Chapter 6: Screams in the Night

The first day was an exercise in auditory torture. Liam sat on the edge of his cot, the silver whistle clutched in his hand, its metal growing slick with the sweat from his palm. The cabin, once his pristine sanctuary, had become a soundproof box designed to amplify the torment of his own conscience. The silence of the day was worse than any noise, a heavy, expectant hush that blanketed the forest. He knew what that silence meant. It was the quiet of a predator stalking its prey.

As dusk bled into a deep, starless night, the sounds began.

At first, they were faint, easily dismissed. A high-pitched cry that could have been a hawk. A sharp snap that could have been a falling branch. But his senses, honed by the park’s unholy gift, wouldn't let him lie to himself. He heard the distant, terrified shout, cut short with sickening finality. An hour later, a woman’s desperate sobbing, a sound that seemed to go on for an eternity before it too was swallowed by the immense silence.

He pressed his hands over his ears, but the park's vitality was a curse, making every sound clearer, every imagined horror more vivid. He saw the family from that morning. The father's confident smile turning to panic. The mother's frantic search. And the little girl in the pink raincoat, her glittery hairclip—which he had touched—lying lost in the mud next to her forgotten form. The guilt was a physical entity, a venomous snake coiling in his gut, its fangs dripping with his cowardice. He was an accomplice. He was a monster.

The second day was the same. More screams, more silence. He paced the confines of his cabin like a caged animal, the four walls a constant reminder of his complicity. He was safe. He was protected. And the price of his safety was the lives of people who had trusted him. He stared at the splintered cabinet under the window seat, at the ghost of Dr. Sharma in the photo with David Miller. Had David heard these screams, too? Had he hidden in this very cabin, slowly going mad, before the park finally claimed him?

By the third night, Liam was a wreck. His body, infused with supernatural health, refused to collapse from exhaustion. He was wide awake, every nerve ending screaming, trapped in a perfect prison of guilt and fear. He told himself it was almost over. Just a few more hours until dawn. He could survive this. He just had to hold on.

That’s when he heard the new sound. Not a distant scream, but a frantic, wet scraping at his door. A body, dragging itself across the wooden porch. Then, a fist, hammering weakly against the solid oak.

Thump. Thump-thump.

A man’s voice, raw and broken, tore through the night. "Please! Oh god, please, help me! Is anyone in there?"

Liam froze, his blood turning to ice. Casey’s words echoed in his mind, a stark, absolute command: Lock the door. Don't open it for anyone or anything. This was a test. A final, cruel temptation.

"My wife… something took my wife!" the voice sobbed, followed by a gut-wrenching cough. "It just… pulled her into the ground! Please, I’m bleeding… I think my leg is broken…"

Liam squeezed his eyes shut. The little girl's trusting face swam in his vision. He was already damned. His soul was already forfeit. But maybe… maybe he could salvage a single shred of it. If he could save just one person, it wouldn't erase his sins, but it would be an act of defiance. It would prove that the monster they were trying to make him hadn't consumed him entirely.

He looked at the silver whistle in his hand. The park doesn't like being reminded who's who. He interpreted the warning through the lens of his desperation. He thought it meant the park was territorial, that it didn’t like its Keepers interfering. But Casey also said it was his brand, a signal that he was not food. A shield.

A desperate, flawed plan formed in his mind. If he stood in the doorway, whistle in hand, the park would recognize him. It would see its own mark and would have to recoil. He could use his protected status as a shield for this poor man. He could use their own weapon against them.

His heart pounded a frantic tattoo against his ribs as he scrambled to the door. His hands, shaking uncontrollably, fumbled with the heavy bolt. With a loud thwack, he slid it open.

He flung the door wide. The man on his porch was a vision from a nightmare. His clothes were in tatters, one arm hanging at an impossible angle. His face was a mask of blood and dirt, his eyes wide with a terror that went beyond mere fear. He stumbled into the meager light of the cabin.

"Thank you," the man gasped, collapsing against the doorframe. "Thank you…"

Outside, the forest fell into an immediate, profound silence. The chirping of crickets, the rustle of wind—it all ceased. It was the silence of a held breath. The hiker’s head snapped up, his gaze fixed on the darkness beyond the porch. His face, already pale with terror, went completely ashen.

"No," he whispered. "It's here."

Liam saw it too. Not a creature, but a wrongness in the very air. The shadows beneath the ancient pines seemed to deepen, to writhe, to coalesce. This was it. This was the park.

He raised the silver whistle to his lips. He would not be a coward. Not again. He poured all his guilt, his rage, his desperate hope for a single act of redemption into his lungs and blew with all his might.

A piercing, ethereal shriek sliced through the night. It was a sound that didn't just travel through the air but seemed to vibrate in the very bones of the earth. But it wasn't a warning. It wasn't a repellent.

It was a dinner bell.

The ground before the cabin trembled. The carpet of pine needles and damp soil began to writhe and churn as if alive. Roots, thick as pythons, tore themselves from the earth. The trunks of two massive pines on either side of the path began to bend inwards, not snapping, but flexing like the ribs of some impossible beast. The earth between them split open, peeling back to reveal a gaping, vertical maw of churning soil, writhing roots, and absolute, consuming darkness.

It wasn't a monster made of flesh and bone. The forest itself had opened its mouth.

An unseen force, a hungry gravity, emanated from the chasm. It tugged at the injured hiker. He let out a single, choked scream, his fingers clawing uselessly at the doorframe as he was lifted from his feet. He was drawn, inexorably, into the heart of the shifting abyss. The maw closed with a soft, final whump, like a satisfied sigh.

And then, nothing. The ground was flat. The trees stood straight. The pine needles lay undisturbed. There was no blood, no body, no sign that the man had ever existed. The park had tidied its mess.

Liam stood frozen in the open doorway, the whistle still pressed to his lips, a metallic taste of ozone and terror on his tongue. The night air grew impossibly cold, heavy with a palpable pressure. He felt a vast, ancient, and utterly alien consciousness turn its full attention upon him. There were no eyes to see him, but he was seen. There was no voice, but a message was delivered directly into his mind with the force of a physical blow.

It was a feeling of pure, cold, immense displeasure. He had broken the sacred rule. He had interrupted the harvest. He had used the brand of ownership not in submission, but in rebellion. The entity he served, the living park, was now looking directly at its disobedient servant, and it was furious.