"Look, we'll find them, okay?" Dean said, placing a hand on Chris's shoulder.

Nodding, Chris muttered, "yeah... we will." But his reply was saturated in fear and doubt. He continued to shuffle along beside Dean, straining to listen for any tiny sound that could be Arlo.

They found the spot where Sara had dropped her bag, the imprint of it still in the soft dirt. Dean was far more enthused about it than Chris. The bottle-blond barely reacted to the lucky find or anything Dean and Sara had to say about which way they should go from there.

Chris didn't really seem to come out of his own head until the chime of his phone scared all three of them.

"Holy—" Dean rubbed his chest. "That Arlo?"

Chris read the text. It was only three words...

"Look at it."

"What?" Chris sent back, practically holding his breath in anticipation of an answer, but nothing came. Thirty seconds passed. A minute. Then two more minutes.

"Let's keep moving," Dean encouraged. "Trail should be right over there."

"But I have a signal right here," Chris argued. What did it fucking matter? He didn't care about the path anymore. As much as he wanted to get the hell outta this place, he couldn't leave knowing Arlo was still out there somewhere. Every missed opportunity with his best friend and secret crush since twelve was playing over and over in his mind—swirling in a storm of guilt and anger.

"Bro, if we get back on the trail, and they find the trail, then we'll find them," Dean pressed.

"Yeah, where's standing around going to get us?" wondered Annie who was starting to sound more irritated and she had every right to be. She'd come out here for a good time, to see something—anything—get scared and then go home, but nothing scary or creepy had happened. Not unless you counted everyone losing their minds over not knowing how to stay on a path or find a simple parked car. She was annoyed, for sure, but not at all fearful. "Look, what do they say is the one thing you should do when you're lost in the woods? Isn't it to keep moving?"

Chris stayed defiantly still until Dean shook his head and kept walking. "Ar???" Chris typed, sending it before catching up to the other two.

Just as he had, his phone 'binged' again. Then again before he could even unlock his phone. Then, another.

"BRIDGE"
"BRIDGE"
"BRIDGE"

Hope flared in Chris's gut and he immediately tried to text back. "You found the bridge???"

"Look!" Dean said. "What did I tell y'all? I knew this was the right way! That's the bridge, there."

Chris flew past them, bolting for the wooden structure. "Arlo?!" he called out, as soon as he reached it, but his brows quickly furrowed in confusion. There was no sign of his best friend or of Sara. His phone drew his attention down to his hand.

"Chris?"

Chris re-sent his last message that had failed to send moments before. "You found the bridge?" Following it with, "We're here too! Where are you?"

"On the bridge?" Arlo sent back. "I don't see you."

Chris was huffing now as he frantically looked around.

"Man, what are you doing?" Dean asked, stepping up to the bridge.

"Arlo says he's here," Chris replied without looking at him.

"Where?" Annie asked, glancing around and seeing no sign of their two missing group members. Her attention settled back on Chris. "Are we sure they're at the same bridge?"

That hadn't even occurred to Chris until that moment, and the disappointment crushed him.

Dean and Chris both moved towards the step that Dean had put a burn mark on for the very purpose of identifying the same bridge again. It was there.

"Well, we're at the right one," Dean said, stretching his back as he straightened.

Chris texted Arlo back, but Arlo's reply only confused and distressed him further.

"What?" Dean asked, reading his friend's expression.

"He says they're at this one... the one with the burn mark on the step."

Dean threw his hands into the air before pinching the bridge of his nose. "They're confused, then."

Annie gave a frustrated sigh. "Great, we're trapped in the forest of minor inconveniences... can we just go back to the circle now?"

"Minor inconvenience?" Chris balked. "Don't you give a single shit about the fact that your friend is fucking missing? Weird shit has been happening and you wanna go back to the circle?" Chris shook his head. "No way. Fuck you and fuck this fucked up forest! Dean, let's go. We're leaving.

"...Chris," Dean said, his voice uncharacteristically thin.

"Just saying, finding the cars clearly isn't working so maybe we need to think of a different plan?"

But Chris wasn't hearing it. He was already walking. "Done. I'm done. That's it. These crazy bitches can do whatever the hell they want. We're finding Arlo. And we're finding our rental and we're finding a way out of here."

"Chris," Dean hissed, stepping out in front of him and grabbing his arm; forcing him to peel his eyes from the trail and look up at Dean. The cameraman's face was completely drained of color—the fear in his eyes was so genuine that Chris's throat immediately went dry just as a low wooden groan echoed through the trees from behind him. He'd never heard anything like it in his life.

Slowly, Chris turned around, and for a second, he just saw the same seemingly endless backdrop of trees that they'd been looking at all day. Dean's grip tightened and he leaned in over Chris's shoulder and pointed—his arm arrow straight.

Chris followed it, squinting until he found exactly what Dean must have seen. It was tall. Impossibly tall, with limbs that appeared stretched to awkward, unnatural proportions. It was such a light color that it could easily have been mistaken for the space between the grey-ish espresso of the tree trunks—except for its face...

That part of it looked almost like some sort of horrific mockery of an owl's likeness until it came to the mouth—split open in a bizarre shape that reminded Chris of how hilariously demonic his English Bulldog looked at a full sprint—mouth stretched wide open, tongue flopping.

But this wasn't hilarious. He was sure that that giant, gaping mouth—lined with rows of pointed teeth, was going to make his heart explode out of his chest. ...Could someone legit die from fright?

Dean jerked him into motion the moment the thing started to move—no, glide, towards them. A blood-curdling scream echoed out through the forest as they bolted in the opposite direction, and it took Chris hearing a few of his and Dean's own screams to realize the first wail hadn't come from either of them.

