Chapter 2: The Chanting Circle

Chapter 2: The Chanting Circle

“We need to leave. Now.”

Liam’s voice was a ragged whisper, thin and brittle in the cold morning air. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the slaughtered doe, from the obscene spiral of its entrails steaming on the forest floor. The image was burning itself onto the inside of his eyelids.

Greg, for the first time since they’d arrived, was silent. His usual easy confidence had evaporated, replaced by a mask of stony disbelief. He walked a slow, deliberate circle around the campsite, his jaw tight as he inspected the crude totems. He prodded one with the toe of his boot, his face a mixture of anger and confusion.

“What the hell is this?” he finally muttered, his voice low and strained. “Some kind of sick joke?”

“That’s not a joke, Greg,” Liam said, his voice trembling. He gestured towards the woods across the creek, to the spot where he’d seen the figure. “I saw someone last night. Watching us. I thought… I thought I was imagining it.” The confession felt like swallowing glass. Guilt, sharp and acidic, clawed at his throat. He should have woken Greg. He should have screamed.

Greg’s head snapped towards him. “You saw someone? And you didn’t say anything?”

“I didn’t know what I was seeing! It was dark, I was half-asleep…” The excuses sounded feeble even to his own ears.

“Hunters, maybe,” Greg said, though the words lacked any real conviction. “Local psychos trying to scare off tourists.” He was trying to build a wall of rationality around the horror, a wall Liam knew wouldn’t hold.

“Hunters don’t do this,” Liam insisted, the image of the tall, robed figure searing his mind. It hadn't moved like a hunter. It hadn't moved at all. It had simply been there, an unnatural fixture in the landscape. “They don’t build… whatever these are. We pack our things, and we walk out. We don’t stop until we hit the road.”

The desire was a physical ache: to feel pavement under his feet, to see streetlights, to be surrounded by the mundane and predictable world they had so eagerly fled.

But Greg hesitated. The bravado that was his armor was reasserting itself, piece by piece. “And go where? We’re six miles in, Liam. The sun’s already up. It’ll be dark again before we’re halfway back. We don’t know who did this or if they’re still out there. Maybe the smartest thing is to stay put, keep the fire high, and leave at first light tomorrow.”

The argument was a clash of two opposing fears: Liam’s terror of staying another minute in this place versus Greg’s practical fear of getting lost in the dark with unknown threats lurking in the woods. They argued for what felt like hours, their voices hushed and frantic, as the weak sun crawled across the sky. Every minute wasted felt like a nail in their coffin.

In the end, Greg’s logic won, but it was a hollow victory. The decision to stay felt less like a plan and more like a surrender. They dragged the doe’s carcass into the woods, a grim task that left them both shaken and smeared with blood. They built the fire up, feeding it log after log as if its light could burn away the wrongness that had seeped into the clearing.

As dusk began to bleed through the canopy, painting the woods in shades of bruised purple and grey, the forest fell silent again. It was the same profound, unnatural quiet from the night before, only now it wasn't just eerie; it was menacing. The campsite, their small island of civilization, had become a prison. The surrounding trees were the bars of their cell. Every snap of a twig, every rustle of leaves in the non-existent wind, sent a fresh jolt of adrenaline through Liam’s veins.

They sat huddled by the fire, backs pressed together, a rifle Greg had brought for ‘bears’ resting across his lap. The comfort of the weapon was negligible. Liam knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that a gun would be useless against the kind of threat that built bone totems in the night.

Then, it began.

A low sound, so deep it was felt more than heard, a vibration that seemed to emanate from the very ground beneath them. It was a chant. A rhythmic, guttural hum, devoid of melody or joy. It rose and fell in a steady, hypnotic cadence, seeming to come from all directions at once.

Hmm-maah-ohmm… Hmmm-maah-ohmm…

Greg’s head shot up, his eyes wide with a terror that finally mirrored Liam’s own. “What is that?”

Before Liam could answer, the whispers started.

They weren't carried on the wind. They slithered directly into his mind, coiling in his ears like smoke. Sibilant, sexless voices murmuring just at the edge of comprehension. He saw Greg flinch, saw him press his palms to his temples. He was hearing them too.

The whispers were a tangled knot of sounds, a language of rustling leaves and cracking bones. They spoke of ancient things—of hunger, of roots, of darkness that dreamed. Liam felt a pressure building behind his eyes, a nauseating vertigo as if his own mind were an invaded space.

The chanting grew louder, more insistent. The whispers grew clearer.

“We have to see,” Greg breathed, his voice barely audible over the unnerving chorus. “We have to know what we’re dealing with.”

Terror screamed at Liam to stay down, to curl into a ball and wait for the end. But the need to know was stronger. Together, they crawled to the front of the tent, their movements slow and jerky, like puppets on a string. Liam’s hand trembled as he reached for the zipper, pulling it down just a few inches, creating a narrow slit through which they could see the clearing.

His breath hitched. The fire was still burning, but its light seemed weak, pushed back by a circle of new, brighter lights.

Torches. Held by a dozen figures.

They stood in a wide circle around the tent, just beyond the reach of the firelight. They were robed, just like the one from the night before, their forms tall and gaunt in the flickering torchlight. And on their faces, they wore masks. Crude, horrifying things made of pale birch bark, stripped wood, and the jawbones of animals, giving them all a uniform, skeletal grin.

They were the source of the chanting. Their masked faces were turned towards the tent, their bodies swaying in time with the hypnotic rhythm. They weren’t just in the woods. They were here. For them.

The whispers in Liam’s head, which had been a chaotic torrent of alien thought, suddenly sharpened. The babble and hissing focused, the disparate voices merging into one. It spoke with the cold, final clarity of a judge passing sentence. A single, terrifying phrase that echoed not in his ears, but in the deepest parts of his soul.

He sees you.

It wasn't a threat. It was a pronouncement. The entity the figure from the creek served, the thing these masked cultists worshipped—it was aware of them. Its gaze was upon them.

In that instant, all debate, all rationality, all hope of waiting for morning, was incinerated. Greg looked at him, his face pale and slick with sweat in the dim light of the tent, pure animal panic in his eyes. He didn’t need to say a word.

Their only choice was to run.

Greg grabbed the rifle. Liam fumbled with the back of the tent, his fingers clumsy and numb as he tore at the zipper. Behind them, the chanting rose in pitch, reaching a feverish crescendo. The only way out was through the back, into the pitch-black, unknown forest. Away from the light. Away from the circle.

They burst out of the tent and into the suffocating darkness, the terrifying chant and the echo of that final, soul-shaking whisper chasing them into the night.