Chapter 2: The Rhythm of Fear

Chapter 2: The Rhythm of Fear

A full minute passed. Maybe two. Time seemed to have frayed at the edges, measured now only by the frantic thumping in Leo’s chest. He stood rooted to the trail, every muscle coiled tight, waiting for the punchline. For a burst of laughter from the woods, for the crackle of the radio admitting it was a prank by one of the old-timers trying to haze the new guy.

Nothing came. The silence pressed in again, heavier than before, made profound by the memory of that single, impossible word.

Run.

Leo forced a shaky breath into his lungs, the cold air burning. "Get a grip, Martinez," he whispered, his own voice sounding foreign and small. He was a man of science, of waveforms and frequencies. There were rules. A voice couldn't just manifest on a closed radio channel with perfect clarity. It had to be a transmission bleed-through. Some hiker with a powerful ham radio, or maybe even a broadcast from a distant station bouncing off the upper atmosphere in a freak atmospheric event.

It had to be.

To turn back now would be to admit defeat to a ghost story, to the very irrationality he’d come here to escape. Silas would mock him, and worse, he would know he’d let a figment of his imagination chase him out of the woods. Determined to reclaim his composure, he gave the walkie-talkie a final, disdainful look and re-clipped it to his strap. He would finish his patrol. He would walk the loop, check the trail markers, and file his report. He would impose order on this chaos.

He took a step. The crunch of his boot on the carpet of dead leaves and pine needles was loud, defiant. He took another. Crunch. Swish. The familiar rhythm of his own patrol. He forced his shoulders to relax, his flashlight beam steadying as he swept it from side to side. It was just a forest. An old, dark forest full of iron deposits that played tricks on electronics. That’s all it was.

Then he heard it. A third step.

Crunch. Swish. …Crunch.

It was perfectly timed to land in the silence after his own footfalls. It was heavier than an animal’s gait, more deliberate. It was the sound of another boot.

Leo stopped dead, his ears straining, every nerve ending screaming. The sound stopped with him. The forest was once again tomb-silent.

“Hello?” he called out, the word getting swallowed by the immense trees. “This is Park Ranger Martinez. Is someone out there?”

Only the wind answered, a low moan through the high canopy. He waited, counting to thirty. Nothing. It must have been an echo, he told himself, a trick of the terrain. The dense woods and rocky outcrops could bounce sound in strange ways. His training as a sound engineer kicked in, a desperate search for logic. Acoustic reflection. Standing waves.

He started walking again, faster this time, his steps more urgent. Crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch.

And there it was again, a shadow cast in sound. Crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch.

It wasn't an echo. An echo degrades, it loses its sharpness, its fidelity. This was a perfect duplicate. The same weight, the same cadence, the same slight drag of his left heel he’d developed after a minor ankle sprain last month. It was like listening to a recording of himself, delayed by a single beat. A cold dread, far more potent than the initial shock of the radio voice, began to seep into his bones. This wasn't a prank. This was impossible.

He stopped again. The mimicry stopped.

His mind raced. A poacher? A lost hiker? No. No one could move that silently, could match his steps so flawlessly from the darkness. He was being toyed with.

He decided to test it. He lifted his right foot and brought it down with a single, hard, deliberate STOMP.

The forest held its breath.

STOMP.

The reply came from somewhere behind him to the left, a perfect, mocking replication. The dread turned to ice-water terror. He wasn't being followed. He was being mirrored.

He broke into a desperate, clumsy run, abandoning all pretense of control. Branches whipped at his face, and roots seemed to reach up from the trail to trip him. His breath came in ragged, panicked gasps. And behind him, the horrifying rhythm kept pace, a perfect, syncopated drumbeat of his own flight. He was the composer of this terrifying symphony.

Then, the sound changed.

It was no longer behind him. With a sound of snapping twigs and rustling leaves that should have been impossible, the footsteps lifted off the ground. He could still hear them, but they were higher now, moving parallel to him about twenty feet up in the dark canopy. The sound of heavy boots crushing unseen branches echoed down from the moonless sky.

Leo stumbled to a halt, his flashlight beam jerking upwards, cutting a wild path through the tangle of leaves and bark. He saw nothing. Just the impenetrable blackness of the redwood canopy. But he could hear it. Crunch. Snap. Crunch. A bipedal creature, heavy as a man, walking through the treetops as if on solid ground.

His skepticism didn't just crack; it shattered into a million pieces. The laws of physics had been suspended. The rules he clung to were meaningless here. The forest, the silence, the very air was hostile and alive. He fumbled for his radio, his fingers slick with sweat, his only thought to hear Silas’s grounding, gruff voice.

But before he could press the button, the footsteps in the sky stopped directly above him.

A profound cold descended, leeching the warmth from his body. It felt like standing in the shadow of a glacier. He could feel a presence overhead, a weight in the air that had nothing to do with gravity. He was pinned, a specimen under a microscope.

The voice came then. Not from the radio this time. It came from all around him, from every direction at once, as if the trees themselves were whispering. It was the same dry, intimate, genderless voice from the walkie-talkie, a sound with no source.

It knew his name.

"Leo."

He cried out, stumbling backward and falling hard onto the damp earth. His flashlight flew from his hand, rolling to a stop with its beam pointed back at him, illuminating him in a harsh, theatrical spotlight.

The whisper slithered through the air again, laden with a chilling, ancient amusement. It wasn't just a voice anymore; it was a verdict.

"You shouldn't have ignored us. Now… you are being hunted."