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  “Won't it be kind of spooky up here?” she said finally. “Alone, I mean? At night?”

  “Come on,” Chandler said with a smile, “don't be ridiculous.”

  “I mean it! It's just gonna be you and four dead people. I know you want to prove that you're the most dedicated student in the world, but you're taking this too far. It's not right for you to be all alone out here. Come back with the rest of us, we'll all get a drink in a bar somewhere in town, and then tomorrow -”

  “I'm going to be fine,” Chandler said firmly, interrupting her, “and besides, don't you think I'm a little old to be scared of the dark? Anyway, you're welcome to stay with me. It could be fun.”

  “Hell, no,” Muriel replied. “I'm going back to town for a nice hot bath and a nice long drink.” She paused for a moment. “For some of us, this shit's just a job. A fascinating one, but a job nonetheless. We know when to leave the work behind for a few hours.” She patted Chandler on the side of the arm. “See you bright and early in the morning.”

  Chandler smiled and took a step back, and then she watched as Muriel climbed into the van and slid the door shut. And now, as the van's engine started and her fellow students prepared to leave the site, Chandler had to admit that she felt just the faintest tinge of discomfort. She told herself that she was being stupid, of course, but she really had to force herself to look cheery as the van drove off. Waving and smiling, she watched until the van was out of sight, and then she listened to the sound of the engine fading into the distance, and then her smile disappeared as she found herself standing all alone in a muddy clearing at sundown.

  “I'll be fine,” she said yet again, this time to remind herself. And to cheer herself up a little. “I've got work to do.”

  ***

  A portable light stood propped on the table in the cabin, casting a bright white glow across the room. Night had properly drawn in now. Chandler remained on her knees next to the chair and continued her examination of Garrett's body.

  “You were quite a long way from home, weren't you?” she said as she carefully removed a Lordstown ceremonial medal from one of his pockets. “A long way from any recognized road or trail, too. Whatever brought you to this place, huh?”

  She glanced up at the dead face.

  “My father would have a field day with you,” she continued. “You're just the kind of puzzle he'd enjoy.”

  She peered at the medal for a moment, but she'd seen one like it before. Her theory about Garrett's war wounds seemed to be correct, and she saw now that he'd been honored by his town upon his return from the battlefields. This made her think that he must, once, have been a noted figure in his community, someone who was looked up to by the people in his town. She didn't have the right equipment with her at that moment, but she was starting to think that a search of the historical records might well yield some information about this Mr. Garrett, and she liked the idea of perhaps discovering more about his life. And, of course, about how he'd ended up dead on a chair in a remote cabin out in the middle of nowhere.

  “Robbery my ass,” she muttered. “So much for -”

  Hearing a faint clicking sound in the distance, she turned and looked over her shoulder. The glow from the portable light was almost blinding, making it impossible for her to see much other than the sight of the well-lit cabin reflected in the window. The exception to that was the single broken pane, which showed a view of utter darkness outside.

  Listening for a moment, Chandler realized she could now hear nothing but silence. And if she was honest, it was the silence that had really troubled her in the hours since her fellow students had left. The whole area around the cabin seemed utterly devoid of any wildlife, and she'd heard not even so much as birdsong. She had no idea why animals would steer clear of such a large area, although she kept telling herself that there was no reason to worry, that she was probably just over-thinking something that was completely normal.

  Still, that clicking sound had been very real, and she was suddenly very aware that she was miles and miles from civilization.

  Grabbing her phone, she saw that she had 25% battery remaining and barely a single bar of coverage. She was tempted for a moment to call home, just to hear her father's voice and to get some reassurance, but then she told herself to grow up a little and to stay focused on the task at hand. She still pulled up some photos, however, and she scrolled through shots of her family in the garden during the previous summer. Soon she'd be back with them, and she couldn't wait to explain all about her work in the cabin. Soon she'd prove to both her father and her mother that she had what it took to follow in their footsteps.

  She allowed herself a brief smile.

  Setting the phone back down, she began to turn to Garrett again, only to then hear a bumping sound against the cabin's exterior wall.

  She immediately got to her feet and look over at the closed door. She told herself not to worry, but she also had to admit that her heart was racing. Were there wolves in the area? Bears? Was there maybe a jail somewhere, with bad security? Did random murderous hobos hang around in the forest? All these fears rushed through her mind, but after a moment she told herself that she had to nip this panic in the bud. She took a deep breath, and then she stepped around Garrett's chair and made her way over to the door.

  “Back in a moment,” she told him under her breath.

  As soon as she opened the door, she felt the cold outside air and she saw her breath. The battery-powered light in the cabin had actually made the interior fairly warm, but now Chandler stepped outside and felt just how cold the night was becoming. She glanced around, to make sure that there was no sign of anyone or anything nearby, and then she took a flashlight from her belt and switched it on, casting the beam in every direction. Still, she saw nothing, but she closed the door and then began to make her way around the side of the cabin. Her fear was evaporating now, and she told herself that she just had to prove that those two brief noises had been no cause for concern.

