The bat lay on the path. It didn't gleam. It didn't look sinister. It just was. A simple, terrible fact.
No one spoke. The only sound was the wind, which had returned now that they were outside the glade, sighing through the pines as if nothing had happened.
"Okay," Jake said, his voice too loud in the quiet. "New theory. We're all super high. Collective hallucination. That's a thing, right?" He looked at Chloe, desperate for her logic to fix this.
Chloe didn't look at him. Her eyes were locked on the bat, wide and unblinking. "I didn't smoke any," she said, her voice thin.
Mark took a step forward, his practical nature warring with the impossibility in front of him. "Maybe it's... magnetic? Or there's a... a thread..." Even he couldn't finish the thought. There was no thread. It was just a wooden bat.
Leo's mouth was dry. The initial shock was hardening into a cold, leaden dread in his stomach. He had done this. That thing was his. He walked over, his movements stiff, and picked it up. The wood was still warm, as if alive. It felt... comfortable in his grip. Right. The feeling was so unsettling he almost dropped it again.
"Just... just leave it," Chloe pleaded, finally tearing her gaze away to look at Leo. "We'll get to the car, we'll drive away, and it'll just... stay here."
"Will it?" Leo asked quietly. He didn't think so. The certainty of it was a stone in his gut. The bat had chosen. It had been made for him, and it would not be left behind.
Mark let out a long breath. "We can't just leave it. What if some kid finds it? It's... we don't know what it is." He was trying to be the responsible one, but the fear was right there under the surface. "We'll take it with us. Figure it out back in town. Maybe... maybe we can take it to a ranger station or something."
The suggestion was so normal it was almost absurd. Yes, ranger, my friend here carved a bat from a demon tree and now it won't stop following us. Do you have a lost and found?
No one had a better idea. Leo tightened his grip on the handle, the strange warmth seeping into his palm, and nodded. The walk back to the trailhead was silent, heavy. The easy camaraderie of the hike in was gone, replaced by a tense, watchful quiet. Every snap of a twig made them jump. They kept glancing back, half-expecting the bat to be gone, or for something else to be following them.
The parking lot was a welcome sight: their beat-up sedan, a few other cars, a slice of civilization. The normalcy of it was like a balm. Maybe they could outrun this. Maybe it was just a weird glitch in the woods.
Then the voices hit them.
"—think they're still out here? Place is dead."
Leo froze. His blood went from cold to ice. He knew that voice. It was the soundtrack to his recent nightmares.
Leaning against a beat-up truck were Troy and his two friends, Kyle and Derek. They were passing a bottle of cheap whiskey between them, their laughter loud and abrasive in the peaceful evening air.
Troy saw them first. A slow, ugly smile spread across his face. "Well, look what the cat dragged in. Lost, ladies?"
The familiar humiliation washed over Leo, hot and immediate. He felt his shoulders hunch, his gaze drop to the gravel. He could feel the bat in his hand, a heavy, solid weight. The memory of carving it, the white-hot rage that had fueled him, flickered in his mind.
Mark stepped forward, placing himself slightly between Leo and the others. "We're just heading out. No trouble."
"Wasn't talking to you, was I?" Troy's eyes slid past Mark and landed on Leo. They dropped to the bat in Leo's hand, and his smile widened into a sneer. "What's this? Gonna play a little ball, loser? Didn't know they had a special needs league out here."
Kyle and Derek snorted with laughter.
Jake bristled. "Just leave it alone, Troy."
"Or what?" Troy pushed off from the truck, taking a swaggering step forward. He was bigger than all of them, all muscle and cheap confidence. "You and your stoner friends gonna do something about it?"
He shoved Mark. It was a casual, dismissive gesture, but it was hard enough to make Mark stumble back a step.
Something in Leo snapped.
The dread, the fear, the weirdness of the bat—it all got drowned out by the roaring in his ears. The laughter. Always the laughter. The bat in his hand wasn't strange anymore; it was an answer. It was justice.
He didn't think. He just swung.
It was a wild, uncontrolled arc, fueled by pure, blinding rage. He wasn't aiming to kill. He was aiming to hurt. To wipe that smirk off Troy's face forever.
The crack of the bat connecting with Troy's shoulder was sickeningly loud. A sound like a branch snapping in a storm. Troy's scream was a sharp, animal thing of pure shock and pain. He crumpled to the ground, clutching his ruined shoulder, his face a mask of agony.
For a second, there was absolute silence. Even the forest seemed to hold its breath.
Then chaos erupted.
Kyle and Derek roared and charged. Chloe was screaming. Jake was yelling, trying to get between them. Mark was shouting Leo's name, his voice sharp with panic and disbelief.
Leo was lost. He swung the bat again, a blind, panicked swipe to keep the others back. It was a primal dance of fear and fury.
"Leo, STOP!"
Mark lunged forward, not at Troy's friends, but at Leo. His hands reached out, not to hit, but to grab, to restrain, to get through to his friend.
He stepped directly into the swing.
Time seemed to slow. Leo saw the look on Mark's face—not anger, but fear. For him. The bat, already in motion, couldn't be stopped.
It connected with Mark's side with a dull, awful thud.
The sound was different. Not a clean break, but something deeper, more final.
Mark's eyes went wide. All the air left his lungs in a soft, surprised gasp. The word "Leo" died on his lips. He looked down at his ribs, then back up, his expression one of profound, utter betrayal. Then his legs buckled, and he folded to the ground.
The world rushed back in, loud and horrifying.
Leo stared, the fury draining from him so fast it left him hollow. The bat fell from his numb fingers, clattering onto the asphalt. This time, it didn't move. It just lay there, a dark stain on the grey ground.
Troy's friends had frozen, their fight gone, replaced by terror at what they'd just witnessed. They scrambled back, hauled a screaming Troy to his feet, and practically threw him into their truck. The engine roared to life, and they peeled out of the gravel lot, leaving a cloud of dust and silence behind.
Chloe was on her knees beside Mark, her hands fluttering over him, tears streaking her face. "Mark? Mark, talk to me. Oh god, Leo, what did you do?"
Jake just stood there, pale and shaking, looking from Leo to Mark and back again, his mouth open in a silent O of horror.
Leo couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. He looked at his best friend, lying broken on the ground. He looked at the bat, innocent and still.
And he knew, with a certainty that chilled him to his soul, that the strange horror in the glade was over.
The real horror had just begun.