That had me standing abruptly and reaching the cabin door in an instant.
I push it open fully and step outside.
... And the first thing my eyes land on are Jake's shoes on top of the short stairs which Lila is pointing at.
"It might just be a prank," Mason said.
He was standing beside her and looking down at the shoes.
"Jake doesn't play pranks," Cody mutters, and it's then that I notice him just beneath the steps.
"He's too obsessed with his phone for that."
"I'll call him," Talia interjects, and I find myself rolling my eyes.
She pulls out his phone and dials his number.
"Well, has he picked?" Lila asks impatiently and Talia shakes her head in response.
Honestly I don't see why everyone seems to be on edge it's early.
"Don't you guys think you're over reacting? It's still 7 in the morning."
Now everyone turns to look at me.
"It's after 10," Cody states gruffly and my mouth drops open.
"It's okay," Lila tells me with a small smile, walking over to me and giving me an unexpected hug.
"You needed the rest to clear your mind, so I let you sleep."
Oh no.
I didn't get to book an Uber.
Suddenly I feel the floor vibrate under and jerk, disengaging from the hug.
When I look down, the first thing I notice is the muddy paw prints on the porch's floor, and then I see Jake's phone with its mini car- key chain.
"J---- Jake's phone's been here the whole time?" Lila mutters as I bend to pick it up.
Flipping it around, I see Talia's name on its screen just in time before she disconnects the call, and everyone gathers around me.
As the call screen drops, I notice that the phone's screen is cracked, and the same picture of the smiling dog from last night is right there, staring back at us with its eyes glowing faintly.
Unable to tear my eyes away from the screen, I keep looking, it's bead red eyes looking back at me, staring into the depth within my gaze.
At a point, it... it almost feels like...
It blinked at me.
"Fuck this," Cody curses.
"I'm following the trail."
His words break the mini haze I'm in, and so I look up from the screen.
"What trail?" I ask, and in response Talia points at something.
I'm still angry at her, and I don't want to have anything to do with her anymore, but I also want to know what's going on.
So I follow the length of her fingers with my eyes, my gaze landing on a thin trail of blood leading into the woods.
... And Cody is following it.
"Cody wait up," Lila yells, tugging my fingers so I follow her, and behind us, Mason and Talia follow as well.
We search for him in the woods, yelling his name, but he didn't answer back.
Minutes passed by, then hours and some yet we still didn't find where Jake had gone.
It was getting dark already, so we trugded back to the cabin.
By nightfall, Jake still wasn't back, so we locked up the windows and door.
Then Mason tried to light the fireplace, but the wood was too damp to catch fire.
"What are we going to do?" Talia asked quietly and Lila shook her head.
"I don't know."
"It's unlike Jake to go anywhere without his phone," Cody added.
I, on the other hand, was silent.
I becoming genuinely worried for Jake.
Where could he be by this time?
Just then, a series of pinging sounds reached my ears, and so I looked down on my phone in my head.
Raising it up to my face so I could look at it, my brows furrowed as I saw a WhatsApp message notification.
... From the same number.
However it only had one message in it.
So why had my buzzed several times------
"This again?" Lila said, sounding exasperated.
I raised my gaze, from the look on their faces, I realised they'd gotten the same message.
Looking back down, I clicked the message open, seeing the Smile.jpg again.
Curious, I downloaded it and saw the same dog image, but this time, there was text beneath it which said:
SMILE BACK.
"Okay, this isn't funny anymore!" Mason shouted, pacing the room.
"I agree with Mason," Lila cried, causing Cody and I to turn to her with shocked gazes on our face.
"Maybe Jake's the one doing this!" She continued.
"He's trying to mess with us!"
"Wha----- what if he's dead?" Talia interjected, causing all of us to suck in a sharp breath.
I swallowed hard. "Don't say that."
"Let's be realistic Harper," Talia said, facing me.
"Jake is missing, his phone he pampers is not with him, his shoes are on the front porch and there's blood leading into the woods."
She stops and swallows visibly. "I think there's a murderer out here."
But Lila shook her head, "Don't, don't think that far."
