Drizzle taps lightly on the leaves all around us, the smell of pine rich in the air as we creep through the undergrowth, my Grandad and I.

I run my tongue along my teeth, focusing. I raise the rifle a little higher. A Nosler. A way higher quality weapon than I should be using, the thing is wasted on me. I’m an appalling hunter.

…I’m not even sure if I agree with it, to be honest. Hunting, I mean. Ethically speaking.

I mean, my Grandad and I eat basically everything we kill and, to be honest, I don’t kill a whole lot. I send many of my shots deliberately wide.

I just do this to hang out with him, really. He’s a fascinating man, and the guy likes taking me out into the woods, so. I just go along with it, it’s fine. It’s good quality-time that I’m lucky to have.

But we’re stalking a pair of deer right now. Big things as well. I’m pretty sure the creatures know we’re here, but, you can get surprising close provided you don’t actually give off any sign that you’re tryna shoot them.

“Stay low Robbie”, he murmurs through the side of his mouth. “Move to your right past the bush, then it’s a clean shot. Take it when ready”.

I like my name. Named after the man beside me, as it happens. Robert. He being Robert I, and me of course, Robert II.

I nod and creep into position, taking careful aim as instructed.

I see a thumbs up in the corner of my eye, and I shoot.

…I miss.

The sound ricochets around the forest and birds burst from a nearby tree, shooting up towards the sky. The deer wheel round in a panic and make to leave.

“Godammnit” my Grandad mutters and raises up from behind the bush, bringing his rifle with him and firing off a quick shot.

My ego is somewhat relieved by the fact that he misses too, and we both watch as the deer disappear into the undergrowth and shadow of the forest.

The man lowers his weapon and looks at me. I do the same and give him a shrug.

We hold eye contact for a second, then, he breaks with a chuckle, shaking his head. “Damnit Robbie, every time I think I’ve taught you something you manage to pull off some magnificent blunder just like that”.

“Hey, well, you know what they say- you shouldn’t judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree”.

“I ain’t judging you on your tree-climbing ability. You’re my Grandson. I’m judging you on your ability to swim, fishie”.

I point to the shattered branch my Grandad caused when he fired his shot. “I truly am learning from the best”.

“Bastard”, he snorts with a laugh, thumping me on the chest. “Come on, let’s track ‘em. Plenty daylight left”.

We push around the bush and head through the little clearing, stepping over a fallen log and making to follow the route the deer both took, but my Grandad suddenly stops and holds up his hand with his head cocked to the side.

I pause likewise, waiting, holding my breath and listening intently.

My ears hone in on the sound of rustling foliage and snapping twigs. It grows louder, heading towards us, in the exact direction the deer were running from.

“Jesus”, my Grandad grunts, “they’re coming back this way. They’ll have seen a-” but he is cut off by the sudden emergence of the deer through the bushes ahead. Rushing right at us from the green, gloomy shade.

“Shit!” I shout out loud in a panic. The deer make no attempt to run around us in the slightest and run instead directly towards our position. I raise the rifle and take rapid, shaky aim.

“Damnit Steve, DOWN!” Grandad shouts, grabbing me by the sleeve and hauling me to the forest floor, back behind the log.

…Steve?

The air escapes me as I crash with my Grandad down to the ground, and the deer jump right over us.

My Grandad instantly takes position, cocking and aiming his own rifle over the top of the log, deathly focused.

“Something will have made ‘em run like that. They’ll have seen a wolf, or a bear”.

“A wolf? A bear?”

“I’d be surprised to see either, at this time of day. But as I said. Something made them run”.

My Grandad remains cool and composed, the barrel of the rifle fixed on the damaged woodland ahead and along the deer’s path.

I stick close, watching out in all directions in case we are approached from the side, gun cocked and heart pounding.

…

…But.. nothing comes.

We wait for a tension-laden minute, then another, muscles aching with the stress of simply holding ourselves in pre-emptive positions, but as I said, nothing else comes towards us.

My Grandad cautiously gets to his feet. “Weird”, he mutters. “We’d better move on out of here. Come on, stay alert, but let’s go”.

I nod in reply and together we make a swift but carefully exit from the little grove, heading back through the woods and retracing our steps.

After what I hope is something of a safe distance, I ask my Grandad a question. “Why’d you call me Steve, back then?”

“Eh?”

“When the deer were coming at me, you called me Steve. You said ‘Steve get down’”.

“Huh, is that so”, my Grandad asks, scratching his chin. “I don’t know. You know Steve though, right? Old friend of mine. I swear I’ve mentioned him before”.

I consider. “Uh… yeah, maybe. Once or twice”.

