The next thing that Sara remembered was waking up in her tent, daylight filtering through the thin material. She stretched, but the cool morning air made her quickly pull her arms back under the covers as she inched closer to Arlo. She noticed Chris was already gone and could hear someone moving around the camp, just outside the tent. As she lay there quietly, she started to make out the voices of Dean and Annie.

"Hey," Sara said, nudging Arlo gently. She wasn't sure how tired he still was, but when that didn't wake him, she seemed content to just lay there quietly for a little bit longer.

"That all sounds so wild! I'm so mad I missed it!" Annie pouted as she broke a few twigs and added them to the fire. "Can we do it again tonight, so I can go? I haven't seen anything weird yet!"

"I don't know if we're gonna stay another night," Chris said, looking at Dean with the hope of getting some backup.

"Actually, Annie and I were talking about that," Dean said. "I think we should go get our stuff from the car and bring it back here. We'll have plenty of time to set up before dark, and we can set up our tent right there." Dean twisted to point out a spot between skinny tree trunks on the other side of Sara's tent.

"No, no, no." Chris shook his head, which only exacerbated his headache. "I don't wanna stay here. And Arlo doesn't either."

"Man, seriously?" Dean balked. "You really wanna go home with three minutes of footage when we came halfway around the damned world to get here? Waste all that time we spent in airports, and at the rental place, and getting passports and shit?" Dean counted out each point on one of his fingers as he leaned forward. "Why? For what? Cuz we got a little turned around yesterday?"

"A little turned around?!"

"It happens a lot. It's a forest, and all the trees look alike. It's nothing supernatural, or anything to feel embarrassed by," Annie assured, and though she was probably trying to genuinely make Chris feel better, what she said came off as mostly patronizing.

Chris let his head fall into his hands as he let out a deep sigh. The fear that maybe he was just taking all of this way too seriously and out of context was really starting to get to him. But it was also just as impossible to deny the weird shit they'd experienced. They'd counted five sources of light last night. First, they'd walked towards the one Arlo had sworn was the right one, but the closer they got to the treeline, the farther the fire looked—as if it'd been moving away from them—slinking back into the distance.

Freaked out, they'd backtracked and went for the one Chris had zeroed in on, but their situation had only gotten worse when they'd gotten back into the circle. Chris swore he'd heard those bells again. Arlo had too. Then there were the footsteps... Chris shuttered and shook out his arms as he sat up straight again. "I'm gonna wake up Arlo," he said, wincing as he stood. "We were planning on walking Sara back to their car to get her phone."

"Their car?" Dean raised a brow. "How far away are y'all parked?" he asked, turning his attention back to Annie.

"Same place as you, I mean there's only one place to park, that I know of," Annie said casually as she put the kettle on over the fire.

"Mmmm..." Dean hummed skeptically as he raised a brow, leaning away from her a little while watching her hang the kettle from the metal tripod straddling the fire. "Did we not park in the right place, then?"

Chris paused on his way to Sara's tent. Maybe Dean wasn't too far gone to listen to reason. "We followed the only signs we saw."

Dean nodded slightly. "He is right about that..."

Chris nodded too. "Exactly."

"But," Dean said, raising a hand to stop Chris before the pretty boy could protest. "Hear me out, if we did miss a sign somewhere, and parked in the wrong place, that could account for why we got confused when we were looking for it."

Chris didn't look convinced. "Could it, though?" he asked, meeting Dean's stare for a long moment before shaking his head and reaching for the tent.

Arlo flinched awake at the sound of the zipper and Chris's voice. "Bro! Hey. Get up."

Sara shifted and sat up a little "Did something happen?" she wondered as she started to pull on her jacket.

"N-no... just-" Chris sighed, crouching down. "Annie wants to stay another night, and it sounds like she's convinced Dean to stay too," he whispered.

Arlo grunted as he sat up. "I don't wanna stay," he mumbled.

"I know," Chris said, looking between the two of them. "But I think you should come talk to him, man...I don't know what else to say to him."

"Hey, there they are!" Dean said, smiling when Arlo and Sara emerged from the tent from behind Chris.

"Morning," Arlo greeted, stretching his back.

"We'll have food up in a minute." Dean pointed towards the modest fire.

"Yeah? I'm surprised that thing's still going," Arlo said, his stomach growling.

"You guys have gotta be hungry," Dean commented. "You never ate last night, did you?"

Arlo looked at Chris, and Chris shook his head. "My stomach's been upset. Not very hungry..." Arlo lied. Sleep had helped a little, but in reality, he felt shaky. He thought of trying another bite of a granola bar, but he was afraid to even look at one after what happened last night.

Chris seemed to be thinking something similar because Arlo watched him dig the water bottle he'd had out of his bag. Chris inspected the clear liquid inside like a kid looking for "cooties". The rays of warm sun that made it through the crowns of the trees glistened off the contained water. There was barely any of it, but it looked fine.

After eating and cleaning up, the group started to break camp. Annie was clearly upset about the idea, but she and Dean had been outvoted—three to two.

She wasn't the only one unhappy about the schedule, because packing up the tents did delay them for about an hour. But, delays aside, they still managed to get going before noon. The sun was high and bright, but despite that, there was still something unsettling about the forest, a silent, sinister undertone veiled by the unassuming scenery.

Annie seemed to thrive in it—asking to hear their stories again and lamenting how the only thing she'd experienced so far was a bunch of spooked YouTubers.

