“FATHER! FATHER! I’M COMING! FATHER!”
Ana froze. The screams, together with the sound of running feet were coming from the darkness in front of her, and the strangest thing about them was their joyfulness, euphoria. She quickly jumped behind a tree, tripped and rolled into a hollow. A wonderful hiding place, she thought, leant on the soil, pushed herself up and peeped over the edge.
A figure dressed in a short T-shirt and y-fronts ran along the path, waving something in its hands and calling for its father. The apparition had gone past her before she could make out anything else about it. She looked after it in amazement. For the first time, she got a very serious and unpleasant feeling that something was happening which was not a game and which was completely out of her control.
Should she go on? The rumbling from the direction of the village was increasing and for some time now she had known it was from some kind of an engine, probably a tractor or something similar even though she could not think of anything suitable. She let the soil take her down to the bottom of the hollow. She would wait another few minutes and then pluck up the courage to go on.
Moonlight shone on the branches but it was nearly completely dark down there, apart from the very middle of the hollow, about a metre in front of her, which was lit up by a vertical ray of light from the moon.
She became aware of the quiet in the woods, probably because of the shouting earlier.
The first day of her holidays and there she was already alone in the middle of the night (or was it early morning?) among the pine-trees. She remembered her schoolfriend’s advice that she had rejected. No, she would not want to stay up that late every night. The thought reminded her of bed and sleep, which she had not really missed until then, but now she started to. It would be nice to go to sleep in her own bed. But she would make do with the bed at her uncle’s, even though it looked very old, with a mattress stuffed with straw, and was probably pretty uncomfortable. Only somebody rested finds it hard to decide between an adventure and rest.
She smiled at the darkness.
A skull nodded in the ray of light, or so it seemed at first glance. Large shining eyes, teeth exposed in a big grin, whilst the rest of the face was covered with something dark, sticky and hard, studded with pine-tree needles.
Ana felt like screaming. Her mouth opened, the air travelled into her lungs, her vocal cords flexed, but her brain read the look on the monster in front of her and told her: if you scream, you are dead.
The being made no threatening moves, it just stared at her. Ana did not scream, she believed her inner voice.
“Why are you trembling so much? Are you cold?” asked Alfonz.
Raf saw the light in the woods and in between sobs, little seeds of doubt started emerging: were those really signs of madness? They looked so realistic. But then, that is the definition of madness.
He felt his forehead, took a quick breath in and got up. No, his hope was false: his neck was completely stiff, his body was drenched in sweat and he could feel his stomach somewhere deep in his groin. All the signs of an imminent catastrophe.
He looked towards the campsite. The child came out of the smallest tent and started paying attention to the motorbike. The slaughter had started. Raf surprised himself with his cold indifference and a feeling of superiority — all that had nothing to do with him anymore. He was already dead and buried. The only thing that bothered him at all was the slight envy he felt when he thought about the destiny of the tourists within those tents. He felt ashamed and he turned away from the boy who was now looking towards the light above the woods.
Raf put his hand on his heart and it gave him a fright. The madness was growing. His organs were working more and more irregularly, the visions and noises were becoming clearer and clearer.
Oooooooooooooooohhh!
He wrinkled his forehead. Was that possible? The creature was looking at the light above the trees and it seemed to Raf that it was standing there, listening. If it was seeing and hearing the same things as him, than it could not all be just his imagination.
He looked towards the camp again eagerly but the boy was not there anymore. Raf turned his head around in panic, his eyes cutting the air. Finally, he noticed the boy near the campsite entrance, walking up the hill slowly. There was somebody at the reception door with his back towards him, but the completely confused Raf was not interested in him. Pull yourself together, he told himself, what did actually happen earlier?
Aco fell and Raf looked on. In the meantime the boy turned towards Raf and asked for his name, he remembered that very clearly, but everything after that became blurred. He must have answered, because the boy went off and left him as if he had finished his assignment.
"Too late, too late, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!"
That was all he had said, nothing else. He had repeated the name of the Saviour and NO!
-NO!-
it had saved him. He had directed all his attention to Aco’s fall and that had helped him to lie. Not deliberately, that was not possible. He told the name collector a name he surely had already? So what happened with other people’s names and duplicates? Was Jesus a self-sufficient name, which did not need a person behind it? Was that why many doubted it ever did have a person behind it?
He’s saved me, thought Raf. Saved me! Jesus has saved me.
