Chapter 24
Beau
I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching us.
Not like backwoods-camper paranoia. Not like we were being hunted. It felt…older. Like we’d stepped onto someone’s land without knocking first.
We kept walking.
Flashlights on low. Milo trotting ahead, ears pinned, every so often glancing back to make sure we were still behind him. Noelle’s hand brushed mine every few steps, and every time it did, I remembered the ring I’d slipped onto her finger last night.
She was still wearing it…someone might notice. If anyone saw it, our secret was out.
If we even survived the night.
The trees started to shift. Not visibly—but I noticed it. The rhythm of them. The space between trunks. How every bend looked just a little too familiar. We’d looped back on ourselves at least once, I was sure of it. But the trail never turned.
It just…breathed.
Moved beneath us.
Alive, for a thing that absolutely should not have been alive.
“Trailhead’s gotta be close,” I muttered. Maybe if I said it enough, it would make it true.
Shane’s phone buzzed again.
He looked down at it, stopped walking. “Another one.”
We all gathered around as he pulled up the image—grainy black and white. Just like the others. Empty forest. That same smear of light streaking through the middle like a thumbprint on the lens.
“This is Cam Seven,” he said. “That one…Jesus, they’re getting closer.”
No one said a damn word after that.
We kept walking.
And walking…and walking. It was like we couldn’t walk far enough to get the hell out of these woods, like they were twisting and turning and closing in on us.
Delilah stopped first, hand going up sharply. “Wait. This is…we’re not getting anywhere like this.”
We all paused. My flashlight beam caught on the moss beneath our feet—thicker than it had been before, velvety and soft, like the ground had started cushioning our steps without us noticing.
“What are we doing?” Whit asked, voice tight. “We’re not getting anywhere.”
Holden looked around, brow furrowed. “I think we should stop. Regroup. Figure out where the hell we are.”
Noelle didn’t say anything.
At first I thought she was just quiet—processing, same as the rest of us. But then I saw her face. Pale. Eyes wide, lips parted. Breathing too fast. Her hand dropped from mine and pressed hard against her thigh like she was grounding herself.
“Noelle?”
She shook her head. Not no. Not yes. Just—overloaded.
“Hey.” I stepped in front of her, caught her chin in my hand. Her skin was cold. “Hey, darlin’. Look at me.”
She did. Barely. Her pupils were huge.
“I can’t—” she whispered. “I can’t breathe. I can’t—Beau, I think we’re stuck. I think we’re fucking stuck out here and there’s something moving and—and we don’t know what it wants—”
“Okay. Okay, I’ve got you.” I wrapped both arms around her, holding her against my chest. She was trembling like a live wire. “Breathe with me, alright? Just like this. In and out. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
She clutched at my shirt like she was drowning, her forehead pressed into my collarbone. I could feel her heartbeat thudding against my chest, sharp and erratic.
“I believe you,” I murmured into her hair. “I believe everything you’re sayin’. But we’re gonna get out of here. You hear me? You’re not alone. We’re gonna get out.”
Her fingers curled tighter.
“I know this is weird. I know it feels wrong. But we’re not just wanderin’ out here blind, Noelle. That thing you saw—the Painter—it showed up for a reason. It didn’t hurt you. It warned you. So you tell me what you think we do next, and I’ll follow you.”
She took a breath. Then another. Her hands loosened just a little.
Delilah’s voice cut through the dark. “Y’all good?”
“Gimme one more second,” I said, not looking away from Noelle’s face.
She blinked slowly. Nodded.
“Alright,” I said. “Then let’s—”
“Do you hear that?” Shane asked.
I looked back over at him, frowning…then I heard it, too.
Someone was whistling.
It made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, the sound high and melodic and out of place.
Milo stopped dead in his tracks.
Noelle flinched in my arms, breath catching hard.
“Who the fuck is that?” Whit asked, voice razor sharp.
We all turned toward the sound. The forest looked the same in every direction, but the whistling was coming from the left, off the trail.
“Could be a hiker,” Holden said, but it didn’t sound like he believed himself.
“At two in the morning?” Shane snapped. “With perfect pitch and a soundtrack straight out of a haunted Appalachian banjo duel?”
The whistling stopped.
And before I could stop him, Milo bolted.
“Shit!” I yelled, taking a few steps after him before Holden grabbed my arm.
“We can’t split up—”
“I know,” I said, dragging a hand down my face. My gut was twisting. Milo wasn’t the kind of dog to run unless something was seriously wrong.
“We have to go after him,” Noelle was arguing. “Maybe he knows a way out—”
“What the fuck,” Delilah whispered.
We all went completely silent again…and followed her gaze down the trail.
Then my whole body locked up.
Because something was standing at the edge of the trail.
Tall. Still. Backlit by something we couldn’t see—maybe the moon, maybe nothing at all—but enough to outline its shape in pale silver.
Long limbs. Broad shoulders. A posture too elegant to be fully human and too grounded to be anything else.
