Der Wald der verlorenen Seelen
Excerpt
Lightning streaked across the sky over the sea. The gray sky grew almost black. Thunder shook the earth. Then the rains began. They were no mere shower. They pelted down onto the road with a viciousness that Nerissa had never seen before.
Her father could not see a thing out the front windshield. His mirrors were all fogged up. So he put his defrost on high, flicked on his high beams, adjusted his windshield wipers to the top speed, and slowed down to almost a crawl.
“Probably nobody else is on the road except the guy in the pickup truck, so we should be all right.” He promised them. “It should probably be easier going, too, as soon as we can turn off this coast highway and head inland toward the rain forest.”
There was so much water on the road that Nerissa thought they were about to be swept away. The minivan wasn’t a high clearance vehicle, though it was four-wheel drive. They were wading through water that was already halfway up the tires. She stroked Sesostris’s back to give herself courage.
She thought for the first time, Maybe we shouldn’t have come this way after all. We should have turned around and gone back to the interstate just as the stranger warned.
Then Nerissa felt it. The back end of the car got lifted up. She could no longer feel the wheels touching the pavement. They started to swirl around like a toy in a bathtub instead of a car. As she and her mother screamed, they spun wildly out of control toward the side of the road, while her father madly struggled with the controls. She saw a dark pair of eyes coming toward her. They got bigger and bigger. Finally as the car struck what must have been a tree, she thought she heard a voice.
“So, you’ve come at last. We’ve been awaiting you for such a long time. Such a long time . . . “
Lightning streaked across the sky over the sea. The gray sky grew almost black. Thunder shook the earth. Then the rains began. They were no mere shower. They pelted down onto the road with a viciousness that Nerissa had never seen before.
Her father could not see a thing out the front windshield. His mirrors were all fogged up. So he put his defrost on high, flicked on his high beams, adjusted his windshield wipers to the top speed, and slowed down to almost a crawl.
“Probably nobody else is on the road except the guy in the pickup truck, so we should be all right.” He promised them. “It should probably be easier going, too, as soon as we can turn off this coast highway and head inland toward the rain forest.”
There was so much water on the road that Nerissa thought they were about to be swept away. The minivan wasn’t a high clearance vehicle, though it was four-wheel drive. They were wading through water that was already halfway up the tires. She stroked Sesostris’s back to give herself courage.
She thought for the first time, Maybe we shouldn’t have come this way after all. We should have turned around and gone back to the interstate just as the stranger warned.
Then Nerissa felt it. The back end of the car got lifted up. She could no longer feel the wheels touching the pavement. They started to swirl around like a toy in a bathtub instead of a car. As she and her mother screamed, they spun wildly out of control toward the side of the road, while her father madly struggled with the controls. She saw a dark pair of eyes coming toward her. They got bigger and bigger. Finally as the car struck what must have been a tree, she thought she heard a voice.
“So, you’ve come at last. We’ve been awaiting you for such a long time. Such a long time . . . “
