Chapter Seventeen
After a week in prison space Rob had gone out into the woods to collect some firewood, when he suddenly stumbled upon some footprints in the dirt which scared him silly.
They were three pronged, and clawed toed, with a dewclaw in the back. The length of between each of the footprints indicated a stride of eight feet.
Rob swore up and down that this was some kind of trick. He actually doubted himself for a moment, and ran off to get his brother, in order to verify that his brain was not playing some kind of cruel hoax on him.
When John arrived at the spot where the tracks had been found, they had gone.
Rob spit and swore, claiming that they were there only moments before. John looked uneasily at his brother, knowing that he was serious, and yet soberly observed that no such tracks exist.
When Rob shared his story that night, Matt openly mocked him, stating that he must have been suffering from delirium tremmens.
Harry paid attention to the claims, but said nothing.
John was quiet, and unnerved. He knew that something had happened for his brother to make a claim, but he was also aware that his brother had done a lot of drugs, and felt as though it could simply be a neural misfire, or an imagination gone wild to a point of generating a palpable anxiety.
John began to keep a watchful eye on the forest whenever he gathered wood for campfires and cooking.
It seemed that the paranoia of Rob's experience had rubbed off on his brother. John’s eyes would often be locked to the edge of the clearing, while they all sat around the fire.
Conversations had diminished, and it was generally observed that neither John, nor Rob were acting the same since the incident with the axe.
The brothers ended up sticking together when they took care of their daily chores.
They had much anxiety about going into the woods, but it was a necessary component of their daily existence, and so they decided that a combined front was better than isolated confrontation by the phantoms from their peripheral vision.
The shapes within the woods did not desist and generally, only one of the brothers saw them each time.
The lack of a mutual experience did not cause them to doubt each other, but themselves, as each realized that they were falling into a new nightmare.