Liam's breath hitched, the sound a tiny, pathetic fracture in the profound silence. It was the only sound he could make.
Above him, something shifted.
Not a dramatic lurch, but a subtle, deliberate adjustment of weight. The air changed, growing heavier, denser around him. And then he saw them. Two golden eyes, burning through the absolute dark of the canopy like twin embers buried in deep ash. They didn't glow with a wild, feral light. They were steady, unnervingly focused. Patient in a way that felt ancient and utterly cold.
Too patient.
The tree—a massive, long-dead oak—let out a soft, agonized creak. It was the sound of bark scraping, of something immensely heavy settling more firmly onto a thick, horizontal branch. A shower of dry, brown leaves trembled free, spiraling down in the still air to dust Liam's shoulders. Then, silence again, deeper than before.
Liam's body reacted before his thoughts could even form a coherent word. It was pure, primal biology taking over.
His heart slammed against his ribs, a single, brutal hammer-strike that felt like it might crack bone. A cold wave, starting at the base of his spine, washed upward, paralyzing him muscle by muscle. It wasn't the chill of the night; it was the icy touch of absolute dread.
Run.
Every instinct he possessed, every evolutionary survival mechanism, screamed the single command.
But his legs didn't move.
Not a twitch.
His feet felt fused to the forest floor, as if the roots beneath the leaf litter had coiled up around his ankles, claiming him. He tried to blink—to break the terrible connection of that gaze—but his eyelids were locked open. He tried to swallow, to wet his dust-dry throat, but the muscles refused. His lungs worked in tiny, frantic bursts, pulling in air that felt thin and useless. Each shallow, whistling inhalation was deafening in the vacuum of sound around him.
There were no insects. No wind whispering through pine needles. No distant call of a night bird.
The forest wasn't asleep.
It was holding its breath. Waiting.
The thing above him shifted again. This time, Liam didn't just see it; he felt it. A deep, resonant pressure that vibrated in the center of his chest, a physical confirmation that he had been seen, noted, and assessed. The prey had looked up and met the predator's eye. The dynamic was sealed.
The golden eyes narrowed slightly. A sliver of darker pupil constricted within the molten gold, sharpening its focus on him.
Then, a sound. It rolled down from the branches, low and vibrating, thrumming in the air rather than simply traveling through it. It wasn't quite a growl. It wasn't a breath. It was something in between, thick and wet, a guttural noise that seemed to come from a throat not built for any sound a human would recognize. It was the sound of consideration.
Liam's vision blurred at the edges, darkness creeping in. His mind, in its final, failing act of self-preservation, tried to cobble together a rational explanation—a large owl, a fisher cat, a disoriented bear—but the lie collapsed instantly, annihilated by the sheer, intelligent malevolence of that stare.
Animals didn't watch like that. They hunted, they startled, they fled. They didn't wait. They didn't project a sense of dreadful, unhurried choice.
This thing wasn't startled by his presence.
It was deciding how to take him.
A sudden, shocking warmth spread down the inside of Liam's legs. He didn't register the sensation at first, disconnected from his own body. Shame, embarrassment—those were luxuries for a mind that believed it had a future. They never came. The fear had consumed everything else, leaving behind only a numb, hollow terror.
The branch above, burdened by the unseen mass, bent lower. It was a slow, inevitable descent.
Too close now.
Close enough that Liam's dilated pupils could begin to parse the deeper shadows behind the eyes. There was movement there—the suggestion of dark, corded shapes, of horn-like curves that scraped faintly against dead leaves, of something massive and wrong crouched with an unnatural, poised stillness.
A new, more horrifying understanding dawned on him, cold and absolute.
It hadn't climbed the tree after he arrived.
It had always been there. Perched. Watching the clearing. Watching them. He had simply walked directly beneath its perch.
The pressure in the air—the held-breath quality of the forest—snapped.
The creature tensed. He saw it in the way the shadows behind the eyes coalesced, in the slight forward lean of the burning gaze. Every line of its hidden body drew tight, coiling like a spring.