Grandad shakes his head. “I’ve definitely talked about him more than that. You probably weren’t listening”. He sighs. “It was just the moment, I suppose. The way you were standing, the deer coming right at you, raising your gun… What would have happened if you’d shot one, eh? It would have gone right down and knocked you out with it”.

“I don’t know, it wasn’t all that big-”

“It was bigger than you’re giving it credit for. And at that speed? Would have flattened you. It’s what I told Steve, all those years ago, he did the exact same thing, the idiot”.

“What’s he up to these days?”

My Grandad does not reply. He only looks out into the depths of the forest. We’re atop a high hill, and the trees give way to a view across a deep, green valley. The sky is gray overhead.

The man tuts and shakes his head. “Steve… Steve isn’t around much anymore”.

“Oh, sorry. He’s not… he’s not dead, is he?”

My Grandad grimaces. “I don’t know, exactly”.

“You don’t know?”

“Look, just drop it kid. A story for another day. Let’s just get back to the campsite. Cook that rabbit we caught earlier”.

He pauses, putting out a hand, and I stop at once, following his line of sight.

I hadn’t even spotted it, but it chills my blood to see it now. Gives me the shivers even remembering.

We stand only a few feet away from a deer. It’s one of the same deer as before, I’m sure of it. Neither of us had spotted it because the thing is standing entirely still. Like a statue. A taxidermy, almost.

“The hell?” Grandad whispers, staring at the creature in surprise. He squints and then leans over to me. “It’s breathin’ though only barely. Look down there at its chest”.

I do so, taking the spectacle in. The deer has one hooved foot placed against the trunk of a tree, which in itself is quite curious already… but the animal does not move, even slightly. It does not blink.

“Hey”, my Grandad barks, then louder: “Hey!” he claps his hands, but the deer does not react.

Then, in time with a sudden flurry of water from the rain-soaked leaves above us, the deer slowly turns its head. All the way around, until it is staring at my Grandad and myself, one eye on each.

My stomach drops, though I am unsure as to why. The deer is… I don’t know. Something is wrong.

“The thing must be sick”, my Grandad murmurs. “We’ll take a different route back, go wide of this creature. We’re too close already as it is”

“Yeah”, I mumble, and the two of us edge away and through the undergrowth, taking a new direction as the deer watches us go, deathly-silent.

I shiver as it at last passes out of sight, lost behind us to the watery green shadows of the forest.

​

*

​

Later that night, after returning to camp and preparing and eating our catch, I bid my Grandad goodnight and crawl into my tent, zipping the flaps up after me.

I fumble round in the near-darkness for a while, my lamp casting intense, black shadows out in all directions as I shift it from place to place, trying to work my way into my sleeping bag.

It doesn’t feel particularly cold at the moment, but, the temperature has the potential to suddenly drop at any given minute, and I don’t want to wake up frozen solid at 3am.

…

…As it happens, I don’t. I awaken at 3:15; not frozen, but slick with sweat.

Roused from a dreamless slumber, my ears prick up at the sound of rustling and snuffling outside.

Right by my tent.

​

I hold my breath and grit my teeth.

​

It’s this fear of the unknown that gets me. It’s probably just a rabbit, or a hare.

…But the possibility that it could be something larger, something more dangerous, is impossible to ignore.

For some reason my mind does not go to an image of a bear, or a mountain lion, or anything like that.

It goes to the deer. Frozen in place. Eyes unblinking, head turning as it watches my Grandad and I pass by.

Something presses up against the tent, right by my head.

I wince and stare at the bulging material through the darkness. I try not to think about the fact that I am separated by the beasts of the forest by a pair of what are effectively thin, flimsy sheets of fabric.

Just ignore it, I tell myself. Ignore it and it’ll go away.

I quietly roll over and scrunch up my eyes, determined to be a man and to not get frightened by the presence of some raccoon or squirrel.

The creature sniffles some more.

Rustling about in the grass, in the dark.

​

My heart rate increases as I hear the thing pawing against the tent’s outer lining.

…And then, for a second, it stops entirely, and to my horror I hear my Grandad’s voice.

​

“It’s breathin’ though only barely”.

​

The sentence comes crisp and sharp through the general murmur and backing breeze of the forest.

The sentence is entirely devoid of cadence. As if read from a book by someone who has never known English.

“Look down there at its chest”, says the voice.

​

Fuck.

FUCK.

​

Panicking now, I do not know what I am supposed to do. It’s my Grandad outside, playing a prank on me. It has to be. It MUST be, because there is literally no other explanation that makes sense.

