The ice in Zeke's hand melted completely before Atem stirred. Zeke's eyes widened as mine did. I could see the whites of his eyes in the moonlight.

Atem awoke with a start. "Who's there?"

"It's us," I said, reassuringly. "I found Zeke. I'm still looking for Felicity, but how do you feel?"

Even though the utter darkness made everything confusing, he took a deep breath and answered calmly. "I'm ready for this to be over. I feel like shit."

"We just have to find Felicity and we're out of here." I nodded, not sure if that was a possibility, but banking on it.

Atem chuckled. "So glad you're okay, Zeke. I wouldn't know what to do if I couldn't listen to new music from The Garbles."

Zeke snorted. I could imagine the bashful grin on his face.

"Maybe we could try to find the keys for the other car and drive until we find a clue to where Felicity could be?" I suggested. "It's better than staying in one place being bait for whatever wants a bite."

Zeke agreed with a nod.

Atem gripped the steering wheel to adjust his position. "Anything is better than sitting here by myself."

I went around the car to help Zeke as he pulled Atem to stand. It was too dark to see much, so I grabbed the camera to use it to see our surroundings since it recorded well in the low light. And while Atem grunted in pain as he tried to maintain his balance on one leg, I retrieved the notebook from the glove box.

I couldn't leave it there. My life, sanity, and well-being depended on it. Safely tucking the book in my waistband, I placed my arm around Atem, and Zeke did the same on the other side. We sandwiched Atem between us and acted as his legs while we headed toward the second campsite.

I lifted the camera, zooming in on our path ahead through the heavy fog and ignoring the dancing trees. The occasional snap of twigs, creaks of swaying branches, or rustling of leaves kept me on edge. But it was the sound of unrhythmic thumping that frightened me most.

"What's that noise?" I asked the others. "It's coming from where we're going." I pointed ahead with the camera, even though they probably couldn't make out my gesture.

"Stay alert," Atem warned. "If I were writing this story, this would be the part I would throw a curveball. Something unexpected to mess with and surprise the characters."

With that warning, I gripped Atem tighter. He hobbled along, trying his best to stifle his grunts and groans of pain and discomfort. He wanted to pause and rest several times, but we encouraged him to keep moving by acting as his crutch and anchor.

Finally, the car appeared in camera view. "We're almost there," I said, and we picked up speed.

I zoomed in on the car parked on the other side of the cold and unused fire pit. I made out the driver's side easily as the front of the car faced the dirt road we used as guidance. The car rocked suspiciously, and I scanned the scene to grasp what caused the swaying.

The last time me and Zeke were here, the doors were locked and there had been no other way to get inside. But as we moved closer, I could make out the shape of a person sitting in the car. The car rocked, matching the thumps that were heard.

Zeke pointed ahead and Atem asked, "Is that a person?"

We paused a few feet from the vehicle, hesitating, watching the weird behavior of the inhabitant. It wasn't until the whimpering grew louder that I recognized Felicity's voice.

"Oh, my god," I gasped. "It's Felicity." I left Zeke holding Atem to hurry to her side. "Felicity?" I called, excited to see her alive. However, she didn't answer or acknowledge me. "Felicity, are you okay?"

Only through the camera could I make out the dried blood on her face and neck. She hit the steering wheel with her palms. "Why won't you start?" she cried, pulling the wheel in a fit to rip it from the dashboard.

Although the keys dangled from the ignition, her eyes focused on what stood outside in front of the vehicle.

Her sobs were indistinguishable beyond some words. "Why were you there? Why in the road? I shouldn't have been there. Oh, my god! What the fuck? You walked right in front of the car. Oh, no. Fuck!"

Finally, Zeke and Atem were at my back, staring at the sight before us. A hot stream of tears ran down my face, but I was just as powerless as Felicity. "Hey, Felicity?" I called, but still no acknowledgement.

Finally, Zeke opened the car door and kneeled to get face level. He touched her shoulder, and she turned to look at him and buried her face in his chest to cry when she recognized his caress. Zeke looked at me through the lens as if pleading for what to do next.

