A town named Winter

Kevin

I was first person Todd woke up this morning. He said he needed me to look at something. We walk out of the tent and close it back up before I noticed it all. On all the trees that surrounded the tent, pentagrams were drawn. I walk up to a tree to examine it closer. The pentagrams were made of a dark inky material. I wipe one and my finger comes back with dark red liquid. I quickly wipe in off with my pants.

"I woke you up to look at it first so you could tell me if you think one of your friends did this."

"I'm not sure. Maybe. But they both slept next to me. Surely I would have woken up when they got up, right?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. I don't want to let the other hikers see this and panic."

"Oh my god. What are those?!" Meghan and Adam of course chose this moment to leave the tent. The noise made more stirring come from the tent.

"I think we are too late to fix this." I said this as I turned back to Todd. He looked aggravated and tired already. Everyone else piled out of the tent to check out the source of the commotion. Stephanie screamed when she saw it. Amy held onto her arm and tried to calm her down, but she was hysterical.

"It wasn't a dream! I saw a shadow last night roaming around our tent. It was the demon! She's marking us!"

"Just calm down and breath Steph. Someone's just playing a joke on us."

She's right. Someone is trying to cause trouble and I can guess who. I stare at Jake. He is just walking around looking at the pentagrams. I walk up to him and push his shoulder.

"What the hell, man? What's your deal? Don't go around shoving people!"

"You need to come clean. Your pranks have gone too far this time. The girls are terrified."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"The hell you don't! You're the one that told that demonic story!"

"It was probably Alex that did this. Maybe she's a witch herself! Look at that green hair! I bet she's a freak!"

Alex looks up after hearing this. She was filming the pentagrams. She put the camera down and turned to us.

"I was sleeping on side of the tent furthest away from the opening. I would've woke everyone up crawling over them to get to the exit. There's no way I did this!"

Todd and Ryan got between us at this point. Todd speaks up.

"Enough you two. There's no proof as to who did this yet so everyone needs to relax. This is a prank, but until we figure out who did it let's be civil."

Stephanie is still crying and clinging to Amy. If she saw someone out here last night, we just got to figure out who it was. I have my guess but I will just have to prove it. Until then, we need to just forget about it and move on.

"We have wasted too much time. Winter is only a short distance away now. Let's forget about this joke and make our way there. We can explore the town today and camp there tonight."

"Are you crazy! If the demon marked us already, we will be just giving ourselves to her on a silver splatter if we stay there."

"Just breath Stephanie. There is no demon and never was. We can't let our imaginations run wild here."

Amy stood away from the tent with Stephanie trying to calm her down while everyone else packs up. We need to put as much distance between us this site as we can.

We start hiking again finally and Stephanie had stopped crying. She still looked terrified, but she will make it. She keeps stealing glances at Alex. I really hope she didn't listen to Jake and is thinking Alex would do something like this. He's just trying to take the blame off of himself.