It was about to jump.
Liam knew it with a certainty that bypassed thought and went straight to the soul. There was no escape. No time to turn. No miracle was coming. The darkness above was about to become a solid, crushing weight, and then there would be only those golden eyes, and then there would be nothing at all.
Liam knew it with absolute certainty. There was no escape, no time left, no miracle coming—
BANG.
The night exploded.
A gunshot, deafening and violently final, tore through the suffocating silence. Wood splintered directly above Liam's head as a bullet ripped into the tree trunk beside the golden eyes, showering him with bark and splinters.
The eyes flinched, vanishing for a split second.
BANG.
Another shot, closer, more precise. This one grazed the branch, the sound of the impact a sharp crack of shearing wood.
The creature let out a sharp, furious shriek—a sound that was high, layered, and utterly wrong, like two different voices shredded and forced through one ragged throat. It wasn't a sound of pain, but of rage at the interruption. The dark mass behind the eyes uncoiled and sprang, not down toward Liam, but sideways into the deeper darkness. Branches whipped and snapped under its weight as it vanished between the trees with terrifying speed.
Liam's knees, finally released from their paralysis, buckled. He pitched forward, the world tilting.
He never hit the ground.
Hands grabbed him from behind, hooking under his arms. Ace's grip clamped around his bicep like an iron band, fingers digging in with a pain that was shockingly, blessingly real.
"MOVE!" Ace's voice was a raw shout by his ear.
Liam's legs were clumsy, numb stilts. Ace didn't wait for him to find his balance. He yanked, and Liam stumbled forward, boots skidding and slipping on the damp leaf litter. Every step was a struggle against a body that had given up, against a forest floor that seemed to clutch at his feet.
Behind them—
CRACK.
A thick branch, not snapped by a bullet, but by sheer, rushing weight.
Then another, closer.
Something big was moving. Not fleeing. Pursuing. And it was fast. Impossibly, silently fast between the impacts.
Cedric was a shadow at their flank. He spun, planted his feet in a wide stance, and fired twice more into the swirling dark.
BANG! BANG!
The muzzle flashes were strobes of blinding white, freezing the scene in stark, terrifying tableaus: Cedric's grimace, the twisted trunks, the chaotic undergrowth. The bullets tore through foliage, but the sound that answered wasn't a cry of injury. It was a guttural, vibrating growl of pure annoyance. The shots weren't stopping it—they were harassing it, forcing it to swerve, buying seconds.
"KEEP RUNNING! DON'T LOOK BACK!" Cedric yelled, already turning to sprint after them.
The growl came again—closer now, and from the wrong direction.
Not behind them.
Above.
Liam felt it before he understood it: a rush of displaced air above his head. A rain of leaves and twigs pattered down. Then the distinct, horrible sound of claws—too many claws—scraping against bark as something heavy and agile leapt from one tree to the next, keeping perfect, effortless pace with their frantic, earthbound flight.
Ace swore, a vicious, breathless curse. "Don't turn around," he hissed at Liam, his voice tight with a fear he was no longer trying to hide. "Whatever you hear—don't."
Liam wanted to look. The urge to see the thing hunting them was a physical pull at the base of his skull. But the raw terror in Ace's command overrode it. He kept his eyes forward, on the patch of nothingness Ace was dragging him toward.
They burst through a wall of thorny brush. Briars ripped at Liam's arms and jacket, scoring lines of fire across his skin. He cried out, but the sound was lost. Ace didn't slow. Ahead, Cedric skidded to a sudden stop, whirled, and raised his pistol in a two-handed grip.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Three rapid shots, spaced apart, aiming at the canopy. The forest answered with a shrill, deafening screech that vibrated in Liam's teeth. This sound was different—pained and furious, a multi-tonal shriek that felt like it was scraping the inside of his skull.
The thing hit the ground.
