But I didn’t know that, if they were. As I ran I kept hearing sounds, sounds made by the rain coming down through the dead old leaves left on the trees and by the wind blowing, and it may be that the sound that scared me most of all was my own bare feet stepping on a dead branch and breaking it or something like that.
There was something strange and scary, a steady sound, like a heavy man running and breathing hard, right at my shoulder. It may have been my own breath, coming quick and fast. And I thought I heard that chuckling laugh I’d heard up in the loft, the laugh that sent the shivers right down through me. Of course every tree I came close to looked like a man standing there, ready to grab me, and I kept dodging and going—bang—into other trees. My shoulders kept knocking against trees in that way and the skin was all knocked off, and every time it happened I thought a big black hand had come down and clutched at me and was tearing my flesh.
How long it went on I don’t know, maybe an hour, maybe five minutes. But anyway the darkness didn’t let up, and the terror didn’t let up, and I couldn’t, to save my life, scream or make any sound.
Just why I couldn’t I don’t know. Could it be because at the time I was a woman, while at the same time I wasn’t a woman? It may be that I was too ashamed of having turned into a girl and being afraid of a man to make any sound. I don’t know about that. It’s over my head.
But anyway I couldn’t make a sound. I tried and tried and my throat hurt from trying and no sound came.
And then, after a long time, or what seemed like a long time, I got out from among the trees inside the track and was on the track itself again. I thought the two black men were still after me, you understand, and I ran like a madman.
Of course, running along the track that way, it must have been up the back stretch, I came after a time to where the old slaughter-house stood, in that field, beside the track. I knew it by its ungodly smell, scared as I was. Then, in some way, I managed to get over the high old fairground fence and was in the field, where the slaughter-house was.
All the time I was trying to yell or scream, or be sensible and tell those two black men that I was a man and not a woman, but I couldn’t make it. And then I heard a sound like a board cracking or breaking in the fence and thought they were still after me.
So I kept on running like a crazy man, in the field, and just then I stumbled and fell over something. I’ve told you how the old slaughter-house field was filled with bones, that had been lying there a long time and had all been washed white. There were heads of sheep and cows and all kinds of things.
And when I fell and pitched forward I fell right into the midst of something, still and cold and white.