Chapter 11

The hikers had been warned not to take the old forest road after sunset.

“People get lost out there,” the gas station clerk had said.

There were five of them—Mia, Owen, Daniel, Priya, and Jake—and they laughed it off. The road was supposed to be a shortcut back to their campsite.

At first, it was just fog.

Thin wisps drifted between the trees lining the deserted road. Their flashlight beams cut through it in pale tunnels of light. The forest around them was unnaturally quiet. No insects. No birds.

Only the crunch of their boots on cracked asphalt.

“Does anyone else feel like we’re being watched?” Priya whispered.

Jake rolled his eyes. “It’s just fog.”

Then Daniel stopped walking.

“Guys…” he said weakly. “Did you hear that?”

A wet sound echoed from somewhere ahead.

SCHLKKK… SCHLKKK…

Like something massive dragging itself across the road.

The fog thickened.

“Mia?” Owen asked.

No answer.

He turned.

Mia, who had been walking behind him seconds earlier, was gone.

“Mia?” Priya called louder.

A scream tore through the trees.

They spun toward the sound just in time to see it.

Something enormous shifted within the fog.

Tentacles.

Dozens of them.

Thick as tree trunks, slick and glistening, writhing through the mist. They moved silently except for the horrible sound of suction cups peeling against the pavement.

Mia stumbled out of the white haze.

“RUN!” she screamed.

A tentacle exploded from the fog behind her.

It wrapped around her waist.

Another seized her ankle.

Another coiled around her throat.

She vanished back into the mist before anyone could reach her.

The screaming stopped instantly.

The group bolted down the deserted road.

Behind them came the dragging noise.

SCHLKKK… SCHLKKK… SCHLKKK…

The fog followed.

Jake looked over his shoulder.

“I can’t see it!”

“You don’t have to!” Owen shouted. “Just run!”

Then Jake disappeared.

One second he was beside them.

The next, a tentacle snaked out of the whiteness and yanked him sideways into the trees.

Branches snapped.

His flashlight rolled onto the road.

Its beam illuminated the creature for a heartbeat.

A mountain of shifting flesh suspended within the fog.

A body too large to understand.

Hundreds of tentacles searching blindly through the mist.

And dozens of human backpacks tangled among them.

The survivors ran harder.

But the road never ended.

No matter how long they sprinted, the same bent road sign appeared through the fog.

The same broken guardrail.

The same stain on the pavement.

The forest had trapped them.

One by one, the screams grew fewer.

Until only Priya remained.

She stumbled to her knees, gasping for breath.

The fog curled around her like cold fingers.

From somewhere above, hidden in the white void, came the wet dragging sound.

SCHLKKK… SCHLKKK…

A tentacle slid across the road and stopped inches from her trembling hand.

Then another.

Then another.

Priya squeezed her eyes shut.

“I don’t want to disappear,” she whispered.

The forest answered with silence.

When the morning sun finally burned away the fog, the deserted road was empty.

No footprints.

No backpacks.

No signs that anyone had ever been there.

Only a weathered warning sign standing among the pines:

DO NOT WALK THE ROAD DURING FOG.

IT HUNTS BY SOUND.