Chapter 4: A Memory in the Dark

Chapter 4: A Memory in the Dark

The world bled out in shades of grey and orange as the sun was devoured by the horizon. Darkness didn't fall here; it rose from the ground and seeped out from between the trees, a tide of black that Liam felt in his bones. Trapped. The word echoed in the hollow space where his rational thoughts used to be. His car was a hundred yards away, a useless metal shell. To run now, into the tangled, lightless forest, was to offer himself up to the thing that hunted him. Suicide.

Survival, then. It was the only objective left.

Panic gave way to a cold, frantic energy. He was a data analyst, not a soldier, but his father had taught him things. Practical things. You don't just cower. You prepare. You make your stand.

Working with feverish haste, he built his pathetic fortress. He scavenged his scattered belongings, his hands shaking so badly he could barely grip the items. He took his two aluminum cooking pots and an empty tin of beans and positioned them around his tent. Then he unspooled the fishing line from a reel in his backpack—a reel his father had given him for his fourteenth birthday. He tied the near-invisible line taught, stringing it from a tree, to a stake in the ground, to the handle of a pot balanced precariously on a rock. He created a tripwire, a crude perimeter alarm. It was a child’s defense against a monster under the bed, but it was something. An action. A protest against the encroaching dark.

He rebuilt his fire, feeding it logs until it roared, a defiant beast of light and heat pushing back against the oppressive gloom. He sat on the log, his back to the flames, facing the dark wall of his tent. In his right hand, he clutched the recovered knife, the handle still faintly sticky with sap from the oak tree that wore his name. His left hand gripped the heavy flashlight like a baton. He was a cornered animal, armed with teeth and a desperate will to live.

The night deepened. The air grew still and cold. The only sounds were the hungry crackle of the fire and the frantic, shallow rhythm of his own breathing. He stared into the shadows, his eyes burning from the strain, trying to see the watcher before it revealed itself.

It was the fire. The hypnotic dance of the flames, the familiar scent of woodsmoke, the suffocating stillness of the forest—it was an echo of a time long past. Huddled here, bathed in the same flickering light, the walls of the present moment grew thin. A memory, buried for seventeen years under the sediment of his life, began to surface.

He’s twelve years old. The fire is smaller, more controlled. His father sits beside him, the lines around his eyes crinkling as he laughs at one of Liam’s dumb jokes. The air smells of charred marshmallows and pine. Everything is safe. Everything is perfect.

The scar on his palm, the pale crescent from the fishing knife slip, began to throb with a phantom ache. His father had cleaned it, his big, gentle hands surprisingly deft. But after, something had shifted.

The laughter died. His father’s posture changed. He wasn’t looking at Liam anymore. He was staring past him, into the impenetrable darkness of the treeline. The same treeline. The same spot.

Liam, now twenty-nine and drowning in the very same fear, remembered the expression on his father’s face. At the time, he’d mistaken it for simple seriousness, the way adults sometimes went quiet. Now, he recognized it for what it was. It was terror. Stark and absolute.

“Dad?” his twelve-year-old self had asked, his voice small. “What is it?”

His father didn't look away from the woods. His voice, when it came, was low and tight, stripped of its usual warmth. “Stay by the fire, Liam. Don’t move.”

Liam had obeyed, his skin prickling with a fear he didn’t understand. He’d stared where his father stared, but saw nothing but trees. The silence stretched on, thick and heavy. Finally, his father seemed to relax, but it was a performance, a forced release of tension for his son’s benefit.

“What did you see?” Liam had pressed, the way kids do.

His father had finally looked at him, his smile thin and unconvincing. He’d ruffled Liam’s hair. “Nothing, son. Just thought I saw… a kid. Looked lost for a second.”

A kid.

The words echoed across the years, striking Liam with the force of a physical blow. A kid. It wasn’t a lie meant to comfort, but a desperate attempt to categorize the unexplainable. His father hadn't seen a lost child. He had seen what Liam had seen. Something tall and wrong, something that stood too still in the shadows. He had felt that same cold, predatory gaze. His father’s fear hadn't been for a simple cut on his son's hand; it was for the thing that watched them from the dark. This curse, this presence, it wasn't new. It had been here waiting for him. It had haunted his father first.

CLANG-CRASH!

The explosive clatter of metal on rock ripped Liam from the memory. He leaped to his feet, his heart trying to batter its way out of his chest. The sound came from the right side of his tent. His alarm. It had been tripped.

It was here.

He spun around, grabbing the flashlight, his knuckles white around its casing. He held the knife out in front of him, a trembling extension of his will. “Who’s there?” he yelled, his voice cracking, pathetic against the vast silence that followed.

He took a shuffling step forward, then another, his feet crunching on the dirt. He swept the flashlight beam in a frantic arc, its white eye cutting through the black. The beam landed on the source of the noise. One of his cooking pots lay on its side. And caught in the stark white light, frozen mid-scamper, was a raccoon.

It was plump, its masked face tilted in what looked like comical surprise, a half-eaten piece of beef jerky clutched in its tiny paws. It blinked at him, then dropped the jerky and scurried away into the undergrowth with a chittering sound of complaint.

A raccoon.

The tension drained out of Liam in a dizzying, nauseating rush. He nearly collapsed. A choked, hysterical sound that might have been a laugh or a sob escaped his throat. It was just a raccoon. A stupid, hungry raccoon had set off his tripwire. The footprints could have been a prankster. The figure in the woods could have been a shadow. His phone could have just fallen out of his bag. He was letting his grief and the isolation get to him, building a monster out of nothing.

He stood there for a long moment, breathing heavily, the flashlight beam trembling. He was alive. He was okay. He was just being paranoid.

SPLASH.

The sound was not loud, but it cut through the night with chilling clarity.

It came from the lake.

It wasn't the gentle lap of waves or the plop of a jumping fish. It was a heavy, deliberate sound. The sound of something weighty entering the water. Or, perhaps, stepping out of it.

Liam’s head whipped toward the dark, glassy surface of the lake. His blood ran to ice. The sound had come from the exact spot on the shore where the wet footprints had begun.

The raccoon hadn't been the main event. It had been a diversion. A deliberate misdirection. While he was investigating the false alarm, his attention focused on the woods, the real threat had been watching him. It had been waiting, silent and patient, in the cold, black water.

It wasn't just a monster. It was a strategist. And it was playing with him. The game had just entered a new, terrifying stage.