“Look…” Ami whispered shakily.

The light is faint, flickering.

The woods are achingly still, as if the insects that were crooning their alarm to us before were silenced by the vengeful gods that led us here, a fate that even a crow couldn’t prepare us for. There were no calls or coos, no snapping of twigs, no stirring of vegetation. Just pure silence.

I moved my eyes to Ami’s. Her glazed stare was still fixated on it, the fleck of that dull crimson piercing the whites of her eyes.

“Do we go?” I whispered back.

“I…” she exhales shakily. “Should we?”

“I don’t think we have an option.”

We really didn’t. We stumbled our way onto this trail through dumb luck after two hours of battling our way through the dense thicket, Ami somehow ahead of me as she limps through.

We’ve been on this trail for the last hour with only a smudge of moonlight hanging over us. It’s almost as if it’s giving us the last waning sliver out of pity, hoping that our eyes can adjust to its fragmented light barely breaking through the canopy. We’ve mostly been staying on path by the feeling of fine earth under the soles of our boots.

And what’s strange is- the same earth we’ve been feeling for an hour hasn’t felt like the same earth we started this trek on. Nor does the scent. The resinous odor of pine needles has dissipated hours ago. Neither of us have mentioned it- losing all senses of the seven mile loop we’ve traversed twice before, tucked into the middle of fourteen-hundred square miles of conifer and evergreen. Now that I mention it… there seems to be no smell at all. A stark contrast between the path we wanted to be on and the path we ended up on after her slip.

I close my eyes and take a long, deep inhale.

Nothing.

I make another attempt, concentrating hard on my sense of smell.

Still nothing.

I open my eyes through a furled brow to see Ami furling her brow at me.

“What?” she questions.

“Do you…” I sniff again. “Can you smell anything?”

Amy closes her eyes and inhales. “No,” she whispers.

“Like at all?”

She gives a quick, panicked inhale. “No.”

I combed my hands through my hair and held the back of my head. Ami startles at the sound of my windbreaker sleeves swishing together, the only sound we’ve heard since we froze at the sight of the light. The light that either welcomes or mocks us, a secret left veiled until we move in the only direction we can.

“Ok,” I drop my arms.

“Liz!” she yells through her teeth.

“What, is the light gonna hear us all the way out here?”

Ami rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “Let’s go.”

Ami still limps ahead of me. I don’t mind trailing behind her. I always do. For the seven years that I’ve known her, she’s always been the leader, a natural pacemaker, a descendant of commanders and dominators. Or just plain stubborn.

But that’s how our dynamic works so well. I’m the eyes on the back of her head, protecting our flank as we cross creek beds and duck through branches.

Though right now, my role is moot. The darkness catches up behind us so quickly, it’s almost as if we’re drawing a curtain over an infinite cable we’re only two steps ahead of. The only way either of us can look is at that light.

It’s been about forty five minutes of synchronized crunching under our feet. I’ve subconsciously matched her now subtle limp that she keeps trying to mask with each stride.

We stop simultaneously.

“Has that light gotten any bigger?” She asks, no longer whispering.

“I can’t tell.” I study the light over her shoulder.

It hasn’t moved.

I bend down to feel for a pebble the size of the light and gently pinch it between my fingers.

“If it doesn’t get bigger than this pebble in the next 20 minutes,” I trail off, not wanting to manifest imminent doom.

We keep walking as I roll the pebble between my finger and thumb. Waves of panic are starting to wash over me, my body flushing at each crest.

I knew there was something wrong.

But this is really wrong.

Ami stops and I bump into the back of her good foot.

“Can you check it real quick?”

I hold the pebble up in front of us as we close our left eyes and align it. It still covers the light.

Ami slowly sinks down onto the path, hands over her face.

“What the fuck is going on?”

I keep holding the pebble back to the light, hoping to see even an iota of glow around the edges, slowly distorting as my eyes wet with tears. Ami is gently rocking back and forth at my feet as I watch the clouds of my breath hover over her, just a dull luminescence through the shadows of the forest that breaths it in and tastes the terror in every exhale.

She jumps up.

“We have to run.”

“What about your ankle?” I ask, knowing it won’t change her mind anyway.

“Are you ready?”

I toss the pebble back into the void.

“Okay.”

We book it, heels flicking the erosion behind us, feeling her disrupted earth against my shins. We’re running to a point of panting, evolving into a point of grunting. We don’t know what or who or why this light is taunting us, but we know we can’t turn back. We no longer care if it hears us. Maybe there’s a chance that it will set forth to us, greeting us with warmth and safety.

It stops.

We stop.

“What the FUCK?!” Ami drops to the ground and starts to let out desperate cries, the sound an animal makes when it knows it’s trapped, caught in the snare of the reaper. Her nails dig into the ground, then back to her face, wet with tears, scraping grains of wet sand against her cheeks. Her body is left running only on instinct. No rational thought, only panicked movements and flailing limbs. Perhaps her instinct is telling her to bunker into the ground and hide or camouflage herself with dirt. Or her spirit is telling her to start digging her grave.

I can do nothing but observe her, frozen like a doe that just grew out of her spots, the only movement in my rapid breathing, knowing the reaper has me, snare or not.

Then it hits me.

A smell.

An odor not of this region. Not of this fauna. Not of this earth.

I force myself to take a long inhale between panicked breaths. It stings and stinks of two scents I can pick up on instantly- sulphur and burnt hair.

“Ami,” I barely manage to utter.

Ami is now in fetal position, hands over her ears as she tries to silence her own frantic moans.

“Ami,” I try to push out again.”

A twig snaps and our heads whip to the left of the trail.

There is no sound again. There is no smell again.

Amy sits up as we focus our wide eyes into the pitch black slit between the trees.

A small light ignites.

Ami gets to her feet, slowly inching off the path toward the faint ember.

“Ami,” I whisper. “Please.”

She steps closer.

“Please,” my voice cracks.

Ami’s head suddenly twists around to me, jaw dropped, eyes wide.

Then a fleck of red appears in the whites of her eyes.

It’s behind me.

I hear a strike, another fleck emerges in the whites of her eyes, now looking up.

Another one, eyes now rolling back.

Another one, reflecting off the drool falling from her open mouth.

“No, no, no,” I start to cry. I beg, I plead.

More flecks behind me.

The red dancing on the saliva Ami is coughing and spewing.

The sound of a match strike deafens my ear.

The smell of sulphur and burnt hair scorch my nostrils.

My eyes can’t turn away from Ami as I watch her jaw snap.

I can’t tell if the light has devoured her drool or if it’s blood.

I can’t turn away.

I’m afraid to look, afraid to turn.

Her nose leaks.

More red.

More strikes.

More singe.

Her eyes leak, blood beads from her pores.

The crimson devours her.

The forest blinds me with red.