There were three of us. Kenny, Joel, and me.
We parked just past the ranger’s shed, where the dirt chewed up the tires and the pines started breathing different. Deeper, like they were watching themselves.
No one else there. Just the wind and the crackle of bugs against the windshield. Kenny lit a smoke. Joel checked the pack again—his third time.
“I don’t like how empty it is,” he said.
“You mean the lot?” I asked.
“I mean the air.”
I told him he was being dramatic. He didn’t say anything after that. Just zipped the pack and shouldered it like it might drag him under.
The plan was simple. Twelve miles in. Camp by the lake. Fish. Drink what we packed. Twelve miles back.
The sign at the trailhead was new. Carved too clean. “Wapiti Loop.”
Underneath, someone had scratched over it in black marker: DON’T GO QUIET.
We didn’t mention it.
The first four miles were uphill, but gradual. Joel set the pace. Kenny lagged. He was sweating like a cut hog by mile two. Kept wiping his neck, sniffing at his armpits like something was off.
“You smell that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You.”
He didn’t laugh. “No. It’s like—something dead.”
We paused. All of us sniffing like dogs.
Nothing. Trees. Old pine sap. The wet sour of our own bodies working.
Joel said, “It’s probably just wind kicked something loose.”
But the trees weren’t swaying. They stood too still. That’s what I remember now. The stillness, like they were afraid to move.
Mile six, Joel stopped talking. Just pressed forward, jaw tight.
I asked if he was okay. He nodded, but not to me. Like he was agreeing with something in his own head.
Kenny started muttering then. Real low. Stuff like “that’s not right” and “we already passed this.”
I told him to knock it off.
He said, “I’m serious. That same split stump—we passed it an hour ago.”
I looked. It did look familiar. But then again, all trees start to look the same after a while.
“You’re tired,” I said.
“No,” he said, “I’m scared.”
We kept going.
At mile eight, the trail forked.
Wasn’t on the map. Wasn’t on Joel’s GPS either.
Left kept climbing. Right dipped into a darker cut, where the trees knotted close and the light died quicker.
Joel stared down the right path like he saw something move.
“We should camp here,” he said. “Off the fork.”
Kenny shook his head. “You outta your mind? We stick to the trail.”
Joel was already stepping into the shadowed path.
I should’ve stopped him. Should’ve grabbed his arm. Instead I followed. Like a goddamn idiot.
By dusk, the cold set in. Not a normal chill—this was sink-your-teeth kind of cold. The kind that hums in your joints.
We set camp. No fire. Joel said we shouldn’t.
“Why not?” Kenny asked. “You want to freeze?”
“Something out there,” Joel said. “It don’t like the light.
Kenny laughed. A short, hollow thing.
I didn’t sleep much. Just lay there with the bag zipped up to my neck, listening to Joel whisper to himself and Kenny snore like he was drowning.
Sometime past midnight, the snoring stopped.
I found the tent open. Not torn. Just unzipped clean.
Kenny’s bag was still warm. Boots gone. Knife gone. Pack gone.
No note. No noise.
Joel didn’t seem surprised.
“He left,” I said.
“No,” he said. “He was taken.”
He said it like it was fact. Like he’d seen it happen and just chose not to stop it.
I asked him what he meant, and he looked at me like I was stupid.
“There’s something in the trees,” he said. “It watches. Follows. Learns. It waits till you’re soft.”
I didn’t argue. I just packed my shit.
We hiked back fast. No breakfast. No talk. Just breath and boots.
The trail was different now. Thinner. Less beaten. Trees leaned in like they wanted to whisper.
At one point, I heard Kenny’s voice. Swear to God.
“Ray,” it said. “Ray, help me.”
I turned around so quick I stumbled. Nothing there.
Joel grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t listen,” he hissed. “It knows your name now.”
I didn’t ask how it knew his.
Mile marker ten—though we never saw a sign—we hit a clearing.
Stumps everywhere. Clean-cut. No trees standing. Just rot and silence.
In the center, a hole. Like a mouth in the ground. Black and wide and wrong.
Joel stopped walking.
“We’re not supposed to see this,” he said.
I turned to him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
But he was gone. Just gone.
No footfall. No scream. No rustle.
Just me and the trees, and that hole breathing under the sky.
I didn’t go near it. I ran.
Don’t remember much after that. Just flashes. Bark scraping my arms. Blood in my boot. The sound of something pacing beside me that never broke the tree line.
I hit the trailhead around dusk. Same sign. Same scratch: DON’T GO QUIET.
Ranger found me curled by the gate, mumbling.
They didn’t believe me. Why would they? No sign of Kenny. No trace of Joel. Just a man who looked too old for his age, covered in dirt and cuts, eyes gone wide.
That was six months ago. I don’t sleep much. I don’t hike.
Joel’s face shows up in my dreams, but not the way I remember it. His eyes are too still. His mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
Kenny’s voice too. Sometimes in the pipes, under the floorboards, just below hearing.
I live near the highway now. Can’t see trees from the window.
But some nights, I still smell it.
That sweet rot.
Something dead.
Something waiting.