Where the Trees Watch – Chapter 14
The Campfire That Was Still Warm
Ryan crouched beside the firepit slowly while thin strands of smoke still curled upward from beneath the damp ashes. The heat rising from the coals felt impossible after the cold silence surrounding the clearing.
Someone had been here minutes ago.
Maybe less.
Ryan Mercer looked around the abandoned campsite carefully while uneasiness tightened deeper in his chest. Two tents stood near the tree line, both damaged badly enough to suggest panic rather than normal evacuation. One had collapsed sideways beneath broken support poles while the other looked shredded open from the inside, long tears splitting through the fabric like something desperate had tried escaping.
Claire slowly filmed the clearing in silence now. Even she no longer narrated observations into the camera. The atmosphere inside Blackwood had changed too much since finding the recording.
Mason scanned the surrounding trees constantly while gripping the flashlight tripod tightly in one hand. “Nobody spread out.”
Ryan noticed backpacks still lying near the firepit untouched. Food containers. Sleeping bags. Hiking boots abandoned beside one of the tents.
People didn’t leave campsites like this voluntarily.
Then he saw the blood.
Small dark droplets stained part of the moss near the firepit before continuing toward the trees beyond the clearing.
Claire noticed too.
“Oh God…”
The blood trail disappeared into dense fog between the pines on the northern edge of camp.
Mason immediately stepped in front of it. “We are not following that.”
Ryan frowned. “What if someone’s injured?”
The guide looked genuinely frustrated now. “And what if that’s exactly what wants us to follow it?”
Silence settled heavily afterward because nobody had an answer for that.
Ryan slowly walked toward the damaged tent nearest the trees. The zipper hung half-open while muddy handprints covered part of the fabric near the entrance. He hesitated briefly before kneeling down and pulling the flap wider.
The inside looked destroyed.
Sleeping bags torn apart.
Supplies scattered everywhere.
Deep scratch marks gouged across the tent floor.
Not knife marks.
Too uneven.
Too deep.
Ryan’s stomach tightened.
Then he noticed writing scratched into the plastic floor beneath the sleeping bags.
Three words carved shakily into the material:
IT KNOWS OUR VOICES
Cold fear moved through him instantly.
Behind him, Claire suddenly whispered sharply, “Ryan…”
He turned immediately.
Claire stood near the edge of the clearing staring toward the trees beyond the blood trail. Her face had gone pale beneath the gray forest light.
“What?”
She pointed silently.
At first Ryan saw nothing except fog drifting slowly between endless black trunks.
Then the trees moved.
Not branches.
Not shadows.
Trees themselves.
One of the massive pines farther out in the fog slowly shifted sideways several feet across the forest floor.
Ryan physically stopped breathing.
The roots dragged silently through the moss as the enormous tree repositioned itself deeper between the others.
Then another moved nearby.
Slowly.
Almost carefully.
Like something rearranging the forest around them.
Claire backed away from the tree line immediately. “No. No, no, no…”
Mason looked terrified for the first time since entering Blackwood.
“We stayed too long.”
The moving trees settled again after several seconds, blending back into the surrounding forest as though nothing had happened.
But the clearing looked different now.
Smaller.
The trees surrounding camp stood noticeably closer than before.
Ryan turned in a slow circle while dread crawled through his chest.
The paths leading out of the clearing had changed.
There had originally been three visible exits through the trees.
Now there was only one.