hare brained.

Laurie followed Zach through the woods and thought about every internet safety talk she’d had to endure at school in the mid 2000s. Here she was with a random man she had barely known for twelve hours and agreed to do an experiment with him. If she had more sense she would simply leave and go home. But she wanted to be here, and she felt like she had been called to him anyway. Not to mention the fact she was almost in her mid thirties and therefore could make bad decisions on her own.

Besides, she was curious about what Zach wanted to do anyway.

He’d at least given her a bit of time to freshen up and change out of yesterday’s clothes. It was marginally warmer today for a March spring day, so instead of the cargo trousers she had on yesterday she’d opted for shorts instead. She was sensible enough to have her rain mac on though, because this was England after all.

They must have been walking for about ten minutes or so before they reached a small clearing in the woods that was secluded enough from any potential passersby - granted, that possibility was slim.

“Here should be fine,” Zach said, turning to Laurie.

She nodded. “What is it you want to do?”

He pulled out two pills and the mushroom she had vomited up earlier on. Laurie raised an eyebrow at the items.

“Aren’t you curious about why you’re dreaming up the things you do?”

“Of course I am,” she folded her arms. “I didn’t expect to eat something that I threw up.”

Zach rolled his eyes and took a few steps closer to her. “I gave it a rinse. Best I could do. Besides: you ate this last night and you brought it back up as if it hadn’t been digested at all.”

“So?”

“It has to mean something. The dreams, the spores in the fog, you looking for me… it’s all connected.”

Any sensible bone Laurie had left in her body was long gone. This was the reason she was here: to find Zach and get to the bottom of what the spirit in the woods wanted. All the research she had done in the lead up to this barely touched the surface. There was more to it. There was a magic to it that she couldn’t understand but he might. 

Zach had been acquainted with the forest far longer than she had.

Laurie knew she had to trust him on this, even if the reality was that she shouldn’t. He eyed her like he didn’t know what to do with it, as if she was some little rabbit he was preying upon. She didn’t know what animal he was in return.

“Do you think my dreams are how the spirit is communicating with me?”

“It must be,” Zach said. “We need to find out if that’s the case.”

“And you want me to eat a mushroom with…?”

“Sleeping pills. See if there’s anything we can do to open up the connection.”

“If it works?” Laurie folded her arms. “What then?”

He tilted his head to the side ever so slightly. “Your choice. I wonder if there’s a way to keep that connection open when you’re awake. Make it your art.”

She hummed. “And what exactly is your art?”

His lips twitched upwards briefly in amusement. “You’ll find out soon enough. I don’t want to share that yet.”

“Right. Fine. Give it here then.” She stepped towards him with a hand outstretched. “You didn’t bring water so I’ll just take ‘em all together. I can tell you if anything happens. You’ll be here?”

“I’ll be here.” Zach handed over the consumables. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Laurie nodded, shoving all of them into her mouth in one go and taking a painfully long time to chew and swallow it all. He almost seemed impressed by the dedication to the cause.

There was no way of knowing how long it would take to kick in all together, so Laurie sat down in the centre of the clearing whilst Zach remained at the edge, watching her intently. She ignored him for the most part, doodling innocuous things in the dirt with her fingers and staring up at the treetops where the sunlight filtered through, dappling down onto her face.

It warmed Laurie from the inside out, which was needed after last night’s debacle. Everything had to melt away at some point, didn’t it? Why wait? It could start now. She might not see the sun again in a clear sky because she would only know it through the trees. That could be enough for her. Even if her environment started to pulse around her.

Ah. The singular mushroom was kicking in.

Everything was melting away now. She stopped her incessant doodling and lay down on her side, clutching at the soil as she slowly but surely drifted off to sleep.

-

She knew nothing but pain.

Where was it coming from?

Somewhere inside her. In her very flesh and bone. Somewhere deep, that no contact with the earth could fix. No grounding could keep her from looking to the stars and silently begging for mercy.

Laurie was on her hands and knees, tears streaming down her face and dropping onto the ground in front of her. She pressed her fingers into the wet earth. She licked them. She hoped it would ease the pain.

