The Dark Unseen

by Andrew C Jaxson

  “Yeah. Whatever got Daniel probably got him.”

  There’s silence as we each consider our options.

  “Are we being hunted?” Bek asks.

  I know the answer, but I don’t want to say it. “No,” I lie. There’s no reason to scare her more.

  The mountains up here are notoriously moody, switching between rain and sun and wind at a moment’s notice. Even though it’s summer, I half expect snow to start pelting down around us out of spite.

  Instead, a fog rolls in. It crawls through the trees, fingers tracing every contour, and soon I can’t see much past the next turn. The stars are gone, hidden by the fog, and our torch cuts a beam through the swirling mist. It feels alive, though of course it isn’t. I’m just terrified.

  Fortunately, the path is simple enough to follow, even in the fog, and we reach our campsite safely. The first thing I notice is that the zipper is open.

  I’m positive I closed it when we left. If you don’t want snakes or spiders in your tent, keep it zipped—that’s rule number one of camping.

  I don’t want to scare Bek, so I carefully edge toward the tent and peek inside. It’s empty, and Bek hasn’t noticed anything wrong, so we crawl inside to change and put better shoes on. I still feel numb, but maybe that’s useful. After we get help, I can melt down, but till then, emotion will just get in the way.

  I reach into my bag.

  The next thing I know, I’m sitting on my sleeping bag. One hand holds my notebook, the other a pen.

  Bek’s eyes are wide, and she’s crouched in the corner farthest from me.

  On the page, in my writing, the same message is scrawled over and over and over:

  IT’S BACK FOR ME.

  My foot goes cold. This is a dream. It has to be. The thing is impossibly awful. It shouldn’t exist. It can’t exist. Pins and needles shiver up my leg. It’s still under my sleeping bag, and the fabric ripples as the thing crawls towards my head. I don’t want to look. I can’t look. That will make it real.

  Bek won’t come near me. “What happened, Hud?”

  “I honestly don’t remember.”

  “You froze, and started mumbling, and then you wrote that message again and again. I tried to stop you but you pushed me away. You’re scaring me.” Her hands are shaking.

  “I’m so sorry, Beks. I really don’t know what just happened. Did I hurt you?”

  She shakes her head.

  “I’m all right now, though. I promise.” I move to her and take her hand. She relaxes, certain the danger is over.

  “The thing you wrote.” She points to the notebook on the air mattress. “What does it mean? Who is back for you?”

  I shake my head. “I wish I knew. Maybe tonight, everything that’s happened, maybe I just cracked for a moment.”

  She frowns but says nothing.

  “We’ve got to get moving,” I say. “We have to get help.”

  We pick up a few bits and pieces, including our phones, leave the tent, and head back out into the fog. It’s even thicker now. We can barely see ten steps in front of us. It’s going to be hard to make it anywhere in a hurry, but we have to try. Fortunately, the road is easy to follow, so we won’t get lost. As long as we make it to the road, we’ll find the hut. The odds are low that we’ll find help there, but it’s better than sticking around here till morning. My mind returns to Dan, lying dead next to the pool. Every moment he’s out there is wrong.

  I lead the way, and Bek stays close behind. She has to—after we’ve taken only a few steps from our camp, it’s already disappeared into the fog. The car is an easy walk away, but we go slowly in the mist. We can’t afford mistakes.

  Something squeals in the dark. A mouse caught by an owl, perhaps, although how a predator could catch anything in this fog is beyond me. That might be an advantage. We won’t see anything coming, but it won’t see us either, assuming it needs eyes to track us.

  Bek’s crying. The stress has caught up with her now there’s a lull in the tension. She sobs, and I stop for a moment, wrapping my arms around her, holding her tight. The mist holds us, too, somehow. It shifts around us and curls in my fingers, only this mist isn’t trying to comfort us. It’s trying to keep us here.

  I shudder, and Bek looks up. “Sorry—cold,” I lie.

  She wipes her eyes. “We need to keep moving.”

  Bek starts walking again, but I grab her hand and she stops.

  “Beks, if you need more time—”

  “I’m fine. Let’s keep talking while we walk, though. It makes me feel safer.”

