The moon hung low over Vicrock Forest, pale and indifferent, casting long silver shadows through the trees. It was the kind of light that made everything look almost beautiful — almost — until you remembered what was running through it.
Indigo Derby's boot caught a root and the ground rushed up to meet her. Her palms hit the wet dirt hard, and for one terrible second the world stopped — the sounds of the forest too loud, the darkness too close. Then a hand locked around her wrist and pulled.
"Get up — get up —"
Anastasia. Her grip was iron. Indigo scrambled to her feet without thinking, legs already moving before she was fully upright, the two of them crashing through the undergrowth in near silence, breathing too hard to speak.
They ran until the trees began to thin. Until the sound of footsteps behind them — slow, unhurried, almost casual — seemed to fall back into the dark. Until Anastasia grabbed Indigo's jacket and yanked her sideways behind the wide trunk of an oak, pressing them both flat against the bark.
They stayed there for a long moment. Listening.
Nothing. Just the wind moving through the high branches and somewhere far off the low creak of something settling.
"I think we lost it," Anastasia whispered. Her voice was steady but her hand was still shaking where it gripped Indigo's sleeve.
Indigo opened her mouth to answer and felt it then — a deep, hot throbbing in her left arm that she hadn't registered until this exact moment. She looked down. In the pale moonlight she could see the dark stain spreading down from just below her elbow, soaking into the fabric of her jacket, dripping steadily from her fingertips to the wet ground below.
"Indigo." Anastasia's voice dropped even lower. She was staring at the arm, eyes wide. "That's — that's a lot of blood."
"I know." Indigo pressed her other hand over it, hard. The pain arrived properly then, sharp and insistent, and she bit down on the inside of her cheek. "I know. It's fine. Keep moving."
Anastasia looked like she wanted to argue. She didn't.
They moved carefully through the last stretch of trees, staying low, checking behind them every few steps. The forest opened onto a narrow dirt path and across it — maybe thirty meters away — sat a cabin. Small, dark, the windows black and empty. No lights. No movement. But four walls and a door and right now that was everything.
They ran.
Indigo hit the door first, fist pounding against the wood, the sound obscenely loud in the quiet. "Hello? Hello — is anyone in there?" Nothing. She tried the handle. Locked. She hit it again anyway because stopping felt like dying.
Anastasia grabbed her shoulder. "There's no one in there. Come on, we can try to—"
A sound. Behind them.
Footsteps in wet grass. Slow. Deliberate. The sound of someone who was not running because they had never needed to run.
Indigo turned around.
It was standing at the edge of the tree line, half swallowed by shadow. The moonlight caught the mask — rough burlap, hand-stitched, the two dark eye gaps absorbing the light rather than reflecting it. The heavy canvas jacket. The work boots. Still. Completely, impossibly still.
Just watching.
Anastasia stepped forward, her voice cracking open the silence like a stone through glass. "What the fuck do you want?"
It didn't answer. It never answered. It just took one slow step forward, and then another, moving out of the trees and into the pale light of the clearing.
Indigo felt Anastasia's hand find hers in the dark.
The figure reached up. Gripped the edge of the mask.
And pulled it off.
Indigo looked at the face beneath it. The world tilted.
"What the fuck ," she whispered.
THREE DAYS EARLIER
" Finally. "
Indigo Derby said it like a prayer, dropping back against the headrest as Jett pulled into the car park of the Vicrock Valley Visitor Centre. She stretched her arms above her head until her spine cracked satisfyingly and turned to look at him. He was already grinning — that easy, unhurried grin she'd spent the better part of three years completely unable to stay annoyed at.
"Told you it would be worth the drive," he said.
"Four hours, Jett."
"Worth. It."
They had been born six days apart — Indigo on a Thursday in late October, Jett on a Wednesday the week before — a fact he had never once let her forget because he claimed it meant he was technically wiser. She had been telling him for two years that was not how wisdom worked. He remained unconvinced.
The sound of a horn — two short, cheerful beeps — made them both look up. A black SUV had swung into the space behind them, reversed slightly too fast, and made gentle but undeniable contact with their back bumper.
Jett closed his eyes briefly. "There it is."
The driver's door of the SUV swung open and Nico Carmichael stepped out, both hands already raised in a gesture of profound and entirely unconvincing innocence. He was tall, broad shouldered, wearing a jacket that said Camping Expert on it despite the fact that Indigo had personally witnessed him complain about a single mosquito for forty-five uninterrupted minutes on their last outdoor trip.
"That was barely a tap," he announced.
"You hit my car," Jett said.
"I grazed your car. There's a difference. Legally and spiritually."
The passenger door opened and Addison Parker stepped out, pulling her hair up into a ponytail without looking, already scanning the visitor centre with the quiet, appraising focus she applied to most new places. She had a way of walking into a room — or a car park, apparently — like she was cataloguing it. Indigo had always liked that about her. Addison noticed things. Behind her, Elizabeth Jack slid out from the back seat, immediately pulling her jacket tighter against the cool air and looking faintly suspicious of the surrounding forest in the way she looked faintly suspicious of most things. And finally Anastasia Smith appeared from the other side of the SUV, her overnight bag slung over one shoulder, squinting up at the treeline with something that looked less like apprehension and more like a personal challenge.
