The forest had never felt so alive. Every tree seemed to breathe, every shadow leaned closer, every sound meant something. I moved slow, careful not to break branches or step on loose rocks. The faint outline of the service trail lay ahead, half-swallowed by moss and old leaves.
My flashlight had died hours ago. The moon was my only light now—dim, uncertain, barely cutting through the fog. It didn't help much, but I didn't dare turn on my backup. Anything that could draw attention wasn't worth the risk.
I clutched the map in one hand, though I didn't need it anymore. I had studied it every night since my arrival, tracing the narrow service path that wound down from the tower to the highway. If I could reach that road, I'd be safe. At least, that's what I kept telling myself.
The night was too quiet. The forest was never this still. Even the insects were gone. I could only hear my own footsteps—soft, deliberate, nervous.
Then came the sound I'd been dreading.
A distant crunch of leaves. Behind me.
I froze, heart pounding so loud it echoed in my skull. Slowly, I turned my head.
The fog shifted, revealing movement. Several movements.
Figures.
They were following.
No chanting now, no ritual. Just silent pursuit. Their pale outlines flickered between trees, moving with impossible coordination. They weren't running, not yet. Just walking. Watching. Gaining.
I crouched low, pressing myself against a fallen log. My breath came fast and shallow. I had to stay calm. Panic would kill me faster than they could.
I waited, counting each breath. The figures stopped too, as if listening. As if feeling my heartbeat.
When the fog drifted past them, they were closer than before. Ten meters. Maybe less.
I swallowed, wiped the sweat off my palms, and slipped off the trail. The underbrush scratched my arms, tore at my sleeves, but I didn't care. I needed distance. I needed space between us.
I crawled through roots and leaves, barely daring to breathe. I moved toward where the creek had been, hoping the sound of running water might mask my movement.
A twig snapped to my left. Another behind me.
They were spreading out. Surrounding.
I ducked behind a cluster of ferns, pulling my body tight. My chest pressed against the cold earth. I could hear them now—bare feet moving through wet leaves, slow and measured.
Then a whisper cut through the dark.
Soft. Too soft to be carried by wind.
My name.
"Evan."
My throat closed. It wasn't Carter's voice. It wasn't any voice I knew. It sounded… borrowed. Like someone trying on a word they didn't understand.
I shut my eyes, biting the inside of my cheek to stay silent.
"Evan…"
It came again, closer this time.
I wanted to scream. Instead, I waited, muscles burning, until the sound drifted away. When I finally dared to move, I crawled deeper into the brush, staying low, keeping every movement controlled.
Minutes passed—or maybe hours. Time didn't exist anymore. I reached the creek and crouched beside it, the cold water biting my skin. I followed it upstream, careful to step on stones where I could, to leave fewer tracks.
The forest opened slightly ahead—a clearing. The moonlight hit it in patches, silver and white. And beyond that, a faint incline. If I climbed it, I'd reach the ridge that bordered the service road.
Hope surged. Weak, but enough.
I started up the slope. My legs ached, lungs burning. Each breath came out ragged, scraping my throat. I didn't dare look back until I reached halfway.
Then I did.
They were there.
All seven now. Emerging from the fog below. Not running, but faster. Coordinated. Climbing with an eerie grace that made my stomach twist.
Their faces were still indistinct, hidden by distance and shadow. But one of them tilted its head back, and I saw the gleam of teeth.
That was enough. I ran.
The slope turned steep, my boots slipping on damp soil. I grabbed at roots to pull myself upward. The forest seemed endless, each tree identical to the last. The sound of pursuit was closer now—bare feet slapping mud, the rhythm steady, relentless.
When I reached the top, my body was screaming for air. I stumbled onto the service trail again, narrower now but clearer.
I ran.
Branches tore at my jacket, roots grabbed my ankles. I didn't care. I ran until my lungs burned and my legs felt hollow. The forest blurred, dark streaks of motion and breath and fear.
Behind me, the chanting returned.
Faint at first. Then louder.
It wasn't rhythmic this time—it was frenzied, chaotic. Like laughter turned inside out.
