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Every tiny hair on her arms lifted.
“No,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure who she was talking to.
Ava took one step toward it before she understood she was moving. Her mouth went dry. “Hello?” she called softly, immediately hating the sound of her own voice out there. No answer came back.
The lantern drifted again, and something deep in her chest pulled with it. Not curiosity, but not exactly fear either. The feeling was bizarre; an invitation wrapped around command.
Ava didn’t remember deciding to cross the clearing. She only realized she had when branches brushed her sleeves, and the campsite fell behind the first row of trees.
Panic rose hot enough to cut through the strange calm pulling at her, and she turned her head sharply, trying to keep the tents in sight. They were still there, but farther than they should’ve been. The fire pit was a smudge, and the truck had vanished behind tree trunks.
She had only walked a dozen steps, maybe twenty, and already the forest had rearranged itself into something unfamiliar, as though the woods had opened a path for her and expected her to have the decency to follow.
“Guys?” she called, and her voice came out too small and was swallowed almost instantly. “Jonah?”
No one answered, and the lantern waited.
The smell of damp, herbal leaves thickened around her until it coated the back of her throat. Her eyes watered, and she wiped at them with her sleeve. When she lowered her hand, the lantern was farther away.
Ava’s breath shook as she followed it down a narrow deer path she didn’t remember seeing during the day. Branches snagged at Jonah’s flannel, and mud sucked at the edges of her socks. Somewhere to her left, the creek rushed louder than before, though she didn’t remember moving downhill.
She kept telling herself to stop. She said it inside her head with increasing force until the word became useless.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
Her body didn’t listen.
Her pulse hammered in her ears, but underneath that sound, something else moved through her, something warm and terrible and intimate.
Come deeper, Ava.
Ava made a broken sound and clapped both hands over her ears… because that sounded like Jonah.
She stumbled against a tree and caught herself on rough bark, breathing hard through her nose. The lantern swung ahead, half hidden now by a wall of cedar boughs.
“Please,” she said, and shame hit her because she didn’t know what she was begging for. “Please, I don’t want to.”
The woods went still, and for the first time since leaving the tent, she saw the shape behind the lantern.
Her breath caught so sharply it hurt. Every story from the fire came back at once, stripped of exaggeration and drunken laughter, until nothing remained except the raw, animal truth: she was standing alone in the dark.
The creature didn’t rush her—that almost made it worse. It stood there among the trees with one clawed hand hanging open at its side, massive shoulders half lost in shadow, watching her in complete silence.
The lantern hanging from one black antler tine lit the black, bark-textured markings and deep scars across its chest and arms. It looked less like a monster wearing the woods and more like the woods had grown a body and stepped forward. Ava tried to scream for Jonah, but only a thin, broken sound came out.
The thing tilted its head curiously, and Ava felt warmth trickling down her jeans as her bladder let go.
By the time dawn touched the ridge in a thin gray line, the camp was already awake.
They found her footprints—socked feet in the damp soil, heading into the trees. They found Jonah’s flannel snagged on a branch even farther from camp.
After that, adults came. Rangers and police came. Dogs came too. Becca stood with Marcus near Jonah’s truck while handlers tried to push them past the creek. The dogs whined. One lay down in the mud and refused to move. Another tucked its tail in so tightly it looked injured. They found one of Ava’s silver rings two miles from camp near the creek, but they never found Ava.
Jonah told them Ava had been scared and acted strangely withdrawn all day, even though she initially planned the trip. He told them they’d been drinking and woke up to find Ava was gone.
He didn’t tell them about the Lantern Stalker until the second night, when he stood outside his house under the porch light and smelled something sweet and herbal drifting in from the dark trees beyond the road.
Only then did he tell his mother everything.
