Saturday, September 24th, 2016

They crawled until they reached bushes that would hide them from sight before they got up and walked a bit further; all in complete silence.

They were probably all equally excited over the fact they managed to trespass a forest that was guarded by the army, not taking in account how stupid and illegal their actions were.

"We're actually here," Edward said in disbelief, taking in their surroundings. But Sid bet he couldn't see much, since there was no light. The moon was almost completely behind the leaves of the trees, making it harder to see where they were walking. In response, Sid handed out the first set of flashlights. They had three extra flashlights, a power bank and fully charged phones in case needed.

"Let's agree on using one at a time, only when necessary," he told them, not wanting to waste the batteries.

"Got it, save the batteries." Davy nodded, grabbing his phone. "Let's take a picture to prove we were here to the girls."

Sid smirked, posing next to Edward, while Davy held out the phone to take a selfie of them. They took two or three serious pictures, but then goofed around by pulling scared faces, chuckling as they watched the pictures.

"Okay, let's go and find out what is so scary about these woods." Davy pulled out a map he had in his backpack, a compass, and his flashlight to take a look at the map. He placed a dot at the location of entry. Since he had been a boy's scout for years, Edward and Sid just let him do his thing and guide them further into the woods, every so often leaving a trace in a tree with bright coloured fabric that they ripped off an old shirt, mapping the spots on the map to know where they were.

They weren't fools. They went over this, again, and again, and again, coming up with safety precautions and whatnot to make sure they would find their way back out again.

It was all they did for a while, playing boy's scout while making their way over to lake Legis in the midst of the forest.

"This is boring, dude," Edward complained, whiny voice to empower his state of boredom. "It's just a fucking forest, nothing scary about."

"I know, man," Sid complained along with him while holding the flashlight for Davy to mark their location on the map again. "What the hell caused Cory to freak out and end up in a ward for over two years?" As an act of futile rebellion, he kicked away a pebble.

"So far, I would say those doctors are right, and he is a loon—"

Sid swirled around on his feet when he heard cracking sounds behind Edward, and they all silenced instantly. "What was that?"

"Sounded like someone stepping on twigs," Davy muttered, slowly getting up from the ground while Sid turned his flashlight to see behind Edward. There was nothing there.

"Ed, you fucking idiot!" Davy scowled, shining his own light towards Edward's feet. "You're the one stepping on twigs."

Sid chuckled at the broken twigs under his feet, but then he heard the same sound again, now close behind himself. They all turned in unison, shining light in three different directions: nothing.

"I swear, I wasn't moving," Sid defended himself, but he already saw that Davy knew he wasn't the one making the sounds. But while they remained silent, there was no sound coming from breaking twigs again.

"It's probably an animal," Sid rationalized, trying to calm himself down at the same time. "Let's keep moving."

Edward and Davy agreed with a nod, and the three of them started moving again, towards lake Legis. They reached it without any trouble, relieved because they made it faster than they had calculated for the walk. They needed to be back in town before the sun would rise. They took pictures as evidence they made it all the way to the banks of the lake without an issue before they sat down.

They were sitting in a flat area next to the lake, staring over it towards the other side, while taking a break to eat something.

"Did we take a spliff?" Davy asked, leaning towards Sid. "We should totally get high right now, that would be funny."

"I took them, yeah," Sid answered, retrieving two blunts that they still had left.

"You want to get high?" Edward scowled, shaking his head. "No way, dude."

"What? Why no—"

A gush of wind silenced Davy's protest, causing them to sit up straight in surprise. It wasn't so much the gust of wind, which was totally normal to happen in a forest, or outside, really. It was the fact only the trees close by were affected by the wind; the rest remained still.

"That's... weird," Sid mumbled, not sure what to make of it.

Sid was still staring in the direction of the last trees to move, when Edward made a sound, that seemed eerily similar to a shriek, and Sid turned around to see what had startled him.

He noticed a ball, slowly rolling in their direction. To make matters worse, Sid instantly recognized the ball as their own. The one they had kicked into the woods two years before.

"How the hell did that get all the fucking way over here?" Davy yelled, pointing at it as it came to a stop a few feet away from them.

Sid suddenly heard a faint whisper close to his left ear, but he couldn't quite make out what it said. It scared him, nonetheless. "May I suggest we get the fuck out of here before we actually do discover what drove Cory nuts?" Sid said, jumping up from his seat, snatching one of the backpacks from the ground in one go.

"Agreed." Davy grabbed the other backpack, and as he was grabbing the map in hand, they heard a cracking sound coming from above. They all looked up in unison, to see a large branch break off a tree, plunging towards them.

Sid wanted to jump out of the way, but he swore something pushed him in the other direction, and he stumbled backwards, landing on his ass, only just far enough away to not get hit. Though, for some weird reason, it felt like he had been scratched by the branch on the back of his neck. Which made no sense, since his face was unharmed, and he was facing it.

Davy left him no time to think about any of it, pulling him up without words, running after Edwards in the direction they came from. They were all simply panicking, running as hard as they could to get away from whatever the hell just happened. But eventually, inevitably, one of them had to run out of breath the first.

It was Edward, and he simply couldn't run another inch. He stood, bend over, grasping in air, as Sid and Davy took the opportunity to look for the coloured fabrics they had tied to the trees on their way to the lake. But even though Sid was sure they had been in the exact same spot on their way there—it was a path they had followed shortly—there was no coloured fabric in sight.

"Fuck it, let's follow the map." Davy gestured, pointing in the direction they needed to go. "Let's at least keep walking while catching our breath."

They nodded, and for a few minutes, they hastily walked after Davy, taking in their surroundings every three seconds. Aside from their footsteps, it remained silent.

That was, until Sid felt something grab his ankle, causing him to trip. In the exact same time, the wind picked up, though Sid didn't feel it since he was face first on the ground.

"Get up, get up," Edward said, sounding as if he was begging him.

Sid scrambled up, ignoring the nagging voice in his head that screamed at him that something had just grabbed his ankle.

Another gust of wind passed, sweeping the map out of Davy's hands, sending it high up into the air.

"No! Get it!" Edward yelled, and ran after it in sheer, blind, panic.

Sid felt shocked, and rather took a moment to comprehend what the hell was happening, when he heard Davy yell at Edward to stop running; the map was flying in the wrong direction.

"I have a compass, we'll go South. That way we'll reach town as well." Davy retrieved a compass from his pocket, opened it, and as all three of them stared at it, it simply kept spinning around in high speed, never once showing where they needed to go.

"No way," Edward mumbled. "This isn't possible."

Though Sid agreed with Edward, he was slightly impressed. These things would do great in a horror movie. But he rather wanted to see it in a movie, not experience it in real life.

"That way," Davy said. "We run in a straight line and get the hell out of here before we end up like Cory."

Sid nodded, Edward yelped, and they started running again, Davy in the lead, Sid as last since Edward seemed too scared to go on the back. All seemed to go well for a short while. There was no soccer ball that shouldn't be that far into the woods. There was no wind picking up at random places, nothing was seemingly trying to send them in a different direction. Sid actually—shortly—believed they had made it out of some sort of haunted zone.

And then the wind picked up from right in front of them, and Sid felt as if two hands were pushing his chest, sending him flying backwards. The last two things he knew was that he flew way too far in the air for it to be natural, and two; the wind never hit him, as if something shielded him from it while Davy and Edward got hit full on, leaving them unable to run further.

And then he hit his head on something hard and everything went black.

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