LEITH AND THE LURKING EVIL

I BLINKED.

If this was a dream, I willed the thing away.

But it didn’t leave. In fact, it kept on coming. I wasn’t dreaming. I was off and running!

I glanced over my shoulder. Henry followed. Not running. Not even hurrying. Not moving much faster than a normal walk. But there was something about the way he moved (relentless, inflexible) that was somehow the most terrifying thing of all (as if he was tracking me) and he’d find me, no matter where I went, or how quickly, long after I’d fallen down in a sweaty, exhausted heap (because he was implacable, unrelenting) and I know how weird it must sound, saying this was the scariest thing about him, because we are after all talking about a guy without a head - but it wasn’t like he resembled the victim of a train wreck, or had been buried for months and had worms crawling out of him, because he looked in every other way perfectly normal---like the guy in Dr Grieg’s story who wished his physical defects away and paid for his vanity with his head.

Well, Henry wasn’t only like that guy, he supposedly was that guy. I wondered what the wild-eyed Adam would say about it. He’d already told me that he wasn’t Henry but Henry was him. The deeper I got into this mystery, the more unclear everything became. Whoever - whatever - Henry was, he wasn’t Adam Python. Although, with a head, he’d be about the same height.

Behind me, Henry kept on coming, his hands leading the way - reaching, squeezing, opening, closing, like a strangler seeking fresh throats, those terrible hands reminding me of twin Venus flytraps, eager for prey - and I knew I couldn’t count on Adam to rush in and save me like a hero in a horror movie (which was maybe a good description of what my life was turning into), so I was going to have to find a way to elude my intractable tracker. I stopped. I had a good lead, but I couldn’t run all night. Eventually, he’d get me. I thought about trackers, stories I’d heard about ways they could be evaded, and as my breathing eased, I heard it ... the soft rush of the river.

That was it! Animals couldn’t track across water, and even poor, cowardly Ichabod Crane had eluded the Headless Horseman by crossing a bridge (though there were those who said Ichabod hadn’t gotten away; Ichabod had been caught), so maybe that was all I had to do - take a canoe a short distance downriver and walk back to camp as I had with Ant. Henry would still be wandering the banks while I was snoring happily in my bunk.

I started toward the place where they kept the canoes, and caught my breath as I came to the tree with the Tarzan rope - from which Broody had swung and Jane had fallen (and was now in hospital) - and reached up absently to touch the length of rope, to feel the rough, worn nub that had finally given up the ghost after countless summers of fun---and my fingers froze.

Even in the dark, even with a headless boogeyman after me, there was no mistaking the smooth, clean feel of the end of that rope. It felt tight and bristly, not worn and ragged. This rope hadn’t broken. It had been cut!