Smoky Mountain Tracks
Donna Ball

Excerpt

DEADFALL

    The flashlight flew from my hand and tumbled town the cliff. I wasn’t far behind it as I rolled and slid and bumped and sprawled down twenty feet of ragged ravine. I felt my leg strike something and an icy white pain stabbed at my knee.
    I skidded to a face-down stop about ten feet from the water. I saw, to my amazement, that my flashlight was only a few feet away, still casting its beam through the tangled night. In another moment, I felt hot breath on my cheek as Cisco reached my side.
    By that time, I had recovered my senses enough to notice that the beam of the flashlight had caught something strange in its glow. I crawled to the light and picked it up, holding the beam as steady as I could, staring at what it revealed.
    It was a shoe. A man’s white running shoe, to be exact, and it was attached to a blue jean covered leg. The light was no longer steady as I moved it across the prone form, a hand, a shoulder, a neck. And a bloody mess where the face should have been.
    I started to scream.