Chapter 4: The Unseen Shot

Chapter 4: The Unseen Shot

"Get back," Mark snarled, his voice a low growl that was swallowed by the oppressive silence of the clearing. The rifle was steady in his hands, a solid piece of steel and wood in a world that was rapidly turning to smoke and mirrors. "Get away from my son."

The smiling man simply tilted his head, the motion unnervingly fluid, like a curious bird. His painted-on grin didn't falter. If anything, it seemed to widen, stretching the skin of his cheeks into taut, unnatural lines.

"But we were just getting acquainted," he said, his voice a pleasant baritone that was a hundred times more terrifying than the Winter Man’s shriek. It was the sound of a predator toying with its food.

That was all it took. The pretense of a human encounter shattered. This was not a sick poacher or a deranged local. This was something else entirely.

"Alex, run!" Mark yelled, taking a step back, keeping the rifle aimed at the man's chest. "Run back to the cabin! Now!"

For a split second, Alex was frozen, his feet rooted to the blood-soaked ground. But the raw command in his father’s voice broke the spell. He turned and scrambled, Mack yelping at his heels. He didn't look back. He just ran, the sounds of his own ragged breaths filling his ears. He crashed through ferns and dodged low-hanging branches, the forest a green, whipping blur around him.

He could hear his father behind him, his heavy boots pounding the earth. They were in a full-blown, panicked retreat. Alex risked a glance over his shoulder and his blood ran cold.

The smiling man wasn't running. He was moving through the dense undergrowth with an impossible, gliding grace, his dark suit unruffled, his hands still clasped calmly behind his back. He was keeping pace with them effortlessly, his terrifying smile fixed on them through the dappled light. The distance between them wasn't shrinking, but it wasn't growing either. It was a calculated, deliberate pursuit.

The woods seemed to conspire against them. Roots snaked up from the ground to trip them, and familiar paths twisted into confusing loops, mirroring the impossible geography of his hike with his mother. The rabbit tree, which should have been far behind them, seemed to reappear through the trees to their left, then to their right, a constant, grotesque landmark in a landscape that refused to obey the laws of space.

"He's still there!" Alex gasped, stumbling.

Mark grabbed his arm, hauling him upright without slowing down. "Don't look back! Just run!"

But there was nowhere to run. They burst into another clearing—a small, enclosed space walled in by thick briars and ancient oaks. A dead end. Mark spun around, breathing in great, shuddering gasps, and raised the rifle again. His face was slick with sweat, his eyes wide with a terror he could no longer suppress.

The smiling man emerged from the treeline opposite them, his placid advance coming to a halt. He stood there, perfectly framed by the gnarled branches, the picture of serene menace. He hadn't broken a sweat.

"Nowhere left to go," the man said, his voice laced with a gentle, mocking sorrow.

This was it. The moment of confrontation. In his father’s eyes, Alex saw a lifetime of pragmatic, tangible solutions colliding with an impossible, smiling horror. He saw fear, but beneath it, something else was kindling: a desperate, primal rage. The rage of a man pushed past the breaking point, whose only remaining tool was violence.

"I gave you a warning," Mark said, his voice shaking but resolute.

The man simply spread his hands in a gesture of open invitation. The smile was his only answer.

The CRACK of the rifle was deafening. It ripped through the forest, scattering birds that Alex hadn't realized were there. He saw the impact—a sudden, dark flower blooming on the crisp white shirt of the man's suit, just over his heart.

The man's body jerked back. For a single, horrifying moment, the smile remained plastered on his face, a rictus of joy even in death. Then, his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell, not crumpling like a person, but toppling backward rigidly, like a statue, crashing into the undergrowth with a final, heavy thud.

Silence descended, absolute and profound, broken only by the ringing in Alex’s ears and the smell of gunpowder hanging heavy in the humid air.

He was down. He was gone. A real bullet had hit a real body.

Mark stood frozen for a long moment, the rifle still pointed at the spot where the man had fallen. He was trembling, not from fear, but from the adrenaline dump of a life-altering act. "Okay," he breathed, the word a ragged puff of air. "Okay. He's... he's down."

