A Sound In The Dark

by Kyle Alexander Romines

  ***

  The killer watched the man inside the hole burn until the fire died away, then turned and vanished into the darkness.

  Now there were only three left.

  Chapter Sixteen

  4:06 am

  Zack’s body sank, suspended in a void. In the water, there was only blackness. A stream of bubbles flooded from his mouth, diminishing with each second that passed after he’d struck the surface. The sea of water threatened to become his tomb.

  “Zack,” a voice whispered softly. It was then that he opened his eyes.

  Looming menacingly above Dire Lake, the sky was as dark as it had been all night. Raindrops mingled with the black waters of the lake, creating an ever-shifting collage of ripples. Small waves gently rocked a splintered canoe tied to the dock with frayed rope, bashing it against the faded wood. Thunder roared across the park, as if threatening to shake the very foundations of the cliff towering above.

  Zack’s hand tore free of the water. Moments later, his head surged above the waves. He gasped for air before vanishing back into the depths below. A few seconds passed before he emerged from the shallow waters at the edge of the lake, clenching the muddy shore.

  Zack sucked in a lungful of air and collapsed onto the shore. The thick mud felt soothing against his aching body. Lightning flashed temporarily, revealing blood mingled with the mud.

  He felt a sharp pain in his right arm, close to the shoulder. From what he could tell, the bullet had only grazed him. He was lucky. A fall from that height could have easily ended the killer’s work if he had landed in the wrong place.

  Zack rested atop the wet shore as long as he dared until he mustered the will to rise. He sensed a presence watching him when he was in the water. It was somehow different than before, when he’d felt the killer’s eyes on him in the darkness. Zack rolled over and pushed himself up. The Hunter would be coming for him now. Of that, he was sure. Zack remembered the look of rage in the killer’s face when he pulled the screwdriver out of his eye socket. The killer was probably already well on his way down Deadman’s Drop to make sure Zack was dead.

  Lighting flashed again, and he saw a figure staring down at him from Whispering Reach. Zack swore and stumbled toward the forest. He had enough of a head start to find a place to hide before the killer caught up with him. At the edge of the forest, Zack’s foot caught on a rock and he landed on the ground. He cast a quick look behind him. The shadow on the edge of Whispering Reach was gone.

  Where do I go? Zack thought. No matter where they turned, the Hunter was always right around the corner. There was no way out. Zack struggled to recognize the dark recesses of the forest, but everything seemed foreign to him in the blackness and the storm. Above him, the heavy rain easily penetrated the cover provided by the trees. Harsh winds chilled him straight to the bone through his soaked clothes. He could feel blood continuing to trickle from the shallow wound close to his shoulder.

  Nothing looked familiar. Besides, he was so tired. Tired of running. Tired of fighting to survive. Zack knew he was moving too slowly, but he was powerless to do anything about it. His body was exhausted. If he didn’t find a place to crash soon, he would lose consciousness in the forest. Zack stumbled and grabbed a wide tree to steady himself. Though faint slivers of moonlight now shone through the trees, he could hardly see anything through the torrential rain.

  He kept running, minute after minute. It felt like hours. His legs turned to lead. Zack’s body started to betray him. His heart was pounding. He fell forward onto the ground. This was the end. Zack didn’t know what made him look up as his eyes started to close. Whatever the reason, it was then he spotted the entrance to the cave. Suddenly, he remembered walking into the cave hours earlier with Cole. The memory felt like a lifetime ago.

  “Shallow Water Cave,” he mumbled, his voice drowned out by the storm. Zack found the strength to rise one last time. Before he lumbered into the cave, he tried disguising his tracks. Though damp and dark, the cave proved far drier than the storm. Zack remembered telling Beth that hiding in a cave was to be avoided unless there was no other choice. As things stood, he was out of choices.

  Zack reached into his pocket, searching for the keys to the van. They were gone. He must have lost them when he plunged into the lake. Will and Beth would have to find another way out of the park. Despite the Hunter’s promise that safety waited for those who could escape the boundaries of the park, Zack suspected getting out of Drifter’s Folly wasn’t going to prove that easy. While failing to find the keys, Zack did find another item in his left pocket: the two-way radio. Maybe he could contact the others yet.

  The radio was completely drenched. Zack tried turning it on. Nothing happened. This didn’t surprise Zack, who doubted the device was waterproof. Now he had no way of knowing what happened to Beth and Will. He hoped the killer hadn’t caught up with them first. The prospect of being the only person left alive in the entire park terrified him.

  Maybe if the killer comes after me, they can reach the lodge, he thought. Maybe it’s for the best. The killer would likely find him in the end, but not before the other two escaped. After enduring the last months with no reason to keep going, he only had to push a little harder to keep his friends safe, and then he could let go.

  Zack wandered farther into the cave. He was reluctant to venture too far inside, with no way to see what waited for him, but he also feared not going far enough in case the killer was still on his trail. After realizing he was still holding the dead two-way radio, he let the device tumble to the earth beneath his feet. He wandered a little farther until he was overcome by the need to rest. He found a place to hide on the other side of a large rock formation and eased himself to the ground. Zack closed his eyes and slept.