Six of them. Together since year six — since a classroom seating arrangement and a shared hatred of a particular maths teacher had forged the kind of friendship that somehow survived secondary school, house moves, bad haircuts and worse decisions. They were all seventeen now, which felt simultaneously very old and embarrassingly young depending on the day.
This trip had been Jett's idea. Indigo had known that before he'd even finished pitching it.
ScreamForHell — that was the name of the experience. She'd looked it up after he'd sent her the link, clicking through the sparse website with growing amusement and then something she eventually had to admit was genuine excitement. Three nights on a private campsite in Vicrock Forest. Your group, the site, and one other presence — an actor, in costume, playing the role of a killer for the duration of your stay. Contained between midnight and four in the morning. No contact beyond the boundaries of the game. A thousand pounds per person.
They had each spent four months saving for it.
Elizabeth had complained about this at least twice a month for all four of those months, and then shown up to the car with her bag packed and a brand new torch she'd clearly bought specifically for the occasion.
They walked toward the visitor centre together, gravel crunching underfoot, the building low and clean with large windows and a hand-painted sign above the entrance. As they pushed through the doors a group was filing out — eleven people, ranging from maybe fifteen to mid-twenties, visibly exhausted and visibly exhilarated in equal measure, talking over each other in the bright overlapping way of people who have just shared something they will be describing for years.
"It actually touched my shoulder," one of them was saying. "Like it reached out and—"
"It knew where we were hiding. That's what I don't understand, it knew —"
"Best thing I've ever done. Genuinely. I haven't slept in three days and I would pay double—"
Indigo caught Anastasia's eye. Anastasia looked deeply pleased with herself for having agreed to come.
The man at the front counter was somewhere in his fifties, efficiently friendly in the way of someone who had done this exact welcome speech several hundred times and had long ago made peace with that fact. He collected their names, checked the booking, produced six waivers on a clipboard and slid them across the counter with a pen.
Indigo skimmed hers. Standard stuff — acknowledgement of voluntary participation, confirmation that the activity involved simulated threat scenarios, agreement not to physically engage with the performer, a liability clause that she suspected would not survive serious legal scrutiny. She signed it. So did the others, in varying states of actually reading it.
The man retrieved the clipboard and moved smoothly into what was clearly a well-rehearsed briefing.
"Welcome to ScreamForHell," he said, with the calm confidence of someone who had never once found that name embarrassing. "Before you head out to the site I want to walk you through how the experience works." He reached beneath the counter and produced a laminated card, turning it to face them.
On it was a photograph of a figure in costume.
Indigo leaned forward slightly to look. Dark work boots, heavy with wear. Black trousers. A black jacket with a fur-trim hood — the trim a pale blond colour, almost cream — pulled up to obscure the head. And over the face, a simple balaclava style mask in black, close fitting, with a cut-out at the mouth. Through the fabric she could make out the shape of the actor's eyes, the outline of their features. Human. Recognisably, deliberately human.
"This is The Woodsman," the man said. "Your performer for the duration of your stay. The costume is consistent every night — if you see this, you're seeing our actor. If you see something else, you're either in the wrong forest or you've had one too many around the campfire." He smiled briefly at his own joke. Nobody had laughed at it before and nobody laughed at it now.
He continued. The Woodsman would be present from midnight to four in the morning only. The rest of the time the site was theirs — to explore, to set up camp, to do whatever they liked within the marked boundaries. The cabins dotted around the perimeter of the site were private property and completely off limits — entering them carried a fine and immediate removal from the experience. All interactions with the performer were passive. He would locate them. He would pursue them. He would not make physical contact beyond the parameters outlined in the waiver. It was, the man said, extremely safe and extremely frightening and the combination of those two things was the entire point.
"One final thing," he said, and his tone shifted almost imperceptibly — not quite serious, just quieter. "We don't allow weapons on site. This isn't distrust, it's just sense. People get scared, people make poor decisions. It's for your safety and our performer's safety equally." He gestured toward the metal detector set up to the right of the counter — a simple airport-style frame with a tray beside it for bags. "Everything goes through. No exceptions."
They filed through one at a time. Bags on the tray, pockets empty, through the frame. Each one clean. Even Nico, who produced three separate items from his jacket pockets with the resigned energy of a man who had genuinely forgotten they were there — a multi-tool, a small penknife, and what appeared to be a single firework.
"It's a sparkler," he said, to nobody in particular. "It's not even a real firework."
It went in the tray. It did not come back out.
They collected their bags on the other side. The man at the counter was already moving toward a door at the back of the room, gesturing for them to follow.
Indigo picked up her bag, settled the strap on her shoulder, and turned to look back through the glass doors of the visitor centre. The car park. The road. The ordinary, well-lit world on the other side of it.
"Hey." Nico appeared at her shoulder. "What do you want to do first? We've got the whole afternoon before dark."
Indigo looked at the treeline beyond the building. Dark even in daylight, the kind of dense that swallowed sound. Somewhere in there the campsite was waiting. Three nights. One actor. A thousand pounds of manufactured fear.
She turned away from the glass.
"Let's go," she said.