Gentle hands took hold of her by the shoulders. A voice telling her it would be okay. That this was what she wanted. She didn’t know who it was, it was far too distorted.

Laurie was made to lie down on the ground, laying on her back and staring up at the night sky. The stars had just cracked through the trees.

And in her field of vision: a tall stone with a circle cut through it.

She laughed through the pain.

She laughed and she laughed and she cried and she almost vomited-

-

Laurie gasped as she woke up, uncertain of the reality around her. 

She rolled onto her front and started coughing, desperately trying to steady herself on the dirt and stop her head from spinning so fast. She clawed at the ground, not caring that it was going to get under her fingernails and likely ruin them if she didn’t stop scrabbling at it so hard. In fact, she barely noticed when a couple of them snapped off. Not that they were very long in the first place.

She tried to crawl away but her body wasn’t working, still under the effects of the sleeping pills that Zach had given her. He was next to her, she could tell that much. She wasn’t paying any attention to what he was doing or saying, until his hand on her back brought her back to her senses.

She stopped in her digging of the ground like a wild animal. She hadn’t realised her coughing had been replaced by crying. She remained on all fours for a moment before sitting back on her knees, wiping her dirty hands on her thighs in an effort to get rid of dry dirt from them. Zach’s hand remained on her mid back for a little longer before it trailed up to grip her shoulder.

“You’re alright,” he said. “You’re alive. You’re here. With me.” He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, and she nodded in acknowledgement.

“That was really weird-”

“Hello?” a stranger’s voice called out. “Are you okay there?”

Both Laurie and Zach froze, glanced at each other, the former with a more questioning look on her face than the latter. He then rose to his feet first, offering his hands out to Laurie who took his assistance gratefully, very much unsteady on her feet.

She swayed, looped one arm around his elbow and then gripped his upper arm with her other, staring down whilst her head still swam. She looked up briefly when a hiker entered the clearing: he really was decked to the nines in the right gear for it and had a friendly face.

“Oh!” he smiled brightly at the two of them. “I heard someone in distress - thought they might be on their own…”

Laurie didn’t know why her grip tightened on Zach, but he responded by placing his free hand over where hers rested on him. She still didn’t raise her head, her eyes now cast down again.

“No,” Zach replied, a little tense. “She’s fine - we’re fine. Panic attack. That’s all.”

“Right. Understandable. The times we live in now…”

“Exactly. How come you’re so far from home?” he asked the hiker.

“Needed to get out of my own head.”

“Like many others.”

“And what about you?”

“Research,” Zach said. “My partner and I have been out here a few weeks now, haven’t we?”

Laurie nodded, going along with the lie. What a lie it was.

“You live out here?” the hiker seemed surprised. “What sort of research are you doing?”

“Can’t say.”

An awkward silence hung between them. Laurie risked a glance at the hiker, who appeared to be eyeing her oddly as if he didn’t quite believe the situation she was in. She dug her nails into Zach’s arm.

“We have some supplies if you’re in need…?” Zach tried to bring it back to a more jovial, relaxed tone.

The hiker shook his head. “No need for that - I wouldn’t mind a sit down on a proper chair though. If you have one, that is.”

“Yeah. Come with us. Keep your distance though, if you don’t mind…” Zach gave the hiker a once over before turning his back and leading him and Laurie back towards the shelter. “I’m going to need you to take another pill,” he whispered to her.

“Why?” she hissed back with a frown.

“Can’t have you watching what happens next.”

The frown remained on her brow as she thought over what the hell Zach could possibly mean about that. It must have been to do with what he referred to as his art. Why didn’t he want her to see it yet? What was so bad about it- oh. Laurie’s expression turned to one of surprise when she realised the direction that Zach was going.

What the hell was he going to do with the hiker?