Regardless of the fact that this is entirely out of character. Regardless of the fact that I have never heard the man speak in such a way, even in humor, in his entire life.

…

He must be sleep-walking. That’s it.

My explosive heartrate cools just a little.

That’s it. It’s the only possible explanation that makes sense.

And if that’s the case, then, I can’t just leave him to wander around outside.

Despite my fear, I gently ease my way out of my sleeping bag. You might think me an idiot, but, if my Grandad is wondering around in the woods in a daze he could get lost, or seriously hurt. So I push aside my irrational terror, and with a shaking hand I reach for the zip, pulling it open with a noise that is far too loud for comfort.

Fuck it. In for a penny, in for a pound.

I yank the zip open, and then the next, and push my head out into the night, the cool air washing across my face as I raise the lantern to cast away the darkness.

​

…What I see, is nothing.

​

I jump outside of the tent, staring, lifting the lantern as the light falls across the long grasses and the nearby trees. We’re still on the ridge of the valley, but the valley itself is shrouded in darkness. A small section of visible moon illuminates the very tips of the trees in silver, but I am too pre-occupied to properly appreciate the natural beauty for now. I pace around the tent in a circle and see no evidence of my grandfather.

“Grandad?” I hiss out into the night, turning and raising the lantern up high.

…

…Still, nothing.

Something chirps softly from between the branches of the deep woods.

I turn to face it with throat dry, but the trees give away no secrets.

I cross the grass and crouch down by my Grandad’s tent. The zip remains closed.

“Grandad?” I whisper, to no response. I try again, a little louder. “Grandad?”

I hear a groan and a grumble from inside.

“Huh?” I hear him mutter, then, “the hell?”

“Grandad are you good?”

“Of course I’m good, what’s the matter with you?”

“Alright… Uh, nothing. See you tomorrow”.

He murmurs something under his breath and I hear the rustle of his sleeping bag as he rolls over. I stand up straight and stare out into the night.

​

For a second time, that chirping sound rings out from the branches, and I make a hasty return to my tent, zipping the thing up tight and secure, shivering as I try to force myself back to sleep.

​

It takes a long time, and I do not recall drifting off. My dreams are disturbing, and are largely comprised of the discovery that something crept into my tent, dream-distorted and warped into an impossible size. My dream-self scrambles around from place to place as a nightmare slithers and swims through the shadows like water.

It is a welcome relief when I awake safe and sound, to the faded glare of tent-filtered, morning sunlight shining into my face.

“Ugh”, I mutter, sitting up straight and groggily rubbing my eyes.

For a second or two the reality of last night blurs into the dreams, but as I remember the truth, that bitterly familiar anxiety settles back in. I clamber out of the tent into the warming morning air to find my Grandad washing his face in a pot of water.

“Mornin’” he grunts. “How you feel this morning?”

“Not great, to be honest”, I reply. “You were sleep-walking last night”.

“Eh?” Grandad glances up at me but continues with his routine. “No, I don’t sleepwalk”.

“You were mumbling nonsense and bashing into my tent at like 3am”, I tell him. “I came to check on you but you… you must have just gone back to bed”.

My Grandad pauses and looks right at me. “So that did happen then. Your disturbing me. Thought I might have dreamt it”. He stands up and scratches his jaw. “Tell me exactly what happened”.

I relay the story, and my Grandad remains silent until its end. Slightly paled he looks around at our surroundings, and down into the valley.

“I fuckin’ knew it”, he mutters, almost imperceptibly. “It’s the same place. The exact same place”.

“What?” I ask him. “What do you mean?”

“I came here with- with Steve, once. I knew I’d been here before. I thought I’d picked the location pretty randomly, but, I guess my subconscious had other ideas”.

“Grandad I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about”.

He stares out over the valley and I follow his gaze. We watch as a small flock of dark birds flutters around in a circle above the trees.

Again… and again… and again…

​

Around and around they go.

​

He turns to look straight at me, his expression grim. Perhaps even… afraid, a little. And this unsettles me deeply. Nothing is supposed to scare that man.

“Pack up, Robbie. Make it good, and be quick. We’re out of here”.

In another atmosphere I might have questioned him, but the vibe is clear. I do as he says at once and in silence, we quickly pack away our gear, loading up our backpacks with constant furtive glances to the trees.

The forest has dried somewhat since yesterday’s rain, but the sky overhead is still a swirl of gray. We set out beneath its gloom, all trace of our modest campsite thoroughly erased.

​

My Grandad’s pace is a little faster than normal. Bracken and pine needles are crunched underfoot as he strides through the woodlands. He clenches his rifle a little tighter, too.

