It was a night just like this one.
A group of friends — your age, maybe a little older — camping in the woods about forty miles from here. Good trip. Warm enough, clear sky, fire going strong. The kind of night that makes you feel like nothing bad happens to people.
One of them needed to use the bathroom. Went off into the trees alone, which everyone agrees later was the first mistake.
When he came back, he was pale. He sat down without speaking. They asked what was wrong. He said he'd seen something.
He said he'd been about thirty feet into the trees when he heard movement. Not animal movement — deliberate, bipedal, trying to be quiet but not quite managing it. He looked around and he couldn't see anything. But he could hear it. Moving parallel to him. Matching his pace.
He turned to go back to camp. The movement changed direction to match his.
He walked faster. The movement walked faster.
He ran. The movement ran.
He came out of the trees at the edge of camp and turned around.
Right at the tree line, just inside the shadow, something stopped. He could see the outline of it. Could not identify it. Could not tell what it was. Could tell that it was looking at him.
They all looked at the tree line now. The fire popped. Someone said he was messing with them. He said he wasn't. Someone said it was probably a deer. He said it wasn't.
They went to bed. They told themselves it was nothing.
At 3 AM, one of them woke up. She lay in her sleeping bag and listened. There was a sound she couldn't place — low, rhythmic, just outside the tent.
She unzipped the tent enough to look.
At the edge of the firelight, where the dark began, something was standing and looking at the tent.
She zipped the tent closed. She lay down. She did not scream. She waited for morning.
In the morning everything was normal. Everything was bright and clear and the forest was just a forest.
They packed up and left. Nobody talked about it much afterward.
But when the drive home took them past a long stretch of dark tree line, every single one of them checked the trees.
And one of them saw something watching from just inside the shadow, moving slowly to keep pace with the car.
She didn't say anything. Neither would you.
Look behind you.
Look at the tree line.
It was a night just like this one.