Snap

Chapter 5

The pitch black darkness of the night sky was lit up by billions of small bright stars.

We don't normally get to see the stars very well from the built up areas where we live.

The stars have never looked so pretty then they did tonight, the sky looked as if small little fire flies were watching over us.

I'm waiting in the gazebo with Brooke for Kai and Jade to come out of the tent ready for our little night trip down to the river side.

"I'm excited to take some pictures with all of you so I can post it on Instagram so I can look back on this night" Brooke says as I lay down next to her on the floor who is sitting up right.

"Me too" I say as I look up to her and she smiles down to me, we lock eyes and we both sigh in unison.

"Are you comfortable like that? Laying on the hard cold floor" Brooke asks as she analyses my whole body.

"I actually am haha" I laugh.

Brooke lays down next to me and closes her eyes.

"You better not fall asleep, we have a walk to go on" I turn my head towards her.

"Oh calm down, I won't, I'll sit up if it makes you feel more at ease" she sits back up.

"You know for a fact I didn't mean it like that" I sit up with her.

We hear Kai and Jade finally leave the tent as Kai runs into the rope we set up to hang out washing.

"I think that's our cue" I stand up and help Brooke up off the floor.

We gather all our phones so we are able to take photos in some spots we thought were pretty looking or we felt like we would look nice in a photo, Kai wanted to take some landscape photos, Brooke and I wanted to take some selfies and group photos.

The trail that takes us to the walking path down by the river is unstable, it's covered with sticks, leaves and small rocks.

We walk excitedly in a single file, following each other down to the path.

As we reach the walking path we stop for a short moment before we continue along the river side.

We stop multiple times to take photos of the river at sunset, we take individual photos, pairs and group photos of each other.

We continue walking further down the river, the sky gets darker and the wind gets stronger as we keep taking photos in different locations.

The sound of the wind, the river, the trees, they are all like music to my ears, I really enjoy being out in nature.

We reach a wider section of the walking trail and decide to take some more photos in front of a large tree, we all take turns.

I hadn't noticed it yet but the wind had suddenly and completely stopped and it fell oddly silent... dead silent in fact, the sound of the running water from the river was nonexistent, the trees, the bugs, everything around me was silent, I couldn't hear anything but my friends talking about where they should stand and what pose they should do for the photos.

One by one Brooke, Kai, Jade and myself all took some photos of each other and of the trees and the river.

When it came to the time to take a group photo of Kai, Jade and Brooke the camera wouldn't focus, it wasn't detecting their faces and the camera was blurry, I couldn't figure out why, but when it eventually did focus the quality of the photos were poor and it looked like they had a dark shadow behind them even though the flash of the phone camera went off to light up their faces.

Next Kai was taking a girls group photo, it was a photo of myself, Brooke and Jade, I was on the far left, on the end, Jade was in the middle and Brooke was on the far right, closet to the river water.

Kai was talking the photo... and of course we had trouble with this set of photos as well... I looked all shiny and oily where Jade and Brooke looked normal yet somewhat dark as if they had a shadow cast on them..

While Kai and Brooke were trying to sort out the camera problem I kept looking over to my left side near a small hill/ wall of dirt that blocked us in between the camping grounds and the river on the walking trail.

I looked over to a seperate path that I hadn't had noticed before on the previous days we came down to the river.

it connected up to the top of the hill, I assumed it led to another section of the camp grounds.

My attention kept being brought over to it, I was feeling uneasy but ignored how I felt.

"I didn't know there was another pathway leading to this spot on the trail, I thought the one we took was the main one" I said out loud without thinking after a while of starring at the new path.

Kai finally thought he had fixed the problem so we set back up for the photo.

I jerk my eyes to my left and eyes the pathway for a split second thinking I heard a twig snap, I brush it off and look back over to Kai for the photo.

Once he takes the photo I heard two more twigs snap  from that direction but this time slightly closer.

I try to see if there are any snapped sticks on the floor that any of us may have stepped on or if any wildlife may have been making the noises around us but I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, I look back to my friends kind of freaked out.

"Did you guys hear that?" I ask them.

"It sounded like someone was walking on twigs and the twigs snapping...." I say.

"Lily.. I'm going to be honest, I did but I thought I was just being paranoid" Jade said as she placed a hand in my shoulder.

We go silent for a few min and I hear another other twig snap, this time it sounded like it was right next to me about 10 steps to my left.

Brooke freaks out "Guys let's go!" she starts fast walking back down the path/direction we came from.

Kai and Jade follow her, they are right behind Brooke, I'm at the end of the line as we all rush back down the path way towards our camp.

Jade pulls me to walk in front of her, I can tell she has a bad feeling about something due to her acting like I was in danger and pulling me from walking behind her to walking in front of her.