“Shit man!” John said, his bat trembling in his hands as he looked at the body.

Lucas thought that deep down, John still believed this was all some sort of hoax, even if an unlikely one, orchestrated by the two shyest members of the group. Michael, however, crouched near the body, seeming weirdly unbothered by Richie’s brutal death, which was sure to raise some flags in Lucas’ mind.

“Those aren’t claws,” Michael said, showing a wound in Richie’s chest.

“That’s a pretty big knife,” Lucas muttered, surprised.

It seemed that the blade had pierced Richie’s back and gone out through his chest multiple times. To do something like that required incredible strength, unless the blade was abnormally sharp like Lucas’ glass.

Warily, the three of them started looking around in search of the potential killer, but there was nothing to be seen apart from trees, leaves and bushes. The only problem was that the trees, leaves, and bushes all seemed to be watching them with murderous eyes, and often they caught a glimpse of something moving in the darkness beyond, making their hearts speed up.

“There’s something out there!” John exclaimed, taking a step back, but Michael stopped him.

“I don’t think those are real. They aren’t moving naturally. I think it’s the mushroom talking. We shouldn’t stay here much longer. Richie is definitely dead, and there’s nothing we can do for him.”

Lucas agreed with him. Although the movements in the woods seemed real, they also had something mystical about them, which Lucas deemed to be related to hallucinations, since he had the same feeling from that ghastly appearance behind Sasha.

“Are those footprints?” Lucas pointed at a spot in the grass nearby with his flashlight, and all eyes turned that way. Vaguely, on the grass where Lucas had pointed, there was a muddy footprint of a boot—a pretty huge boot.

“Yes, unless we are all hallucinating the same thing” Michael answered, looking closely. “The mud disappears after a few feet, but I can still see a few indications of someone having passed through here. A big fellow, I suppose,” he said, looking suspiciously at John, who became annoyed.

“What are you talking about? Are you a hunter now? It can be anyone’s,” John said angrily. “And besides, I couldn’t even wear a boot this big. You can check it if you want to.”

“Well, I’m not saying it’s you, but whoever it is, they could’ve just used a bigger boot to fool us. It doesn’t mean much.”

“Should we follow the trail?” Lucas asked, trying to look angrier toward the murderer than he actually was, but it seemed none of them were willing.

“It is like Michael said. In the state that we are in, it will probably do more harm than good. And besides, who knows who this guy is? Maybe he has planted some traps for us. It would be stupid to just follow him deeper into the woods. Also, there are the girls,” John argued.

Lucas found the argument funny, considering John had no problems leaving the girls behind a few minutes ago, but he again chose not to say anything. If he had to fight some unknown threat, he would have preferred it to happen in a place where he could actually see what was attacking him and not between those creepy, ever-shifting, trees.

“What about the body?” Michael interjected.

“We can’t leave him here,” Lucas said, trying to put some emotion in his voice. That was his alleged friend, after all.

“We can drag him back to the cottage. We’ll leave him on the porch and figure out what to do about this afterward,” John said. All of them agreed with that proposition, so they started dragging the body back to the cottage.

Lucas was glad everything seemed fine in the cottage, and Maria immediately hugged him after they crossed the door. Lucas hugged her back, but not with the same intensity he would have otherwise. Being caught off guard before had left a sour taste in his mouth, and while he knew she wasn’t responsible for Richie’s death, considering he was with her at the time, that didn’t mean she wasn’t in on it somehow.

“So, what was it? Was it a bear?” Cindy asked, gasping from fear.

“No… it was something else,” John said, not mustering the courage to tell her Richie was murdered, but Michael didn’t have such reservations.

Stolen story; please report.

“Someone stabbed him, more than once.”

A commotion erupted from the three girls as they realized what that meant.

“Do you think the murderer will come back?” Maria asked Lucas, clinging to his arm.

Of course, he will, Lucas thought. His objective was to survive through the night, and he doubted the tower would let him go that easily, but he couldn’t say that to her.

“I don’t know. I think we should call the authorities and leave this place immediately,” Lucas proposed, addressing not only her, but also the others.

