Chapter 5: The Scent of the Hunt

Chapter 5: The Scent of the Hunt

The soft, tuneless humming from downstairs stopped. The silence that replaced it was somehow worse, a void filled with the weight of Trey’s catastrophic new understanding. He sat on the dusty floorboards of the attic, the leather-bound journal heavy in his lap, the scent of dried herbs and old paper thick in the hot air.

Every word he had read was a chisel, chipping away at the foundation of his reality. His father, the monster. His brother, the replacement. The town, a conspiracy of silent watchers. And himself, the fool who had run away, leaving the true battle to fester in his absence.

Clutching the journal, Trey descended from the attic, his movements stiff and robotic. He felt a desperate, paradoxical need to both flee from Neil and to find him, to see if he could spot the seams of the monster his father had described.

But the house was empty. The kitchen, where Neil had been sitting just moments before, was vacant. A half-full glass of water sat on the table, collecting dust motes. A profound and sudden dread seized Trey. Neil wasn’t just gone from the room. He was gone from the house.

“Neil?” Trey called out, his voice sounding thin and foreign in the oppressive quiet.

No answer.

He checked the living room, the small bathroom, even his own grim bedroom. Nothing. The back door was slightly ajar, swinging gently in the evening breeze, a silent invitation to the darkening world outside.

Panic, cold and sharp, pierced through his shock. He stumbled back to the kitchen table and threw the journal open, his hands shaking so violently he could barely focus on the frantic script. He wasn't just reading for context anymore. He was reading for a battle plan. He was reading for his life.

His eyes scanned the pages, skipping over the entries detailing his father’s grief and paranoia, searching for something practical, something he could use. He found a section, the ink darker and more forcefully applied than the rest, titled “The Nature of the Vessel.”

The body is but an instrument, his father had written, the words slashed across the page. The flesh of Jason Blackburn is a key, but the entity of the Creek is the hand that turns it. It will not wander. It is not a mindless ghoul. It is a hound, given the scent. It will hunt.

A cold sweat broke out on Trey’s brow. He thought of the morgue drawer, the lock broken from the inside. It hadn't been a theft. It had been an awakening. A release. His father’s corpse hadn’t been stolen; it had gotten up and walked away on a mission.

His gaze fell on another passage, one he had skimmed over before.

The old pacts demand a price. A life for a life, a son for a son. When the debt comes due, the entity will seek to reclaim its loan. It will come for the facsimile, the echo it placed in the cradle. It will come for the boy.

The words confirmed his worst fear. The reanimated corpse of his father wasn't just a terrifying anomaly; it was a supernatural debt collector. And its target, the asset it was coming to repossess, was Neil.

Trey’s mind raced. He had to call the sheriff, the police, someone. But what would he say? That a zombie was hunting his brother, who was actually a fairy creature from the woods? They would lock him in a padded room and leave Neil to his fate. He was utterly, completely alone in this.

His eyes fell on one last, horrifying entry. It was scribbled in the margin, almost an afterthought, but it made his blood turn to ice.

They know the hunt is coming. They seek to protect their own. The old families, the watchers, they will mark the true blood with tokens—hair, nail clippings, blood—to guide the hunter away from the flock and towards the shepherd. A sacrifice to appease it. A distraction.

A lock of hair.

The memory of Mr. Smith’s yellow-toothed smile and the cold snip of his scissors sent a wave of nausea through Trey. It wasn’t a bizarre keepsake. It wasn't a token for a collection. It was a marker. A scent for the hound. The old man hadn’t just been creepy; he had been an active participant, painting a target on Trey, perhaps to misdirect the hunter, or perhaps to offer it a more valuable prize: the true heir of the bloodline it had a pact with.

The humming. It hadn't been mindless. It had been an answer to a call. Neil hadn't wandered off. He had been summoned.

Trey bolted for the back door, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. He burst out onto the sinking porch, his eyes scanning the property. The sun was a bleeding wound on the horizon, plunging the world into shades of orange and deep purple. The shadows of the trees at the edge of the yard stretched long and black, like grasping fingers.

The woods.

He watches the woods behind the house, his father had written. He was talking to the creek last night.

Of course. Neil wouldn't run to the town, to safety. He would run to the source. He was going home.

A primal terror urged Trey to barricade himself inside the house, to nail the doors and windows shut and pray for dawn. But a deeper, fiercer instinct overrode it—the guilt-ridden, protective core he had tried to bury for a decade. He had abandoned his brother once before. He wouldn't do it again. Not now that he knew what was hunting him.

With the leather-bound journal clutched in one hand like a holy text and a heavy, rust-pocked flashlight from the kitchen drawer in the other, Trey Blackburn ran from the relative safety of the house. He plunged across the overgrown yard, his feet sinking into the damp soil, and crossed the threshold from the world of men into the deepening gloom of the woods.

The air grew instantly colder, heavy with the scent of pine and decay. The canopy of leaves overhead swallowed the last of the light, and the world became a maze of black trunks and impenetrable shadows. He was armed only with a dying flashlight and the ravings of a dead man, hunting for a brother who wasn't his brother, while being hunted himself by the corpse of his father. The scent of the hunt was in the air, and he was drenched in it.