Chapter 5: The Final Invitation

The fire crackled between them, but its light seemed weaker tonight, as if the darkness pressed harder against their small circle of warmth. Alex fed another branch into the flames, watching the sparks spiral upward toward stars that looked cold and distant through the canopy of leaves.

Sam sat across from him, but Alex could see his friend fighting a losing battle. Every few minutes, Sam's gaze would drift toward the tree line, his expression growing slack and dreamy before he'd snap back to awareness with visible effort.

"Talk to me," Alex said desperately. "About anything. Your family, school, that girl from your psych class you've been too chicken to ask out. Just keep talking."

Sam managed a weak smile. "Emma. Her name's Emma." He rubbed his temples as if trying to massage thoughts back into his skull. "I was going to... after we got back from this trip, I was going to finally ask her for coffee."

"You still can. We're going to get out of here, Sam. We're going to go home and you're going to ask Emma out and probably stumble over your words and she's going to think it's adorable."

But even as Alex spoke the words, he could hear how hollow they sounded. The forest around them felt alive with malevolent purpose, and that constant murmuring from the river had grown stronger as night deepened. It was almost forming words now—not quite English, but something that bypassed language entirely and spoke directly to whatever part of the brain controlled desire and longing.

Sam's eyes drifted toward the trees again. This time, it took him longer to pull his attention back.

"It's getting harder," he admitted, his voice thick with exhaustion. "Whatever it is, I can feel it... pressing against my thoughts. Like someone trying to push their way into a locked room."

Alex moved around the fire to sit closer to his friend. "Then we stick together. We don't let it isolate us."

"Like it did with Cal and Blake?"

The names hung in the air between them, weighted with grief and terror. Alex thought about Callie's vacant stare as she'd walked into the darkness, about Blake's inhuman black eyes as he'd stepped casually off the cliff. Both of them had seemed so certain, so peaceful, as if they'd finally understood some fundamental truth that had been eluding them.

"They're not gone," Alex said, though he wasn't sure he believed it. "Not really. Whatever this thing is, it... it collected them. Changed them. But they're still out there somewhere."

Sam looked at him with desperate hope. "You think so?"

"I have to."

A branch snapped in the forest behind them, and both men spun toward the sound. For a moment, Alex thought he saw something pale moving between the trees—a flash of skin or clothing in the firelight. But when he blinked, there was nothing.

"Did you see that?" Sam whispered.

Alex had seen it, but admitting as much would only make things worse. "Just shadows. The fire plays tricks with the light."

But the movement came again, closer this time. Definitely humanoid, definitely pale, moving with that same fluid grace Blake had shown in his final moments. And then Alex heard something that made his blood freeze in his veins.

"Sam." The voice drifted through the trees, barely above a whisper. "Alex."

Sam shot to his feet. "That's Callie! That's her voice!"

"No," Alex said quickly, grabbing his friend's arm. "It's not. Listen to it—really listen."

The voice came again, calling their names with perfect pronunciation and familiar inflection. It was definitely Callie's voice, but there was something wrong with the rhythm, the cadence. It was like hearing a recording played at slightly the wrong speed.

"Sam... Alex... come find me. I'm lost."

"She needs help," Sam said, pulling against Alex's grip. "She's been out there for three days. She must be hurt, confused—"

"She's dead, Sam!" The words tore out of Alex's throat like broken glass. "Or worse than dead. Whatever that is out there, it's not our friend anymore."

But Sam wasn't listening. His eyes had that glassy quality again, and his struggles against Alex's grip were growing weaker—not because he was giving up, but because he was no longer trying to resist. The thing calling from the darkness had found its way into his head.

"I have to go," Sam said in a dreamy voice that was becoming horribly familiar. "She needs me."

"The water is so beautiful," came another voice from the trees—Blake's easy laugh corrupted into something hollow and wrong. "You should see the water, guys. It's perfect."

Sam smiled that empty smile and stopped struggling entirely. "They're both there. Cal and Blake. They're waiting for us."

