The Wolf Spinner

The wind screamed, and the rain drummed a heavy metal riff on the roof of the Landrover. It was making more noise than the classical music coming from the radio. Saffron Talbot peered out of the windscreen. This weather was frightening. Saffy wanted to be inside, warm in the cottage. This road didn't even have streetlights, not that they would have been any use, as the trees were so thick. The boughs were bending like a roof over the road.  Saffron leaned forward, clutching the steering wheel. She looked at her phone stuck to the windscreen.

Was Doris the Sat Nav sending her in the right direction? Doris had been quiet for the last few miles. Her phone screen was black, no internet, no 4G, nothing.

"Great."

The road was straight, and no turn offs she could see in the next ten yards that her headlights illuminated. Saffron turned the radio up. All she could do was carry on and hope that the tree roots were long and well established. She was humming along to Beethoven's 7th Symphony when right in front of her, something shot across the road.

"Wow! What the hell..."

Saffron slammed the brakes on. Was it a deer, poor thing she would have to see if it was okay? Saffron looked in the rear-view mirror, and she saw something on the verge. She reversed the vehicle and pulled up in front of the animal. She got out and grabbed the torch from the door. The rain soaking her through in seconds as it pounded into her. She struggled in the wind to reach the back of the Landrover.

Saffron gasped, "Oh my God!" she looked at the naked man laying on the grass, the rain and his blood mingling and running down his face and into his thick stubble. She opened the back of the car and grabbed a blanket to cover him.

"I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hit you. I'll get my phone and call an ambulance,"

"No, no ambulance," he gasped. She was already on the way to the front of the car, grabbing her phone and running back to him. Except... He wasn't there. Not even a mark of where he had been on the wet grass. Although, he seemed to have taken her blanket with him.

The rain made black rat's tails of Saffron's hair, and they slapped her in the face as she shook her head, wondering what was going on. Did she really see a naked man at the side of the road?  That wasn't the only thing that puzzled her. Why hadn't she felt the emotions of that man? She could feel everyone, and that was why she had left London, to stop feeling the emotions of every person she made eye contact with. W she so puzzled by what she had seen that her abilities had not kicked in. Huh, that had never happened before. It was shocking to see anybody out in this weather, but a naked man running in the forest?

"Saffy, you are losing your mind, you've driven a long way, you're tired, and now you are soaking through to your skin," she muttered.