“What if I just - I don’t know. Is there a river nearby? I can go for a walk…”

“Fine,” Zach huffed. “There’s one about twenty or thirty minutes from here. Take your time. I’ll give you a rough map of where to go. You’ll need to know where it is anyway if you’re here long term…”

The hiker was following them at a polite distance, and Laurie glanced back at him with a mildly forced smile once the three of them reached the shelter again. She was much steadier on her feet now, and dived for her backpack to take out a bit of stale bread she was surprised hadn’t gone bad yet. She tore pieces off and began nibbling on it whilst the hiker settled in and Zach went to find her a map.

“What’s your name?” she then asked the hiker in an effort to be polite.

“I’m James. You?”

“Laurie. That’s Zach.”

The man in question wandered back over to Laurie with a folded up map and an empty two litre water bottle, handing both over to her. “For the clothes.”

“Right…” Laurie looked between him and James. “I’ll be back soon.”

Trying to ignore the fact her legs were still a little wobbly and the notion that when she came back that James was not going to be there, Laurie set off and unfolded the map that was a crudely drawn thing with a few instructions on how to get to the river. She kept glancing back over her shoulder in anxiety about what was going to happen in the shelter and what she might find on her return. She didn’t regret leaving home for something like this, nor did she regret that she had an inkling of what was to happen to the hiker - even if she wasn’t to know the gory details yet - but what she did regret, strangely enough, was not digging around in her bag for her iPod for the walk.

Oh well. Laurie knew that it was better to be alone with her thoughts for the most part and it made the map easier to follow. She ended up reaching the river quicker than she had anticipated, taking a moment to remove her boots and socks so she could dip her toes into the refreshing, running water as she filled up the bottle. It was such a pointless task, but it was better than being unconscious again in that damn tent.

Once the bottle was filled up, Laurie moved further away from the bank of the river with her possessions so that her feet could dry off before popping her shoes back on. Except the crunch of the fallen leaves and the softness of the patches of grass under her feet had her not wanting to wear shoes on her way back to the camp. What a beautiful thing it was to feel the earth beneath her. How calm it was. She could stay here forever. She’d happily be buried amongst all of it too.

Carrying so many things on her travels back to the camp was irritating, but Laurie put up with it. It helped to slow her down enough that she wouldn’t end up intruding on Zach doing… whatever it was. She knew somewhere deep down what it would be, but didn’t want to face the reality of it yet.

Until, of course, Laurie arrived back at the camp and found the tent to be entirely deserted.

Forty five minutes. That’s all it had taken.

She dropped her shoes, socks, the bottle, and the map in a chair before standing still and listening out for any sign of movement. Laurie practically held her breath as she paid rapt attention to what was going on outside, a tightness blossoming in her chest as her feet seemed to move of their own accord back out into the open in order to follow the faint sounds of someone straining against… something.

She was careful to not step on any stray twigs, keeping her footsteps as quiet as possible. The lack of shoes made this all the more easy for her. She didn’t have to go very far until she saw some movement between the trees: Zach hauling a limp body through the forest.

Laurie stopped. Waited. Didn’t dare breathe.

She waited until Zach was far enough away again that she could follow without being noticed.

Except it was never going to be that straightforward. Nothing ever was.

Of course she would step on a rather knobbly twig that felt akin to stepping on a Lego. Laurie cursed out and hopped on one foot for a few moments as she spun around to head back towards the camp. She didn’t have to look behind her to know that Zach had dumped the body and was heading her way. She didn’t speed up or slow down, but eventually she stopped hopping, then hobbled, then was walking normally again until he grabbed her and slammed her against a tree.

Laurie tensed up and didn’t bother to struggle with how Zach had her wrists pinned behind her back in just one of his hands, whilst his other was clamped over her mouth. Something small and hard pressed against her lips; she knew it must have been one of the pills. Or at least, half of one of the pills.

“I told you to take your time,” his breath was hot in her ear. She shuddered, but there was no fear in her when there should have been.

Only intrigue.

It was the two of them out there now that the hiker was long gone from this mortal plane. Whilst Laurie knew she should have respected Zach’s wishes for the time being and waited for him to share what he was doing, at the same time there wasn’t much else for her to do except learn about his methods when it came to the spirit of the woods. She was impatient. She couldn’t have possibly waited any longer, even if the discovery of what he did was… concerning.

