, and what makes me one hell of a good paranormal investigator. I never stop delving for answers, even when things seem unlikely.
And I’m going to solve the mystery of the Grim.
No matter what.
Chapter
Two
Erin
The drive through town is short.
Once we pull out of the gravel parking lot edging the woods, it’s a clear shot from one end of downtown to the other, the way peppered with old houses full of character.
Nothing is ever more than a few minutes away, which is something I both love and despise about being in a small town. The convenience is unmatched—no half hour to forty-five minute drives just to get groceries like the last place I lived—but being so close to everyone is a little suffocating.
Everybody knows everybody else, and if you have any secrets, the entire town is liable to know about them. It seems like the only thing they don’t gossip about are the monsters that hide in the woods.
They’d rather take that information to their graves.
Tyler grudgingly directs me straight to the Reese’s house, and I pull up in front of the curb at the end of a perfectly-kept yard. It’s a small, cabin-style home with colorful bushes beneath the front windows and a floral wreath welcome sign on the front door. The type of home you’d expect a nice, approachable couple to live in, which soothes my bubbling nerves enough for me to kill the engine and step out into a warm afternoon breeze.
