"Are we going in circles?" Dylan's voice cracked with impatience, his eyes darting nervously through the wall of trees that hemmed them in on every side.
Kimberly spun around, pointing to a tree marked faintly by a jagged scar. "That's the same one I scratched an hour ago. We've been walking in a damn loop."
The air around them was heavy, suffocating. The deeper they pressed into the Amazon, the more it felt like the forest swallowed sound. Emily shifted uneasily, brushing her damp hair from her forehead. The humidity made her shirt cling to her skin, but it wasn't the heat that gnawed at her. It was the silence. No birds, no insects, no nothing, just the ragged breathing of her friends.
Louis dropped his backpack to the ground and kicked it in frustration. "This doesn't make sense. The map shows a clear route back to the river. If we just keep heading east..."
"East?" Elena's voice cut sharply, dripping with sarcasm. "And how exactly do you know where east is without a compass? We lost the GPS hours ago. Do you want to wander blindly until night falls?"
Their bickering echoed strangely, as if the forest bent their voices back toward them. Emily hugged her arms across her chest. She wanted to speak, to calm them, but her throat was tight. The moment they had crossed into this part of the forest, she had felt a wrongness, subtle at first, now undeniable.
"We shouldn't be here," she whispered finally, her words nearly swallowed by the thick air.
Kimberly scoffed, though her trembling hands betrayed her bravado. "What, because the trees look scary? We came all this way for adventure, Em. It's just a forest."
But Emily shook her head. She didn't know how to explain it. The trees here were different. Taller, their bark blackened as though burned, their branches twisting like skeletal fingers. And the ground was too soft, damp with a moisture that clung to their boots, smelling faintly of iron.
Louis crouched suddenly, frowning. He touched the soil, then pulled his hand back, his fingertips smeared red. "This isn't mud," he muttered, his voice trembling. "It's blood. Dried into the earth."
For a moment, no one spoke. Even Dylan's bravado collapsed, his throat bobbing as he swallowed hard.
"Don't mess with us," Kimberly hissed, her eyes darting nervously between the trees.
"I'm not joking," Louis shot back. He wiped his hand on his pants, but the stain clung stubbornly. "This whole ground, it's soaked with it."
Elena's expression hardened, though her skin had gone pale. "We should move. Now."
Emily's pulse pounded in her ears. Every instinct screamed to run, but where? The forest stretched endlessly, each direction identical, each path swallowed by shadows. Still, she found her voice. "She's right. Standing here won't help. Let's keep moving until we find water again."
The group fell into uneasy silence as they pressed forward. Their footsteps squelched faintly, and every snapped twig seemed unnaturally loud. Emily tried to steady her breathing, but her mind kept circling back to Louis's discovery. Blood in the soil. How could that be possible?
Dylan pushed ahead, machete in hand, hacking branches with unnecessary force. "It's just old animal remains," he muttered, mostly to himself. "Predators, that's all. Nothing we can't handle."
But his bravado faltered when a sound rippled through the forest. It rose and fell, then cut off abruptly, as though the forest itself silenced it.
They all froze.
"What… what was that?" Kimberly whispered, her eyes wide.
No one answered. Even Dylan held his breath. Emily felt the sense of being watched again. Not by one pair of eyes, but many.
Branches shifted somewhere behind them. A flicker of movement, too fast to catch. Emily spun, heart hammering, but saw nothing. Only trees, their twisted shapes mocking her.
Louis cursed under his breath. "Something's out there."
"We need to go," Elena said, her voice low but urgent. "Now. Keep moving."
They did. Faster this time. Fear drove their steps, made them stumble, made their lungs burn. Yet the forest did not relent. Every direction led deeper, further, as though the trees shifted when they weren't looking.
After what felt like hours, Dylan threw down his machete with a sharp clang. "This is bullshit! We're not lost, we're trapped!" His voice cracked, raw with desperation.
Emily knelt, clutching her knees, her chest heaving. She wanted to deny it, to call him dramatic, but the truth lodged heavily in her gut. They were trapped.
Then Kimberly screamed.
They all spun toward Kimberly, who stood rigid, her eyes fixed on the nearest trunk. At first glance, it was only a tree, but then Emily saw a carving, brutal and deliberate. Deep gashes slashed through the bark, the grooves twisting into a warped emblem that seemed to writhe under the dim light. The lines curved together into the likeness of a mouth stretched wide in an endless scream. And it wasn't the only one.
Emily's breath caught as she turned her head. Dozens of trees around them bore the same mark, some old and faded, others fresh, still bleeding sap like tears.
Elena stepped forward slowly, her eyes locked on the nearest symbol. "These aren't random." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "They're warnings."
The forest answered with silence. Then, somewhere in the distance, a faint high-pitched cry, human, and abruptly silenced.
Emily's blood turned to ice.
They weren't alone in this forest.