Then she added, "I'm going to bed, let's just hope Jake comes back tomorrow. If not we're leaving and filling a missing person's report."
"I agree," Cody said.
"Let's just sleep for now."
And so everyone began heading to bed, while I wondered;
... What were those muddy prints I'd seen on the porch this morning.
All the same I was tired, and exhausted from spending the whole day in the woods, so I went to bed.
-------------
The next morning, when we woke up we found Lila outside the cabin.
She... she was dead.
Her mouth stretched terribly wide in a... smile?
Her cheeks were torn open so much that it looked like she'd been smiling so hard until her face ripped.
It terrified us; no one knew when she left the cabin or what could have possibly happened to her.
But what scared us the most was the fact that her phone was in her hand, with its screen showing that same smiling dog picture with red eyes.
Talia threw up all over the place, and Mason started shouting that we needed to leave.
Forget the fact that he was a cheating bastard, he was right and there was no denying it.
So together we ran out of the cabin, heading straight to Cody's car we'd come here in.
However when we tried to start the car, it wouldn't turn over, instead the engine sputtered several times then died.
We were trapped.
That was when Cody said, "There's this old couple who lives a few miles east. We passed their sign on the way here; let's go there."
So...
Well... we didn't really have a choice, none of us could stay here anymore.
We'd slowly come to the realisation that Talia was right; Jake was dead, and now Lila too.
And we didn't even know how or why.
We hiked through the woods, sudden rain pouring down over us.
It took a couple of turns, but finally we reached the old couple's cabin.
Strangled though, they were already waiting for us, looking frail with their hollow eyes staring at us.
"You've seen it," the old woman said before we even spoke.
I froze. "Seen what?"
"The dog," she grated in a hoarse weak voice.
"It smiled at you in the picture, didn't it?"
Just then, Mason shoved his way to the front, hovering over the short old couple.
"You know about this?"
The old man sighed, "Come with us."
Without waiting for a response from us, he held his wife by her shoulder and led her inside.
Nervously, I looked between, Talia, Mason and Cody, not knowing what to do.
Then finally Cody took the first step and walked in, pushing Mason out of the way roughly with his shoulder.
With Cody gone, I decided to follow him immediately; I didn't want be anywhere near the lying figure beside me.
Inside, the old man and woman were seated on a mat, and had somehow already prepared tea.
He served us tea in cups, but none of us were thirsty.
"How do you know about the------" Cody started but the old man cut him off.
"The picture? Smile.jpg?"
Instantly Mason snapped, grabbing the old man by the scruff of his cloth near his neck.
"Are you the one that sent that?! Tell me, did you kill our friends?!!"
"Darling? Darling? What is going on dear?" The old woman called, patting her hands around in the air in search of the old man.
Instantly our heads turned to her, and we were stunned.
She was... blind?
It was now that I could see the excess amount of grey in her eyes.
Mason let go of the old man then, and the old man tapped his wife lightly by her arm.
"I'm here dear, it's all good. They're just scared."
He fed her tea and said some soothing words to her, while I lowered my head in shame.
Even though I wasn't the one that just rough handled him, I was feeling guilty.
Finally the old man began to speak again, and thus time his voice sounded cracked.
"My wife and I saw it ten years ago. It was just picture our son was scared about, so we thought it was a childish fear."
He paused, "Then he started screaming in his sleep."
Raising his hands, the old man pointed to a picture of a boy on the side of the room which was placed on top of a raised carpeted ground.
"He's buried there now."
I blinked twice, completely unsure of what I'd heard.
Perhaps I'd heard wrongly.
"Pardon?"
"We couldn't bear to leave him alone in this world so we buried him here near us."
I was suddenly uncomfortable, and I had to bite my lips to stop myself from saying 'you have a fucking yard for that'.
And from the corner of my eyes, I saw Mason shuffle away to keep himself far from that spot.
Coward.
"I believe the picture is cursed," the old man says finally.
Cursed.
So he was saying a curse killed my friends??
I almost couldn't believe it, and yet...
All of us were silent for a while, then Talia spoke, and her voice trembled as she did.
"How do we stop it?"