Blackfoot Forest neon cathedral

Though her rabid fits of black-eyed Marcus and his legion of the damned had ebbed there were times, especially when she found herself alone in the woods, that Em's imagination played tricks on her. At least...that's what she desperately hoped they were. She could see him wandering sometimes in the distance; a vagrant...a disembodied phantom that peeked at her between the gaps of the thickest tree lines.
 
It was a similar moment of disillusion that had sent Emily off the well-beaten path and onto one that was suitably darker...all too perfect to fuel the nervous hammering of her heart. Her ears were pinned to her head but they were largely ineffective again pushing away the noises that stirred from inside her own thoughts.
 
"I love you," he whispered from the shadows.
 
She reacted as she always did when the dead were talking her to. She banked abruptly right and began sprinting in a different direction.