After a brief discussion, they all agreed to Lucas’ plan. A couple of minutes later, however, it was confirmed none of them had any reception on their cellphones. Feeling that this was a pretty bad sign, they rushed to pick up their bags and exit the house, only to find that all the tires had been slashed, along with the fuel compartment.

“Oh, God!” Sasha exclaimed with terror, with the others reacting similarly.

Of course, Lucas thought, looking at the state of the car. Their only good chance of escaping that death trap was gone. Descending the mountain on foot was the only option left if they wanted to get out of there, but he doubted it would be easy.

Lucas considered what would happen if he restarted the floor at that moment. Theoretically he would have an unfair advantage; by knowing the car would be tampered with, he could keep an eye on it and prevent it from ever happening or perhaps even surprise Richie’s killer when he was about to strike.

However, as people around him tried to see if they could salvage the situation with the car, with little success, he came to the conclusion that it couldn’t be so simple. He was sure that if someone received any sort of advantage from a restart, their points would be deducted proportionally later on, the same way his points were deducted when he took that staff with him.

Getting his head back into the situation that was unfolding in front of him, he thought things through. Apart from knowing that their escape route was now limited, the recent events showed them there was someone in those woods around the house intent on sabotaging and probably killing them.

His doubts about having a killer amongst them weren’t completely dispelled by the recent events, as they could still be working together, but an unknown threat was always more dangerous.

Feeling his mind somewhat clearer than before, he began to think through all the possibilities and things he could do to assure his success in this objective. If years of study taught him one thing, it was that the most complicated problems could sometimes could be resolved with the simplest methods.

In a matter of seconds, he thought about burning the entire forest and house down, killing the entire group, and running down the road to jump into the lake below. Each one of those crazy hypothesis, however, had a big problem blocking his way.

Ignoring the ethical aspects of it, his main concern for the first two was that he had no idea how strong his mysterious foe was. If he went on to burn the whole place down or kill everyone, only to find out he couldn’t surpass his last obstacle without their help, he would be screwed.

The last option also had a major flaw: he had no idea if he could survive the fall, even if he managed to make it that far. He would probably be forced to slowly descend the cliff, which would give his opponent plenty of opportunities to finish him off.

It seems there’s no simple way out of this, Lucas concluded, resigning himself and going back to the hut with the others.

“Are you sure there’s not any guns in this house?” Michael asked John after they arrived in the living room.

“I don’t know. My cousin didn’t say anything about guns, but who knows? He said there was a basement with some supplies. Maybe we’ll find something there,” John replied, and the three of them started searching for the basement entrance.

After some time, they found a trapdoor below the living room mat that lead to the basement. Using their flashlights, the three of them descended the stairs while the others tended to Sasha, who was feeling rather unwell after the latest finding.

The whole thing resembled a horror movie more with every passing moment, but Lucas wasn’t actually scared. It was one thing to face an unknown and dangerous threat with the speed, strength, and reflexes of his former self, and a completely different thing to face it with his current confidence in his ability to fight back or at the very least run away from whatever was hiding in the shadows.

The basement was exactly as Lucas expected: there was no illumination apart from the lights they carried with them, spiders were basically everywhere, and the stairs creaked as they slowly descended.

The three of them separated after reaching the basement. Slowly walking on one side of it, Lucas ran his flashlight over everything he could find. Amongst his findings were a couple of gallons of gas, small tools, and a few old papers, which made him halt as he started to go through them with great interest, trying to see if he could find any useful information. And there it was:

Mysterious deaths shock small town

According to the news, a group of teenagers recently out of high-school were murdered during their celebration in a hut a few miles from where they were now. Still, according to the coroner, due to the way their bones were broken during the assault—committed with a cold weapon—everything pointed to the killer being a very strong man, and judging by the angle the blade reached the victims, he made and educated guess that the offender was a man of more than 6’7 in height.

The only problem was that a man of those proportions had never been seen around the small town, which greatly confused the local authorities in their search for the perpetrator, since someone of that size would hardly go unnoticed by the locals.

The newspaper article finished with a small suggestion that the killer was perhaps not a man, but something far scarier than that. It went on to list a series of “peculiar” incidents that had happened in those woods in recent times, involving dark rituals, desecration of corpses, and much more.