It had antlers. That much was clear. Curving, gnarled things that reached toward the canopy like they belonged there.
It wasn’t moving.
It didn’t have to.
The air around it shimmered, the way heat sometimes warps asphalt. Except there was no heat. Just chill. Wet, clinging cold and something heavier—like pressure against the base of your spine, telling you to kneel. Or run.
“The fuck…” Shane breathed.
The Gloamstrider.
I didn’t know how I knew that’s what it was…but I did. Same way I knew storms were coming in by how my knees ached. Same way animals sense earthquakes.
Noelle grabbed my hand.
The creature didn’t make a sound.
Didn’t blink.
Didn’t breathe.
Then…it turned.
“Oh fuck,” Shane said. “I didn’t…Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck—”
Delilah started whispering under her breath, praying not to God but to whatever forces she used to lock down the library and cast love spells.
Whit moved closer to her, gripping her hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Shane closed ranks with us, while Holden stayed completely still.
The Gloamstrider cocked its head, shuddering slightly…movements jerky, as if it wasn’t quite here. I heard its fucking body rattle.
Then…something else in the trees above it.
Moonstone eyes and inky black wings.
I didn’t quite make out whatever it was, but it was a like a shadow came alive, plunged from the trees, and forced the Gloamstrider off of the path and into the brush. Vicious snarls and tearing sounds came from the trees, and I grabbed Noelle.
“Run!” I hissed.
We all bolted in the opposite direction, back toward the campsite…to anything, as long as it was away from whatever the fuck was going on back there. We didn’t speak; everyone’s breath was ragged, desperate, fucking terrified.
It was going to get us. All my life, I’d seen that fuckin’ festival happen every year and never heard of anyone actually getting hurt, and now.
..now it felt like the woods were folding in around us, like maybe the people who’d been hurt didn’t disappear; they were forgotten, and the world outside kept rolling on—
“Fuck!”
Just ahead of me, Shane let out a grunt and a curse, stopping in his tracks.
I stopped right after him, Noelle stumbling into my back, and I caught her before we both went down.
My flashlight skittered to the ground, beam spinning wildly, but it didn’t matter; the path was lit ahead of us in warm, glowing gold.
We all froze.
Because it wasn’t a monster…it was a girl. Flora Hardwick, from Holden’s grade back at Ashmore County High, peering at us with a lantern held high in one hand.
And Milo…Milo was on her other side, tail thumping—until, of course, he raced forward and leapt into my arms, as if he weighed 10 pounds and not 90.
I nearly dropped to my knees with relief as Milo barreled into me, tongue lolling, tail wagging so hard his whole body wiggled. I buried my face in his fur for one brief moment before looking up at Flora, heart still trying to beat its way out of my chest.
She was wearing hiking boots and cargo pants, along with a faded red canvas jacket with the hood up over her long blonde hair. She looked like Little Red Riding Hood. It struck me as very, very strange.
But what wasn’t strange about this town? These woods?
That monster?
“Evenin’,” she said.
“Flora?” Holden’s voice came from behind me. “What…what are you doing out here?”
She raised her eyebrows at us. “I live here.”
“I could’ve sworn your place was miles away,” Delilah muttered.
Flora tilted her head. “Where’d you start?”
“The trailhead up by Foggy Creek,” Whit offered.
“Ah…” Flora said. “Yeah—you really should be more careful about camping there on the night of the new moon.”
All we could do was stare at her as the adrenaline faded, no one speaking—until Holden opened his mouth again, reminding us all that some kind of eldritch god was in hot pursuit.
“You—you saw it, right?” Holden asked. “Heard it…that thing back there?”
“Define it.”
“That thing with the antlers,” Shane said. “The tall one. Looked like a person but like…wrong? I mean you’ve all been saying it, the Gloam—”
“It doesn’t like to be named,” Flora said. “But yes, I saw it.”
“Was that you whistling?” Noelle asked, voice still trembling.
Flora nodded. “It likes music.”
None of us replied—because what the hell are you supposed to say to that?
Then she tilted her head over her shoulder.
“You can come with me,” she said. “Spend the rest of the night at my place. It’s cramped for seven folks, but…it’s not safe out here tonight.”
No one moved at first.
“But our campsite—” Holden interrupted.
“Yeah, you won’t find that until tomorrow,” Flora said with a shake of her head. “We can all pile into my truck and I’ll take you back to the trailhead in the morning.”
I looked back to exchange a look with Noelle, who still seemed petrified. Her eyes were unusually bright in the lantern light, though…the blue almost green.
For a moment, they shone like moonstones.
She swallowed hard. “I think we should go with her,” Noelle said.
“I mean—fuck yeah,” Shane said. “Sign me up. Like obviously don’t put me in a stew or anything…but I’m sold.”
Flora smiled slightly. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I only eat children. You’d be way too gamey.”
Then she turned and walked back the way she’d come—waiting for the rest of us to follow.