  It might also help whatever is out here track us down, but I don’t say that. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Let’s talk about Daniel. I know it’s—I know that might seem weird, but it might help me forget he’s … ”

  “Sure,” I jump in. “Okay, what’s your favourite Dan moment?” We start moving again, feet kicking rocks as we walk.

  “I don’t think I ever told you this, but remember back in year seven when we had that crazy drama teacher with the big hair?”

  “Mrs. … something. Yeah, I remember.”

  “She was real absentminded and a bit of a weirdo. So Dan decides to prank her, really mess with her head. The stage in the drama room has these hatches underneath, access for special staging stuff, so Mrs. Whatshername heads outside to work with a group, and Dan arranges the rest of us to hide under the stage, dead quiet. She comes back in, and no one is there. Not even our stuff is there; the whole room is empty. She calls out to us, and then she heads outside to ask the other group if they saw where we went. In the meantime, we all climb out, set up our stuff, and continue practicing like nothing has happened. She walks back in, and her mind just explodes. She doesn’t even ask us about it, she just stands there, staring. I swear she spent the rest of the day thinking she was crazy.”

  I laugh. “I never heard that one. That’s brilliant. Evil, but brilliant.”

  The moon glimmers down through the fog for a moment, like a street lamp. My torch flickers. The battery is running low.

  “What about the cupboard story?” I smile. Bek grins and asks me to keep going. She’s heard it, but it doesn’t matter. “So he hides in the cupboard in Mr. Linstrom’s room one lesson, and Mr. Linstrom just locks it as a punishment. He’s stuck in there for like twenty minutes, until Linstrom lets him out. Everyone was laughing at him, so he had to save face and get his revenge.

  “He hides in there again the next day, and so Linstrom locks the cupboard a second time. But halfway through the lesson, violin music starts playing from the cupboard. When Linstrom opens it, Dan is sitting inside tucking into a three-course meal complete with candles, playing violin music on his phone. Dan just says, ‘More wine, garçon,’ and closes the door again. Man, Linstrom went ballistic. I lost it, so did everyone else. That was the day Dan became legendary.”

  Bek is laughing, but crying as well.

  I frown. “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”

  “No, I needed that. Thanks.”

  We walk in silence for a while. My torch runs so low it’s almost pointless to have it on. But a light glows in the fog ahead. We’ve reached the car.

  Dan’s bomb of a cruiser sits in a clearing at the top of the access road. The hut is somewhere down at the bottom of the sloping road. It’s going to be a long walk there, but at least it’s downhill.

  As we approach the car, we see the light is on because the driver’s door is wide open and the boot is unlocked.

  Clothes are strewn around the back of the car, like Dan was interrupted while he was unpacking his stuff. The river is a long way from here. Whatever took him either chased or dragged him away. Hopefully that means it’s not here now. I shiver, pointing my torch around at the edges of the clearing. Each tree is a figure, each shadow a monster. Visibility is so low I can’t see past the first row of trees, let alone anything that might be watching us. The fog eases for a moment, blowing clear for a second, and stars flicker on overhead, b
efore vanishing back into the next wave of white that coils around us.

  “We should look for the keys. Maybe he dropped them,” I suggest. Bek nods, and we search the clearing. The rain has turned dirt to mud, and Dan’s footprints are clear near the car, leading from behind the boot and off into the trees to my left. There are no other footprints. Maybe he wasn’t chased at all. Or whatever took him didn’t leave footprints.

  There are no keys. No chance of driving out of here. Great.

  There’s a crack from inside the trees. An animal, probably. Another crack, and another. Something bursts from the tree line, and I yell at Bek to get back. Two eyes gleam in the car’s light as they emerge from the fog.

  It’s a fox. While they’re not harmless, we should be able to chase it off. Bek reaches my side, and I yell at the fox to get lost. It doesn’t. It looks behind itself, back into the trees, and runs. Not from us. From something else.

  It’s scared. What could scare a fox out here? They’re top of the food chain in these mountains.

  I don’t have to wait long for the answer.

