The dense fog was all we could see when looking out of the cracked and splintered car windows. And no matter how much Atem insisted we read more of the text in the notebook, I refused.

"Look at me." I gestured to my nose and my blood-soaked shirt, remembering the massive headache I endured while reading. "Opening that notebook will only open the floodgates again."

"Then let me read it." Atem extended his hand. "I can skim it pretty fast."

I shook my head. "When you read it a while ago, there was a pressure in my temple. I don't know what that means, and I don't want to risk it."

The cloth Felicity held against the gash on her head sopped with blood, so much so it seeped through the fabric to stain her hand. Her quietness in the last thirty minutes concerned me.

Zeke fixed his wide, round eyes on each of us. "We have to do something. Felicity is bleeding pretty bad, and we can't just sit around and wait for her to bleed out."

"I got it!" Atem reached inside of the dashboard's glove box and pulled out a sharpened pencil. "We never tried writing our own ending." His eyes were wide, and the corners of his mouth curved with the possibilities.

"You know," I slowly nodded, reaching for the pencil. "That's not a bad idea."

He mimicked my nod and tapped his temple. "Told ya. Brains."

I rolled my eyes and opened the notebook to a blank page toward the end of the outline, being careful not to read any of the written words. I thought about what to write, and Atem must've understood why I hesitated. "Uh."

"Write that the group walked down the road to see the highway, which allowed them to return home," he suggested.

"How do we return home, magic?" I scoffed. "It needs to make sense."

Zeke crossed his arms over his shoulder. "Felicity needs help now, you guys. We don't have time for this."

Atem raised a finger with another eureka moment. "Write that we find the highway pretty quickly and just as we step foot onto the asphalt, an ambulance shows up to help."

"Too convenient," I shook my head, doubting it would be satisfying enough.

"If that's how you write, no wonder your films suck," Felicity managed.

He huffed, ignoring our criticism. "Just try it. Go on. It might work."

I pressed the pencil to the paper to write the first word, and the pencil snapped in two. "What?!" I cried out in disbelief. "I didn't even press it that hard."

Atem immediately dug around inside the glove department again, looking for another writing tool. "Here. A pen. Use this."

I took the pen and ran it across the page. No ink came out. "It's dry. It's not gonna work."

"That's it. I'm leaving." Zeke tried to open the door, but it wouldn't budge.

"You can't leave. It's dangerous out there," I said, grabbing his forearm to urge him to stop and rethink his plan.

"Look at Felicity. You think staying here is any less dangerous?" He nodded towards her. Her complexion drained of color even in the dim light of the moon.

"Where are you gonna go?" I turned to him.

"I'm gonna find that ranger station." He threw his thumb back behind him in the building's direction. "Break in if I have to and find a way out of here. Like you said earlier, maybe they have a satellite phone or a way to get some help here."

"I guess it's worth a try." I nodded.

"Just don't say 'I'll be back,'" Atem added.

"Not going," Felicity was adamant. "I'm sitting here until help shows up, or the sun rises, whichever comes first. I'm not getting out of this car."

"Atem?" I looked at him, wondering where his thoughts were.

"Sitting here isn't any different from waiting for that truck to come back." He looked at Felicity. "Maybe you should come with us. You know what they say about splitting up in horror?"

"That we shouldn't do it," I confirmed. "Come on, Felicity. We'll can go to the ranger station together. I'm sure they have a first aid kit, right? We can properly take care of that ugly wound."

"I'm not going!" Felicity's tone reached levels I never knew were possible. "The only way I'm getting out of this car is if you drag me out. Just like the outline said, getting out of this car is death. And I know I'm the first to go. I can feel it. Whatever is out there, it's after me."

I sighed, sad that she believed that. Even though I wasn't sure what to think, I knew we had to expect anything at any moment.

"I'll stay with her," Atem offered. "We'll stay here and wait for you guys to return. But no matter what you find, you gotta come back or give us some kind of signal that you're okay."

"Signal?" I shrugged. "What sort of signal are we supposed to use?"

Atem handed me my phone. "Just wave your phone with the flashlight on."

"I'll try." I knew that wouldn't work as well as he believed it would, especially in the fog, but I nodded anyway. At least he came up with an idea, unlike me. "We will get help and a medical kit back to Felicity as soon as possible."

"And search for a fresh pair of pants for Atem too," Felicity added while staring at the fog outside the window.