  ***

  There was nothing there. Austin Fields swore loudly. The park ranger returned his pistol to its holster. There was no mistaking the sound of gunshots he’d heard almost twenty minutes ago. He followed the sound to the lake, hoping to run into any of the remaining campers. They were playing on the Hunter’s ground now, and Fields doubted they truly understood the magnitude of that.

  He thought he heard a twig snap, although it was impossible to tell in the rain.

  “Hello?” he called. He silently slid his hand toward his holster. “Is anyone there?” No one answered. He was alone.

  But he wasn’t alone, was he? There were others in the forest. He needed to find the campers first, before they ran into anyone else. Fields had hoped some of them would stumble across the ATV he’d overturned deeper in the forest. Surely they had heard it. Maybe they had heard the ATV, only they were unable to make their way to it. Drifter’s Folly was covered in traps, as Fields knew well.

  He’d seen the bodies. The more people who died, the harder it grew to find the remaining survivors. That’s what happened when someone thinned the herd.

  He withdrew to the relative cover provided by the trees and moved farther away from Whispering Reach. He could see several broken branches and uprooted weeds in a clearing not far from a wide trail nearby. Fields dropped to a knee and took out a flashlight. The tracks were clear. There were two pairs, moving together down the Endless Trail. It was a path that would take them toward the entrance to Drifter’s Folly.

  They would never reach it in time.

  Fields switched off the light and started making his way down the trail. He needed to catch up to them before anyone else did.

  ***

  “You have to wake up.”

  Everything was light. It was so bright he could barely see. The contrast with the monstrous storm raging over Drifter’s Folly couldn’t have been sharper.

  Her voice spoke again, this time with an added urgency.

  “You have to wake up.” He’d know that voice anywhere. It was the one that had haunted his dreams—it was her voice.

&n
bsp; “Lily?” He wasn’t sure if this was real or if he was hallucinating, but this was no flashback.

  “Don’t let him win, Zack.”

  The killer’s footsteps echoed in the cave.

  Moonlight spilled into the entrance, revealing the man’s shadow moving along the wall. Still on the floor, Zack crawled backward while following the intruder with his eyes. He could feel the wet fabric of his pants scraping against the rock. He pushed himself against a wall and waited. Zack caught a glimpse of the killer’s bow a few minutes later through a hole in the rock formation in front of him. The killer materialized soon after, advancing slowly through the cave. He was wearing some kind of goggles on his head, which Zack guessed allowed him to see in the dark.

  How did he find me? Zack wondered. He had tried to cover his tracks. Zack tried not to panic, but the killer was getting closer. With the goggles, the man would spot him easily. There was no way out. Zack slid backward a little farther and his hand brushed across something wet. A pair of dead eyes greeted him when he peered into the darkness, where a bloated corpse floated in a pool of water. It was all he could do not to scream. He managed to stifle the sound before drawing the attention of his pursuer. As his eyes continued to adjust to the dark, he paused to inspect the body.

  Zack didn’t recognize the remains. This didn’t surprise him; however long the corpse had been rotting in the cave, it could only be considered human in a grotesque sense of the word. He guessed the dead man had been killed some time ago, left in the cave by the Hunter to avoid being seen. The man was wearing some kind of uniform, though what kind he couldn’t tell in the dark.

  The footsteps drew nearer. Zack only had seconds to act. The killer would be on top of him in minutes. His face lined with disgust, Zack softly slid into the pool, making the softest splash. He ducked under the water and reluctantly pulled the floating corpse over him.

  ***

  Rodney Crowe thought he heard something moving deeper in the cave. He advanced, holding the bow in front of him. His pistol remained available to him if he needed it, but the killer preferred his prey to suffer. The camper put out his eye, and for that there would be consequences. He’d hunted the man all the way to the cave before the trail had gone cold. Rodney grew impatient. He searched around the chamber with his infrared goggles, searching for some trace of life. Other than the occasional rat or group of bats, there was nothing. The killer rounded a corner and looked down, where he saw the dead body floating in the pool of water.

  ***

  Zack forced himself to keep holding his breath, though he knew he would need to surface eventually. The killer was looking straight at him. He could feel his skin crawl. Time seemed to freeze. A thousand thoughts and emotions raced through his head at once. Most were about Lily. Zack thought he would welcome an end to his pain, but as he stared death in the face, he realized that he very much wanted to live.

  All of the guilt he had allowed to fester inside him day after day threatened again to rise to the surface. The regret, the pain, it was all there. This time, as he held his breath under the water, he listened to Cole’s words, and he let it all go.

  Lily, he thought, I forgive you. In doing so, he forgave himself.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the killer turned his head and looked at something else. Zack watched as the man knelt down, picked up the two-way radio, and retreated into the darkness.

  Zack rose to the surface and gulped in a fresh lungful of air. He waited a few minutes until he thought it was safe before pulling himself out of the pool, leaving the bloated corpse behind. His knee scraped against the unforgiving rock. It struck Zack as odd that the killer bothered to retrieve the broken walkie-talkie. It wasn’t of use to him, not broken. How had he even spotted the device in the first place?

