Edmund Knock looked over his shoulder at Zoe, his stark features emphasized by the contrast between shadow and moonlight. "I am no healer or prophet, but perhaps their faith is not utterly groundless." He trailed off, gesturing hopelessly at the shallow grave with a hooked thumb. "I am not going to flaunt my unnatural faculties... they do not work with any degree of reliability." Then his features brightened somewhat, and he smiled, first at little Eula and then back at Zoe. "But they did this time, and I suppose that is all that matters." The young bedraggled preacher reached toward the girl. Eula looked at him with dark round eyes, wide with shock and confusion. "It is alright, my dear. You were sick, and had to rest for a little while."
The child looked back over her shoulder, curly hair whirling with the quickness of her movement. She stared out into the unlit woods for a moment, before turning back to Edmund and Zoe. Her hands fidgeted nervously but she did not say a word. Edmund smiled, his tired face seeming a little less weary as he addressed the risen girl.
"We must find your parents. They will be very glad to have you back, strong and brave as ever." He bent on one knee and extended a hand closer. "Don't be frightened. You are safe."
Eula shook her head vigorously. 'No, we aren't.'
The wind rose, making the trees sigh and gasp as a guttural, distant yell of pure anguish tore out of the woods. A hulking wreck of a man, his face a blood-spattered mask bereft of ears or nose, came staggering out of the undergrowth barely a stone's throw away. Zoe realized with shock that it looked like the brutalized corpse they had found earlier in the evening, Elijah Martin's messily dispatched assailant. His head twisted toward them, and mean pig-like eyes rolled in their sockets as he made another low, throaty cry, throwing back his head. Brown, broken-toothed jaws gaped and a ragged stump of a tongue glistened in the moonlight. Thick, dark liquid ran down his chin in coursing channels.
Eula whimpered and crawled toward Knock who moved like lightening to scoop her up and run, headed at a dead sprint toward the remote barn.