Mason
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Just a strip of meat, wet from rain, placed there like an offering or a joke.
Mason's face was tight.
"'He's right here,' he said.
I looked around, trying to see movement in the darkness beyond our little ring of head-lampless shapes."
The trees were black columns.
The rain hissed.
I couldn't see anyone.
But I felt, with sick certainty, that we were not alone.
We packed in the dark.
We left the jerky where it was.
We started walking again before dawn, stumbling over roots, desperate to reach any place that felt less controlled.
By the third day of this, we weren't hiking anymore.
We were fleeing.
The plan was gone.
The loop didn't matter.
The mileage didn't matter.
All that mattered was getting to a trailhead, any trailhead, or finding another person who wasn't him.
The problem was that the forest had a way of making every direction feel the same.
The canopy blocked the sky.
The rain blurred everything.