The silence that fell after the search helicopter left was heavier and more threatening than any sound. During the day, the noise of the rescue effort had been a strange comfort, a reminder of the outside world. Now, the wilderness had reclaimed its quiet throne, and the quiet was filled with menace.
Alex sat at his desk, the radio's microphone clutched in his hand. The single lamp on his desk cast long, dancing shadows across the small room. Every gust of wind sounded like a footstep. Every creak of the tower sounded like a breath.
"It feels different tonight," he said into the mic, his voice low "Doesn't it?"
Thirty miles away, Elara's voice came back instantly, a fragile comfort in the dark. "It feels... hungry. Like the forest is waiting for something."
They didn't talk about sleep. Neither of them could have closed their eyes if they tried. Instead, they kept a vigil. They talked about about anything and everything to keep the fear at bay—their favorite childhood memories, the worst movies they'd ever seen, the kind of pizza they would order the second they got out of the woods. The conversation was a tiny bubble of warmth and light in an ocean of darkness
Alex found himself hanging on her every word. He was building a picture of her in his mind from the sound of her voice, the rhythm of her sentences, and the way she would pause before telling a joke. He felt a deep, aching need to keep her safe, a feeling so strong it was almost painful. It was absurd. He was hundred feet in the air, miles away, armed with nothing but a radio and a flashlight.
It was his turn to "watch" while Elara rested her eyes that he saw it. He was tired of pacing the small room, so he decided to do something useful. He grabbed the most powerful flashlight he had—a heavy, battery-powered beast that could throw a beam nearly half a mile—and began to methodically scan the area directly below his tower. He swept the light back and forth, cutting through the darkness.
The beam slid over rocks, ferns, and the trunks of pine trees. And then stopped.
On the pale bark of a massive, ancient aspen tree at the edge of a clearing, something was carved into the the trunk. It wasn't a heart with initials or a random graffiti. It was a set of symbols.
"Elara," he said into the radio, his voice urgent. "Wake up, I found something."
Her voice came back a moment later, thick with sleep but instantly alert. "What is it? What's wrong?"
"There are symbols," he said, holding the flashlight beam steady on the tree. "Carved into a tree trunk just north of my tower. They're... weird."
He tried to describe them. One looked like a spiral, but it was jagged, made of sharp, straight lines instead of a smooth curve. Another was a circle with a single, straight line cutting through it vertically. There were three of them, carved deep into the wood. They looked fresh.
"Are you sure it's just not some hiker?" she asked, but her voice was laced with the same dread he felt.
"No," Alex said. "These feel different. They feel... deliberate. Like a warning. Or a claim."
As the word left his mouth, a loud CRACK shattered the night's silence.
Alex jumped, whipping the flashlight beam away from the tree and towards the source of the sound, deeper in the woods. The noise was sharp and violent, like a thick, heavy branch being snapped in half. It was close. Too close.
"What was that?" Elara's voice was sharp with panic.
"A branch," Alex said his heart hammering against his ribs. His knuckles were white where he gripped the flashlight. He swept the beam of light through the trees, back and forth, but the forest was a wall of black trunks and deep shadows. He saw nothing. No deer, no bear, nothing. But the feeling of being watched was suddenly overwhelming. It was a physical pressure, a weight on his skin that made every hair on his body stand on end.
Whatever had made the sound was still out there. It was watching him. It knew he had seen the symbols.
He backed away from the window, his breath catching in his throat. He looked at the radio, his only connection to another human being. They had a new piece of the puzzle now, the strange symbols in the bark. But they also had the terrifying certainty that the owner of those symbols was lurking just beyond the reach of his light, and waiting.