Since she wasn’t able to say anything, Laurie tested the waters and merely leaned back into him in an attempt to relax. She was in a precarious position. She didn’t know what he planned to do with her and she was likely about to find out.

“I’ve still not decided if I should kill you,” Zach then whispered. “Except something tells me I shouldn’t.” He pressed his hand more firmly against her mouth, the pill slipping between her lips and hitting her teeth. “Relax,” he said. “You clearly want to. It won’t send you to sleep.”

Laurie inhaled deeply, opening her mouth a little wider so that she could let the pill drop onto her tongue and then swallow it. It grated on her as it went down her throat, and she coughed to help ease the irritation of dry swallowing it.

Zach removed his hand from her face and let go of her wrists, spinning her around so that they were nose to nose, an arm around her waist now. Laurie didn’t break eye contact with him as she placed her hands on his shoulders, clutching at the fabric of his coat to keep herself steady for when the sleeping pill inevitably hit, considering the ones she had earlier weren’t even out of her system yet.

“Why did you follow me?” he asked, his breath brushing against her lips now.

“I was curious,” Laurie batted her eyelashes at him. Why did she do that? She’d known him for a day. Was it the proximity talking? The isolated situation? Or the fact that she’d seen him drug and kill someone in the name of art and it… it enthralled her to no end.

“I wasn’t ready to show you.”

“I know. Curiosity killed the cat. Satisfaction brought it back,” her lips twitched upwards in a slight smirk before she inhaled sharply as a sudden lightheadedness kicked in. Laurie swayed, and Zach instinctively steadied her.

“You sleepy?” he pouted at her, mockingly.

She blinked a few times to keep herself present, digging her heels into the ground. The soil was cool between her toes, and the feeling overcame her almost instantly: the desire to be at one with the earth, as if she were intertwined with it somehow.

A far cry from how she felt earlier.

“You shoved half a sleeping pill in my mouth.”

“Hmm. I know. What are we going to do with you, Laurie?”

Zach had reached for the elastic band tying her plait together and carefully pulled it out of her hair. She shook it out, her long, golden locks flowing and framing her face perfectly in the afternoon sun as it filtered through the tree branches.

“I won’t follow you again. Unless you want me to,” she murmured, linking her fingers behind his neck and pulling his face ever closer to hers if that was possible. Their noses touched. Zach froze.

“You’d do anything I’d say right now.” He tossed the hair tie away, firmly planting his hands on her waist properly.

Laurie instinctively arched in towards him, surprised to brush up against a hardness between his legs. Her smile was dozy.

“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” she said, closing the gap between them and planting her lips to his in an impulsive move that had Zach immediately break away from her for a moment.

He was still holding onto her, eyes searching her face for some kind of logical answer to why she had kissed him. Seeing nothing that could answer him, Zach truly caved and pressed his lips to Laurie’s in a much more desperate way than she initially had. As if he hadn’t known intimacy for some time; he was craving it without realising.

His stubbly face scratched against her as he took full control of the situation, moving to push her up against a nearby tree. Zach dutifully moved one of his hands behind Laurie’s head as a barrier between that at the tough bark. Her hands trailed up to tangle in his hair that she was certain had been far neater once upon a time, and was never going to be neat again. She was happy to mess it up further, and she smiled against his lips.

She’d been wanting to be this close with someone for a while too.

Zach slipped the hand still on her waist up her shirt, his calloused fingers grazing her skin as he made his way up towards her breasts. He kneaded one through her bra cup, eliciting a moan from the half drowsy woman.

“Aren’t you a malleable little thing?” Zach murmured against Laurie’s lips, forehead pressed to hers. She hummed in response, going in for a kiss again. He didn’t let her, moving his head away. “Needy too.”

Laurie shook her head, mildly distracted by the fact that Zach had pulled her bra down and was now tweaking her nipple between his thumb and index finger. She bit her lip and held back a mewl. An ache and uncomfortable wetness had started to grow between her legs, so she began to grind at the erection through his trousers. He, too, held back a moan, biting the inside of his cheeks and going back in to kiss her again.