  Once she'd walked all the way around the cabin, she stopped and shone the flashlight out across the clearing. There was clearly nobody out there, but after a moment the beam caught a smudged patch of darkness on the ground, and Chandler immediately knew what she was seeing.

  It was the body of the man who'd been brought down from the tree.

  The body hadn't moved, not so far as she could tell, but Chandler felt distinctly uneasy as she kept the flashlight trained in its direction. For a moment, she almost expected the dark shape to shift slightly, or perhaps for a wolf or some other predator to hurry over and start chewing on the meat. The flashlight's beam shifted slightly as her hand began to tremble, and for a few seconds she looked at the distant forest. There was still no sign of any kind of wildlife, but in that moment she desperately hoped to see perhaps a deer or even just a bird. Anything, to show that there was life out there.

  She shone the flashlight around a little further, still watching the forest, and then she turned back toward the cabin.

  Suddenly the beam caught a figure standing far out across the clearing. Gripped by fear, Chandler realized that it was the dead man, with the chain still around his neck. He was leaning heavily to one side, and after a moment he took a slow, stumbling step forward.

  Gasping, Chandler turned and hurried around the side of the cabin, and then she stopped and tried to regather her composure.

  That wasn't real, she told herself. You're just losing your mind.

  Panicking and starting to feel out of breath, she continued for a few seconds to try calming herself, and then she realized she had to look again. The man from the tree was definitely dead and there was no way he could have been standing just now, and she knew that she just had to prove that to herself. She'd never expected that her mind would play these kinds of tricks on her, but she figured that it was imperative now that she regain control. She counted to three, then she hesitated, then she counted to three again, and then finally she managed to force herself to step back around the c
abin and shine the light across the clearing.

  There was no-one standing there.

  She felt an immediately rush of relief, but then she looked at the dark smudge on the ground. At first, she told herself that this was the dead body, in its proper position. Slowly, however, doubts began to creep into her mind. Was the smudge as large as it had been before? Was it definitely the body, or could it possible just be a disturbed patch in the mud? She swallowed hard as she waited to understand the truth, for sense and sanity to be re-established, and then she took a step forward, hoping to get a slightly better view.

  Her hand was trembling more than ever, causing the flashlight's beam to sway this way and that, but she was just about able to keep it trained on the dark smudge. And the more she looked, the more she struggled to determined whether she could actually see the body on the ground.

  She began to turn, casting the beam wide across the clearing. When she finally saw that there was nobody out there, she felt a huge rush of relief, although this was tempered by the realization that – even if it had only been for one moment – she'd definitely imagined seeing that figure standing all the way out there with the chain around its neck.

  She took a step back.

  “There's no-one here,” she said out loud, trying to calm herself down.

  She took a deep breath.

  She listened.

  She heard nothing.

  Checking her phone again, she tried to call her parents, just to hear their voices. Shivering slightly in the cold, she brought up her father's number and tapped the green circle, and then she waited as the phone emitted a series of faint crackles. She desperately wanted the call to connect, but after a few seconds she began to realize that she wasn't going to be so lucky. Finally the call was dropped, and she told herself that she'd been dumb to even try. Far better to tell her parents about her exciting new discovery in person, when she could dump it all on them at once.

  They'd be so proud.

  And then, suddenly, she realized she could hear something. She could hear a chain rattling nearby.

  Clenching her teeth, she turned and shone the torch back toward the far end of the cabin, and to her horror she found the dead, hanged man standing right behind her.

  Twenty-Three

  “Hmm, what?”

  Startled from a deep sleep, Doctor Jack Levant opened his eyes in darkness and – for a moment – had no idea where he was. He blinked a couple of times, aware that he was in a strange bed, and then he saw the red display of a hotel bedside clock, and he sighed as he rolled onto his back and remembered all the business about driving out to check on a site that a student had uncovered.

  Reaching up, he wiped sweat from his brow, and then he remained on his back for a moment as he tried to understand why he'd woken. He had a vague idea that he'd been dreaming, and that the dream had been rather unpleasant, but beyond that he was unable to recall any details. This in itself wasn't particularly unusual, of course, since he never slept well when he was away from home. Nevertheless, his mind was alert and he could feel a little pressure in his bladder, and he knew he'd have to make the long journey to the bathroom before going back to sleep.

  He waited a few minutes more, going over a few matters in his mind, and then he hauled himself out of bed and began to shuffle over to the en-suite.

  As he reached the door, his phone suddenly starting vibrating on the nightstand.

  Furrowing his brow, Levant turned and saw that the screen was flashing. He didn't remember setting an alarm, and he certainly wouldn't have set one for 2am, but it wouldn't be the first time his difficulties with technology had manifested in this manner. Figuring that he couldn't be bothered going all the way over to turn the alarm off just yet, he muttered a few curse words under his breath as he turned and resumed his slow journey to the toilet. And then, as he began to pee, he heard the phone fall silent again.

  “Some alarm,” he said out loud.

  Or had it been the ringtone?

  For a moment, he really wasn't sure.

  He began to pee, but a moment later the phone began to vibrate once again.