The wound on her head had thankfully stopped bleeding, but she too looked like she had been through hell as dirt, pine needles, scrapes and blood covered her body. Her always attractive hair looked like a bird's nest, with a visible chunk missing around the wounded area.

I helped Atem into the backseat to get off his leg while Zeke escorted Felicity in the back beside Atem. When Zeke sat in the driver's seat, I took the front passenger seat and relaxed in the car's safety. Although I wasn't foolish enough to believe that were completely out of danger, the intact windows and good condition of the car gave me the sense of security I craved.

Then Zeke turned the key in the ignition, and the engine turned over on the first try. He turned to me wide-eyed, and I did the same, looking at him, the ignition, and the others with as much surprise.

Did Felicity never try the ignition out of confusion or lack of strength? Or did the story require Zeke to be in the driver's seat to progress?

Atem gasped. "That was easy." He leaned forward with a grunt. "A little too easy." He turned to Felicity. "Did you have the keys on you the whole time?"

"Are we going home?" she answered.

Atem nodded, squeezing her forearm. "Yeah, we're going home."

When the headlights came on, it illuminated several hanging bodies on the trees across the road from us. Dozens and dozens of bodies swung from the branches by ropes, much like the bounded man, but these bodies hung by ropes attached to a specific part of their body.

"Go," I cried. "Now!"

Zeke didn't hesitate. He pulled out onto the dirt road and sped off toward the blazing ranger station.

The thick fog remained, but the orange flames glowed brightly through it. The fire made the perfect landmark and helped us position ourselves in the rest of the forest. And just like the fire in the firepit, the blaze looked like it had no plans to stop.

However, once passed the burning ranger station, the murkiness only allowed us to see a few feet ahead. In my periphery were the hanging bodies in the trees, but my focus settled on the fog ahead and the anticipation of what was to happen next.

As predicted, we circled back around past the destroyed car and the roaring fire again. Not getting anywhere, back at square one, as we were before.

Tempted to look inside the notebook, I lifted the camera instead, afraid of the implications of trying to thumb through the pages again.

I hoped the camera would allow me to see further past the fog, but this time when I looked at the screen, something else appeared other than the road ahead. What looked like a recording of us replayed the moment where we first encountered the truck and its high beams in the other car.

The recording only showed me and Zeke's legs and the floor of the backseat. Felicity's voice was the only thing audible as she recounted what had happened during her accident. The half-filled bottles of urine rolled around the crumb covered floor of the backseat as Atem manned the vehicle.

An out-of-place bottle with a missing cap slid across the floor on the screen. With a quick glance, it resembled an empty bottle of my spiritual brew. Then the images distorted, and we heard only the sounds of Felicity sobbing and our screams.

Then static.

"What was that?" Atem's voice came out tired and weary.

Zeke even glanced at the camera in curiosity.

"It was a recording of earlier," I said, confused by what I saw and want it meant. But before I could think about it, multiple ropes shot out in front of us, spreading tight across the road like an impenetrable web. Zeke hit the brakes, but the car skidded from lack of traction on the dirt. It only came to a stop as it met the ropes. There wasn't enough momentum or weight to burst through the weblike cord like I had hoped.

My chest rose and fell rapidly as more rope overtook the car, the ends slithering over the hood and roof.

"What do we do?" Atem's eyes were wide and alert.

The sound of dozens of ropes banging the metal of the roof, sides, and hood of the car was enough to drive us insane. Felicity covered her ears with her palms and let her deafening cries drown out the noise.

I didn't know what to do, so I panicked and screamed along with Atem and Felicity every time a rope hit my window. I'm sure if Zeke could, he'd scream, too.

Atem leaned forward and pointed to the notebook. "Do something, Ima!"

"What am I supposed to do?" My throat ached from shouting.

The car rocked violently, bouncing back and forth on the tires as if the hanging bodies were attempting to pull the doors off the hinges.

