The wind howled like a dying animal, rattling the skeletal forest until their bare tree branches clashed together in hollow, mournful rhythms. They reached skyward like twisted hands frozen in a final plea, scratching at the blackened heaves as though trying to claw their way to freedom. Fog wove between them in slow, curling tendrils-thick and unyielding like a living shroud that devoured all light. The moon was a distant, blurred smear behind the mist, its pale glow swallowed whole by the gloom.
Sandra Price stumbled through the underbrush, her breath rugged and uneven, drawn in sharp gasps that scraped her throat raw. Panic surged through her like poison, burning hotter than the gash along her side. Blood seeped steadily through torn fabric, soaking her fingers in warmth that felt wrong in the night’s icy grip. Each step was agony, but still she ran–her limbs trembling, her body slick with sweat and fear.
The forest offered no comfort. It watched her in silence.
Twigs cracked underfoot, brittle and loud against the suffocating silence. Every sound she made felt deafening–too loud, too revealing. She didn’t dare look back. She didn’t need to. The thing following her was near. She could feel it–an oppressive pressure closing around her, tightening like a noose. It was a presence that throbbed at the edge of awareness, as though the earth itself recoiled from it.
Then it came again–that sound.
Low and wet, like something dragging itself across broken stone. A slow, slithering his layered beneath the heavy exhale of a breath that was too deep and too hollow. Too…wrong. The very air trembled with its weight, and for a moment, the fog recoiled around her as if it was trying to escape as well.
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It wasn’t just following her.
It was hunting her.
Sandra’s legs gave a violent jolt of protest as she forced herself forward. But the ground turned against her, rising suddenly with a gnarled root hidden beneath fallen leaves. Her foot caught. Her body pitched forward, and the world spun into a kaleidoscope of pain and cold earth.
She hit the ground hard. The impact stole her breath in one sharp, wheezing gasp. Darkness rushed in at the corners of her vision, and her scream died before it could leave her throat. She lay there, face pressed to the dirt, gasping, trembling–the taste of blood and soil thick on her tongue.
Move
Her mind screamed the command–wild and frantic–but her body refused. She clawed at the ground with numb fingers, dragging herself forward with what little strength remained. Nails split and caked with mud. Each inch forward felt like a mile, like she was drowning in molasses.
Behind her, the night tore apart.
A shriek–shrill, bone-deep, inhuman–ripped through the forest, shattering the stillness like a scream inside a dream. It wasn’t just a sound. It was a warning. A predator announcing that the end had arrived.
Sandra turned her head, slow and helplessly. It was upon her.
A silhouette–taller than any man, hunched and grotesque–emerged from the fog like a nightmare pulled into reality. Its form twisted and shifted, the outline barely visible through the mist. She could barely see its face, half swallowed by the shadow, yet unmistakable. A grin stretched impossibly wide across its jagged maw, filled with rows of serrated teeth glistening with filth and fresh rot.
It didn’t have eyes, but it didn’t need them.
It had found her.
A sob caught in Sandra’s throat. Her arms trembled as she tried to rise, however, her legs wouldn’t obey, too weak, too spent. The ground beneath her felt like ice, sapping the last of her strength.
She was alone. Exposed.
The creature let out a hungry snarl. It raised one long arm, finger curling–no, splitting–into sharpened claws. The air rippled around its form, warping under its weight, and for a moment time itself seemed to stretch, caught in the gravity of something unnatural.
Sandra could feel the scream rising from her chest, but the wind stole it away before anyone could hear it.