She really melded into him, partly because of the sleeping pills, partly because of the fact she’d not been touched in months. Zach moved his hand from her breast down to the zipper on her shorts, undoing it and moving past the waistband of her underwear to place a thick finger over her clit and start rubbing it in small circles. In her surprise at the gesture, Laurie bit down hard on his lip and ended up drawing blood.

All he did was chuckle.

“What is wrong with you?” Zach left a trail of wet kisses along her jaw and buried his face in the crook of her neck, lips and teeth planted over a sensitive spot where he sucked hard enough to leave a bruise. Between that and his finger circling her clit, Laurie was going into overdrive.

“A - a lot,” she managed to get out, her hands curling into fists in his hair.

Zach grunted as she lightly pulled on it, and came back from her neck to her mouth again. His fingers were working faster now, lubricated by how wet she was.

“I can see that,” he breathed against her mouth. “Funny how you’re all wired now. Like the idea of being under my control?”

She nodded, blinking rapidly as a knot in her belly formed. She was going to have her first orgasm in months and it was going to be up against a tree caused by a man well over a decade older than her after he drugged her.

There was definitely a lot wrong with her, but she didn’t care. She had the earth at her feet and a man between her legs. What more could she possibly want?”

Laurie let out an uncontrollably loud moan and threw her head back against Zach’s hand, crushing it against the tree as the very nature of the universe exploded in front of her eyes whilst he continued to work her through her orgasm. He was as delighted as anything, capturing the moan in his own mouth with more wet, sloppy, yet earnest kisses.

They’d only been in each other’s company for barely a day.

Here they were.

Laurie clinging onto Zach for dear life as he gave her her first orgasm in months.

They slowed to a stop, the pair of them breathing heavily. She finally let go of him, and he took his hands away so she could zip herself back up again and readjust her bra under her shirt. Zach sucked on his fingers, watching Laurie idly as she pulled herself together. He still had a visible hardness through his trousers, but he ignored it for the time being.

“What did you dream about earlier?” he asked, now leading the rest of the way back to the camp. “In the clearing?”

She was rather taken aback by the casual line of questioning as if he hadn’t just finger fucked her. “I was in pain. There was a standing stone. I only really saw the sky,” she replied with a shrug. “I think I was laughing as well.”

“You were laughing. Out here - in the real world.”

“Right…” Laurie shoved her hands in her pockets. “Zach, did you kill that hiker?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

They’d reached the tent by that point, and he stopped to glance at her over his shoulder.

“Are you bothered by it?”

“I should be, but I’m not. Could be me next, couldn’t it?”

Zach had been alone for at least three months.

When he and Olivia realised that their ways of working were completely different and their goals were never going to align properly, it was better to go their separate ways.

Still, he wasn’t too far from her. Maybe a few hours’ trek through the forest at most. He didn’t plan to seek her out unless it was absolutely necessary. The pick up point between the two of them served as a means of him dropping off the photographs to her if she so desired them so she could see and understand what he was trying to do in the name of Parnag Fegg and communicating with the spirit of the forest. He didn’t want to control it - he wanted to appease it.

His long daily walks in the forest often led him to the odd person, couple, or family seeking some form of escape from the pandemic that had been wrought on the rest of the world. Some of them had come from the base with rangers, some of them had stumbled down the wrong path.

Well, wrong for them.

Zach saw it as an opportunity to prove his devotion - something of which Olivia hadn’t quite understood.

Tableau after tableau, photo after photo.

He wondered if it would ever be enough to get a sign from Parnag Fegg. The marks on his body, the stones he’d sewn into his skin - they were all so he could prove himself and show that communication was better than subservience. That he was part of the earth just like the woodland spirit, just like the mycorrhiza that Olivia was studying.

His way of communicating was more beautiful.

He wanted to connect with it in a more intimate way.

That’s why he did what he did. Even if it felt repetitive and boring at one stage.

Then something interesting happened one night.

It had been weeks since he had been sent anyone for sacrificial offerings and art.

Weeks.

He was beginning to doubt that more strays would come his way.