I break the tension.

“Grandad what the hell is going on? What aren’t you telling me?”

“I was an idiot once before”, Grandad replies, as a breeze whistles its way through the boughs of the trees. “And I lost a good friend. I won’t let the same thing happen to you”.

We push through the bushes and pass by a large pond, surrounded by thick, tangled weeds. I glance over to the water.

The water is a grim gray-green and covered in a curious, floating moss. The surface is broken by the heads of three deer, standing perfectly still. The entirety of their bodies below the necks are submerged, and they stare at us as we pass them by.

On another day I might have found the sight quite comical, but right now I feel nothing but cold, biting fear.

One of the deer rises up from the water, rippling it quietly, rearing up onto its hind legs, and my Grandad grabs my sleeve and hauls me along.

“Don’t stop moving. We’re getting out of here. Just keep going, Robbie”.

Our steps become faster, our breathing a little more labored.

The trees rush by, branches scratch at my arms and my face. We push out into a clearing, and my Grandad skids to an immediate halt.

“What is it?” I ask, panting.

​

Something moves in the shadows of the trees, shifting between the branches at the clearing’s opposite side.

The hair at the back of my neck bristles and I instinctively raise the rifle.

The sounds of the birds and the breeze fade away, and the air itself seems to darken as the shifting shadow ahead draws closer.

It is difficult, near-impossible to make out its exact shape through the layers of branch and foliage… But I swear I can see a rough, vaguely humanoid silhouette amongst the shadows and the dark, green-blown blur.

​

“Did you come back for me, Robert?” whispers a voice.

​

My muscles tense up in reaction to my name.

Is it my name it speaks... or, my Grandad’s?

My Grandad sucks some air in through his teeth. He begins to carefully sidestep his way round the clearing, and I copy his movements.

​

“You wouldn’t leave me behind again… would you?”

​

The voice is not dissimilar to the one I heard last night. It is different, sure, but the cadence, or lack thereof, is much the same.

​

My Grandad raises the rifle, cocks it… but he does not fire.

“Keep going around kid”, he says to me. “To the left, pass through that part of the clearing there, I’ll be right behind you”.

I start to edge my way round the clearing, never taking my eye off the shadow in the trees just ahead. I’m trying so hard to focus on it… To understand what it is that I am seeing, but I can’t. The very branches themselves seem to be moving, cracking and rippling in the shade.

​

The figure takes a sudden step forward.

“RUN!” my Grandad shouts, raising the rifle and firing a loud shot up into the air.

Unprepared for such a sudden noise my ears ring as I scramble and stumble through the forest, along a natural path of sorts between the trees, though I stumble to a halt when I realize my Grandad is not behind me.

He told me to run, but, do I go back for him?

…

…I have to. It’s a no-brainer.

So I swivel around and prepare to charge back to the clearing when the man himself staggers out through the bushes towards me, face white as a sheet.

“Get that damned thing out of my face, ya idiot”, he grunts as she shoves away the barrel of my rifle, and together we race through the forest. My Grandad dumps his backpack and I do likewise, leaving the equipment behind as we tear through the undergrowth, way back to where we parked the truck the other day.

When at last we see it, waiting for us on the edge of a dirt-track road, we throw ourselves inside, and my Grandad stuffs in the key and turns it with a clank, the engine revving into life.

The wheels spin and away we go, back through the wilds down the long back roads of the woodlands.

​

…

​

I summon the courage, after a while and once the air has cooled, to ask my Grandad what he saw. What happened after he fired the rifle.

“Thing tried to speak to me again. The deep woods, Robbie. I’m sorry for taking you there. They can screw with a man’s mind, these places. Real, real bad”.

“There was something there though, wasn’t there. Something real”.

“Yes. I think so”.

“Was it… “ I falter. “Who was it, Grandad?”

“A nightmare. That’s all. Something that shouldn’t exist, by all the laws of nature”.

“Its voice… Did you, recognize the voice?”

“You said you heard something outside your tent last night. Right?”

I nod.

“It sounded like me?”

“Yeah”, I reply.

“But it wasn’t me, was it.”

“…No”, I reply. “No, it wasn’t”.

“Sometimes we hear voices. Don’t mean they belong to anyone”.

“So why didn’t you shoot it?”

“What?” his hands flex and clench around the wheel.

“You fired the rifle, but you aimed up into the air. Not at the shadow. Why did you do that?”

To this my Grandad has no answer. He only reaches briefly across to pat my shoulder, and as the clouds swirl overhead, we spend the rest of the long drive home in a contemplative silence.

Silence, with the occasional glance to the thickets of trees that pass us by.