  A dark shadow flickers in the forest, curling over leaves and brush. It’s like fog, but in reverse, black, an absence of light. It’s taller than both of us, at least eight feet. It enters the clearing.

  “Get in the car,” I whisper to Bek. Maybe it won’t see us. It feels intelligent. It’s not an animal. It’s not human, either, but something else entirely.

  I run to the car, and Bek gets in the passenger seat, slamming it behind her. I jump in the driver’s side and let off the handbrake. Hopefully Dan’s car doesn’t have power steering. We start to roll downhill.

  The darkness darts around the car, swirling in the night’s mist. It’s looking for a way in, or maybe playing with its food. The car picks up speed, gathering momentum on the gravel road. The tyres crunch across rocks, and I turn the headlights on to see where we’re going. The dark thing shifts in front of us for a moment. It enters the beams of the headlights, but it doesn’t light up. Instead, the light disappears inside it, like it’s been sucked into a black hole. This creature, this thing, shouldn’t be here. It’s impossible.

  It darts away again, and a tree looms large in the windscreen. I spin the wheel, and we slide away from the edge and back onto the road. I pump the brakes, but they’ve stopped working. The engine is off, so the brake fluid has lost pressure.

  “It’s gone,” says Bek. “I can’t see it anywhere.”

  A tendril of shadow trickles down the windscreen. It’s on the roof.

  The tendril crawls past the windscreen wipers and into the grill on the front of the car.

  The air conditioning.

  “Close the vents!” I yell at Bek. It’s not likely to make a difference, but it’s better than nothing. Shadow leaks in through the windscreen vent, covering the glass like smoke. Up close it’s like looking at a fire, but a black fire, burning cold instead of hot. I can’t see where I’m going anymore, and the thing is coming in through the vent. Time to bail. “Hold on.”

  I pull the handbrake, and the car tilts. We’re going too fast to stop properly. The tyres spin on the gravel, and we’re going sideways down the hill. A tree comes up fast, and I turn the wheel the other way. It’s too late. The world turns upside down.

  Swallowing my fear, I lift the sleeping bag and look at the thing on my leg. It’s impossibly black, and hundreds of tiny spindles grow from it like snake tongues. Something runs from its body out through the tent flap, a rope connecting it to something outside. No, not a rope. An intestine.

  The thing pulses and shifts and swallows. The spindles move, propelling it forward, up to my thigh. I shake. This isn’t real. It’s not real. It’s not real.

  “Hey, buddy. Wake up. You’re all right.”

  My head spins. I try to sit up.

  “Whoa there. Don’t do that.”

  “Bek?” I ask.

  “Your girl’s here. She’s okay.”

  My vision clears, and I turn my head to the side. I’m on an old wooden table. “I think I need an ambulance.”

  The man nods. “Your girl does too. She’ll survive, though. Don’t worry; help is coming.”

  The roof is tin, but rusted parts let white mist leak in from outside. Old logs make up the walls, and a cracked window offers views of the misty trees outside. A gas-powered lamp burns low in one corner, throwing shadows across the room. We’re in the hut. We made it.

  Still, that thing could be outside. Hopefully it was hurt in the accident and slithered off somewhere to die.

  Bek lies on the couch, an old musty thing that looks like it’s been here for decades. Bits of it have come off and rotted through, and foam sticks out through holes in the cover. She’s still unconscious. I jump off the table, but my head spins and I fall to my knees.

  “I told you not to do that.” The man helps me up. He’s thirty, thirty-five at the most. If park rangers had a look-book, he would be on the cover. Shaggy hair down to his shoulders, dirty uniform, rugged face. He’s Crocodile Dundee without the inappropriately tiny shorts.

  “There’s something out there,” I say. “We need to go.”

  “Nothing out there, buddy. You been drinking or what? You sure as hell can’t drive.”

  “It was on the windscreen; it was dark. A shadow.”

  He screws up his nose. “Sure, sure. Look, it’s lucky I was here at all. I do rotational shifts between the stations in case of issues. Normally on fire watch in this heat, so I shouldn’t be up this high, but I got bored at the lower station and thought I’d head up here for the night. I’ve always liked the mist. Makes everything mysterious. Anyway, I heard the crash outside, and here we are. You really should wear a seatbelt. I left my truck down at the lower station, so I couldn’t drive you both out of here for help. Sorry.”

