Chapter 8: The Next Hiker

Chapter 8: The Next Hiker

The world snapped back.

There was no disorientation this time, no frantic scramble of a mind trying to reconcile impossible facts. The reset was clean, precise, like a film reel clicking over to its first frame. He stood on the path. The thorn bush was to his right, and snagged on its barbs was the familiar scrap of his green shirt. The air was thick with the same oppressive twilight, the same profound silence. The cage was re-locked.

But Alex was different. He was no longer a rat in the maze. He was a rat who had been shown the blueprint and offered the key, and the key was a guillotine.

He clutched the cold, cracked compass in his hand, its needle now still. It was a useless object for navigation, but it was a perfect reminder. A relic of Abigail, the woman in the woolen jacket, who had made it to the heart of the forest and had either refused the choice or been deemed unworthy of it, and was now a permanent, weary echo on the trail. He would not become an echo.

The vision the entity had granted him burned behind his eyes, a tantalizing, agonizing promise. The parking lot. The setting sun bleeding across the horizon. The mundane, beautiful sound of his car engine turning over. It was a vision of a life he had been desperate to escape, a life of spreadsheets and deadlines and a hollow apartment, but now it was a paradise beyond imagining. Freedom. All it would cost was everything.

He didn't run. He didn't scream. He walked, with slow, deliberate steps, to a thicket of ferns just off the trail, a few yards before the thorn bush. He sank down behind them, his movements careful, controlled. He was no longer a victim fleeing; he was a predator taking up his post. He had tested the cage and learned its rules. Now, he would use them.

The silence pressed in, but it had changed. It was no longer a passive, indifferent void. It was anticipatory. It felt like a held breath. The ancient pines, the mossy boulders, the very dirt of the path—they were all watching him, waiting for him to play his part. The mountain was hungry, and it had offered him the chance to serve the meal instead of becoming it.

He waited.

Time ceased to be a measure of minutes or hours and became a measure of his own decaying morality. He thought of his burnout, the crushing weight that had driven him here. He remembered Dr. Evans’s warning: “You’re running on fumes, Alex. Your system is going to crash.” A bitter laugh almost escaped his lips. The system had crashed, alright. He weighed the memory of his bleak office cubicle against the eternal, looping twilight. Was his sterile, passionless life worth the price of a soul?

His survival instinct, raw and primal, screamed YES! It was an ugly, selfish, undeniable roar in the core of his being. He had suffered. He had been terrified. He had been broken. Hadn't he earned his escape? Wasn't that the way of the world? The strong, or the lucky, or the morally flexible, survived. The others… they became whispers in the trees.

He thought of Elara. He saw her calm, grey eyes, her hands folded on the worn motel counter. She was the one who stocked the larder. She sent people like him up this path, knowing full well what waited. She had made her peace with the mountain’s needs. Could he not make his? He was just one small part of a system far older than himself.

A sound snapped him from his reverie.

It was faint at first, but sharp and utterly alien in the profound silence. A twig, snapping under a boot.

Alex’s heart hammered against his ribs. His breath hitched. He pushed himself lower behind the ferns, his eyes glued to the bend in the trail further up.

Then came the second sound, and it was a thousand times more horrifying than the scream he had once run from.

It was whistling.

A cheerful, careless, off-key tune, slicing through the sacred silence of the forest. It was a sound of such profound, oblivious innocence that it felt like a physical violation of the place. It was the sound of life, of a world where shadows were just shadows and paths led somewhere.

A figure rounded the bend.

It was a boy. Or, a young man, perhaps eighteen or nineteen. He was the absolute antithesis of everything this forest represented. He wore a ridiculously bright yellow rain jacket, unzipped to reveal a band t-shirt. A vibrant blue backpack was slung over his shoulders, and from it dangled a metal water bottle that clanked softly with his stride. White earbuds were nestled in his ears, the source of the music he was whistling along to, blissfully unaware of the oppressive silence he was tainting. He walked with a light, easy bounce in his step, his head tilted back to look at the canopy of ancient trees with simple, uncomplicated awe.

He was everything Alex had lost. He was youth. He was innocence. He was hope.

He was the price.

The boy ambled down the path, getting closer. Alex could see the faint dusting of acne on his chin, the guileless, happy grin on his face. He looked like he was on a weekend trip, a casual adventure before heading back to college classes on Monday. He had a whole life ahead of him, a life of possibilities Alex could barely remember having.

This was the ultimate test. It wasn't an abstract choice offered by a cosmic entity. It was this boy. This happy, whistling, living, breathing boy. To save himself, Alex had to do nothing. He just had to remain silent. He had to let the boy walk past him, past the thorn bush, and into the jaws of the loop. The forest would do the rest. It would strip him of his cheer, curdle his hope, and sand down his soul until he was just another weary ghost, another whisper to torment the next victim.

Alex’s own terror, his own desperate flight down this very path, flashed in his mind. He knew, with an intimacy that made him sick, exactly what was about to happen to this kid. He would be the one to scream. He would be the one to find a scrap of his bright yellow jacket on a thorn bush. He would be the one to stand before the silent heart and be broken.

The boy was almost level with him now, just twenty feet away. He pulled out one earbud, the tinny sound of an upbeat pop song leaking into the air. He paused, looking around, his smile faltering for the first time. He must have finally felt it—the unnatural quiet, the static gloom.

“Hello?” the boy called out, his voice clear and strong. “Anybody out there?”

The forest watched. The ancient trees stood as silent judges. The oppressive air was thick with hunger, a single, palpable question hanging between the pines. Well?

Alex’s throat was dry as dust. His heart felt like a block of ice in his chest. He could feel the vision of freedom, of the setting sun, pulling at him, whispering promises of release. He could almost smell the exhaust from his car.

The boy took another hesitant step forward. His eyes scanned the shadows, and for a terrifying second, they seemed to lock directly onto Alex’s hiding place.

This was the moment. The pivot upon which two lives, two eternities, would turn. Condemn an innocent to save himself, or remain trapped forever?

He opened his mouth.