He lowered the rifle, turning to Alex with wild eyes. "We go back. We call the police. We tell them we were attacked. Self-defense. That's what it was. You're my witness." He was trying to build a narrative, to force the jagged edges of this nightmare into a shape the real world could understand.

The journey back to the cabin was a surreal, silent march. When they stumbled into the main clearing, Sarah and Maya rushed out onto the porch, their faces masks of anxiety. Mark’s explanation was a rushed, fragmented mess of "a man," "a threat," and "I had to." He sank onto a porch chair while Sarah, her face pale with shock, called 911.

It took forty-five minutes for the police to arrive, an eternity in which every shadow seemed to lengthen and twist into a familiar, smiling shape. Two sheriff's deputies got out of their cruiser, their expressions a mixture of boredom and caution. The older one, whose name tag read Brody, had a weary, seen-it-all look in his eyes.

"You said you shot a man?" Brody asked, his voice calm and methodical.

"He was threatening my son," Mark said, his voice firming up, regaining some of its authority. "He chased us. I had no choice. I'll show you."

Mark led them back into the woods, Alex trailing behind like a ghost. He felt a sickening sense of dread, a premonition that coiled in his gut. The woods didn’t like witnesses. They didn't leave receipts.

They reached the dead-end clearing. Mark pointed with a shaking finger. "Right there. He fell right there. Behind that bush."

The younger deputy pushed aside the branches. He looked. He looked again. He then turned to Brody and gave a slight shake of his head.

"Sir," Brody said, his voice losing its patient tone. "There's no one here."

"What?" Mark pushed past him, his eyes frantic. "No, he was right here! I saw him fall! I shot him!" He began tearing at the undergrowth himself, his movements becoming wild, desperate. "The body has to be here!"

The deputies exchanged a look. It was a look of pity and suspicion. Alex felt his stomach clench.

"Let's see if we can find any blood," the younger deputy said, pulling out a flashlight despite the daylight.

They searched for ten minutes. They scoured the leaves, the ground, the tree trunks. They found nothing. No body. No bloodstains. No footprints other than their own. Brody even knelt and sifted through the leaf litter, looking for the spent shell casing. It wasn't there. It was as if the shot had never been fired.

"Mr. Miller," Brody said, his voice now carrying an edge of official admonishment. "Are you sure about what you saw? The heat can play tricks on you out here. Maybe you saw a deer and got spooked."

"It wasn't a deer!" Mark roared, his face turning a blotchy red. "It was a man in a suit! I shot him!"

"We can't find a victim, sir. Or any evidence a crime was committed," Brody said flatly. "Discharging a firearm without cause is a serious offense."

They escorted them back to the cabin, gave Mark a stern warning, and left. The crunch of their tires on the dirt road was the sound of the real world retreating, leaving them stranded once again.

The four of them stood in the cabin's living room, the illusion of safety shattered.

"You see, Dad?" Alex whispered, the words catching in his throat. "You see what I've been trying to tell you? It's the woods. The things here… they aren't real in the way we are. They don't play by our rules."

Mark turned on him, his face a mask of pale, terrified fury. His entire worldview, his very sanity, had just been invalidated. He had shot a man. He knew he had. To accept Alex's explanation was to accept madness. His only defense was to retreat back into denial, but this time, it was a violent, desperate denial.

"Don't you say that," he hissed, his voice low and dangerous. "It was a man. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. His friends must have come and dragged him away while we were gone. There's a reason. There's always a reason!"

"But there was no blood! No shell casing!" Alex pleaded.

"I don't want to hear it!" Mark shouted, taking a menacing step forward. "This conversation is over! We do not talk about the man in the woods. We do not talk about anything you think you've seen. We are going to have a normal summer. Is that understood?"

The threat hung in the air, thick and suffocating. The family's unity hadn't just cracked; it had been pulverized. The enemy was no longer just the smiling thing in the forest or the eyeless phantom at the window. It was now sitting at their kitchen table, wearing his father’s face.