Page 124 of Into the Dark, We Go
But I was faster.
This was muscle memory, years of track meets and laps around the field. My body knew how to run, even as my mind frayed, overflowing with panic and fear.
Two more gunshots cracked in the distance, their echoes dissolving into the night. I didn’t look back. I clutched the knife in one hand and the grimoire in the other. The book buzzed faintly beneath my palm. I told myself I was imagining things, though I didn’t believe it for a second.
Pain flared in my shoulder as blood soaked through the shredded shirt, tracing my spine like warm fingers. Each breath scraped the inside of my throat. My abdomen clenched, but I didn’t slow.
The trees ahead bent unnaturally. In the dark, I didn’t see details, just shapes in the dead moonlight. To the left, I caughta flicker of movement, a shadow of a shadow. It didn’t look human.
Two screams—one, then another—sharp and sudden, slicing through the trees behind me. Then, silence.
I pushed harder.
Now, all I could hear was my own ragged breathing and the relentless pounding of blood in my ears. No one was chasing me anymore.
But something else was out there. A presence. Silent. Invisible. A pressure, constant and tightening its grip. It drove me forward, deeper. I forced a swallow, but the bitter sting of bile still crept up my throat.
Something caught my foot, and I went down hard. The knife slipped from my hand as I crashed through the ferns, leaves and branches, landing flat on my stomach. Air rushed out of me in a helpless gasp. For a second, everything went still.
Plastered against the damp earth and trying to catch my breath, I listened carefully. No footsteps. No voices. Just silence pressing in from all sides.
I had lost them.
A sharp ache bloomed across my knees where I’d landed on tree roots. The pain was jarring but survivable. The ground beneath me shifted, almost like it was breathing with me.
I pushed myself up slowly, the grimoire clutched tight to my chest. My free hand fumbled through wet leaves, searching for the knife. But my fingers found something else. Something out of place.
Hard. Rectangular.
Plastic.
I froze.
Leaves and dirt peeled away to reveal a phone, screen cracked and caked in grime. But I knew the case. Even though the old football team logo was barely visible.
Lucas’s.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. The woods suddenly felt too close.
I stared at the phone, too stunned to think. My brain couldn’t catch up. How had it ended up here, hundreds of miles from where Lucas was last seen? Had it been here the whole time, buried under the leaves, waiting? As if it had been placed there. As if it wanted to be found.
And now I had found it.
This was real. Lucas was gone. Something had dragged him into the dark, and now I had willingly followed it straight into its den.
Overhead, the moon broke through the canopy again, a lifeless eye framed by a mouth full of crooked teeth. My skin prickled.
The silence was so heavy that it felt deliberate, like the woods were holding their breath. I didn’t dare move.
Then, a sharp crack.
I spun toward the sound, my heart slamming into my ribs.
A figure drifted between the trees, peeling away from the shadows.
But it wasn’t Lucas.
It was my father.