Suddenly, he found himself in the middle of the world again. He was not an inseparable part of it — that was impossible after his close experience of death — it was more a case of a temporary coexistence and responsibility.
I have fucked everything up, well and truly. God saved me that time I didn’t go to play on the trains and God lent me his name tonight and saved me again. There is a task I have to carry out. If there is a goal, than God does exist. This time I won’t fuck up. I’ll be cool and collected, just like Aco. I’ll do everything right and try to atone for my sins.
You’ll hear them as soon as they start off and they’ll come with a noise.
That was what Aco had said. Raf repeated the sentence a few more times and suddenly he recognised the sound coming through the darkness.
The tank. They were coming in the tank!
The child was at the bottom of the hill.
He had promised Aco to warn them and explain to them who their enemy was and what he looked like. He ran over to the spear and pulled it out of the ground. He wanted to run after the boy and attack him again. He changed his mind, remembering the boy’s powers and his own clumsiness. There was one move which would do both at once: he must run along the slope across the wood and not on the windy road so that he overtook the boy, which should not be difficult as the boy seemed to be moon-walking. The rescuers on the tank were sure to have weapons with them and when the creature appeared in front of them, they could shoot him without coming within the reach of his powers. The solution had never seemed so simple and so near. A ripe promise of the end of the nightmare. He looked towards the campsite where there was nothing to do anymore. The boy had already completed his task there and the mad slaughter would begin any moment.
Over the hill, then. Clutching the spear he ran like never before.
The reception door opened noisily and the biker jumped into the room, transformed into a wild and merciless monster. The receptionist jumped up, picked up the tourist by his collar, gave his head two good blows, one from the left and one from the right, kicked him over to the built-in cupboard, opened it and hurled his attacker in and then closed and locked the door.
“There!”
He brushed his hand on his trousers and sat back on his chair, which had not even begun to cool down. Good job he had been expecting an attack ever since he had started his shift that evening, when he had looked through the personal details of all the guests and seen that one of them was a writer. He had never met one in his life, but knew very well what sort of people they were. They came to the seaside, got pissed out of their heads and then caused havoc, having fights all night. His assumptions proved correct and the receptionist smiled smugly and shouted towards the cupboard, without feeling any need to open his eyes:
“You just keep growling and scratching at the door (spitting on the floor) — fucking writer! We know your sort very well here!”
“We’re half way there now, boys, so let’s be a bit more careful from now on!” Luka said into the microphone. He was still half way out of the turret, leaning on the heavy Browning machine-gun on his left.
Bruno asked: “Luka, may I lower the seat?”
“You think it’ll be dangerous straight away?”
“No, it’s just that there’s quite a cool breeze and my rheumatism”
“OK, lower it and drive more slowly!”
From where he was, Luka could not see the driver looking out of the tank just beneath the turret, right next to the barrel. His seat was lowered and the lid was closed.
“Miro, are you ready?”
“Yes.”
Miro was really an artillery-man, but had now taken Luka’s place at the second machine gun.
“Give Adriano down there a kick, just to make sure he’s not asleep.”
“What if he starts going on again?”
“Kick him!”
“EH? WHAT? WHAT SORT OF BEHAVIOUR IS THIS, YOU’RE NOT ON A BUS OVER ON THE MAINLAND!”
“Alright, it’s alright. Just like I said, be careful now, boys!”
The tank struggled on up the road and it was another five-minute drive up to the junction at the top of the hill.
Raf stood in the middle of the road and the lights were already penetrating through the trees. The child was nowhere to be seen.
“Victory!” he said, while catching his breath and then he waited for the arrival of the rescuers.
“FATHER! FATHER!” Raf heard behind him, at first quietly from a fair distance, but then it got louder and he knew it was coming nearer.
“Oh, no! Max!”
He looked around quickly and hid behind some pine-trees at the side of the road. He could not afford to be seen by Max, it was not the right time to be kissed by him, he needed his mouth empty so that he could speak to the pensioners.
Lights appeared in the middle of the road: the one a few metres above the ground was so strong that it blinded Raf whereas the two lower down, in a triangular shape, were much weaker. He could only hear the mass of iron behind them but not actually see it.
Max sped down the road, shouting and running towards the tank.
