Sorry that this chapter is late. We had no school on the day I had it to where this chapter would be posted. Snow and all that, you know.

But it's here now! Enjoy!

[xXx]

It was late into the night by the time Jeff and Elvira agreed to stop and rest. The two had no idea how far they were from the girl's house, but it was far enough to feel safe. The both of them were exhausted, and they were both thirsty and hungry. As Jeff started to set up a small camp, Elvira told him that was going to go to the nearby river and clean herself off so she could change into the clean clothes that the two of them had brought along with them from her house.

A frown curled at the edges of Jeff's natural lips. "What do we do about your blood covered clothes?" he asked her seriously, concerned that they would get the two caught if they carried them with them. Elvira seemed to go into thought for a moment. She then seemed to come up with an idea, her eyes lighting up some.

"Why don't we take the clothes and scatter them around? We can bury them under the earth some, too. If the police find them, it will lead them astray," she said.

Jeff took a moment to think about it. He then shook his head. "It's a good idea, don't get me wrong, but… I'm seeing a problem here," he told her. "If the police use their tracking dogs to track us down, won't they still follow your scent afterwards? I mean, you're still alive and all."

"The lead isn't exactly mean to throw the police entirely off of our trail," Elvira explained. "It'll buy us time to get away as far as we can, putting a bigger distance between us and the police. Besides, since you 'carried me away,' my scent would still be all over you, anyways."

She had a valid point, there, Jeff noticed. Nodding, he said, "Go ahead and get cleaned up, then. If you're not done in five minutes, I'm going to come check on you, whether you're in clothes or not."

Elvira smiled and gently kissed his cheek, along his self-inflicted scar. "If I'm not clothed when you come to check on me, I will cut you. And you won't like it, so be wary, okay?" she whispered teasingly. She took her change of clean clothes and left Jeff alone in the clearing, heading off to the nearby river.

Jeff smiled a little at her threat, shaking his head some to himself. While she went to clean herself up in the nearby river, he set forth to make a makeshift camp. He thought that he had seen rain clouds earlier on, and he didn't want them to get drenched in the rain. As he worked on making a tent, he found that he had some time to think.

Elvira was a murderer. There was no way around that. Nobody could ever forgive her for what she had done to her peers. There was no chance of redemption for her. She couldn't go home because the police would find her, and if the police found her, there was a high chance that she would be arrested for murder the instant they found evidence against her. If she was arrested, her mother would find out upon coming out of her coma, and she would never be able to look at her only daughter the same way again.

As he managed to shape a form of shelter for the two of them to rest in for the night, Jeff realized that the circumstances that Elvira was going through were the direct result of his selfish impulses. If he had never attacked her in the first place, for example, then she would have continued to live her normal life. She would have met an average guy, gotten married, had a normal family… What was to happen to them, though, since Jeff had attacked her? Would his selfish impulses somehow get her out of her current circumstances? Even if only for a little while?

Jeff frowned some to himself. Oh, it was so easy for one to hope for such things, but it was much harder to actually try and believe in something like that. It seemed so impossible, so much like a small, small, small pipe dream.

Meanwhile, Elvira had found the nearby river, feeling a bit relieved. Delicately, she laid out her fresh change of clothes near the edge of the river. Once she was sure that the clean clothes would not get wet, she started to undress herself, careful of her injured shoulder. She dipped her toes into the water to test the temperature before slowly sliding down inside the river's chilled waters. She shivered, slowly beginning to rub at her flesh in some sort of effort of cleaning off the dry blood that covered her. It would have to do seeing as to how she didn't have any form of soap to aid her. Like Jeff, Elvira found that she, too, had time to think.

She knew that she was a murderer, even if she tried desperately to deny it in her mind. She knew that she should just turn around, walk back home, and turn herself in to the authorities; it would be the right thing to do. She knew that by doing so, she could be arrested, but a part of her wanted nothing more than for her to do what was right. However, she knew that by having herself arrested, there was a small but still likely chance that Jeff would be arrested as well. The idea of seeing Jeff behind bars sent chills up and down her spine.

The idea of seeing him in an electric chair shook her to the core.

Shaking her head, Elvira lowered herself further into the water, feeling the river's current break and wade around her naked body. Just how far did her feelings run for the homicidal maniac? She knew that she liked him enough to be considerably attracted to him, that much was obvious, but… Did she like him more than she originally thought?

She needed time to think on that, to make certain that her feelings were genuine, rather than just fleeting, temporary.

After she was sure that most of the blood was out of her hair and off of her skin, Elvira started to get out of the river. Something rustled nearby in the bushes, causing the blond girl to freeze. Slowly, she turned around towards the source of the noise, hoping that all it was was an animal or maybe even Jeff. She would rather have Jeff watching her than a police officer finding her. Swallowing, she called out, "H-hello? Who's there?"

The rustling continued on for a moment before someone came out from behind the bushes. Elvira paled, knowing that there was no possible way for her to be there.

After all, the dead can't follow you.

Right?

But there the girl stood, body littered with stab wounds and covered in blood, both old and fresh. Her dark eyes were narrowed in a hateful glare, aimed directly at Elvira. Her dark skin seemed to be lacking color, and her movements were a bit sluggish at first. Then, she ran and jumped on top of the blond haired girl.

Elvira screamed.

Jeff heard the scream, his head nearly snapping from how fast he turned it to face the source of it. He recognized it as Elvira's and without him realizing it, he had taken off to go check on her. His heart was hammering in his chest as his legs slammed one after the other into the ground. It felt like he suddenly had no control over his own body, having gone into overdrive. The need to protect what was his was driving him forward, he realized subconsciously.

When he found her, he was stunned in place, though only momentarily.

Elvira was alone, laying on her back, struggling against something that wasn't there. She was yelling for whatever it was that was on top of her to get off of her.

Jeff rushed to her side, grabbing her good shoulder and arm, shaking her. "Elvira! Elvira! Nobody is on top of you!" he exclaimed loudly, frowning deeply to himself. "Nobody else is here but you and me."

She trembled, her struggles slowly dying down. She looked at Jeff, slowly sitting up. Tears were in her eyes as she looked back and forth between him and the vision of her sitting on top of her lap. Her glare darkened, her features growing darker as well. The stab wounds seemed to gush forth more fresh blood, as though to remind the blond girl of what she had done only hours ago.

Her tears fell down her cheeks in thin, rapid streams, her eyes finally resting on the worried features of Jeff's face. He said that nobody else was there except for the two of them. So either she was just seeing her as a figment of her guilt ridden mind or she was a ghost and she chose to spend her afterlife haunting the girl who murdered her.

Neither sounded pleasant at all. In fact, both equally terrified Elvira, forcing her to tremble worse and worse.

"J-Jeff…" she whispered shakily, grabbing one of his arms with a trembling hand. What was she going to tell him, even she had to wonder. Swallowing, she went with what she knew to be the truth: "Jeff… I… I see Ivy. And she's sitting on my lap."