Chapter 3: The Cliffside Gaze

By the time they reached the clifftop campsite, Alex's legs felt like lead and his lungs burned with each breath. The sun was already sinking toward the western peaks, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple that should have been beautiful but somehow felt ominous instead.

Blake finally stopped at a rocky outcrop that jutted out from the mountainside like a natural platform. Below them, hundreds of feet down, the Whitewater River snaked through the valley in silver ribbons that caught the dying light.

"This is it!" Blake announced, spreading his arms wide as if embracing the entire vista. "This is where we make camp tonight!"

Alex looked around dubiously. The rocky ledge was exposed and windswept, with little shelter from the elements. A few scraggly pines clung to cracks in the stone, but most of the area was bare rock. It was nothing like the sheltered, level campsite Callie had marked on her carefully annotated map.

"This wasn't part of the plan," Alex said, dropping his pack with relief. "Callie had us camping in that grove we passed an hour ago—the one with the stream access and wind protection."

"Plans change," Blake replied with that same manic grin he'd been wearing all day. "This spot has character. Adventure! Besides, look at that view."

He gestured toward the river far below, and Alex reluctantly followed his gaze. The waterway looked different from this height—less like the peaceful camping companion they'd started with and more like something alive and purposeful. Even at this distance, Alex could swear he heard that same underlying murmur that had bothered him the night before, as if the water were speaking in voices too low to understand.

Sam joined them at the cliff's edge, swaying slightly with exhaustion. "It's pretty," he said, though his voice lacked conviction. "But maybe Blake's right—we should set up camp back from the edge. Safety first, right?"

For a moment, Alex felt a surge of hope. Maybe Sam was fighting through whatever mental fog had settled over him. Maybe they could still salvage this situation, find Callie, get back to some semblance of normalcy.

But then Blake clapped Sam on the shoulder with enough force to make him stagger. "Safety's overrated, buddy. We're young and strong and alive! This is exactly where we're supposed to be."

Again, that phrase: where they were supposed to be. The same words Blake had used when talking about Callie's disappearance. Alex felt that familiar chill of wrongness, as if reality itself were being rewritten around them.

They made camp as the last light faded from the sky, Blake insisting they position their tents as close to the cliff edge as possible "for the full experience." Alex managed to stake his tent a few yards back from the precipice, but Blake and Sam set up theirs barely ten feet from the drop.

The wind picked up as darkness fell, howling across the exposed rock face and tugging at their guy-lines. Alex had to weight down everything twice to keep it from blowing away. More than once, he found himself watching his friends' tents nervously, imagining them torn loose and tumbling into the abyss.

"Great choice on the campsite," he called over to Blake, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

Blake emerged from his tent with a headlamp strapped on, his eyes bright with that same feverish energy that had driven him all day. "Isn't it perfect? Can you feel how alive this place is? How... connected?"

Connected to what? Alex wanted to ask, but he was distracted by movement from Sam's tent. His friend crawled out on his hands and knees, moving slowly and deliberately toward the cliff edge.

"Sam?" Alex called. "What are you doing?"

Sam didn't respond. He reached the rocky lip and sat down with his legs dangling over the side, staring down into the darkness where the river ran invisible far below.

"Sam!" Alex scrambled toward him, his heart hammering. "Get back from there!"

But when he reached his friend's side, Sam looked up at him with perfectly clear eyes. "I'm fine, Alex. Just enjoying the view."

"There's no view. It's pitch black."

Sam smiled that gentle smile Alex had known for four years, but there was something different about it now—something empty behind the familiar expression. "You're not looking hard enough."

Alex followed Sam's gaze downward, squinting into the darkness. At first he saw nothing but black void punctuated by a few distant stars reflected on water. But as his eyes adjusted, he began to make out shapes moving in the darkness far below. Pale shapes that seemed to drift and flow with the current, occasionally catching what little starlight filtered through the clouds.

"Do you see them?" Sam asked softly.

Alex did see them, and the sight made his skin crawl. The pale shapes looked almost like... but that was impossible. They were too far away to make out clearly, and the darkness played tricks on the eyes.

"See what?"

"They're beautiful," Sam continued, his voice taking on the same dreamy quality Callie's had the night before. "So peaceful. So... complete."

"Sam, you're scaring me. Come away from the edge."

But Sam just smiled and kept staring downward. "They're waiting for us, you know. All of us. They've been waiting for such a long time."