Until fraught screaming and crying woke him one from his sleep.

Frowning, Zach switched on the lights, pulled on hoodie and slipped his trainers on before heading outside to see what all the racket was.

He stopped short when he saw the mist dissipating, and a hysterical woman coming out from it with an enormous backpack on her.

She also came to a stop and stared at him.

“You,” she said.

“Me?” was his reply. Did she know him? Did he know her?

“You!” she repeated, before promptly collapsing to the ground and violently convulsing.

Zach sprung to action, bounding over to help. This wasn’t a stray. This was someone who had come here with intent, and she had gotten lost in the fog. The further he went from the tent, the dimmer the light became but there was enough for him to see what he was doing.

Whoever she was, she looked horrified as she lay there practically seizing.

“It’s alright…” he told her gently, crouching down and beginning to take hold of her backpack straps. For a moment she calmed. “Let me get this off you.”

It was difficult, but he managed it. Slinging it onto his own back, Zach estimated she must have had a few weeks worth of supplies in there. What the hell did she have in mind? Why was she even here in the first place? How had the mist gotten to her?

Zach then scooped the woman up into his arms and started to head back to the tent, which was when she started crying and screaming again. The bloody spores in the fog. They’d be the end of everyone if it ever got out of this damn forest. If Parnagg Fegg ever allowed it to leave the forest.

“You have to calm down,” he said. “Stop crying, it’ll only make it worse.”

He slipped inside the tent and she appeared to be getting worse if anything.

“For god’s sake…” he muttered.

He set her down on the camp bed where she started to settle down. He was able to take a good look at her now: somewhere around five two, long blonde hair tied into a plait, definitely not built for living a life in the woods despite what she had clearly brought with her.

Zach put her backpack down and noticed that the front pocket was partially open. He probably shouldn’t be going through her things but he’d never seen anyone in such a state because of the fog before. He pulled out a plastic bag of the remnants of psychedelic mushrooms.

He sighed. Yep. Inexperienced with what lay within the forest, that was for sure.

“Are you joking?” He turned back towards the woman, who was now more conscious and lying on her side facing him. “You thought it was a good idea to take psychedelics and walk through that fog? What did you think was going to happen? Hmm? Stupid woman…”

He threw the bag into the depths of the tent, somewhere. He’d worry about it later. Right now: he had a woman who was either going to be one of his sacrifices or something else. He wasn’t sure what yet. He needed to figure it out quickly.

Zach went over to her.

“Can you tell me your name?” he asked.

“...Aur…”

Oh good, she was garbling. He frowned at her, trying to make sense of it. “Aura?”

She made a noise. “L…”

“Laura?”

She made another odd noise at him.

“Laurie?”

“Hmm…” Clearly more lucid than before, she rolled onto her back with wider, open eyes.

“I’m Zach, by the way,” he said, pressing a hand to her forehead. “Hmm. You’re fine. Almost overdid it, didn’t you?”

“I - I didn’t…” she couldn’t catch her breath. “Water? My - my - bag.”

He went back over to her bag to fetch her water bottle, coming back to help her drink it. He had a hand at the back of her head as he helped her raise it, and he resisted the urge to dig his fingers into her soft hair. Zach had been without actual company for three months, and sacrifices were hardly that.

“What are you doing all the way out here?” he then asked Laurie, helping her lie back down and setting the bottle down too.

She managed to get out: “You. I - I think.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You came looking for me?”

“Maybe,” she sighed, placing a hand on her chest. He watched her curiously for a moment as she took a few deep breaths.

A million questions started to run through Zach’s mind; a million questions that were to be saved when Laurie was recovered from her stint in the fog.

“Rest,” he said, going to grab a heftier duvet from one of his storage boxes and placing it over the woman. “You’ll need it after all that.”

Laurie appeared to settle down quite quickly after that.

Zach pulled up one of his chairs close by so that he could watch her whilst she slept, thinking about all the possibilities of why she was there.

How could she have been looking for him?

Was it Parnagg Fegg sending him someone worthy?