"Chris!" Arlo shouted all of the sudden, startling the group and rushing past Annie to sprint over to a section of the path where wooden boards had been embedded in the dirt to help hikers get some purchase on the incline whenever it rained. "Remember this?" If Arlo's joy and excitement hadn't been evident enough in his voice, it was certainly written across every part of his expression.

"We're closer than we were when we thought we were near the car last night, then," Dean said, shifting the weight on his back. He'd volunteered to carry one of Annie and Sara's heavy bags, along with his own, and he was thoroughly regretting the decision.

"Gotta be," Chris agreed, his chest swelling with relief.

"See? All you boys needed were some women to get you on the right path!" Annie made sure to point out with a smug grin. Sara couldn't help but laugh as well because it all really did seem silly now. Of course, evil spirits, ghosts, and cursed forests seemed pretty far-fetched now compared to last night.

"You know, it probably all was just being tired and hungry..." Sara said to her friend in a more private tone, just between the two of them.

"It's ok, it'll make a good story at the very least and..." Annie glanced at the boys before hushing her tone further. "Maybe find a cute date? I noticed you and Arlo slept in," she said, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.

Sara gasped as loud as she could without garnering the attention of the boys as she slapped Annie's arm. However, the blow was far too gentle and Sara's cheeks far too red for Annie to assume that her conclusion was completely false.

"You're absurd," said Sara.

"I'm right!" jeered Annie in return, making them both laugh.

Ten minutes of walking later, with no apparent end to the trail, found all five of them in a less jovial mood again. Chris was particularly on edge. He chewed on his nails between swiping his bangs back into place even though Arlo had assured him his hair looked fine already.

"So how much farther is the parking lot after the steps, oh great and wisdomous goddesses of outdoors-ing?" Chris asked, stretching out his hands as he turned to walk backward for a moment, staring pointedly at both girls.

"It shouldn't be much further," Annie said with a confidence that Sara wished she possessed at that moment. Honestly, she would have said that she agreed, but sometimes things were further away than they seemed, and walking a path once wasn't enough for her to say how long it truly was. She was far from certain at the exact distance from there to the parking lot, and so kept her mouth shut on the subject.

It wasn't until ten minutes later when Annie said she needed a break, that Sara was starting to get the nagging feeling again. That feeling that told her something wasn't right. While Annie relaxed and drank some water, Sara strolled to the edge of the path. She looked out as far as her eyes could see through the trees in one direction, and then back the way they'd come, but there wasn't any sign of the parking lot.

Arlo, seemingly more eager than ever, continued a bit farther until he froze, then abruptly turned back towards the group. Dean was the first to intercept him, with Chris just behind him.

"What's up?" Dean asked, his voice lowered. "You okay?"

Arlo didn't look okay at all, in Chris's opinion. And obviously, Dean wouldn't have asked if he'd disagreed.

"I'm not crazy, right?" Arlo whispered before casting a fearful gaze between them, towards the girls resting only a dozen feet away.

"What?" Chris whispered. "No, man. What are you talking about?"

Dean placed a hand on Arlo's shoulder, squinting ahead to try to get some idea of what had scared his friend so badly.

"We're at the stairs again."

Chris's brows shot up, and both he and Dean took a few more paces before they too spotted the all-too-familiar sight.

"What the hell?" Dean groaned, wiping his hand down his face. Getting turned around with how dark it was at night in these damned woods was one thing, but it was midday. Sure, the thick blanket of leaves and branches overhead kept most of the forest below shadowed and dim, but it was daytime. They'd been walking in one direction. On this path. They hadn't gone off of it. Hadn't taken any turns. "Maybe there was more... and we hadn't been paying attention," Dean said.

"Maybe we'd actually been off the trail before we came to the set we passed earlier when we first got here," Arlo added. At this point, any rational explanation was far more comforting than the alternative. There was something seriously wrong with these woods.

"Hey, are you guys ready to keep going?" Annie called, she was back on her feet and Sara was with her as they rejoined the three.

"After you," Arlo said, his words edging on bitter. He wanted to see how the girls would react to the discovery—if they'd even react at all. Dean and Chris's silence as the girls approached them seemed to suggest they were thinking the same.

Sara gave them a suspicious look as she and Annie passed the boys and continued on down the trail, but the moment she laid eyes on the stairs, she'd pieced together the reason for their mock chivalry. Her heart jumped into her throat and Annie stopped to look at her.

"What?" Annie asked, her gaze already following Sara's to the stairs.

"I think we're going in circles..." Sara said, but the roll of Annie's eyes made her wish she hadn't.

"Really? I mean I want something creepy to happen as much as the next person... eh, well, maybe more. But how can you really tell these apart from any other stairs?"

"They're the same fucking stairs!" Chris snapped.

"Hey, hey, hold on," Dean said. "Here, I have an idea. Okay? Hold this a second." Dean shrugged the girls' bag off his left shoulder, then his bag with their cameras off his right, handing one to Chris and the other to Arlo. It only took him a second to locate and pull out a Bic that he then carried over to the steps.

Crouching down, Dean swept the dirt and leaf debris away from a small area on one of the steps before holding the lighter close to the wood. Once a dark, burnt mark had been made, he stood. "There. Now we know these stairs from any other set we come across. Fair?"

Chris exhaled through his nose, his jaw tight.

"Yeah," Arlo agreed, handing Dean his bag back.

"Hmph, smart and handsome," Annie said with an approving smile before she climbed the stairs.