  He took a step forward. His left leg made a faint splashing noise as it left the water. Ahead, the sound of the killer’s footsteps grew soft. Having failed to find Zack, the man would either keep looking elsewhere or return to deal with Beth and Will. The two had a sizable head start, but the killer had obviously spent time learning the park well. There was also likely a contingency plan in place in case they returned to the lodge.

  The killer’s shadow disappeared just around a corner. Then Zack spotted a large rock resting on the floor of the cave. There was a way to keep the killer off his friends’ trail. Zack slid his hand along the surface of the ground and picked up the jagged stone. He crept toward the entrance of the cave and looked for a sign of the killer. The footsteps died away, leaving silence in their wake. The storm had finally passed, at least for the moment.

  Zack took a few deep breaths and gathered his courage. There was no coming back from this. He closed his eyes and jumped into the moonlight, holding the stone high.

  The killer was nowhere in sight. Zack started to search for a way back to the trail when he spotted something in the mud. It was a boot print. The killer had left it behind. Zack paused for a moment, before quickly following the tracks. They would lead him right to the killer and to his friends. The Hunter was about to become the hunted.

  ***

  Rodney Crowe had almost shouted in anger when he spotted the radio inside the cave. His prey eluded him again. The killer wasn’t used to being denied. Most of his victims were easy targets who put up little struggle. It didn’t matter. He would find the camper who had blinded him, and he would make him suffer.

  The killer checked the time. Day wouldn’t arrive for another few hours. The game was still going on, and he intended to win. He knew where the remaining campers were headed. As Crowe stepped onto a secret trail known only to him, he imagined the various painful ways he would kill them to make them pay for what their friend had done to his eye.

  The night wasn’t over yet.

  Chapter Seventeen

  4:38 am

  “I think we should go back for Zack.”

  It wasn’t the first time Beth had suggested this. Will wasn’t sure how much more of it he was going to put up with.

  “I heard you the first time,” he said irritably, continuing on what was proving to be the aptly named Endless Trail. Will marched on, with Beth trailing closely behind.

  “What if he needs us?”

  Will came to a stop and stared his companion down with the darkest expression he could muster. The woman remained undeterred.

  “You heard the gunshots. How can you just leave him? He’s your friend.”

  This was as far as Beth got. Will reached out and grabbed her by the arm, squeezing tightly. “I know. And if I could leave him behind, what do you think that means for you if you don’t keep your mouth shut?” Beth’s eyes flashed in anger under the moonlight. In another place and time, Will might have found this attractive. At the moment, he found Beth’s behavior endlessly annoying. “Besides,” he said more quietly. “We’re being followed.”

  He’d known for some time that someone was on their trail. So far, there was enough of a lead for him to be reasonably sure of their safety. That could soon change.

  “How can you be so heartless?”

  He didn’t answer the question. Leaving Steve behind hadn’t bothered him because the man was already dying. Sacrificing Cole to save himself was necessary, and while it had initially troubled him, he was now numb to it. Surviving was everything. It meant more than friendship, more than morality. Cole would have sneered at the idea, but Cole was likely dead and Will was alive. Now Zack was probably dead as well. Will and Beth had heard the gunshots from Whispering Reach, though they were too far away to see what transpired. In either event, Zack had managed to come through for him one last time. His friend distracted the killer long enough for them to get a head start back to the lodge. The rain slowed them down a little, but now the clouds were moving away and the moon was out again.

  Will estimated they still had a half-hour or
so before they reached the lodge. He’d led Beth off the trail, despite her insistence against it. She’d worried they would get lost. Will glanced at her again as they resumed the trek. When she occasionally gazed his way, it was with nothing but contempt.

  Why am I even keeping her around? he wondered. With Zack dead, Will’s promise to protect her no longer mattered. Maybe it would be easier to cut her loose and leave her as another distraction for the killer. He smiled at the idea before quickly deciding against it. Beth was a second set of hands, which might come in handy if he needed her help. If the killer found them, well, he’d certainly have a far easier time sacrificing her than he had with Cole.

  Will looked to the large moon for reassurance. He basked in the light, which he knew would guide him to safety and rest—much like the nightlight kept in his room as a child. The cell phone sat ready in his back pocket in case the darkness threatened to overwhelm him again. He took it out and flipped it open. There was still no reception. Will returned the phone to his pocket and held on tightly to the shotgun. The killer caught him off guard the last time, and Will had clearly missed his target. He swore to himself that wouldn’t happen again.

  A few minutes later he saw it through the trees, clear as day, basking in the light of the moon.

  “The lodge,” he whispered. He reached out with his free hand, as if to touch it. The building was almost two miles from the hilly terrain at the beginning of the Endless Trail. Beggar’s Road loomed below, which led from the lodge toward Whispering Reach. It was the road they’d first taken to their campground hours earlier. That felt like a lifetime ago now.

  ***

  “What now?” Beth asked. She tried to keep her tone neutral. The edge in her companion’s voice was causing her to feel seriously uneasy. Given what else lurked in the forest, that was saying something.