Instead of a snarky comment, Atem bowed his head in embarrassment. "Thanks, Felicity."

Zeke butted the door with his shoulder, forcing it open with the third slam. Metal bent, screeched, and popped as the door came ajar. The impact caused the glass in the window to shatter into small pellets on the road.

Immediately, the fog poured into the backseat like smoke, and a sense of unease crept through me almost instantly. Something about the fog and the way it swirled like a living entity disturbed me. And whatever lay beyond the fog scared me even more.

I followed Zeke's lead and turned on my phone's flashlight, sliding out through the smashed door after him. When he closed it, the loose pieces of glass rattled around in the center.

"Make it quick, guys," Atem ordered.

The large pine trees within ten feet were visible. Their abundant spruce and bristlecone branches reached far and wide to tangle with the other trees in the vicinity. We allowed the headlights of the car to guide our way as we headed off in that direction, keeping the line of trees to our right. Our shoulders grazed one another's as we walked, afraid of separating even a few inches and getting lost in the fog.

"What do you think is really going on?" Zeke whispered, pointing the light toward the fog to see through it. "This is too strange. I mean all of it, right? You think it has something to do with the forest? That whole ayahuasca thing?"

He didn't seem convinced of me and Atem's theory of being characters in a novel, however, even he couldn't deny the strangeness surrounding us.

"I don't know." My voice was low as to hear any unwanted sounds within the mist. "They call this place a sacred site, but I think there's more to it than the problematic ancient Indian burial ground cliché. We shouldn't ignore the notebook."

"I never said that."

"You're implying it," I corrected. "Ayahuasca is all about an individual's journey with spirituality. It has nothing to do with a particular religion or holy sites. Sacred can mean something spiritually alive, culturally important, or just deserving of respect."

"Fair enough, but what's happening can't be all about your notebook, though." He shook his head, not buying it. "How do you explain Felicity and the whole truck thing?"

"I don't know." I shrugged, looking off at the towering trees and the eerie shapes they produced. "If I think like a writer, my best bet is those things have something to do with us personally. Maybe things we fear."

"Like Stephen King's IT?" He cocked an unconvinced eye at me. "Like that damn creepy clown?"

"Maybe." I cut my eye to the looming trees and their dark silhouettes in anticipation of an evil clown appearing from the shadows. I took a soothing inhale when none came.

"What if the fog, the truck, and even the weirdness from the notebook are all happening because of our thoughts?" He lifted an eyebrow at his explanation. "What we think about we bring about?"

"Or maybe our guilty conscious?" My heart sank at the thought of me not being enough for Clay to want to stick around. I thought if he endured any hell, he'd do it for me. Maybe being his little sister wasn't enough. Maybe I should've tried harder.

"Oh, guilty conscious?" Zeke's pace slowed. "Like things we did to others that we feel guilty about? That's a brilliant theory. Hmm. What's yours?"

"I—I don't know," I hesitated, surprised that he would approach it so casually. But if our lives were on the line, holding back made little sense. "I guess I could've been a better sister for Clay. Been a better listener, saw the signs sooner, or something. I wish we would have gotten far away from Mom and Dad when we had the chance. We should have spoken up sooner. Maybe he wouldn't have had the added pressure of raising me at a young age when our parents were too busy hitting the streets."

"I'm sorry, babe." There went the paw on my upper back again. "I wish I would've known all the shit they put you through."

"It started a long time ago." I shrugged, trying to dismiss the bubbling emotions. "There was nothing you could've done. There's nothing you could do now. The best thing for me to do is keep my distance from it and forget it."

His palm moved in a small circle on my lower back. "Do you think that's working?"

I stepped aside to put a bit of space between us, determined to keep those thoughts in the past and focus on our current situation. "What about you? What do you feel guilty about?"

"Uh." He swiped his hand through his hair, avoiding eye contact, stalling. "I don't think I have anything to be guilty about."

"Well, if you're not guilty of anything, then our theory is wrong." I knew something was lingering on the tip of his tongue. Something he didn't have the courage to say.

"What do you think Atem's guilt is?" He changed the subject.

I sneered in the darkness until the tree ahead grabbed my attention. The tall, dark branches and the thick bushy patches of pine needles on each twig swayed gently in the breeze. Near eye level on a tree trunk, a white sheet of paper beckoned me. "Look!" I rushed forward to see the torn page pinned to the tree. Clay's handwriting was visible in the flashlight beam.