Behind them, Blake had started a small fire in a depression between rocks, though the wind kept threatening to scatter the flames. He was humming something under his breath—a low, rhythmic tune that seemed to harmonize with the sound of wind through stone.

Alex tried to coax Sam back from the cliff edge, but his friend seemed rooted in place. Every attempt at conversation met with the same dreamy responses about the beauty of the view, the perfection of their location, the rightness of being exactly where they were.

As the night wore on, Alex found himself taking longer and longer watches, afraid to sleep while his friends acted so strangely. The wind never stopped howling, and beneath it, he swore he could hear that same murmuring sound from the river—closer now, as if it were climbing the cliff face toward them.

Around midnight, Blake stopped humming and stood up from the fire.

"I think I'll take a look around," he announced casually.

"It's the middle of the night," Alex protested. "And we're on a cliff. There's nowhere to look around."

Blake laughed—a sound that was becoming increasingly grating. "There's always somewhere to explore if you're brave enough."

He wandered toward the cliff edge where Sam still sat motionless. Alex watched nervously as Blake approached his friend, expecting him to sit down as well. Instead, Blake kept walking past Sam, moving along the rocky lip with casual disregard for the deadly drop just inches from his feet.

"Blake, get away from there!"

"It's fine!" Blake called back. "The view is incredible from here!"

He was walking the edge like it was a sidewalk, his headlamp beam dancing across the rock face as he moved. Alex could see him in profile—the same broad-shouldered, athletic build he'd known since freshman year, but something about Blake's posture was wrong. He held himself too straight, moved with too much purpose, as if he were following some invisible guide.

"Blake, please. Come back to the fire."

Blake paused and turned toward him, but the motion was strange—too fluid, too controlled. When the headlamp beam swung around, Alex caught a glimpse of his friend's face and felt his blood turn to ice.

Blake's eyes were completely black.

Not the deep brown Alex had always known, but black—pupil and iris indistinguishable in the LED glare. And they weren't focused on Alex at all. Instead, Blake stared past him toward the river far below with an expression of such intense longing that it made Alex's stomach clench.

"Blake?" Alex whispered.

His friend smiled, but it wasn't Blake's easy grin. This was something else wearing Blake's face, something that found genuine joy in whatever it was seeing in the darkness below.

"It's time," Blake said in a voice that was almost his own but not quite.

"Time for what?"

Blake didn't answer. Instead, he took another step along the cliff edge, then another. His movements had become even more fluid, almost graceful, as if he were dancing to music only he could hear.

Alex lurched to his feet. "Blake, stop!"

But Blake kept walking, kept staring downward with those terrible black eyes. And then, with casual ease, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he stepped off the cliff and vanished into the darkness below.

Alex screamed and rushed to the edge, but there was nothing to see except black void. No sound of impact, no cry of fear—just the endless murmur of the river far below and Sam's soft voice behind him saying, "He's where he needs to be now."

Alex spun around to find Sam still sitting exactly where he'd been all evening, still staring downward, still smiling that empty smile.

"Blake just fell!" Alex shouted. "We have to call for help! We have to—"

"Blake didn't fall," Sam said gently. "Blake went home."

The wrongness of it crashed over Alex like a physical blow. First Callie with her vacant stare and her walk into the trees. Now Blake with his inhuman eyes and his casual step into oblivion. And Sam sitting there speaking nonsense as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world.

Alex grabbed his friend's shoulders and shook him. "Sam, listen to me! Blake is gone! He walked off the cliff! Something is seriously wrong here!"

Sam looked up at him with those same gentle eyes Alex had always known, but behind them was that terrible emptiness. "Nothing's wrong, Alex. Everything is exactly as it should be."

And then Sam turned back to stare down at the river, humming the same low tune Blake had been humming earlier.

Alex stumbled backward, his mind reeling. Two friends gone in two nights. Two friends who had acted like strangers before they disappeared. And Sam sitting there like a wind-up doll, repeating comforting lies while reality crumbled around them.

The fire was dying down, and the wind kept growing stronger. Alex fed it more wood with shaking hands, desperate for light and warmth against the growing cold. But even huddled by the flames, he couldn't stop shivering.

Something was hunting them. Something that could rewrite memories and steal away his friends one by one, leaving behind hollow echoes that insisted everything was fine.

And Alex was beginning to understand that he might be the only one left who could see it coming.