CHAPTER 4
The balcony air was sharp, smelling of damp pine and the metallic tang of the coming rain. Rhodes stood at the railing, a silhouette of wounded pride, his knuckles white around a glass of amber liquid. When the sliding door hummed open, Sarah stepped out, the silk of her robe catching the moonlight.
"There you are," she whispered, her voice a soft anchor in the dark.
Rhodes didn't turn. His voice was a low, jagged rasp. "You're being disobedient, Sarah. I'm the one who spent weeks pleading with Elias and the others just to let you come on this trip. You're my girlfriend—you aren't part of their 'inner circle.' Yet the second they want to play these twisted games, you're right there, taking their side over mine."
Sarah didn't argue. She knew the sting of his displacement. She stepped up behind him, molding her body to the rigid line of his back, her arms winding around his waist. "It was just acting, Rhodes," she murmured against his shoulder blades. "A silly film for old time's sake. Don't overreact to a mere movie. I'm here for you, not the ghost stories."
The tension in his shoulders finally broke. He turned in her arms, his gaze dark and searching, before he crashed his mouth against hers. It was a desperate, territorial kiss, a peace offering fueled by the adrenaline of the night.
In the heat of the embrace, Sarah suddenly jerked back, her breath hitching. Her eyes darted toward the tangled black void of the woods beneath the balcony. "Did you feel that?" she breathed, her heart hammering against her ribs. "I felt... a presence. Like we aren't alone out here."
Rhodes glanced over the railing. The shadows of the trees were motionless. "There's no one, Sarah. Everyone is inside, passed out by now. It's just the wind playing with your head."
He pulled her back into the heat of his chest, his hands sliding down to the small of her back as he reclaimed her lips. The kiss deepened, becoming heavy and urgent, until Rhodes suddenly flinched. He let out a low, breathless chuckle against her mouth, his eyes half-closed.
"Stop being naughty," he murmured, his voice thick with sudden desire. "We're supposed to be watching for 'killers,' remember? Not starting a riot."
Sarah pulled back slightly, her expression flickering with genuine confusion. "Rhodes... I didn't do anything. My hands were on your neck the whole time."
A shadow of doubt crossed his face, but the fire between them was too bright to let it catch. He dismissed it as a trick of his own heightened senses, a phantom touch born of the wine and the night. He pulled her closer, his kiss turning predatory and passionate, leading her back into the darkened master suite.
They moved toward the bathroom in a feverish blur, clothes discarded in a trail across the cold, dark tile. Under the dim, amber glow of the vanity light, the air was thick with the scent of steam and skin. They came together with a desperate, primal intensity. Rhodes pressed her against the cool, tiled wall of the shower, his hands possessive as they mapped the curves of her body.
Every touch was a reclamation, a searing friction that burned away the fear of the woods. Sarah arched into him, her fingers digging into his shoulders as their shadows danced against the frosted glass. The world outside—the mask, the film, the missing friends—ceased to exist, replaced entirely by the rhythmic, heavy thud of their hearts and the heat of their breath mingling in the mist.
But as the mirrors began to fog over with the rising steam, a small, clear circle appeared in the corner of the glass—a deliberate, steady swipe of a finger, clearing the frost just enough for a single, unblinking eye to watch the scene from the shadows of the hallway.
***
The red recording light on the camera pulsed in the dark, a tiny, mechanical heartbeat against the vast, silent void of the porch. Elias stood at the threshold, the iron of the door handle biting into his palm like a frozen shackle. As he turned to retreat into the house, a sudden blur of motion caught the corner of his eye—a tall, elongated shadow sweeping across the glass door right behind his shoulder.
He spun so violently he nearly lost his footing on the slick wood. "Who's there?" he barked, his voice cracking into a jagged whisper.
The yard was a graveyard of shifting silver and grey. The old tire swing creaked once in the wind, but the space behind him was hollow. No footsteps, no snapping twigs, just the oppressive, expectant weight of the pines. A rational man would have locked the door and hidden under the covers, but the silence of the house felt more dangerous than the forest.
"Rhodes! Harper!" he shouted, stepping off the porch and plunging back into the tree line. "Ren, if this is a prank, you've won! Just come out!"
He pushed deeper into the woods, his flashlight beam slicing through the mist like a surgical blade. The air here was different—stagnant, smelling of wet iron and ancient rot. He swept the light across the forest floor, and the beam caught a glint of something that made the air vanish from his lungs.
On the dry, cracked soil beneath a cluster of thorn bushes, a dark, viscous trail stretched out into the blackness. This wasn't the "strawberry syrup" from their teenage film. This was deep, heavy crimson, still steaming slightly in the midnight chill.
Elias dropped to his knees, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. He reached out, his finger hovering in a tremor before he finally touched the fluid. It was thick. It was warm. It was real.
"No," he whispered, his vision tunneling until the world was nothing but that red smear. "No, no, no."
Confusion warred with a primal, screaming terror. He looked back toward the house—the flickering yellow lights of the living room looking like a distant, unreachable planet—but the trail of blood didn't lead toward safety. It snaked deeper into the black heart of the woods, toward the old, collapsed tool shed they hadn't stepped foot in since they were children.
Numb with a shock that felt like ice water in his veins, Elias stood up. He didn't scream for help anymore; the woods felt like a physical hand pressed against his mouth, demanding silence. Like a moth drawn to a funeral pyre, he began to follow the crimson path, his flashlight shaking so hard the shadows seemed to dance. The trail grew wider, thicker, as if something heavy and unresisting had been dragged through the dirt.
High above him on the balcony, the bathroom window remained fogged with the lingering steam of Sarah and Rhodes's passion, but the clear circle in the glass was gone—replaced by a bloody, oversized handprint that smeared downward, as if someone had been clinging to the glass while watching them.