Liam felt the impact through the soles of his shoes—a heavy, jarring thud that shuddered through the earth. It was followed instantly by the sound of something massive sprinting on all fours, a terrifying, rhythmic thumping of weight and speed tearing through the brush, gaining fast.
"It's charging straight at us!" Cedric shouted, his voice cracking with urgency.
Ace didn't waste breath on a reply. He shoved Liam forward with all his strength. "RUN. NOW! GO, GO!"
They ran. It was no longer a retreat; it was a blind, desperate flight. Branches became whips against Liam's face. Roots seemed to rise up to trip him. His lungs were twin furnaces, burning and searing with each ragged gasp. The sound of his own heartbeat was a war drum in his ears, drowning out everything but the pounding of his own feet and the terrifying, closing rustle behind them.
Then—
A shadow, impossibly tall and whip-thin, detached itself from the deeper black and crossed their path ten yards ahead.
Cedric fired instantly. The single shot was a lance of light.
For half a second, the flash illuminated a nightmare silhouette: a twisted, bipedal form, too lean for its height, topped by a crown of jagged, backward-curving horns that were not smooth like a stag's, but gnarled and segmented. The face was a smudge of darkness beneath them, but the eyes—those burning golden coins—were fixed on them.
The bullet struck with a wet, solid thwack. The creature shrieked again, a sound of shock and rage, and veered off its intercept course, crashing into a thicket of young saplings instead of landing among them.
That misdirection was all they needed.
They didn't stop running. They ran until the sounds of pursuit faded from immediate danger to a distant, angry crashing in the woods behind them. They ran until Cedric's breath was coming in ragged sobs and Ace was half-dragging a near-limp Liam. They ran until their legs simply gave out, and they collapsed against the broad trunks of a cluster of pines, gulping air like drowned men.
Cedric finally lowered his gun, his chest heaving. He leaned against a tree, eyes screwed shut for a moment.
Ace released Liam's arm. Liam's knees hit the soft ground, and he stayed there, folded over, hands pressed into the cool dirt as his entire body shook violently with spent adrenaline and terror. Sweat stung his eyes and soaked through his clothes. His legs felt like they'd turned to water.
For a long minute, the only sounds were their tortured breathing and the slow, steady drip of moisture from the trees.
Liam stayed on his knees, the world slowly swimming back into focus. The metallic taste of fear was still in his mouth.
"What… what the fuck was that?" he rasped, his voice a ruined, cracked thing.
Cedric didn't answer right away. He methodically checked his pistol, ejected the magazine, noted the rounds left, and slapped it back in with a sharp click. Only then did he look at Liam, his expression grim. "We don't know yet. Not fully."
Ace got his torch working again, the beam cutting a shaky path across the forest floor. It illuminated deep, parallel gouges in the soil where they'd stumbled, and on a nearby trunk, long, fresh scratches in the bark, too high for any natural animal.
Liam's eyes locked on those marks. His stomach twisted. "That thing was real," he muttered, the words barely audible. "That wasn't a prank. That wasn't a bear or a… a person in a costume."
Ace didn't argue. He just nodded once, his face pale under the grime and sweat. "Yeah."
"It was a Goatman," Ace said quietly.
The name hung in the air, somehow making it worse. Giving it a name made it a known quantity, a thing with rules and a history. It wasn't just a monster; it was a type of monster.
Cedric turned to him. "You're sure? You got a clear look?"
Ace exhaled, a long, weary sound. "Yeah. When Cedric shot it. The silhouette. The horns, the way it moved—upright but ready to drop to all fours. Way too intelligent to be just an animal. It herded us. It tested our reactions."
Liam looked between them, the panic in his chest slowly hardening into a cold, disbelieving dread. "Wait—hold on," he said, pushing himself up to sit. "Like… Goatman goatman? The internet creepypasta? The bridge thing?"
Cedric blinked, a flicker of surprise crossing his exhausted features. "You know about that?"
