In Their Domain

Chapter 6

The next thing that Sara remembered was waking up in her tent, daylight filtering through the thin material. She stretched, but the cool morning air made her quickly pull her arms back under the covers as she inched closer to Arlo. She noticed Chris was already gone and could hear someone moving around the camp, just outside the tent. As she lay there quietly, she started to make out the voices of Dean and Annie.

"Hey," Sara said, nudging Arlo gently. She wasn't sure how tired he still was, but when that didn't wake him, she seemed content to just lay there quietly for a little bit longer.

"That all sounds so wild! I'm so mad I missed it!" Annie pouted as she broke a few twigs and added them to the fire. "Can we do it again tonight, so I can go? I haven't seen anything weird yet!"

"I don't know if we're gonna stay another night," Chris said, looking at Dean with the hope of getting some backup.

"Actually, Annie and I were talking about that," Dean said. "I think we should go get our stuff from the car and bring it back here. We'll have plenty of time to set up before dark, and we can set up our tent right there." Dean twisted to point out a spot between skinny tree trunks on the other side of Sara's tent.

"No, no, no." Chris shook his head, which only exacerbated his headache. "I don't wanna stay here. And Arlo doesn't either."

"Man, seriously?" Dean balked. "You really wanna go home with three minutes of footage when we came halfway around the damned world to get here? Waste all that time we spent in airports, and at the rental place, and getting passports and shit?" Dean counted out each point on one of his fingers as he leaned forward. "Why? For what? Cuz we got a little turned around yesterday?"

"A little turned around?!"

"It happens a lot. It's a forest, and all the trees look alike. It's nothing supernatural, or anything to feel embarrassed by," Annie assured, and though she was probably trying to genuinely make Chris feel better, what she said came off as mostly patronizing.

Chris let his head fall into his hands as he let out a deep sigh. The fear that maybe he was just taking all of this way too seriously and out of context was really starting to get to him. But it was also just as impossible to deny the weird shit they'd experienced. They'd counted five sources of light last night. First, they'd walked towards the one Arlo had sworn was the right one, but the closer they got to the treeline, the farther the fire looked—as if it'd been moving away from them—slinking back into the distance.

Freaked out, they'd backtracked and went for the one Chris had zeroed in on, but their situation had only gotten worse when they'd gotten back into the circle. Chris swore he'd heard those bells again. Arlo had too. Then there were the footsteps... Chris shuttered and shook out his arms as he sat up straight again. "I'm gonna wake up Arlo," he said, wincing as he stood. "We were planning on walking Sara back to their car to get her phone."

"Their car?" Dean raised a brow. "How far away are y'all parked?" he asked, turning his attention back to Annie.

"Same place as you, I mean there's only one place to park, that I know of," Annie said casually as she put the kettle on over the fire.

"Mmmm..." Dean hummed skeptically as he raised a brow, leaning away from her a little while watching her hang the kettle from the metal tripod straddling the fire. "Did we not park in the right place, then?"

Chris paused on his way to Sara's tent. Maybe Dean wasn't too far gone to listen to reason. "We followed the only signs we saw."

Dean nodded slightly. "He is right about that..."

Chris nodded too. "Exactly."

"But," Dean said, raising a hand to stop Chris before the pretty boy could protest. "Hear me out, if we did miss a sign somewhere, and parked in the wrong place, that could account for why we got confused when we were looking for it."