Page 3 of Mortis

Another branch breaking. Except this time, the sound had come from somewhere else, and James slowly turned his head towards the opposite side of the woods.

That didn’t make sense.

A fox couldn’t move that quickly. Could it?

A low, rumbling growl rolled through the trees.

James flinched, and Ollie whipped around.

“What the fu⁠—”

“Turn the camera on!” Ollie hissed, frantically waving a hand behind him.

“You cannot be serious,” James exclaimed.

“Camera, Jay!”

And despite every survival instinct currently screaming at him to do the exact opposite, James obeyed. He switched the camera back on and aimed it towards his friend. Ollie looked over his shoulder, eyes glittering beneath the harsh LED light. Gone was the exaggerated excitement from earlier.

This was genuine.

“We’ve been running around these woods for hours,” Ollie told the camera, grinning despite the nervous edge to his voice. “And I think we might finally be rewarded for our efforts.”

James wasn’t entirely sure how being stalked through the woods by an unidentified growling creature constituted a reward, but he kept filming.

Ollie cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hello? Mr Satyr?”

“Don’t encourage it,” James warned.

Ollie ignored him. “Fancy being on YouTube?”

Silence.

Ollie lowered his hands in disappointment. The image on the camera’s screen blurred. James frowned and adjusted the focus before realising it wasn’t the camera. His hands were trembling.

Another growl echoed through the trees.

Louder this time.

Closer.

James gasped, almost dropping the camera. “Did you hear that?”

Ollie didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. His eyes were wide, the earlier grin completely gone. Even in the poor light, James could see his chin trembling. For several seconds, neither of them moved. They simply stared into the darkness, waiting.

The camera continued recording, and James slowly turned his head to the right.

Something was there.

At first, he thought it was another trick of the light. Two tiny red pin pricks suspended between the trees, far beyond the reach of the LED. He blinked, but they remained, and James scrubbed his eyes with one hand.

Maybe staring into the camera light had screwed with his vision.

Maybe he was tired.

Maybe six hours wandering around these creepy fucking woods had finally started messing with his head.

He looked again, and the lights were still there. “What . . .”