"It started with that notebook!" Atem pointed out. "I'm pretty sure it ends there."

"The letters?" I opened the notebook on my lap, flipping through the pages to find a loose piece. My heart sank when I realized. "You tore all the letters."

I knocked the book to the ground in frustration and as it made impact with the floor, my gut twisted, and I cried out in pain. But the ropes surrounding the car suddenly fell limp, only to gain a renewed energy and rise again. Me and Atem looked at each other with the realization.

I grabbed my stomach to ease the scorching pain inside and bent to get the notebook from near my feet. But as my fingers grazed the cover, a rope burst through the window and coiled around my neck. Zeke and Atem grabbed the rope to remove it, but one after the other, their windows exploded, blasting pieces of glass all over us.

The ropes made their way inside the car, grabbing each of us around our limbs and necks. I couldn't hear Felicity's sobs anymore and I knew if I didn't do something, we wouldn't ever have that opportunity.

The fibrous cords slithered under my arms and around my neck. I gasped for air as they tightened. The threads scratched my skin as they slid along it. Suddenly weightless, the ropes lifted me from the seat to pull me through the window.

In a panic, I stomped the notebook at my feet, kicking and attempting to tear the pages with my shoes. An agonizing sensation went through me. The feeling of being torn piece by piece and my heart slowly being unraveled by its strings radiated in my chest. The torture escaped me through my scream until the ropes uncoiled and went limp.

I heard a collective sigh throughout the car as everyone took a breath. Moving quickly, I unraveled the loose ropes from my torso and ducked to get the damaged notebook in hand. As I picked up the book, my eyes fixed on the sight beyond the windshield. Standing in the headlights was the hanged man from the cabin. Familiar, swinging ominously, hanging from a suspended rope that extended straight up into the darkness.

Its head hung to the side, and I focused solely on its wide, unblinking eyes. I couldn't tear my gaze away to check on the rest of the crew, even if I wanted to. I locked my eyes to the oddly dangling body before me.

Its mouth opened. "Ima... Jean... Paige..." it called, the sound ricocheting from every solid object around the forest.

I didn't want to know what else would come from its mouth. "You're not my brother!" I screamed at the figure before me. "You're nothing. You're nobody."

The ropes came alive again, grabbing Zeke by the neck and violently pulling him from the car. The car rocked as Atem screamed in utter agony, a rope tight around his shattered leg. Felicity couldn't scream as another rope wrapped around her entire head and face. The only thing that made it through the gaps in the fibers was her whimpering as she fought to breathe.

"Stop it!" I screamed, fearing their demise. "I need them."

I pushed to open my door and when it finally did, I nearly fell out on top of more twisted rope that stretched from dozens of hanging bodies throughout the forest. A series of ropes quickly tangled around my torso, squeezing and crushing as they lifted me from the ground. I gripped the notebook tight, my fingers grew numb as I struggled to hold on to it.

The scene of writhing ropes and my friends fighting for their lives amongst them terrified me.

My sights landed on the hanged man in the center of the headlights, hovering above the ground by ten feet. Its head crooked on his shoulder, eyes wide and bloodshot, its chewed and bloodied tongue dangled out the side of its thick lips. Its usual dark brown skin was now ashen and bruised in some places.

I recognized the dark faded blue jeans Clay loved to wear with his long-sleeved button-down gray shirt. His short, buzz cut hair looked unblemished, and the shoes on his feet were the ones he spent his savings on for when he entered college.

The man before me was no longer a creature of the forest but looked exactly like Clay had looked when I found him lifelessly hanging from the center ceiling beam of his room.

My throat seized and tears blurred my vision, but after looking around at the chaotic scene, I knew what I had to do.

It was now or never.

As the abrasive fibers of the ropes scratched my skin, slithering and tightening around my limbs, I fought against them and the pain until the notebook was in both hands.

"No more!" I shrieked at the figure before ripping the notebook in half near the spine. The forest seemed to pulse with an unnerving thump that wasn't only heard but felt, rumbling even the trees in the vicinity. I screamed out in pain, feeling as if I had ripped my heart in two.

