Kye woke to the sound of dripping.
At first, he thought it was inside his head, a leftover from some nightmarish dream within the dream, but as he opened his eyes, he found the source: blood. Thin red lines trailing down from the bunk above. Someone was up there. No movement. Just that ceaseless drip from pale fingers dangling like wilted petals.
He didn't scream. Not anymore.
He slid from his bed and let his feet meet the cold wooden floor. The camp cabin was no longer his sanctuary. No longer the warm space where jokes echoed and torches flickered. Now, it was hollow, stripped bare of noise and feeling. His own bed had dried blood crusted around the mattress edges.
He'd stayed here too long.
Kye grabbed the flashlight from the nearby table. Its once strong beam now sputtered like it too was afraid. He clicked it off again. Darkness felt safer.
The cabin door creaked as he opened it. He winced. Every sound in this place felt like a flare. Something watching, waiting. But nothing came. Just the moon, distant and pale above the trees.
He didn't know where he was going, but his body moved anyway, driven by some half-formed instinct that staying in one place would kill him faster.
___
The trees whispered.
No, not the trees, something inside them. The branches didn't sway with wind, they twisted slowly, deliberately, like ribs curling around a heartbeat.
As Kye trudged deeper into the woods, the air grew wrong. Warmer, wetter, sweet like rotting fruit. And it hit him, He'd been here before.
Not physically, but in dreams. Actual dreams, the kind you forget when you wake. A place where he was always running barefoot, mouth dry, trying to scream but gagging on fog.
He reached a clearing. Dead center stood a swing set. Two old wooden swings, rope thick with moss. One of them swung gently, though there was no wind.
Then, a voice behind him:
"You left me in the fire, Kye."
He spun, flashlight beam trembling.
Arun stood there. Or something wearing his face.
Eyes too bright. Skin cracked with heat, as if charred from the inside. He didn't move like a person. He tilted, twitching closer with every blink Kye took.
Kye stepped back.
"I didn't... I couldn't save anyone, I…"
"Liar."
The thing lunged. Kye screamed, dove to the ground, rolled hard into a tree root. His ribs lit up with pain.
No time to think. He scrambled to his feet, dodging another lunge, and ran.
Behind him, the not-Arun screeched like metal scraping bone.
Kye ran blind, ducking under branches, feeling the trees close in. The world flickered, every few steps switching from forest to camp hallway to city street and back like reality couldn't make up its mind.
He crashed through a line of trees and tumbled down a slope. Mud and dead leaves clung to his shirt. When he stopped, he was face-to-face with a lantern. A real one. Warm light.
And next to it, Luca.
Breathing. Alive.
"Kye?" Luca's voice was hoarse. "Is it really you?"
Kye stared at him, blinking. "You're not... another fake?"
Luca smirked, weak but familiar. "You smell real enough."
Kye laughed, genuinely, painfully.
Then his knees gave out and he sat hard beside the lantern. The light didn't banish the horrors, but it pushed them back just far enough to breathe.
Luca passed him a can of something, beans, maybe. Kye didn't ask. He ate it cold, grateful. They sat like that for a while, side by side in the soft dirt, their backs against a fallen log.
Finally, Luca asked, "How long were you alone?"
"I don't know," Kye whispered. "Days? Weeks? It's only been... what, an hour out there?"
Luca nodded. "Feels like a lifetime in here."
They didn't speak for a moment.
Then Luca said, "I saw them too. Our classmates. Only... they weren't right. Like puppets wearing human skin."
Kye nodded slowly. "Yeah. That tracks."
There was a long pause.
"Hey," Luca said, his voice suddenly too serious. "If I turn into one of them, one of those things—promise me something."
"No."
"I didn't even say it yet."
"I know what it is," Kye muttered. "And no."
Luca smiled a little. "Okay. That's fair."
Behind them, the forest breathed again.
The trees shifted like something larger than the earth itself had turned in its sleep.
They both stood.
No more safety.
Kye looked at Luca. "We need to move. There's a place I saw, a building. It wasn't like the others. It looked... real."
Luca nodded. "Then let's go."
Kye picked up the lantern. Its flame flickered, then burned stronger.
And together, they walked back into the dark.
____
Kye crouched low as the wind picked up, the whispering grass making it hard to hear the steps behind him. The road was no longer just a road, it pulsed now. A long, shallow tremor ran under his hands where they touched the gravel, like the land itself was warning him.
There were no trees anymore. Only the blackened silhouettes of fence posts, buried halfway in ash.
Behind him, soft footsteps. He turned, just shadows. One blink too long and they vanished again.
Kye moved.
He sprinted through the open dark, lungs burning, stomach pulling tighter with every step. The road led to a crooked farmhouse in the distance, just past a rusted windmill. The windows were shattered. The light inside pulsed an unnatural shade of red.
He didn't want to go in, but there was nowhere else.
He burst through the splintered door and immediately ducked behind the remains of a couch. Something groaned from upstairs. Something heavy. Breathing.
The room was twisted, pictures on the wall showed faces with no mouths. A grandfather clock clicked backward. Blood crusted on the ceiling, not the floor.
Then, a voice again.
"Kye... I see what you are."
It was Luca's voice.
He stood, carefully, and scanned the stairwell. Nothing there. No Luca.
Until there was.
Luca's body stood halfway up the stairs. Dead eyes. Lips moving.
"You're not meant to wake up."
The face melted into a black grin. The body twitched.
Kye backed away, bumping into a table. It toppled with a crash, and the sound ignited the walls like paper. Flames didn't burn, they sang.
You are prey.
The house screamed, and the stairs began to crawl. Not the steps, the wood itself. Grain by grain, reaching out like fingers, like teeth. The walls tightened, squeezing the space.
Kye bolted for a door to the left, slamming it behind him, And landed in his old bedroom.
Perfectly clean. His backpack was on the bed. Homework, untouched. The curtains danced in a calm breeze, even though he knew the window was nailed shut in reality.
He stepped back. "No."
The door behind him was gone.
On the desk, his phone buzzed.
One new voicemail.
He picked it up.
A click.
Then his own voice whispered through the static: "They're waiting. In your spine. Under your ribs."
He dropped it. The light flickered. And from under the bed, laughter.
Small. Girlish.
Then breathing.
Then a hand snapped out from under the bed, grabbing his ankle, cold as ice, nails jagged and sharp.
Kye screamed, trying to shake free, but the grip tightened, pulling him downward, the floor going soft beneath him. It folded like skin, rippling, sucking him down.
He clawed at the sheets, but they peeled away like wet tissue.
The voice, his voice, no longer scared, whispered again:
"You should've died on the bus."
And just before he was pulled fully under, he saw a reflection in the glass of the closet door.
It was him.
But smiling.
Behind him, something rose.
Not human.
Not animal.
A shape made of memories he had tried to forget, stitched together with shame.
It leaned down, and whispered something in his ear, The world went dark.
(Important announcement in the author's note)