I pushed harder.
The trail curved again, and suddenly, I saw it—the glint of asphalt through the trees. The road.
I almost fell crying. My body wanted to collapse, to just drop right there and sob until morning. But I couldn't stop.
They were still behind me. I could hear them. Not running anymore—just walking again, calmly, confidently. They knew I couldn't go far.
The last hundred meters were the longest of my life. I crashed through the brush, stumbled onto the pavement, fell to my knees. The cold asphalt stung my palms, grounding me back in reality.
I turned around. The forest loomed behind me. Silent.
The chanting had stopped.
I couldn't see them anymore.
I waited, shaking. My body was raw from cuts, my jeans torn, my arms streaked with blood. My breath came out in sobs. I stayed like that for maybe ten minutes, too afraid to move, half-expecting them to appear at the treeline again.
But they didn't.
A distant sound broke the stillness—the low rumble of an engine.
Headlights cut through the mist, and a car slowed down, braking when the driver saw me.
A man stepped out—middle-aged, wearing a hiking vest. His face went pale when he saw me.
"Jesus Christ, you okay? What happened?"
I tried to speak but no words came. Just a rasp of air.
He helped me to my feet, his hands firm on my shoulders. "Sit down, man. You're bleeding all over. Let me get my phone—there's service up the road."
He guided me to the car, sat me on the back seat, wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. The heater blew warm air against my frozen skin. I stared out the window, unable to stop shaking.
"Who's out there?" he asked quietly, but I couldn't answer.
He called someone—rangers, maybe police—and kept glancing at me between words. "Found him by the side of the service road. Says he's a lookout ranger. Yeah, alone. Yeah, looks like he's been out for days."
The world outside the car looked washed-out in the headlights—fog curling across the road, trees shivering in faint wind. The forest stood there, dark and endless.
When the authorities arrived, everything blurred. Questions. Hands. Flashlights in my eyes. Someone asking about the tower. Someone asking if I'd been drinking.
They didn't believe half of what I said. I couldn't blame them. I barely believed it myself.
But they took me in. They cleaned the cuts, wrapped my arm, gave me water. Told me to rest.
I sat in the back of an SUV as they drove me away from the forest. The road wound down the mountain, mist trailing behind.
When we passed the ridge, I turned to look one last time.
The tower stood faintly visible in the distance—a thin silhouette against the pale sky. The fog had started to clear, sunlight edging in.
I almost smiled.
Then I saw movement.
Just for a second—so quick I could've imagined it.
Seven figures. At the edge of the trees.
Still. Watching.
I blinked, and they were gone.
I leaned back against the seat, closed my eyes, and tried to slow my breathing.
The officer driving said something about safety reports, about taking time off. I nodded, pretending to listen.
Outside, the forest slipped away behind us, but I could still feel it. That hum, that low vibration I'd heard for nights, like the forest breathing.
It stayed with me long after the trees disappeared from view.
By the time we reached the station, the sun had risen fully. Warm light filled the car. The horror should've felt distant now. Over.
But when I stepped out and looked back one last time toward the horizon, I couldn't shake the feeling that the forest was still watching.
That it always had been.
And that if I ever went back, it would finish what it started.
It had been three weeks since I escaped. Three weeks, and the forest still haunted me. Every creak in my apartment sounded like branches scraping metal siding. Every shadow in the corner of my vision was a swaying figure. My hands trembled when I boiled water or unpacked groceries. Even sleep offered only brief, shallow naps punctuated by the sound of chanting echoing from nowhere.
The doctors called it post-traumatic stress, which I didn't argue with. My cuts had healed, bruises faded, but the wounds inside—those didn't. They throbbed in the quiet moments, when no one was watching. The nightmares returned nightly, vivid, cruel: the tower silhouetted against orange firelight, the half-circle waiting, the seventh figure tilting its head toward me.
I tried to write it all down. Tried to journal like I had in the tower, to make sense of what I'd seen. Words failed me. Every page was scrawled in desperation, an attempt to anchor reality. I didn't send the footage to anyone. No one would believe it anyway, and if they did… I couldn't risk that knowledge spreading.
