Chapter 2 The Track

Ava's lungs burned before her legs remembered to move. Her hand locked around Lex's jacket collar and yanked, hard. The scream hadn't stopped echoing yet when they bolted through the trees, blind to everything but instinct. No path. No light. No sense of direction. Just branches whipping past and the crunch of deadfall underfoot.

Behind them, the forest exhaled again. The kind of sound that didn't belong in the animal kingdom. It was too long. Too low. Too... amused.

They didn't speak. Couldn't. Ava had never run like that not even in the fire. There was something primal about it, like her own body wanted her gone more than she did.

They didn't stop until Lex collapsed.

She dropped to her knees in a patch of frost-heavy ferns, gasping. Ava stumbled against a pine and doubled over. Her breath wheezed out, sharp and tight, and it took everything in her not to scream.

Lex looked up, wild-eyed. Her flashlight was gone. Her hands were shaking. "Did you see it? Ava, did you..."

"Yes," Ava rasped. "I saw it."

Lex gripped her arm. "That wasn't a bear. That wasn't anything."

Ava nodded. Her muscles wouldn't stop twitching. "We need to get back to the truck. We need to go. Now."

But when they turned around, the way they'd come was gone.

No trail. No familiar rocks. No campfire light. Nothing but trees.

Lex spun in a slow circle. "It moved us."

"What?"

"It didn't just scare us off. It shifted the forest."

Ava wanted to argue, to snap at her, to say she was talking like a crazy person-but she couldn't. Because deep down, she knew Lex was right.

They started walking. Slower this time. Listening.

The wind had stopped again.

"Don't you dare die out here," Lex muttered, half to herself. "Not like this. Not because of me."

They found the first track in a patch of damp moss.

A paw print. Larger than Ava's face.

Five toes. No claw marks. Just pressure, depth, and a strange asymmetry that suggested something had walked upright, paused, and then dropped to all fours.

Ava crouched beside it. Lex stood back.

"That thing," Lex whispered, "was watching you. Not me. You."

Ava said nothing.

She touched the edge of the print.

The moss was warm.

And it was facing the direction they were going.

Toward the truck.

They walked another hour before they saw the outline of the truck in the moonlight. The tires were fine. The windows intact. But the passenger-side mirror had been twisted off and left on the hood like an offering.

Ava scanned the trees. Her eyes caught something between the branches-a tangle of black fur snagged on bark, fluttering slightly in the breeze.

She didn't speak.

Lex started the truck. The engine roared to life, loud and unnatural in the stillness. Ava climbed in and slammed the door.

They drove in silence. Not out of fear.

Out of reverence.

Something had let them go.

Lex kept both hands clenched on the wheel, knuckles bone-white, eyes wide and too dry. Ava stared out the window, one hand still clutching the cloth-wrapped tooth in her coat pocket like a holy relic or a live grenade.

Neither of them said anything for a long time.

The silence stretched like a ligament pulled too far. When Lex finally spoke, it was in a whisper so small it felt wrong in her throat.

"You believe me now?"

Ava didn't answer immediately. She was too focused on her own reflection in the side mirror. Her pupils looked too wide. Her face too pale.

"Yeah," she said. "I believe you."

Lex pulled off the main road and into a narrow driveway behind her trailer, the tires crunching slow over gravel.

The headlights swept across rusting windchimes and a collection of half-dead succulents on the porch. The truck groaned to a stop.

Ava didn't move.

Lex shut the engine off. The silence that followed was even heavier than before.

"You okay?"

"I think it marked us," Ava said softly. "Or me. Or both."

Lex didn't respond. She reached into the glovebox, pulled out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and an old washcloth. "Inside. Come on."

Ava followed her inside, the door creaking closed behind them. The air was dry and smelled faintly of cedar, cigarettes, and old coffee.

Lex didn't turn on the overhead lights, just a desk lamp in the corner. It cast long shadows across the room.

Ava pulled off her jacket and stared at the scar on her collarbone.

It had changed.

The jagged crescent that used to be pale pink had darkened overnight to a sickly gray-purple. The skin around it was inflamed, pulsing faintly like there was something alive just beneath the surface.

Lex stepped forward, reaching to examine it. Ava flinched. She didn't mean to. It was just instinct.

Lex hesitated. "It wasn't like that before."

"No."

"You said it was a dog."

"I lied."

Lex nodded. She sat on the edge of the table and lit a cigarette with trembling hands. "You think this is like rabies? Or... some infection?"

"Does rabies make the trees move?"

Lex exhaled slowly. "Point taken."

They sat in silence again.

Then Ava said, "We need help. Someone who knows what this is."

Lex's expression shifted. She tapped ash into an empty mug. "There is someone."

Ava looked up. "Who?"

"Elijah Greene. Old ranger. Lives up past the ridge, near Lost Hollow."

"The conspiracy guy? The one who used to nail crosses to trees and shout about blood lines at town meetings?"

"That's the one."

Ava sighed. "We're really going to talk to Bigfoot Bob."

Lex crushed the cigarette in the mug. "If anyone knows what that thing was, it's him."