The Witch of Stonecliff Read Online Free PDF Page B

smile. “What in God’s name could you be thinking coming back here? They’ll kill you this time. Mark my words. You got away once. They won’t let you escape twice.”
    Kyle held his grin in place, pretending the man’s predictions didn’t turn his insides to ice. “I’m counting on it, as a matter of fact.”
    Barber lifted his worn gray cap from his scalp and scratched what little hair remained on his round head. “You’re out of your bloody mind, you are. D’ya remember nothing of what I said to you that night?”
    He remembered only too well the man’s furious instructions. The story he’d concocted and insisted Kyle memorize while driving him to the nearest hospital. Kyle had been leaning against the passenger seat of Barber’s truck, holding an old towel the man had given him to staunch the bleeding at his throat. A rough horse blanket wrapped around his lower half to shield his nudity.
    “If you say anything about where this happened, they’ll find you,” Barber had said, his words clipped. “If you’re a threat, they’ll finish what they started. But say you don’t remember anything from me finding you out here in the ditch, they might leave you be.”
    By then, Kyle’s throat had been white fire, he’d hovered on the brink of unconsciousness, but every word the gnome-like farmer had spoken stayed with him. Haunted him.
    He’d had questions, of course, despite the haze of agony spiking every time the truck, with its piss-poor shocks, hit a bump in the road. He’d wondered if this man had known who
they
were—these faceless monsters he feared still. But he couldn’t speak to ask; even breathing had turned into an alarming gurgle, the tinny taste of his own blood thick on his tongue.
    Looking back, Kyle still wasn’t certain how he’d survived. Only that he wouldn’t have if not for the scowling man facing him. “I remember everything.”
    “You’ll get us both killed.” Barber waddled closer, waving a chubby hand. “You need to go. Now!”
    “I owe you a thank you. I wouldn’t have survived that night, had it not been for you.”
    “If you want to thank me, leave and never come back.”
    Kyle snorted. “Believe me, I wish I could. You did a brilliant job, by the way. Moving my car from the pub so no one would think I was anywhere near Cragera Bay, and I suppose that’s why you took me to a hospital on the other side of the island.”
    The man’s careful attention to detail had been instrumental in the police not believing Kyle’s version of events.
    “I did that for you. The further away, the safer you were.”
    “I never doubted it. Was it her, Eleri, you were keeping me safe from?”
    The man’s round face paled so his sagging cheeks looked disturbingly like cottage cheese, and he took a step back. “Who else?”
    “That’s the question I’ve been asking myself. You said ‘them’ in the car that night, and again just now.” Kyle held himself rigid, watching the man’s expression morph from surprise to irritation in a nearly single fluid motion.
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “While you were driving me to the hospital, you told me if I kept my mouth shut with the police, I might be safe from them—not
her
,
them
.”
    “Bah!” Barber waved a hand and stalked off toward a small barn, its brown planks weathered and sloped. The rickety structure looked ready to collapse at any moment. “You nearly bled to death in the cab of my truck. You can’t remember anything clearly.”
    Kyle fell into step behind him. “I doubt I’ll ever be able to close my eyes and not see that night in my head. You said them, and there
was
more than one. If you—like the rest of this village—believed I’d fallen prey to one small woman, why
them
?”
    “I’ve work to do,” Barber said, hauling open one rough weathered door. “I don’t know what happened to you before I found you. I saved your life, isn’t that enough?”
    “It should be.” Kyle wished it were. But