Free The Long Weekend by Savita Kalhan

first, and anyway, Sam wasn't abandoning him. He was going to get help.
    At the bushes the man halted and with a sudden movement, which Sam hadn't been expecting at all, he swung the stick he had been carrying at his side into the bushes. Sam winced involuntarily and covered his face with his hands as the man lifted the hefty stick over his head and brought it crashing down on the bushes again, and again. He gave them a good thrashing, beating and tearing them aside, searching. He threw the stick aside and got down on his hands and knees to look under the canopy of branches and leaves.
    Sam didn't need to watch any more. He had to get away. He wriggled backwards ever so slowly, flat on his stomach, and didn't stand up until he was deep inside the enveloping darkness of the woodland.

9
    Inside the heart of silent darkness nothing stirred. Sam crouched in the hollow of a tree, waiting, thinking. He had expected the man to come into the woods after him, but he hadn't yet, and Sam wondered why. Maybe he was waiting at the edge of the woods for him to come out because he knew it was only a matter of time before Sam came out screaming when the dark woods got to him. Most kids were scared of being by themselves in dark, lonely woods, and Sam was no different. Or maybe the man was creeping through the woods looking for him and Sam just couldn't hear him because he was an expert at creeping. There were people, real people who could do that, and not just characters in books like Lord of the Rings where Aragorn could travel through woods and forests and never make a sound, never leave a footprint. Aragorn could track people, hobbits, orcs, basically anything that moved, but somehow Sam didn't think that this man could do any of those things because if he could, he'd have been here by now.
    Sam tried hard not to look at the marks he had left on the ground. His backwards belly wriggle had made a little furrow that extended from the edge of the woods almost to where Sam was hunkered down. You didn't need to be an expert tracker to follow those tracks. He might as well have got up and yelled, 'Here I am! Come and get me.'
    Maybe the man was afraid of the dark woods and that's why he hadn't followed Sam in, but that seemed an unlikely explanation even to Sam. Grown-ups weren't afraid of the dark, and neither was Sam, usually. This was different. This was a different kind of darkness.
    He should get going before it got too late. He checked his watch; it was just after one, which meant it was highly unlikely he'd be able to flag down a passing car, or bump into someone walking their dog. Who'd walk their dog at one o'clock in the morning? Only a nutter, and Sam had had enough of nutters. The thing was he still had to get out of the woods.
    Was it safe to move now, or should he wait a bit longer? The man could be hiding behind one of the trees waiting for Sam to make a move, and then Sam would really be stuffed, but on the other hand if he lay there for much longer he'd lose his advantage. The trouble was Sam couldn't get up, even though the ground beneath him was cold and damp and his toes had gone numb, even though it was pitch black all around, even though the man was nowhere in sight. He just couldn't get up.
    He knew he couldn't stay there; he had to get moving. But he was scared, even more scared than he had been in the house, which didn't make any sense to him. He wasn't trapped in a locked room any more. He was free. He had escaped. Yes, him, Sam Parker, not exactly famous for his daring deeds or physical prowess, had escaped! So why was he stuck now? Woods were just trees, a collection of trees, and it was dark because the sun was round the other side of the world. In fact he should feel grateful for the dark because it meant it would be a lot harder for the man to find him.
    Logic wasn't working for Sam; he was still afraid. He knew what he had to do. He had to pretend he wasn't Sam any more. He had to be somebody else. Someone who