  “Oh, come off it,” he sighed, feeling that familiar flicker of irritation that came any time one of these wretched devices displeased him. “I am not a slave to these things,” he continued, for nobody's benefit but his own. “I shall not run to switch you off, just because you demand my attention.”

  He continued to pee, and the whole process took rather longer than he would have liked. Still, at his age, he supposed that he wasn't doing too badly. After flushing and washing his hands, he began to make his way back to the bed, just as the phone once more stopped vibrating.

  Sighing as he felt another twinge of pain in his back, he plopped down on the side of the bed and picked up the phone. His annoyance at the bright screen was quickly wiped away, however, as he saw that he had two missed calls from Catherine Chandler. He tapped to take a closer look, figuring that perhaps these calls had been from earlier but that he'd simply missed them, but then he saw that the calls had both been within the past few minutes.

  “It's two in the morning,” he muttered. “I'm not going to listen to some drunk -”

  Suddenly the phone began to vibrate yet again, and once more Catherine Chandler's name flashed onto the screen.

  Levant let out a long, heavy sigh, and for a few seconds he considered rejecting the call and switching the phone off. Any other student would have received that treatment, but he realized that Chandler – out of all of them – was the most studious and serious. In other words, she was the least likely to be calling for some trivial reason. Finally, despite continuing misgivings, he swiped to answer, and he tapped to activate the phone's speakers.

  “Ms. Chandler,” he boomed, “I am not very -”

  “There's something here!” she shouted, sounding absolutely panicked on the other end of the line. “You have to -”

  Before she could finish, her voice was swallowed by a burst of static. Once the static was over, Levant heard only a series of loud, frenzied bumps, as if something was slamming against wood.

  He sat and listened for a moment, trying to make sense of what he was hearing.

  “Ms. Chandler?” he said cautiously. “What's going on?”

  He listened some more, but the bumps and thuds continued for a moment before suddenly being replaced by the sound of somebody's panicked, gasping breaths.

  “Ms. Chandler?” he said again. “What are you -”

  “Help me!” she sobbed, sounding as if she was breaking down completely. “I tried the others but they didn't pick up! Doctor Levant, I don't know how but -”

  Suddenly she screamed as another, louder bumping sound rang out, followed by shuffling and scraping noises and then a heavy thud.

  “Ms. Chandler,” Levant said, now starting to worry just a little, “I want you to calm down and tell me exactly what's happening.”

  “I'm at the site!” she sobbed.

  “At the...” He paused, and it took a moment before he realized what she meant. “The site in the valley? What are you doing there at two in the morning?”

  “There's something out there,” she whimpered. “I saw it. I got back in, but now it's trying to get into the cabin. Doctor Levant, you have to help me. I tried calling the police, but I couldn't get through. I saw its face, it's the man from the tree and he -”

  Before she could finish, there was another thud, this time accompanied by the sound of wood splitting. Chandler screamed, and Levant sat for a moment and listened to what sounded like utter chaos on the other end of the line.

  “Chandler,” he said after a few seconds, “what -”

  Again he was interrupted, this time by a brief cry. He heard footsteps, but only for a few seconds, and then a series of loud, heavy thuds, as if somebody had begun knocking on a door.

  “He's trying to get in,” Chandler whispered suddenly over the phone. “Doctor Levant, I don't know what to do, but you have to send help.”
/>   “I don't understand what's happening,” Levant replied, still feeling a little exasperated. “Are you seriously telling me that you're up there at the site? At two o'clock in the morning? Have you been drinking? Or worse? You're not high, are you?”

  Suddenly he heard the sound of wood being smashed. Chandler cried out, then it sounded as if glass was being broken, and finally the line went dead.

  Immediately, Levant tried to call Chandler back, only to be put straight through to her voicemail:

  “This is Catherine Chandler's phone,” her voice said, sounding cheery. “I can't -”

  He cut the call, and then he sat in silence for a moment.

  In all his years as a teacher, Doctor Jack Levant had experienced more than his fair share of student pranks. He'd found the past few years particularly trying, as students had begun to use smartphones and video editing software to construct ever more elaborate deceptions. Frankly, he was tired of his students' drama and he always preferred to stay well away from these things, but at this particular moment he couldn't shake the feeling that perhaps something really was wrong. He tried Chandler's number again, still being put straight through to her voicemail, and then he sat for a moment longer. Was Catherine Chandler really the kind of person who'd play a prank? Serious, sometimes rather humorless Catherine Chandler, who had been one of his most dedicated pupils?

  He hesitated for a moment, and then – despite the creeping concern that he was being made the victim of a joke – he dialed 911.

  “Hello,” he said, as soon as a voice answered on the other end, “I hope I'm not wasting your time, but I feel I must report something.”

  Twenty-Four

  “Idiots,” Levant fumed as he eased his car to the side of the road and cut the engine, next to a turning that led deep into the forest. “I swear, if she's still alive, I'll kill her.”

  It was almost 4am now, and the night seemed to be at its darkest. Having hurriedly dressed and left the hotel, without so much as a coffee, Levant was starting to feel a little groggy as he leaned back in his seat.