The pain was unbearable, but the cords loosened and fell to the ground, dropping me on a coiled pile of ropes. Felicity gasped for air as she pulled the limp rope from her head. Atem too, stopped screaming from pain as the ropes freed his leg.

Nearly paralyzed from pain, I brought my hand to my chest and allowed the tears to pour from my eyes. I sobbed, crying harder than I had at the funeral.

The hanged man's eyes closed as it swayed with the force of the mysterious rumble, looking unstable as the rope that secured it frayed.

But our rest was brief as the ropes regained life. Even the frayed parts of the hanged man's rope repaired itself, getting stronger as the seconds went by.

"You don't want to be the final girl of this story, do you?" Atem was sitting in the car, yelling out of the broken window. "This is your chance, Ima. You know what to do!"

I nodded. I knew what to do indeed, and no matter how hard it was, there was no other option. It had to be done.

I ignored the pain in my chest and stood with both halves of the notebook in my hand. I stared up at the figure, its bloodshot eyes opened to land on me. It gurgled, white foam oozing from its mouth as if it were trying to communicate or breathe. "Stay..." Clay's voice echoed throughout the forest, coming from every direction at once.

I growled, sneering. "I don't belong here." With little thought, I ripped page after page from the notebook. Not stopping even as the surrounding air pulsated and rumbled the forests. Screams filled the air, mostly my own as the pain became unbearable, but I couldn't rest. I needed to rip, tear, and destroy every page of the notebook.

My body convulsed as I cried, thinking of all the happy memories, the good times, and the bad Clay helped me survive. As I mourned the past I could never return to, my cries released those recollections, putting them to rest where they needed to be.

When the notebook became nothing but a shell, and the pages littered the surrounding ground, I tore those sheets into smaller bits. My fingers scraped the ground several times as I aimed for every paper, not leaving one intact.

It wasn't until a gentle palm caressed my back that I allowed my exhaustion to take over. I looked up to see Zeke. He extended his hand, and I took it to get to my feet.

The hanged man and the ropes were gone. I glanced around the forest, realizing the dozens of hanging figures were no longer in the trees. My eyes went down to the pile of torn and tattered pieces of paper at my feet as a gentle breeze blew the pieces and scattered most of them along the dirt road and beyond.

Zeke's gentle palm on my lower back led me toward the car. The side-view mirror dangled from a wire and each window lay in pieces as the glass littered the seats and floor of the car.

When I entered the front passenger side, physical pain paralyzed me, but the internal agony that had used to debilitate me became more bearable.

A pained chuckle came from Atem. "You did it, Ima Jean. You fucking did it."

"It's not over," Felicity mumbled. I turned to see fear and sadness in her eyes. "I never should have come."

"Everything happened the way it needed to," I said, struggling through my pain to look at them. "We all needed to be here, we all needed this experience, and we all needed to survive it. Like Atem said, we did it."

Atem nodded. "You and I are more alike than we know, Ima. Don't you all see how much we need each other? Even you, Felicity."

Felicity looked at me. "I never had the guts to talk to you, hiding behind my guilt and trying to forget my pain. I shouldn't have gone after Zeke, and Zeke should have had the balls to tell you the truth. It sucks. We all claim to be each other's friends, but weren't there for each other when we needed it." She sighed. "It feels like a punishment."

"Or a lesson," I suggested. "Maybe a lesson we needed to learn."

Atem cleared his throat, chiming in, "Maybe it's whatever you believe it to be."

"Look." Zeke's eyes widened as he pointed toward the forest. We turned to see the sky getting lighter toward the horizon.

Atem ducked his head to get a better look. "The fog's clearing."

He was right. The fog was no longer as thick as it had been. I stared down the road ahead. "You think it will let us go now?"

Felicity fastened her seatbelt. "There's only one way to find out."

Zeke took his cue and placed the car in drive. Slowly and carefully, we drove down the lonely dirt road. 

Only 1 more chapter and an epilogue left!