"Yeah," I muttered, my mouth dry. I wanted to run, but my feet felt glued to the ground. The hum pulsed louder, syncing with my heartbeat, and the symbols on the stones glowed faintly, a sickly green that made my stomach twist.
"W-we should go," I said, grabbing Ethan's sleeve. "This is bad" kept ringing in my head. To make matters worse, he didn't move, eyes wide, staring at the dirt. It was shifting, like something beneath was clawing its way up.
"Dude, look." He pointed, his voice barely a whisper.
A bony finger broke through the soil, gray and withered, nails black and cracked. Then another. The whispering voice sharpened, spitting syllables that burned my ears...it felt like it shouldn't be heard by mortals. I stumbled back, tripping over a root, my hands scraping the cold ground.
Ethan finally snapped me out of it, yanking me up. "RUN!!!"...was all I heard in my stunned state.
We sprinted through the trees, branches whipping our faces. The voice chased us, louder, angrier, and the forest itself seemed to twist, roots rising to snag our ankles. Behind us, the ground shook, as if something massive had broken free.
We didn't stop until we hit the gravel road where we'd parked Ethan's beat-up Civic. Gasping, I glanced back. The forest was still, but the air felt heavy, like a pair of eyes was boring into us.
"What the hell was that?" Ethan panted, hands on his knees.
I shook my head,my heart beating like it's about to burst. "Definitely not a raccoon."
He laughed, shaky, but it died when we saw the car. The hood was crumpled, like something had slammed into it. Scratched into the metal were the same jagged symbols from the stones we found in the forest.
We stood by the wrecked Civic, the symbols on the hood glinting under Ethan's flashlight like they were mocking us. My hands shook as I fumbled for my phone—no signal. The forest loomed behind us, silent now, but the air buzzed with that same wrongness, like static in my teeth.