
Fran’s quiet life is shattered when she stumbles upon a terrifying creature that the townspeople whisper about but never see. In a frantic dash across sun‑drenched fields, she is pursued by the cruel Becker brothers, whose relentless taunts echo the harshness of the world she has known. Breathless and bruised, she scrambles for any hidden refuge, hoping the wild brush will shield her from their grasp.
As the chase drives her deeper into an overgrown ravine, the landscape itself seems to shift, heightening her panic and the sense that something far larger is watching. The forest’s tangled paths become both a sanctuary and a maze, forcing Fran to summon every ounce of courage she has left. In this pulse‑quickening opening, survival hinges on split‑second choices, setting the stage for a haunting confrontation that will test her spirit and reveal the true nature of the monster she fled.
Language
en
Duration
~42 minutes (40K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2021-07-02
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
1921–1990
A busy, dependable voice from the pulp-era boom, he helped fill the pages of mid-century science fiction magazines with fast-moving adventures, strange worlds, and eerie ideas. His stories first reached readers in the early 1940s and still turn up in reprints and public-domain collections today.
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