Chapter 2: Footprints from the Water

Chapter 2: Footprints from the Water

Sleep was a shallow, treacherous country Liam could only visit for fleeting moments. He lay rigid in his sleeping bag, the thin nylon of the tent feeling as protective as a sheet of paper. Every nocturnal sound—the hoot of a distant owl, the rustle of leaves in a sudden breeze, the creak of a heavy branch—was magnified, twisted by his fear into the approaching footfalls of the thing from the treeline.

He’d scrambled back into his tent moments after it vanished, his heart hammering a painful rhythm against his ribs. He had zipped it shut, the sound unnaturally loud in the profound silence, a futile act of security against a thing that defied the rules of presence and absence. He was a logical man, a man who dealt in data and predictable outcomes, but there was no algorithm for what he had witnessed. The cold, intelligent malice he had felt in that brief, terrible connection was not something he could rationalize away.

Hours crawled by. He dozed, only to be jerked awake by nightmares of long, slender limbs and an empty void where a face should be. It was in the depths of one of these fitful cycles, sometime in the suffocating darkness before dawn, that a sound sliced through the night.

Clang-thump.

It was close. Right outside his tent. Metal on stone.

Liam’s eyes flew open, his body instantly rigid with adrenaline. He held his breath, straining his ears against the frantic drumming in his chest. Silence. A heavy, waiting silence. The watcher. It had returned. It was no longer content to observe from a distance.

His desire to survive screamed at him to stay put, to play dead. But a more furious, desperate need took over: the need to know. He couldn't lie here, blind and helpless, waiting for the fabric to be torn open.

His hand fumbled in the dark for the heavy-duty flashlight he’d placed beside his sleeping bag. His fingers brushed against the familiar cold steel of his camping knife, and he wrapped his other hand around its hilt. The solid weight was a small, desperate comfort. With his heart in his throat, he slowly, silently, began to pull the zipper on the tent flap down. Each tooth separating from its partner sounded like a gunshot in the stillness.

He peered through the small opening. The embers of his fire glowed a faint, dying red, casting a weak, hellish light on the immediate area. His camping lantern, which he had left on a large, flat rock near the fire pit, was on its side, knocked to the ground. That was the sound.

He scanned the clearing, his flashlight beam cutting a nervous, trembling path through the darkness. The beam slid over the fire pit, the woodpile, the unyielding wall of the forest. Nothing. The clearing was empty. There was no unnaturally tall figure, no shadowy sentinel. Just the trees and the night.

A wave of dizzying relief washed over him, so potent it left him weak. The wind, his logical mind supplied, grasping at the straw. A gust of wind could have knocked it over. Or a raccoon. Of course, a raccoon. He’d seen one scrounging on a previous trip. It was a perfectly reasonable explanation. He was just spooked, his imagination running wild after the trick of the light he’d seen earlier.

He zipped the tent shut, the sound still jarringly loud. He sank back onto his sleeping bag, but the relief was fleeting, a thin veneer over a deep well of dread. A raccoon wouldn't explain the figure he’d seen. It wouldn't explain the feeling of being known, of being hunted. He lay awake for the rest of the night, the knife clutched tight in his hand, listening. He did not sleep again.

Dawn arrived not as a gentle awakening, but as a reprieve. The first pale grey light filtered through the trees, chasing away the absolute blackness and with it, the worst of the phantom shapes his fear had conjured. The moment the clearing was fully illuminated, Liam was a whirlwind of motion. His only goal, his all-consuming desire, was to get out. Pack the car, leave this place and its tainted memories behind, and never, ever return.

He burst out of the tent, not bothering to be quiet now. The morning air was crisp and damp with dew. He began with the fire pit, dousing the last of the embers with water from his canteen. As he stood up, he noticed it.

On the dark, damp earth near where the lantern had fallen, was a footprint.

He stared, his blood running cold. It was a bare foot. Human-shaped, but the toes seemed a little too long, the arch unnaturally flat. And it was wet. Not just damp from the dewy ground, but soaked, the edges of the print dark and saturated as if the foot that made it had just been pulled from a bucket of water.

His eyes darted around. There was another. And another. A clear trail. His frantic desire to pack vanished, replaced by a cold, investigative dread. He had to know.

He followed them. They led directly to his tent, right up to the flap he had so carefully unzipped in the night. The intruder had been inches from him. His stomach churned. He followed the trail backwards, away from his tent, expecting them to lead to the treeline where he’d seen the figure.

But they didn't.

The wet, bare footprints traced a perfectly straight, deliberate line in the opposite direction. They crossed the small clearing, passed the fire pit, and went directly to the shore of the lake. Liam followed, his boots silent on the soft earth. The trail ended at the water’s edge. The last two prints were half-submerged in the dark, still water, the mud around them swirling slightly.

They didn’t come from the woods. They came out of the lake.

The implications crashed down on him. The thing hadn't been hiding in the forest. It had risen from the black, silent depths of Blackwood Lake, walked to his tent, and then… what?

He looked back at the trail. The prints led to his tent. They stopped there. There were no prints leading away. It was as if the creature had walked to his door and simply dematerialized, just as the figure at the treeline had.

A frantic, new thought seized him. The knife. The one he’d held like a holy ward all night. He had been so focused on packing that he’d left it inside when he went to douse the fire.

He sprinted the few yards back to the tent and threw the flap open. He dove for his sleeping bag, his hands patting the rumpled nylon where he’d laid it. Nothing. He tore the bag open, shaking it violently. Empty. He scrambled through his backpack, tossing aside clothes, a first-aid kit, a bag of trail mix.

It was gone.

His only weapon. His last shred of security. The creature from the lake had not just watched, not just approached. It had entered his tent while he lay paralyzed with fear. It had been close enough to touch him, to breathe on him. And it had disarmed him.

Liam stood up slowly, a low sound of pure dread escaping his lips. He looked from his violated tent, to the impossible footprints, to the placid, dark surface of the lake. The watcher wasn't just in the woods. It was in the water. And it wasn't just watching anymore. It was playing with him.