That was Father’s look! So full of light that it blinded everybody, especially his nameless son. Max could feel his Father’s strength, he could hear his rumble and he knew that they were getting closer and closer, another moment and they would be united in an inseparable embrace. The earth trembled when his Father walked, so he could not be mistaken.
Max waved the strips of jeans he had been tied with in the air. Let his Father see how his worthless son had freed himself from them and was now bringing them to show.
FATHER!
Max ran towards the centre of the light, waving his arms in the air and shouting. His words lost their meaning and became one long howl, an orgasm of euphoric vocal cords.
Raf was hiding behind a tree and could not take his eyes off the scene in front of him.
Luka suddenly noticed the screaming boy, waving something long and flexible above his head and grabbed for the Browning. He was not as quick as he used to be and for a moment he thought that he was finished, the terrorist would throw his explosives before they managed to stop him.
What was Adriano doing? Why wasn’t he firing, he was the head machine-gunner! Was he now blind as well as deaf? Adriano!
The machine gun at the front went off, a moment later Miro joined in and Luka finally managed to aim his barel in the right direction and press the trigger. That was more like it! Fire at the end of the barrel and after every ten loads the fire extended into a long ray of light, which helped him aim. A spider’s web in the darkness.
Max did not seem to be harmed at first and then his right arm came off at the elbow and flew in a long arch into the darkness. The end and devastation happened in a moment: an explosion of stones, soil, pine-trees, blood, flesh and bones fused into a cloud which first flew up into the air, then smashed onto the ground, rolling here and there under the shower of bullets which just would not stop.
Luka let go of the trigger, but the machine-gun would not stop firing. He started hitting the mechanism until it finally stopped.
“STOP!” he shouted.
Miro stopped immediately, whilst Adriano needed another kick, but this time Luka did not have to order it.
“FUCKING HELL!” Adriano’s shouting came through the earphones. “LUKA, FUCK YOU. YOU STICK THAT FUCKING LABEL OF YOURS ON MY MACHINE-GUN AND YOU WRITE ON IT: MACHINE-GUN M 19119A4 AND I CAN TAKE THAT. BUT THEN YOU PUT ANOTHER FUCKING LABEL ON THE FUCKING TRIGGER, SAYING MACHINE-GUN’S M19119A4 TRIGGER! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FUCKING FIRE WHEN I HAVE TO SCRATCH THE FUCKING PAPER OFF THE TRIGGER, EH?”
“ADRIANO, SHUT UP!”
“I FUCKING WILL NOT! SOON YOU’LL BE STICKING A FUCKING LABEL ON EVERY FUCKING BULLET. MACHINE-GUN’S M19119A4 BULLET. AND THEN I’LL HAVE TO SCRATCH OFF EACH FUCKING ONE BEFORE I FIRE IT!”
Luka blushed. Was it possible that the deaf old man could read the innermost thoughts that he had fought against so hard? He decided that attack was his best defense.
“BE QUIET, ADRIANO! WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO FORGET EVERYTHING? YOU SPEND ALL YOUR LIFE LEARNING NAMES OF THINGS. ALL YOUR LIFE! AND THEN YOU FORGET THEM ALL AND YOU’RE NO LONGER HUMAN! GO AND HAVE A LOOK AT MY PARENTS! IS THAT CLEAR? NOW LEAVE ME ALONE!”
“FUCK YOU, LUKA!”
“HEY, YOU TWO!” Miro interfered, laughingly. “What if we paid some attention to that guy on the road?”
“Yes, you’re right!” said Luka. “ADRIANO, THE DEAD BODY INSPECTION!”
“ARE YOU MAD? WE’VE SCATTERED HIM AROUND A RADIUS OF HALF A KILOMETRE, YOU CAN’T EXPECT ME TO WALK THAT FAR, I’M AN OLD MAN!”
So that was it, he was now starting to disobey orders! Luka knew that Adriano would spend at least ten minutes sulking and that he could not count on him.
“ADRIANO, COVER US! Miro, come with me and take the gun!”
Jesus, said Raf. If I show myself they’ll shoot me.
The dust was beginning to settle and he was worried that he would soon be able to see what was left of Max.
Two old men came carefully from behind the lights both wearing uniforms, one carrying a machine-gun, the other one a pistol, and slowly approached the mess on the road. They looked around cautiously and Raf ducked down instinctively.
“Hey,” said the one with the machine gun, “there are no weapons. Just some strips of material”
“Well, I thought”
“Me too!”