  “Beks, she’s still—”

  “She’ll be okay.”

  On cue, Bek starts to shift around. “Help me over to her,” I say, and the ranger puts one arm around my shoulder to move me.

  Bek opens her eyes.

  “Are you all right?” I ask.

  She’s groggy but nods her head. Then her eyes widen. “The thing out there?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s gone for now. The crash might have hurt it.”

  “It’ll be back,” she says.

  “I know.”

  I turn to the ranger. “Our friend, Daniel. He’s dead. The thing out there killed him. That’s the only explanation. He was all dried out. His body’s up at the waterfall. We need the police, or the army, or something.”

  His eyes widen. “Someone’s dead?”

  Bek nods, and the ranger swears under his breath.

  “Right, well, that changes things. Give me a second. Just stay here. You’re in no condition to move.” He picks up a bag near the front door and pulls out a huge satellite phone. “Better reception out the front. Wait here, I’ll be right back.” He walks out the door and off into the night. I call after him to stop, but he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t know the danger, hasn’t seen what we’ve seen. I shake my head. I can’t worry about him, Bek is my priority right now.

  “I’m sorry, Beks,” I whisper, stroking her hair. She starts to cry, and I do, too. Everything comes flooding out of me all at once, and I slump over her, shaking. We hold each other for a while, and when our tears have finally subsided, I lift my head. “Can you move?”

  Bek shakes her head. “My leg’s broken, I think. I’ll be all right, although my head hurts like nothing else.”

  “He might have painkillers in his bag. I’ll go ask.”

  Bek shakes her head. “Don’t leave me alone here.”

  “He’s just out the front, I’ll call him from the door.”

  I stand slowly, not trusting my balance, and make my way carefully over to the door. But it opens before I get a chance to reach for the handle. The ranger stands in the doorway.

  “I’m really sorry,” he says. “I thought you’d be all right. But
I’ve talked to the powers that be, and you can’t leave.”

  “What do you mean? Bek needs a hospital.” I lose my balance for a moment and have to sit on the floor.

  “I could write your accident off as a drunken mistake, but now that someone’s dead, we need proper containment. I really wish we didn’t, but I don’t make the rules.”

  Bek’s eyes widen. “Containment?”

  “Yeah, it’s a fancy word that actually just means you both need to die. Again, I’m really sorry.”

  He’s kidding. This is the most tasteless prank in the history of all pranks. Even Dan would think this is too far. I fake a laugh. “Seriously, though, do you need us to make a statement or something? How far away is the ambulance? My head is spinning like crazy.”

  He shakes his head and pulls a solid steel knife out of his belt pack. “Sorry, buddy. If you like, though, I’ll give you two a moment together to say goodbye. The others wouldn’t do something like this. You’re lucky you crashed near my station instead of theirs.”

  He’s not kidding.

  I crawl away from him, scrambling on the dirt floor.

  He just stands in the doorway. “Seriously, I’ll respect your time together. Take a moment.”

  At the couch, I take Bek’s hand. She’s breathing fast. “We’re gonna be all right,” I say, although I don’t mean it. My chest tightens, and my stomach turns. I breath fast. I’m dizzy. He’s going to kill us both if I don’t do something, and I’m having a panic attack. I want to be sick. Stars cloud my eyes. I need to focus—I have to get this under control.

  “Cool, so I guess that’s time then,” the ranger says. “I doubt you can run, considering everything, but I wouldn’t blame you if you put up a fight. I’d advise against it, though. Gets messy. The last one I had fought, and it just took way longer for him to die. If I get a few key arteries it’ll be much quicker. Takes precision, though, which I can’t get if you’re moving around.”

  I can’t run anyway. My panic has completely taken over. Bek is helpless on the couch. There’s nothing either of us can do. My eyes lock on the knife. I slow my breathing, trying to regain control of my body, but I can’t tear my eyes off the blade. It’s coming for me. It’s coming.