Chapter 2: The Black Blood Warning

Chapter 2: The Black Blood Warning

The retreat back to camp was a frantic, clumsy scramble. The practiced silence Leo prided himself on was gone, replaced by the panicked gasps of a man drowning in open air. Every shadow seemed to writhe, every gnarled root looked like a grasping claw. The forest’s silence was no longer a neutral canvas for his adventure; it was a weapon turned against him, amplifying the frantic thudding of his own heart. The human scream echoed in his memory, a phantom sound that played on a loop, each repetition colder and sharper than the last.

He burst through the treeline into their small clearing, a wild look in his eyes. Isaac was where he’d left him, sitting in a camp chair by the smoldering fire pit, nursing a can of cheap beer. He looked up, his perpetually skeptical expression softening with a flicker of concern at the sight of Leo’s pale, sweat-sheened face.

“Whoa, take it easy,” Isaac said, his voice a low rumble. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Or did you finally find Bigfoot and he asked you for a light?”

Leo forced a shaky laugh that sounded more like a cough. Desire for normalcy warred with the terror clawing at his throat. He couldn’t tell Isaac. How could he? ‘Hey, I shot a god-deer and it screamed at me like a person before vanishing.’ Isaac would think he’d finally lost his mind, and worse, his friend’s ridicule was an obstacle Leo’s shredded pride couldn't handle right now. He needed the flimsy comfort of their shared reality, even if it was a lie.

“Nothing,” Leo lied, his voice thin. He busied himself with unstrapping his bow, leaning it against a log with a hand that trembled slightly. “Just… quiet out there. Eerily quiet. Spooked the deer, I guess. Didn’t see a thing.”

Isaac squinted at him, taking a slow sip of his beer. He knew Leo better than anyone. He could see the frantic energy humming just beneath his friend's skin. “Right. ‘Eerily quiet’ is your bread and butter, man. I figured you’d be taking plaster casts of the silence or something. You’re white as a sheet.”

“Altitude, maybe,” Leo muttered, grabbing a bottle of water and chugging half of it in one go. “Just… got a weird vibe. Let’s just call it a day.”

Isaac shrugged, letting it drop. He was a mechanic, not a psychologist. If Leo wanted to be weird, he’d let him be weird. “Fine by me. I’ve been communing with the spirit of this six-pack. Its message is ‘drink another one’.”

Leo attempted a smile, but it felt like a grimace. He spent the rest of the daylight hours in a fog of anxiety, jumping at every unfamiliar sound, his eyes constantly scanning the dense perimeter of trees that encircled their camp. The imposing shadow of Mount Shasta seemed to press down on them, suffocating. He was acting, performing the role of a slightly disappointed hunter for Isaac’s benefit, but inside, a primal fear was taking root. He had crossed a line. He had shot at something that did not belong in his world, and the human scream was its reply.

Sleep, when it finally came, was no escape. It was a suffocating tapestry of nightmares. He dreamt of vast, dark antlers branching like dead trees against a blood-red sky, of a forest floor littered with his own custom arrows, each one snapped in half. He dreamt of that ungodly scream, only this time it was coming from his own throat.

He awoke with a jolt, the thin nylon of his sleeping bag slick with cold sweat. The pre-dawn air was frigid, and for a moment, he was disoriented, the dream clinging to him like a shroud. A floorboard creaked. No, not a floorboard—a twig, snapping just outside the tent. He held his breath, straining his ears, but there was only the sound of Isaac’s heavy, rhythmic breathing beside him. He lay there for what felt like hours, a prisoner in the dark, convinced that something was circling their tent, waiting.

Morning light finally filtered through the tent fabric, a pale, merciful grey. The birds had returned, their cheerful chirping a stark contrast to yesterday's deathly stillness. The world felt normal again. Leo’s terror began to recede with the darkness, leaving behind the embarrassing residue of a panic attack. Maybe it was just altitude. Maybe he’d hit a deer and a coyote had screamed nearby. His mind, desperate for a rational explanation, scrambled to build a plausible narrative.

“Coffee’s on,” Isaac grunted, already unzipping the tent flap. The hiss of their small propane stove was a comforting, mundane sound.

“Coming,” Leo mumbled, pulling on his boots. He felt drained, but the light of day was a powerful balm. It was all in his head. It had to be. He unzipped his side of the tent and stepped out into the crisp mountain air, blinking against the morning sun.

And then he saw it.

He froze, his blood turning to ice water in his veins. There, planted in the soft earth not three feet from their tent door, was an arrow. It stood perfectly upright, as if placed there by hand. The fletching was pristine, and just below it, a small band of custom red masking tape glinted in the sun.

It was his arrow. The arrow he had fired yesterday.

Isaac, pouring hot water over coffee grounds, followed his gaze. “The hell? Did you stick that there? Trying to be all symbolic?”

Leo couldn't answer. He took a slow, hesitant step closer, his eyes fixed on the broadhead. The razor-sharp steel wasn't caked in the familiar crimson of deer blood. It was coated in something else. A thick, viscous, tar-like substance that didn't drip. It clung to the metal in oily, semi-congealed globules, shimmering with a faint, unnatural iridescence. It looked like crude oil but smelled of rot and ozone. It was utterly, sickeningly wrong. Black blood.

A wave of nausea washed over him. This was impossible. The clearing was eighty yards away, through dense woods. How had the arrow gotten here? Who—or what—had brought it? The rational explanations he had so carefully constructed overnight crumbled into dust.

“Leo?” Isaac’s voice was sharp with confusion now. “What’s going on?”

Ignoring him, Leo spun around, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. His gaze fell upon his compound bow, still leaning against the log where he’d left it. He stumbled towards it, a horrifying suspicion crystallizing in his mind. He snatched it up.

The bowstring, a tightly wound bundle of synthetic fibers capable of withstanding over seventy pounds of pressure, was severed. It hadn't snapped or frayed. It had been cut. A single, clean, deliberate slice right through the middle, rendering his state-of-the-art weapon completely useless.

Leo stared at the useless bow in his hands, then back at the black-blooded arrow standing sentinel before their tent. The message was brutally, terrifyingly clear. I have your arrow. I know where you sleep. And I have taken your weapon.

The feeling of being watched returned with suffocating intensity. The sun was bright, the birds were singing, but the ancient, wrathful intelligence of the forest was focused entirely on him. The thrill of the hunt was a distant, laughable memory. The roles had been irrevocably reversed.

He was no longer the hunter. He was the hunted.