“Why the hell was he running like that then! Serves him right! Did you understand what he was shouting?”
“Not quite, but it sounded to me as he was saying ‘father’.”
“Yeah, I had that feeling too. There are some weird people around, don’t you think? He sees a tank, runs towards it, shouting ‘father’!”
“If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it!”
The one with the pistol added:
“Don’t say anything about this to Adriano!”
“I won’t.”
“Still, we’d better be a bit more careful from now on! We should soon be catching up with that niece of Aco’s and I wouldn’t want to have her on my conscience.”
“Yes, she’s a fast walker for somebody from the mainland!”
“She’s young.”
“Yeah.”
Raf bit his bottom lip. The girl from the ferry was not safely in the village but somewhere in the woods, on the way to the villa. He had to pluck up the courage to reveal himself to the pensioners, hoping they would not shoot him. Their eye-sight probably was not very good and they would probably think he was another terrorist. Maybe he should find a white flag somewhere?
“Hey,” said the old man with the machine gun, “there’s somebody by the tank! Why doesn’t Adriano shoot?”
Raf saw the outline of a small figure between the bottom two lights.
Ana kept looking at the beast in front of her and could not stop trembling.
“Yes,” she said, “I’m cold”
“Unfortunately,” said Alfonz, “I haven’t got anything to put around you.”
“I know, I know.”
She nodded eagerly. The light did not reach below his naked shoulder and she had no desire to see the rest of him.
“I can put a hand on your shoulder, the good hand, the one that gave me crisps, if you want?”
The only thing Ana understood was that the monster wanted to touch her and she found it very hard to suppress a scream.
“No, thank you, I’m getting warmer. I’m not shivering any more.”
“Yes, you really are shivering less. I’m glad.”
They stopped talking. Ana knew she had to look at him, look into those crazy eyes in front of her, but at the same time she was trying to blur out what she saw as much as she could.
“I know you,” he said. “You’re the girl from the ferry. The decent girl, the one I could introduce to my mum and dad and we could have a cup of tea together. Fresh tea, not the one brewed in advance for the guests.”
“From the ferry?”
“Yes, we saw each other there, you probably didn’t notice me, because I was very different then. I was sadder, I wasn’t smiling yet.”
He was one of the boys from the ferry? My God, not the bony one? His shoulder answered that question. It was either the muscular one or the one next to him, whose face she could not remember, but who was dressed like some boys she knew from Sunday school. And the one who was earlier shouting for his father on the road was probably one of them too? What was happening? Where was her uncle? And that boy?
“I remember,” she said.
“And I remember you. You know, I divide feelings into three levels of love: to like somebody, to be fond of them and to love them. I liked you then on the ferry. Quietly – I didn’t dare say it out loud – I said: I like you.”
“Thank you.”
She tried to be friendly hoping that kind words might soften what she saw in front of her.
“But since a few minutes ago, when you looked in my eyes and smiled at me so nicely – the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen in my whole life – I’ve been fond of you. Ever since you’ve joined me in here, I’ve been looking at you, not daring to speak to you. But your smile gave me the courage. Listen, I’m telling you, I’m very fond of you.”
Ana did not quite comprehend what the creature was talking about:
“A smile?”
“I think soon I’ll love you,” he said. “But don’t worry, I’ll warn you before it happens!”
Ana understood. She fell into the hollow, started thinking and smiled to herself, but the creature in front of her saw that smile and thought it was directed at him. She had to be careful and friendly. She had to lead the conversation away from rape. She remembered how all her schoolfriends lost their virginity by the sea, after long romantic talks in the dark. But she did not want to follow their example, at least not there and then, and not with him.
“What’s your name?” she asked him.
He moved and she nearly fainted with fear when he growled and gritted his teeth.
“It doesn’t matter!” he hissed. “What does a name mean to somebody who’s in love! Nothing! Real love pays no attention to names! Names are only important when it comes to inheritance, not to matters of the heart! This is love, not the law! We, the nameless, have a right to love too!”
He went on and on. Ana did not understand anything anymore. Maybe he was not all that dangerous and would let her leave?
He stopped suddenly and remained still.
“I’ll give you my heart, that’ll make you believe me!”
“I believe you!”
“You’re just trying to calm me down. How can you believe me when we’ve only just met? And to top it all I’m very sad. I lost a friend.”
“You lost a friend? One of your friends from the ferry?”
