Page 71 of Into the Dark, We Go
Nick turned to me and I hurried to say, "I’m alright, I’m alright. It’s just a deer. They’re not aggressive, right?"
"No, they aren’t. Do you want to turn back?"
"I don’t know."
"Let’s walk a little further, and if we don’t find anything in the next fifteen minutes, we can go back."
We pressed on, prolonging my suffering. The branches clawed at my head, tugging strands of hair free from my ponytail. Beneath my feet, the root system stretched like a twisted, organic labyrinth, or a swirl of snakes frozen mid-slither. My gaze darted to them again and again as we moved, a cold dread building inside me, waiting for the moment they might begin to writhe.
Nick showed no signs of slowing. He moved with a relentless determination, his focus razor-sharp, his fatigue buried beneath whatever obsession drove him forward.
He led us up the game trail, and I followed closely without protest. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I trusted him. It wasn’t as though he claimed to be an expert at navigating the woods. But there was something about him, something in the way he carried himself, his quiet confidence, the way he’dinstinctively positioned himself between me and the animal without hesitation. That spoke volumes.
I had just begun to wonder when the fifteen minutes would be up, too tired even to pull out my phone to check the time, when Nick stopped again, his arm shooting back to halt me.
My senses, dulled by depletion, barely registered why we’d stopped. It took a moment to process, and then I reacted with a frightened gasp.
In front of us, sprawled across the game trail like a macabre spectacle, lay the deer. Its lifeless body seemed to stare accusingly into the rain-soaked undergrowth, eyes fixed in a permanent, glassy terror. It was the same deer from before, its missing antler and twisted body a grim sight. But now, its legs were bent at impossible angles, its belly torn open with surgical precision. There was no sign of scavengers. No ragged tears, no feeding marks. Just a dark, empty wound, gaping open as though something had scooped out its insides, leaving behind a hollow shell.
The sight was so ghastly that I was scared to look away, fearful that the deer would suddenly twitch to life.
Nick stepped forward cautiously, his shoe hovering over the deer’s flank, before pressing down gently. The body didn’t yield. It was stiff, locked in place by rigor mortis. A wave of nausea washed over me.
"It’s been dead for a while," Nick announced flatly.
"How is that possible?" My voice was shaky. I wasn’t sure of the exact timing, but I knew enough to understand that rigor mortis would take more than a quarter of an hour to set in.
Nick didn’t answer. Instead, his gaze shifted upward, fixing on a massive tree, its trunk looming ominously beside the fallen deer.
"Check this out," he said, voice low.
Only then did I see it. The symbol etched into the bark was a circle of twisted lines containing an eye that seemed to watch us with malignant intent. That was the symbol from Amanda’s photo, the same one Lucas had tried to sketch on the Post-it note. I was sure of it.
My pulse hammered in my chest. I stared at it, unable to look away, entranced. "Is this?—?"
Nick nodded silently, pulling out his phone to snap a picture.
He didn’t need to say it. I knew we were on the right path.
We pushed forward, my tiredness fading almost entirely, replaced by a heightened sense of alertness. The game trails twisted and tangled, forcing us to navigate around massive boulders and fallen trees. I spotted a couple of snakes slithering through the leaf litter, but they vanished before the fear could take root. I knew bears roamed these woods, but now, a deeper, more unsettling dread crept in, the thought that we might run into the people who felt at home here. The ones who had left their mark on the tree.
Once again, Nick halted abruptly, and I stumbled into his back.
"What the fuck?"
I peered around him, my heart racing as dizziness set in. We’d been walking in a relatively straight line, or so I thought, but now, before us, lay the dead deer. The same one. Beside it stood the tree with the eye-shaped symbol, its hollow gaze fixed on us.
My mind spun, struggling to make sense of what I was seeing. Had we been walking in circles? How had we ended up back here?
We exchanged a look, and Nick spoke hesitantly, "It’s okay. We must’ve made a full circle without realizing it. It’s easy to get lost in the woods."
But his words did nothing to calm my nerves.
"I’d rather we turn back," I said anxiously.
Nick’s eyes softened. "I know how to get back from here. Do you trust me?"
I nodded, and he gave my arm a reassuring squeeze before stepping back onto the path. This time, he made sure we were walking in a straight line. I wished, for a moment, that we had a pocket knife to mark the trees and keep track of where we were. But neither of us had thought to bring one.
