[i lowkey wish I'd added something else to the story because it's slackin and idk what to do but next chapter is the last chapter and I don't know what I should do for my next book :')]

Not everyone was on board with the idea at first. Maybe it was just the night that put them all on edge, or all the concern buzzing about that nearly half the team had disappeared into thin air and was most likely never returning. I always tried to stay hopeful, but it proved difficult.

"This is fucking stupid," Pete hissed, and he threw his hands up in exasperation, "nothing's wrong with him. I'm not going behind his back on your stupid hunch, I'd trust him with my life!"

Tyler nodded in agreement, as did Ryan. "I don't know what you're seeing, Brendon, but I think your mind is playing tricks on you."

"It is not! Are you guys blind?" I'd spent so much time around Dallon, it was difficult to tell if it was even him at some points. And Josh had noticed, so I definitely wasn't slowly slipping into insanity like the remaining three had suggested.

"I'm not blind. He's fine—"

"I spoke to Josh before he went missing, about everything that's been going on lately," I said, and instantly Tyler's head perked up, "and now he's gone."

Pete wasn't amused. "I don't see the point you're trying to make."

"He's observant. He noticed something was wrong, we talked about it, and he's gone." I turned to Tyler for confirmation, and he nodded. "Whatever took him doesn't want us to know what's up."

"Why aren't you gone then too? How do you know he didn't just wander off? Maybe he had an idea in the middle of the night and went off to go investigate the rings—"

"I hate to say it, but I think the blood was either Spencer's, Patrick's, or Josh's. They're dead." Even the idea seemed foreign in my mind. I'd talked to all of them days prior, we made inside jokes, for God's sake we all worked together for hours on end every day. And they'd just... disappeared.

Nobody seemed open to the idea, exactly, but I could tell they all knew it deep down. There was no other explanation for it.

"I...I just need you guys to trust me about this, okay? I know I just got here, but something weird is going on, and if we don't get to the bottom of it, who knows who'll be next? We can't let anyone else get hurt if there really is something out here." The tension in the tent doubled while I waited for them to respond. The fear that they would ditch me and leave me to investigate on my own crushed my chest like a soda can every second enveloped in silence.

Tyler was the first to speak, after a solid two minutes. "Alright. I trust you."

Ryan looked absolutely appalled. "What do you mean? There's no way we can do this! What if we die, what if we're wasting our time and nothings wrong? The flashlights are dying, matches sure as hell aren't gonna do shit. We don't even have anything to defend ourselves if Breadbox ends up being right about all of this." Pete seemed to be siding with Ryan. He crossed his arms and nodded along to whatever he said.

"I believe him when he said Josh knew something was wrong too. He's the introvert with the sixth sense for danger. I'm not saying we have to trust Brendon — no offense,"

"None taken."

Tyler smiled, even though it was just the simple twitch of his lip. "Anyways, I'd trust Josh. If he were here telling me something was definitely wrong, I'd follow him out there right now. Our best bet right now is to go check things out, and if there isn't anything, then we don't have anything to worry about."

"And if there is?" Pete challenged, "then what? We throw dirt at it? Rocks?"

We didn't have many supplies left. We had enough water to last a few months, but any weapons we'd been given were either malfunctioning or lacked any real power. The matches were too small and burned too quickly to provide much light. While we did still have flashlights, the battery indicators flashed angry red whenever it turned on.

"We fight back with whatever we have," I said, only because there wasn't another option, "trust me on this, okay?"

__________

I couldn't have picked a worse spot to hide out. We were behind Patrick's tent, the one closest to the rings. It was positioned directly across from Dallon's tent, though, which was a very good thing, but we also had an entire area of pitch black land where anything and everything had the opportunity to sneak up on us.

"Y'know, this is like a whole new level of fucking stupid." Pete huffed, only about five minutes in to the stakeout. He wasn't happy to say the least, and being in such close proximity to Patrick's empty tent probably wasn't helping any potential improvements to his mood.

Dallon's tent was bathed in darkness; I had to squint to see anything, and I could only catch the outline of the material because his light was glowing on his bedside. "Yeah, well, we've been here for five minutes. Nothing good happens in the first few minutes of the movie."

"In Saw, people died within the first five minutes. That's good."

"Oh my god, you're such a sadist, Ryan. That's disgusting." Tyler hissed. He was in charge of holding the flashlight, because he was the only responsible one, set on the dimmest option. He was shaking so badly the beam of light went everywhere but where it was supposed to.

"At least I'm not afraid of the dark."

"Everyone's afraid of the dark! You're just so desensitized, it doesn't bother you anymore." He had a point. Ryan was like, a horror junkie, from what Spencer had said. I kinda missed him, even though we hadn't talked much, and I still remembered every detail to our few conversations.

I'd turned around to back up Tyler, and as soon as I did, Pete shoved my shoulder and pointed to Dallon's tent. "Look! Over there!"

"What? What's over—"

"Nothing's over there," he snickered, "that's what. We're sitting out in the cold for jackshit, Brendon. There's literally zilch out here. Nada. None. Zero. Dirt. Dust. Air."

Annoyance and anger seeped their way into my mind, overwhelming the small piece of myself I'd managed to keep in a somewhat homeostatic state. "Can you shut up for ten minutes? Why can't any of you guys trust me? I'm not asking for much, and there might not even be anything out here, so if all three of you could—"

"Wait," Ryan froze, eyes wide with fear, and he slapped the back of his hand against my chest a few times, "holy shit, there really is something out there."

"Haha, Ryan, I already made that joke. It's not funny when you plagiarize my shit."

"No, really! Look, he's just... standing there."

I followed Ryan's line of sight, and sure enough, he wasn't messing around like Pete was. The flaps to Dallon's tent were pushed aside, and he was a few feet away from the entrance. And he was just standing there.

What freaked me out the most, though, was that it looked like he was staring straight at us.

The flashlight moved across the ground quicker, more sporadically. "Damn it, I hate it when Ryan's right. It's never good news..."

They went at each other, back and forth like kindergarteners, for a few minutes. I couldn't tear away from him. He wasn't doing anything. It was like we were stuck in some paranormal activity film, and we'd reached the part where the demon shows itself and absolutely destroys everyone. I hoped that wasn't the case, to say the least.

"...and even if I do like pineapple on pizza, that doesn't connect to calling me piece of moldy cheesy bread!"

"Can you three shut up now? It's kinda important that's it's dead quiet so nobody gets murdered out here." I whispered, and immediately they all shoved the other and fell silent. It was like watching over elementary school kids and their childish disputes, but I would've have expected anything else. They'd all worked together for long, it was impossible they would get anything productive done anymore.

I'd glanced back at them for one second — one second — and the next thing I knew, Tyler was shining the flashlight at a vacant campsite. "Where'd he go?"

The only thing running through my mind was the journal entry about how he'd managed to keep the thing at bay, whatever it was, but it kept telling him it'd come back. He said he could control it, he said he regained authority over whatever it was; there was no way that thing had overruled his own body. Of course, there were most likely a few times when it had, but he must've been caught off guard and unable to reel it in. There was no way. 

I remembered lights as bright as the sun flashing behind us. I remember looking back to the base and it being further away than I'd expected.

That was it.

That was all I remembered.