Sometimes, though, I replayed it silently in my mind. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to understand. Why they watched. Why they moved closer every night. Why, when I set the fire, they didn't all come to me, didn't all descend. Logic failed. There was nothing logical about it.
My apartment felt safe, though the forest wasn't far in my mind. The walls didn't shake, the trees didn't breathe. But I avoided the news. Avoided anything that could remind me of them. Yet even when I walked to the corner store, or crossed a parking lot, I had the unshakable feeling of being observed. It didn't matter that it was daytime, or that the streets were crowded. Somewhere, always, eyes lingered.
The authorities never recovered the tower ranger logs or my camcorder. They asked questions, yes, but I kept my explanations vague. "Footprints, some ritual stuff, forest superstition," I said. They accepted that. Better that way. I wanted no one digging too deeply. The forest didn't like attention. It never had.
I forced myself to return to normalcy. Grocery shopping. Cooking. Walking. Work. Phone calls to Carter, just to keep a tether to some version of normal. Each day, I carried the ache of that tower inside me—a coil of fear, alertness, and something worse I didn't name.
Night came differently now. I slept with lights on, doors locked, curtains drawn. Every sound — a creak of a floorboard, a car braking outside, wind against the window — made me tense, muscles taut. I sometimes whispered my own name to check that it was me making the sound, that the forest wasn't reaching me here.
I had nightmares still, but they were slightly different. Not just of the tower, not just of the figures. Now, it was me in the forest again, running, climbing, hearing the chanting close behind, scrambling to the road, collapsing in the headlights. But in these dreams, sometimes I saw the figures pause. Watch. Never advancing. And I woke up gasping, sometimes crying, but alive. That alone felt like small progress.
I kept an old notebook from the tower with me. In it, my shaky handwriting documented everything. Each page, each day, a thread of reality I could hold. Sometimes I read through them, counting days, counting figures, counting nights when I survived by sheer luck. On bad nights, I imagined them reading over my shoulder, pointing, chanting. On good nights, I could laugh a little, whisper to myself, I made it.
Even now, I avoid forests, avoid trails, avoid any place that resembles the tower's silhouette. I won't even drive past the ridge. I know I would recognize the line of trees, the slope leading to where they waited. I would see it, and they would see me. And I don't want that.
I haven't returned to work. My contract ended; I didn't renew. I don't want to be alone in a tower again. I can't. My life is quieter now, simpler, but every quiet moment is weighted. Every night is a balance between fear and the fragile hope that I'm safe.
Sometimes, though, when the city is quiet and the wind presses against my window just so, I hear a faint hum. A rhythm, soft, far away. I know it isn't real. I know it's just my memory echoing. But I freeze anyway. Heart hammering. And I whisper, even though no one hears me: They're out there. Watching.
The hardest part isn't the escape. It isn't even the memories of the scratches, the fire, the chanting. It's the knowledge that the forest waits. It doesn't forget. It doesn't forgive. And somewhere, far back, the seventh figure—the one that followed me off the slope—might still remember me too.
I've learned to live with it. Carefully. Slowly. I plan my movements. I check shadows. I keep lights on when I sleep. I carry a small knife in my pocket now. Not that it would matter against them, but the motion makes me feel less powerless.
I go outside only when necessary. I take city streets, not trails. I avoid parks, wooded areas, even old service roads. Every time I see a tree out of place or a shadow where it shouldn't be, I tense, ready to run.
And I know this will never leave me. The fear, the tension, the memory of their ritual — it's a permanent mark.
Yet, for all of it, I survived.
I survived the tower. I survived the climb through the forest. I survived the pursuit that could have ended me a dozen times. And I cling to that, however thin the thread may be.
At night, I sometimes sit by my window, looking at the faint glow of city lights. I don't look toward the forest. Not really. But I feel it there. Always. Just beyond sight. Always watching. Always waiting.
And I know, deep down, that surviving isn't the same as winning.
But it's something.
It's enough.