“Yes, I wanted to separate the good parts of my friend from the bad ones, so that I could keep just the good ones. And then I went for a walk and I realised that friendship is not just about looking at all the good things. You look at a good thing, get hurt by a bad thing and then take comfort in another good thing. Have you ever lost a friend?”
“No.”
“Well, there you go. That’s why I have to explain it better to you. A friendship is like a yo-yo, it goes up and down, up and down. Yes, I can see you do understand me, that’s why I’ll give you my heart.”
He moved so that she could see him down to his waist, pulled an axe out of the darkness and put the blade to his chest. He pressed on it and Ana could see blood trickling from the wound.
“NO! Don’t give me your heart!”
He sounded terribly disappointed:
“You don’t want my heart?”
The axe was lifted and directed towards her.
“I do! I do! But you still need it!”
He started thinking hard. Ana felt sweat running down her back and into her pants, she felt an itch in the middle of her back but she did not dare to scratch it. A stench of rotting flesh was coming from the boy and his breath smelt sour.
“You reject it just because of me?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“Then I’ll give you the only other heart I’ve got.”
He reached towards her with his hand and there really was something dark on it.
“Take it, it’s a friendly heart, it comes from a friend.”
“I don’t know”
That look again.
“Oh, I’ll gladly take it.”
She touched the thing on his hand, trying very hard not to come anywhere near to the hand offering her the gift. She prepared herself for something slimy but it was not too bad. Warmish and dry, a bit sticky in places. A lump of meat, obviously.
“Don’t be offended, there’s only half of it. You know, that friend was only half good.”
With outstretched fingers she took the lump of meat he was offering her and held it away from her, at the same time pretending to be very happy with the gift. She looked down at her hand and it took her a few seconds to realise that he was speaking the truth. She was holding half of a heart. A very large heart, much larger than the model they had looked at in her biology class and she hoped dearly that it was a cow’s organ.
“Treat it as if it were mine: press it close to your heart,” he said. “Heart next to heart.”
She looked at the axe, at the eyes above it and tried to smile when she held the thing next to her own heart.
“You’re happy, I can see that,” he said. “I’ll give you a friendly hand. I’ve still got that. As I told you, I’d lost a friend, but not all at once. I was walking through the woods, loosing my friend piece by piece, just as it always happens when you lose a friend. Bit by bit. I’m sad about that too.”
Too late, he was too late again!
The name collector was standing in front of the tank, the two old men walked back and stood next to him. The end.
Raf felt like crying again. He had fucked up earlier with Aco, destroyed the campsite and now he had allowed the rescuers to meet up with their death. There was just one person left to save and he was not going to make another mistake.
“You said that ten minutes ago, when you came to warn the rescuers!” said a cynical voice inside him.
No, there would not be another mistake. The girl from the ferry was on her way to the villa. He would catch up with her and save her. He slowly crept out of the reach of the tank lights and ran off as fast as he could.
Adriano was over the moon. They kept going on about how deaf he was and now he heard the boy’s quietly spoken question very clearly, without looking at his lips.
Ana was holding the friendly hand in her left hand, pressing the heart to her chest with her right hand and praying to God to save her and allow her to become unconscious. How much more could she take? She would never had thought that she would be able to endure talking to a butcher, a monster from the very centre of hell for such a long time.
“You must tell me,” said Alfonz, “what you feel for me. And don’t lie to me, I’ll know if you’re not telling the truth.”
Ana wanted to scream, cry, shout, but knew that talking was her only chance of survival.
“Do you feel anything at all for me?”
“Eeeehm would I be here if I didn’t?”
He calmed down visibly.
“Indeed,” he said, “you did come of your own accord. You did. But which level are you at? Do you like me, are you fond of me or do you love me?”
“Eeeehm I can’t how shall I say it you know”
His voice was soft and gentle, a complete opposite to his eyes and the axe.
“I don’t know. You’ve got to tell me. I don’t know.”
“Why don’t we just say we’re friends?”
Even before she had finished the sentence she could see by the flexing of his fingers on the handle of the axe that she had made a mistake.
“NO! Friendship is something completely different! It’s not suitable for men and women. Friendship is a poor substitute when all three levels of love have failed. How can we be friends when I’m so fond of you and soon I’ll love you?”
Say something that will break the anger and the tension, echoed around her head.
“I’m not worthy of you,” she breathed. “You deserve someone better. I’m such a boring person, without any imagination or talents.”