I looked back to gauge our location on the road. The car and its headlights weren't there, but the need to collect that sheet of paper drew me in and overpowered me. I extended my arm, caressing the sheet briefly before snatching it from the bark of the tree. As soon as I ripped it down to get a better look at it, Clay's handwriting was no longer visible and only a blank white sheet stared back. Not even the lines on the page were there.

"There's another one." Zeke pointed to the tree ahead, where an extra sheet stuck to the trunk. However, this tree grew far from the road and deeper into the crowded forest.

I didn't care.

"I need that page." I grabbed Zeke's hand and pulled him to the tree, grabbing the paper just as I did the prior one. And again, after examining it, only a blank sheet remained.

Yet far ahead was another sheet on another tree, this time even deeper into the forest.

"Maybe we should stay close to the road," Zeke suggested, but I ignored him and went for it, snatching the sheet from the tree. This time, as it ripped from the nail that secured it, sticky liquid spurted from the peeling bark. Spatters that resembled blood stained the paper. "Is that what I think it is?"

"It's sap." I smeared the tacky droplets on my fingers, and it coated it like the blood that had trickled from my nose. "Ain't it?"

"I never heard of a pine tree with red sap." Zeke aimed his flashlight at the red drops.

I grimaced and wiped my hand on my pant leg. Suddenly, the eerie sound of silence grew loud, stilling the atmosphere. I looked at Zeke, who had noticed the disturbing calm. No longer did the trees sway or the winds whip. The spruce branches went still as a picture instead of rustling in the distance.

"What's happening?" The flashlight lit the surrounding space. I scanned the vicinity, only seeing fog and the taunting of the nearby trees.

The creaking sound of a lone branch bending and readying to snap sounded from the sap-bled tree. A thick rope connected to the creaking branch dropped from above before us. The noose swung back and forth from the momentum, as if attempting to hypnotize us with its sway.

A scream screeched from my lungs, and I turned to run back in the direction we came, but another noose dropped from a tree branch in front of me, and then another. The whipping of lassos and cracking of branches replaced the surrounding silence.

Zeke tugged my arm, pulling me further into the forest to escape the swinging ropes. They continued to drop from branches like low hanging fruit, while some ropes stretched and swung as if to tether us by our necks.

We ran in no particular direction until a faint yellow light flickered ahead as if guiding our way.

"Follow that light," Zeke instructed through heavy breaths. "Keep moving."

My breath became shallow from my screams as nooses continued to fall, crack, whip, and search for victims. We were close to the edge of the forest and what looked like the ongoing fire that burned at the campsite. We continued toward the light, close to stepping onto the road, when a black body bag dropped from a tree with a noose wrapped around the feet.

It fell with such heft, the branch it hung from cracked.

My scream tore through the forests, echoing off the surrounding trees.

The body swung back and forth, twisting in midair with help from gravity and momentum. As I pushed past the heavy bag, the body within squirmed and its muffled cries emitted through the material.

When making it across the road and toward the familiar fire, my breaths came out as sobs. Finally, near the safety of light and welcoming warmth of the fire, I turned to the body, but it was no longer there. Only the full branches of spruce pine swayed gently in the breeze amongst the foggy scenery.

"What the fuck?" Zeke said, struggling to catch his breath. "You saw that too, right?"

"I saw it." I dropped to my knees. Exhaustion finally hitting me, probably because of the surge of adrenaline that had fueled me. "It wasn't your imagination. That was real."

"Well, what do we do now?" I had never seen Zeke as frazzled, scared, and pacing by the fire pit as he was now. "I don't want to go through that again. Ever."

"Me neither." I focused on the camera, still on the tripod, still recording. I glanced across the road to where the camera was pointing, seeing the trees sway in the mist. But curiosity got the best of me when I fixated on the display on the side of the camera. "Look." I pointed.

Zeke moved closer to get a better look. On the small display screen, human shaped bodies of various sizes swayed like fruit from the trees in the breeze. The bodies were cloaked in a taut black bag that enhanced the outline of the forms against the light of the moon. The nooses on the bodies were tied around different body parts, but mostly the feet and necks.

"What is this?" Zeke's eyes were wide as the full moon as he stared unblinking. "I don't understand."

I watched, hypnotized by the beautiful yet haunting branches as they bent and danced in the wind. "Me neither."

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