Falls Peak

Chapter 6

No one said a word as they followed Matt, still keeping a reasonable distance between him and them so that if they happened to be spotted by someone, they wouldn't think they were together. That and they knew he'd be smirking at them so hard right now.

Matt hadn't said anything either, but he kept looking back to make sure that his followers were still there. Although they all knew the way to the woods, he'd led them to a dirt track that wasn't as well known to the general public, forcing Kyle to whisper to the girls.

"You ever think we'd be following Matt Maguire into the woods like this?" He chuckled.

"It would've been a lot less weird before his brother got sent to jail" Jess noted.

"You make it sound so romantic" Katie said dryly. "Why is everyone still obsessed with that anyway?"

"Well, probably because murder is a pretty big deal" Offered Kyle.

"Yeah and it was only a couple of months ago" Jess backed up.

"Yeah but if he can move on from it, why can't anybody else?" Katie asked, gesturing toward their makeshift scout leader.

"You call this moving on?" Jess raised her eyebrows. Katie conceded Jess' point with a nod of her head but then shot back with a point of her own.

"Sure, he's the Captain Ahab chasing the white whale of Falls Peak but at least it's proactive. Half of the people around town haven't set foot in these woods since they found the body. It's stupid. The killer's in jail and now we've got to go back to normal".

"The killer might be in jail but the beast is still out there" Kyle put on the creepiest voice that he could, forcing the girls into a minor fit of giggles. Quickly, they hushed up once they caught up with Matt who'd stopped to wait for them. "Why'd you stop?" Kyle asked him.

"We need to go in this way" Matt pointed to an opening between a couple of trees that was only visible because he'd pointed it out. Walking past, they would most certainly have missed it.

"I'm quite sure that's not the way we went last night" Jess told him.

"But it's faster" Countered Matt. "It's the way I went yesterday and we ended up in the same place right?"

Kyle shared an uncertain look with Jess. Katie however, was more than happy to be the first one to squeeze through the gap.

"Come on guys, what's the worst that could happen?" She chirped as she disappeared into the shrubbery, knowing full well that their previous conversation was about the worst thing that could happen.

However, with little else to lose, they both followed behind Matt and came out the other side unscathed, aside from Jess' ruined hair that is.

"Eww" She huffed as she tried in vain to make it look less wild.

Although they were convinced that they hadn't been here last night, none of them could really be one-hundred-per-cent sure. It didn't matter how many times you went into a forest, it always looked like a completely different place at night.

What had been a claustrophobic and suffocating place less than twenty-four hours ago, now looked completely calm and peaceful. Even with the invisible shadow of the beast looming over them.

"You know, you could actually mistake this place for beautiful" Jess said, echoing their thoughts.

"This way" Matt barged ahead of her with more intensity to his walking than he'd shown whilst they were walking the streets. He'd spent so much time in the woods that he'd become accustomed to the rougher terrain. Once again, the others followed, despite their trepidation.