Sara and Arlo had been walking for a while. It felt like hours, and the setting sun and Arlo's phone seemed to confirm that, but they were both starting to question if they could rely on the device or even each other for that matter. Arlo hadn't spoken much since they'd been chased by that... thing, whatever it was.

"I'm just saying I don't remember laughing..." Sara insisted, but not with much conviction. This had to all be brought on by stress, and she didn't blame either of them.

"Sure," Arlo muttered. He didn't know what to think. The girl seemed to swing back and forth between explaining, theorizing, and making excuses for how everything they were experiencing could just be symptoms of some sort of psychotic break, and actually acting fucking psychotic... Like, demonically possessed, out of her mind, crazy. At this point, Arlo didn't feel like he could trust her any farther than he could throw her, and his skinny arms were for nothing but show.

"So, how long do we keep looking for the parking lot? You know if we are lost, then the further we walk, the less likely it will be that anyone will find..." she didn't finish. 'Our bodies' sounded too negative. Like she'd already resigned herself to the fact that they weren't ever getting out of this forest alive.

"I'm not just going to sit here and rot," Arlo snapped. Sniffling as he swiped his sleeve across his face. He was sweating, but he hadn't stopped to take off his hoodie. He hadn't stopped walking since realizing that he wasn't going to get another text from Chris when they didn't find each other at the bridge. They'd waited for over half an hour before leaving. Arlo hadn't wanted to, but staring at Dean's burn mark, hard enough to probably light the blackened spot of wood again, wasn't making Chris or Dean appear, as much as he wanted it to. He had to keep moving. He had to find them.

Sara suddenly stopped and looked back at Arlo. "Did you hear that?"

At first, Arlo kept walking. "Hear what?"

But Sara didn't answer him right away, as her gaze lifted to the treetops and she held her breath listening for it again. Then, faintly, in the distance, she heard it; screaming.

She and Arlo exchanged looks before both of them raced in the direction of the screams. She knew Annie's voice. That had to be them.

"Chris!?" Arlo yelled, stopping briefly to listen. Within the same breath, they heard another scream, and once again both he and Sara were at a full sprint, minding the terrain as well as they could at such a pace. Going off the sounds, they were getting closer.

A particularly bright ray of light caught Arlo's attention as they passed a thicker cluster of trees, and he briefly turned his head to look. It was sunlight. Sunlight was the shade of a ripe orange, glaring off of the hood of their rental as it sank lower in the sky. Arlo nearly whimpered at the brief glimpse of that and the parking lot in the distance to their left. He couldn't go to it. The others were in trouble. He had to get to Chris and Dean.

"Guys!?" Arlo yelled again, his voice hoarse and cracking. "Please," he panted to himself, praying that this time he and Sara were close enough for the others to hear them as Sara tried too. "Please, please!"

Then, just as quickly as the parking lot had come into view for that one brief moment, Arlo saw them, all three of them, a few yards ahead. Chris must have spotted them at the exact same moment because he jerked to a stop and then broke away from the other two in their direction.

"Ar!?"

"Chris!"

Within moments they collided with each other, Chris hoisting Arlo nearly off his feet in a tight hug. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to lose you," Chris croaked against Arlo's neck, while tears flooded his vision. Arlo didn't force himself to pull away from the blond until Dean and Annie had caught up.

"We gotta move!" Dean said, not even slowing down as he barreled past them.

"Guys! I saw the parking lot!" Arlo said as he and Chris followed Dean, hands clasped together like a vice despite it making it more awkward for them to run. "It's that way!"

"Which way?" Dean asked, pausing for a split second to look over his shoulder. At them.

But the moment Arlo pointed, his hand recoiled just as quickly. "W-What the fuck...?" he whispered, his voice trembling, brain shutting down at the sight of the creature smiling-open mouthed at them, only a yard or so away.

It rocketed towards them, leaves parting from the ground in its wake. The five of them ran. They ran past the point of sharp, shooting cramps and numb faces. They ran without any sense of where they were going, or where they were, but every time one of them looked back, it only spurred on the rest with a renewed alarm, as the creature closed in.

Arlo's heart hammered behind his ribs as an overwhelming sensation, like far too much static electricity, enveloped him, like whatever was chasing them was right on his heels. He didn't dare look back but caught Sara risk a glance in his peripherals. Then, without any means that he could visibly see, Sara was yanked backward and completely off the ground, into the air, releasing the most chilling scream Arlo had ever heard.

The shock hadn't even settled in before the trees fell away, and Dean and Annie slowed, causing him and Chris to stumble into them. Chris whipped around to see the creature pursuing them had suddenly stopped. There was no sign of Sara. Not even a trace. Only the creature—hovering, smiling, teeth glinting in the rapidly fading light, just outside of what they now realized was the dead circle...

They were back in it. Again.

There was a flash, like a strike of lightning, before the ground gave way beneath them. There was no rumble that preceded the collapse and no dirt raining down around them. But they did feel like they were falling.

The sound and sensation of air rushing past their ears, along with the sudden blur of dark images, and the way their guts felt like they were in their throats, all made them certain that they had been swallowed by some giant chasm in the earth, and each of them instinctively braced for an impact that, somehow, never came.

No, instead they found themselves still standing, though they were clearly no longer in the open space between trees. The scene around them now was a massive, dark cavern that stretched so far out around them that the shadows consumed it before they could make out the ends of it.

What they could discern in the dim light were structures; pillars and arches, carved in ancient designs and weathered by eons, tangled in roots and cracked by time. It appeared as if someone had taken some kind of castle and buried it deep down into the earth, and they were standing in its courtyard.