Liam let out a weak, hysterical-sounding laugh, running a trembling hand through his sweat-matted hair. "My little brother is obsessed. He watches those stupid 'found footage' channels, reads all the forums. I thought it was all… made-up stories for clicks."
Ace crouched down so he was eye-level with Liam. The torchlight cast deep shadows under his eyes. "Most people do. Right up until they don't."
Liam swallowed, his throat clicking painfully. "If that thing exists… then why doesn't anyone know? Why isn't this all over the news? Why hasn't anyone, I don't know, warned people?"
Cedric glanced at Ace, a silent conversation passing between them. "You wanna tell him, or should I?"
Ace hesitated, then gave a small, resigned nod. "I'll do it."
He straightened up, turning the torch so it wasn't shining directly in Liam's face. "There's something… call it a Veil," Ace began, his voice low and deliberate. "Think of it less like a curtain and more like a filter on reality. A boundary. It separates the normal world—school, jobs, everything you've ever known—from the parts of reality where things like that live and hunt."
Liam frowned, trying to fit the concept into his shattered understanding. "Worlds? Like… dimensions?"
"Not exactly," Cedric cut in, leaning forward. "It's all here. Same forest. Same hill. Most people just… never cross the filter. And if they do, by accident or bad luck, their minds reject it. They rationalize it. They forget."
Liam shook his head, the motion sharp. "That doesn't make any sense. I'm sitting right here. I saw it. I remember it. I'm not forgetting."
"For now," Ace said, his voice gentler than Liam expected. There was a weight of pity in it that was worse than anger.
Liam's head snapped up. "What do you mean, 'for now'?"
Ace's expression was somber. "When you get back to your house, to your normal life… your mind is going to try to protect itself. It'll start to blur the edges. Break the memory into pieces. It'll feel like a bad dream, a hallucination from stress. By next week, you'll probably doubt it ever happened at all."
"No," Liam said immediately, the denial fierce. "That's not—that's bullshit. You can't just forget something like that. I felt its breath. I saw its eyes!"
Cedric let out a humorless, exhausted chuckle. "You'd be surprised what a brain will do to stay sane."
Ace nodded. "You crossed the Veil tonight, Liam. But you don't belong on this side. So your reality will… correct itself. It'll sand down the sharp edges until they're smooth enough to swallow."
Liam's hands, which had finally stopped shaking, began to tremble again. A new kind of fear was taking root—the fear of losing the truth, of having this horrific experience stolen from him and replaced with a comfortable lie. "So you're telling me I almost died—actually, literally almost died—and tomorrow I'll just wake up and think I had a weird nightmare or ate some bad pizza?"
Ace didn't answer. His silence was confirmation.
Cedric filled the void, his voice flat. "Chances are, yeah. You'll be jumpy for a few days, can't explain why. Maybe you'll avoid forests. But the why… it'll fade."
Liam laughed, the sound breaking into something raw and painful. "That's insane."
"Yeah," Cedric said, not a trace of a smile on his face. "Welcome to our job."
Liam looked at them—really looked. The professional way they handled their weapons. The tactical gear peeking from under their jackets. The weary, knowing resignation in their eyes that was far older than they were.
"You said you're hunters," Liam said quietly, the word feeling strange in his mouth.
Ace nodded. "We deal with these types of monsters. Things that doesn't exist on your side."
Liam's stomach churned. "And that thing back there? The… Goatman?"
Ace turned the torch off for a moment, plunging them into a darkness that now felt infinitely more crowded.
Liam's stomach twisted, a physical reaction to the surreal truth settling over him like a shroud. The hunters. The Veil. The Goatman. Each concept was a jagged piece of a world he hadn't believed in an hour ago, now slotting together to form a picture of terrifying coherence. He looked from Ace's grim, resolved face to Cedric's watchful, exhausted one. These weren't kids playing a game. They were soldiers in a war he'd never known was being fought.
"You deal with this," Liam repeated, the words tasting of ash. It wasn't a question.