Alex held onto his friend's arm with desperate strength, but he could feel Sam slipping away just as surely as if he were drowning. The voices from the forest grew more insistent, more numerous. Soon he could hear what sounded like dozens of people calling from different directions—some voices he recognized, others he didn't.

"Please," came Callie's voice, closer now. "I'm so cold. So alone. I just want to come home."

Sam's resistance collapsed entirely. He looked at Alex with eyes that were still brown, still recognizably his own, but behind them was that terrible absence.

"I have to help them," Sam said gently, as if explaining something to a child. "You understand, don't you? They need me."

"Sam, listen to my voice. Focus on me. Whatever you're hearing out there, it's not real."

But Sam was already walking toward the tree line with that same purposeful stride Callie had shown three nights ago. Alex lunged after him, tackling his friend around the waist and driving them both to the ground.

"I'm sorry," Alex gasped, struggling to pin Sam down. "I'm so sorry, but I can't let you go."

For a few minutes, they wrestled in the dirt beside the fire. Sam fought with surprising strength, but his movements were strange—not panicked or desperate, but methodical, as if he were simply going through the necessary motions to reach his destination.

"Why are you stopping me?" Sam asked with genuine curiosity as Alex managed to get him in a headlock. "They're waiting. They've been waiting so long."

"Because whatever's out there isn't your friends! It's something else wearing their voices!"

But even as Alex spoke, he could hear his own conviction wavering. The voices from the forest sounded so real, so plaintively human. And they were saying exactly what he wanted to hear—that Callie and Blake were alive, that they could all be reunited, that this nightmare could have a happy ending.

Sam went limp in his arms, and for a moment Alex thought he'd won. Then his friend spoke in a whisper that made Alex's skin crawl.

"The water is perfect," Sam said in Callie's exact voice and intonation. "Perfect for everything."

Alex jerked backward as if stung, and Sam slipped from his loosened grip like water through his fingers. Before Alex could react, his friend was on his feet and walking toward the trees again.

"Sam, please!"

But Sam didn't look back. He moved with increasing speed toward the tree line, and Alex could swear he saw pale shapes moving between the trunks to meet him—familiar silhouettes that might have been Callie and Blake if you didn't look too closely.

Alex scrambled to his feet and ran after his friend, crashing through the underbrush in desperate pursuit. But the forest seemed to shift around him, branches reaching out to snag his clothes, roots rising up to trip him, shadows deepening until he could barely see his own hands.

By the time he fought his way through the maze of vegetation, Sam was gone. Alex found himself standing at the river's edge, his breath coming in ragged gasps, staring at water that reflected the firelight in patterns that hurt to follow with his eyes.

The surface was perfectly still, like black glass, but Alex could swear he saw shapes moving beneath it. Pale shapes that rose toward the surface with reaching arms before sinking back into the depths.

And then, from somewhere in the water—or maybe from inside his own head—he heard Sam's voice one last time.

"The water is perfect, Alex. Perfect for everything."

Alex backed away from the riverbank, his heart hammering so hard he thought it might burst. He was alone now. Completely, utterly alone in a forest that had swallowed his three best friends one by one.

Behind him, the campfire still burned, but its light seemed to barely penetrate the darkness that pressed in from all sides. And from the river came that constant murmuring, no longer trying to form words in any human language.

Now it sounded like laughter.

Alex stumbled back toward the fire and threw himself down beside it, feeding branch after branch into the flames in a futile attempt to push back the dark. But he knew it was hopeless. Whatever lived in the river had been patient so far, content to take his friends one at a time.

Now there was only him left, and he could feel its attention settling on him like a weight. The laughter from the water grew louder, more joyful, as if something was very pleased with how the evening had progressed.

In the morning—if he survived until morning—Alex would have to make a choice. He could try to hike out alone, leaving his friends to whatever fate had claimed them. Or he could do what every instinct screamed at him not to do.

He could look into the water and see what the river wanted to show him.