He shook his head and the bare teeth cut a horizontal line through the moonlight.
“No. That’s not true. You mustn’t think about yourself like that!”
He reached for her knee with his hand, with his dark, sticky fingers.
“He’s going to touch me!” screamed Ana inside. I won’t be able to take it. I’ll throw up with disgust, right onto his hand and then he’ll cut me into pieces with his axe, just like he did with his friend.
She would manage. It was not all that bad. The thick material of her jeans protected her and he only touched her for a second with the tip of his finger.
“You’re beautiful!” he said.
“I’m not, I’m not, I hate seeing my image in the mirror!”
“I’ve never met a woman as critical about herself as you. I value that. In my eyes you appear different to what you see in the mirror. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“I have ugly legs. My calves are too big. I have to wear trousers all the time.”
He started to shake his head.
“I have to tell you something, I’ve learned this with my friend and it’s true about love too: a person is more that just a sum of his or her parts. Believe me, I know!”
Raf ran without stopping. He did not look left or right so as not to waste energy unnecessarily. His heart was rebelling, his lungs felt as if they were full of razor blades, but he did not give up.
Ana heard fast steps above her head and thought:
“Help is on its way!”
The steps came and then went again. Was there really no way out of that hell? Was she really completely alone and nobody would come to help her? Did she still have any real hope or was she just fooling herself? She would have to deal with the monster herself.
The worst thing was that she knew what she would have to do if she wanted to get him completely on her side: she would have to touch him. But she could not make herself do it. She imagined how she would slowly raise her hand and stroke his cheek. The lumpy surface on which little streams of drying blood alternated with lumps of already dried blood. She could not do it.
Alfonz tried again. He touched the ends of her hair lying on her shoulders and it was much worse than the touch on the knee. Not because she could feel the touch more on her hair but because his bloody hand, covered in dirt and all sorts of unidentifiable bits, had to travel so near her face that she could smell the decaying flesh. The smell of death helped her go on.
“You’ve got to tell me what you feel for me,” he kept saying and Ana surprised herself when she sensed a desire to kill and started to imagine grabbing the axe, hitting her tormentor and screaming: “This is what I feel for you! THIS! THIS! THIS!”
A beautiful dream.
“I’ll tell you,” she said instead.
“Tell me.”
“It’s not that simple. You have to give me time to think.”
He nodded.
“Yes, you’re right. I don’t want to be a nuisance. It’s only because I’ve changed and I’m now smiling that I dare speak to you, I would’ve been too embarrassed before. They were right. A holiday on the seaside really does change you. I can just imagine the look on my mother’s face when I come home. Oh! And come home with you!”
He was reaching with his hand again. This time he touched her in the middle of her right cheek. A short and gentle touch. The first direct contact between the two bodies and Ana was at the very edge of fainting and vomiting at the same time.
He moved away and got up. A few more bits of his friend fell off him. He said:
“Think about what you feel towards me and when I come to ask you, tell me in clear sentences. You know, I’m not very familiar with a woman’s soul. Please, tell me soon and don’t torment me. Every second of uncertainty hurts right here,” he tapped the left side of his chest with the axe. “Now I don’t need a friend anymore, just you. Please, tell me soon! You’ve completely confused me. Your smile and your eyes are telling me to come near you, but whenever I touch you, you shudder instead of just giving in to my touch.”
He looked at her sharply and Ana pushed her head low between her shoulders.
“You’re not one of those flirts, are you?”
He went on without waiting for her answer:
“No, I don’t think so. You look like a decent girl. I’ll go and you think until I come back.”
In three jumps he was on the road and outside the reach of her eyes. It took a while before she comprehended.
He had just gone.
The killer had left her alone, alive and (nearly) untouched!
She got up slowly, looking around. She could not see much beyond the hollow, so she was getting ready to climb out when she suddenly became aware that she was still holding the heart and the hand. She felt like throwing them away with a scream, but she was frightened that those crazy eyes were watching her from somewhere in the darkness. She hesitated, wondering how to get rid of those things. Finally, she just dropped them without looking as she crawled out, like a child slyly dropping a sweet wrapper.
A few metres later she collapsed in a fit of crying, vomiting and diarrhoea. She only just managed to pull off her jeans and pants before squatting at the edge of the road, excreting all sorts of fluids, still wishing she was unconscious.