Ace turned the torch back on, its beam a feeble but defiant spear in the darkness. "Its a part of our reality," he said, his voice low. "It's been here a while. It knew that house was a good lure. It knew kids would be drawn there after Anthony vanished. It's… patient. Intelligent in a way that's hard to fight."
Cedric added under his breath, the words meant for Ace but clear in the quiet, "And now it knows we're here too. It knows we can hurt it. That changes the game."
Liam gulped, his mind spiraling down a new, vertiginous hole. The creature wasn't just a monster; it was an adversary that learned. The thought of it out there now, not just hungry but possibly angry and calculating, was somehow worse.
Cedric broke the heavy tension with a dry, morbid comment. "Who knows," he said, leaning his head back against the tree trunk. "This might not even be the first time we've had this exact conversation with you."
Liam froze. The chill that ran through him had nothing to do with the night air. "What?"
Ace met his eyes, and there was no joking in his gaze, only a weary, practiced sympathy. "Yeah. That happens sometimes. The Veil isn't perfect. Some people… they have a sensitivity. They cross over more than once. Their minds fight the forgetting harder. We've had to 're-introduce' a few people to the reality they keep almost remembering."
Liam's breathing quickened, turning shallow again. The idea was profoundly violating. "That's—no. I don't like that. You can't just… edit someone's memory."
"We don't edit it," Ace said quietly. "The world does. We just sometimes have to point at the cracks before they seal up for good."
"Trust me," Cedric added, opening his eyes to look at Liam. "Neither do we. It's a messed-up part of a messed-up job. Telling someone the most important truth of their life, knowing they probably won't be allowed to keep it."
The forest around them, which had fallen into a watchful lull, shifted.
It wasn't a loud sound. Not the snap of a branch or the rustle of pursuit. It was a subtle change in pressure, a silent exhalation from the woods themselves, as if the trees had just leaned in half an inch closer. All three of them felt it simultaneously—a hunter's instinct, a prey animal's primal alarm. The conversation was over. The temporary respite was ending.
Ace slowly turned the torch, its beam carving a slow arc across the nearest trees. The light found nothing but bark and shadow, but the darkness beyond its reach now felt attentive, pooled with intention.
"Alright," Ace said, his voice slipping back into that flat, operational tone. He pushed himself to his feet, offering a hand to Liam. "We move. Standing still out here, talking in the open, is a gift we're not giving it."
Liam stared at the offered hand for a second, then took it. Ace's grip was strong, hauling him up. His legs still felt unsteady, but the solidity of the pull grounded him. He was part of this now, whether he wanted to be or not. Their survival was tied to his, and his to theirs.
Cedric was already up, checking his weapon one more time with a quiet, metallic click-clack that was both reassuring and horrifying. "Which way?" he whispered to Ace. "Back toward the hill is a straight line, but it'll expect that."
Ace shook his head, thinking fast. "No. Not back to the open. It's faster than us in a straight chase. We go deeper, but not straight. We angle toward the old creek bed. The water noise might mask our sounds, and the terrain's bad for something its size if it tries to charge."
Liam just nodded, the details of the plan meaning less than the simple fact that there was a plan. He was content, for now, to be an order follower.
As they began to move, a single file of shadows in the bobbing torchlight, Liam couldn't stop himself from casting one last glance over his shoulder, into the blackness from which they'd fled.
He saw nothing.
But he felt it. The same focused, patient attention he'd felt under the tree. It hadn't left. It had simply pulled back, a predator reassessing wounded and dangerous prey.
Somewhere deep in the woods, something watched.
And waited, not just for a moment of carelessness, but for the right moment to strike. The game had changed. It was no longer a hunt for easy meat. It was a confrontation, and the next move was being calculated in a mind both ancient and savage.
Liam turned back around, fixed his eyes on Ace's back, and made his numb legs move. The reality of the hidden world was no longer a theory. It was the chill on his neck, the tremor in his hands, and the absolute certainty that the darkness behind him was alive, intelligent, and hungry.