Did he go through with what he’d usually do when people were sent his way?

He’d have to figure it out when she woke up. He’d have to get the story out of her. It was surprising she even survived the spores in the fog if she’d been on mushrooms in the first place. There’s no way any other normal person wouldn’t have snapped because of it. This woman in front of him had fought her way through it until she got out the other side.

That was the closest the fog had been to his tent. Ever. Had it overtaken Olivia’s base camp? Was she okay?

No.

He couldn’t think about her.

Even if he did leave her photographs of the people sent his way.

But that was work; that was scientific.

It wasn’t personal.

This… this with Laurie here and now? This was a personal choice he had to make.

To teach or to kill. To discover or to maim.

He tilted his head to the side as he surveyed her.

She was twitching in her sleep. Unsurprising, considering the convulsions from not ten, fifteen minutes ago. At the same time, she looked peaceful. Who wouldn’t after that ordeal? Something in him was tempted to remove her long hair from the plait so he could see the colour of it properly. So he could feel it. He wasn’t sure where the urge came from - perhaps it was down to the fact the next morning could go one of two ways?

Zach sank further down into his chair, eyelids drooping closed. It was much too late. This was something for the next morning. It didn’t matter that the lights were still on. He was asleep in minutes.

--

Zach watched as a silhouetted figure made its way through the fog. Back to him, searching for something. He followed after them, unafraid of what would happen. This was a dream, after all, and the fog couldn’t affect him in his dreams.

He couldn’t tell if it was meant to be day or night with how unnecessarily bright everything was and how the person ahead of him was shown to him. He couldn’t make out who it was. They were moving urgently so he followed them in the same way as if they were a guiding light for him despite the shadow figure they were.

Eventually the pair of them broke through the fog to see the standing stone at the edge of Olivia’s camp.

The figure dropped down in front of it, crying out in pain. 

Zach slowed in his approach, not wanting to frighten them any further. Were they frightened? They must have been if they were in pain.

Another shadow rose up from the ground by the stone.

Zach stopped.

He knew exactly who that was; what it was.

A smile formed on his lips, and he sped up towards the person on the ground-

--

Zach woke with a start.

He’d barely been near that fog last night and it had somehow creeped into his mind.

He rubbed his eyes and glanced over at Laurie, who was wide awake.

They locked eyes.

He hadn’t noticed last night how beautiful her eyes were: round and hazel, wide and almost alarmed at the fact the pair of them had taken to staring at each other so abruptly on waking up. He watched as she pulled the duvet tighter around herself and trembled.

“Not feeling up to scratch?” he asked her.

Laurie shook her head. “Not really…” she murmured in response. She brought a hand out of her cocoon and inspected it as it shook. “Jesus Christ. I’m not - I’m not a sap, I promise.”

His lips twitched upwards for a moment, amused. “So you didn’t know about the fog, then?”

“Nope.”

“What do you know? Why are you here?”

Laurie was silent for a moment. “I have coffee in my bag, if you’d be so kind as to make some before I start to talk.”

He paused, rather taken aback at the quite blunt tone she’d give him. Not quite the damsel in distress he initially thought last night. He’d also not had coffee in several months, so that was a nice surprise.

“Alright,” he said, getting up and having a good stretch before going back to her backpack to fetch the very full jar of instant coffee. Not the brand he’d usually go for but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Zach still had some large bottles of water lying around and set about boiling some water in a pot on the little camp stove under the now-watchful eyes of Laurie. He tried his best to ignore her for the time being as he put together the hot beverages except he’d noticed that she was finally sitting upright and trying to emerge from the duvet he’d given her. Still shaking. Still not quite there yet.

“Isn’t the caffeine going to make it worse?” he asked, pouring from the pot into two cups. He handed one to her. “You look like shit.”

“As if you look any better,” she scoffed, blowing gently over the top of her cup. Laurie tried a cursory sip but it was still far too hot to even attempt. “Thank you, though. For bringing me here.”

Zach hummed and sat down in the chair by her again. “Seems like you would have made it here anyway.”

“Yeah… maybe.”

“Explain.”

He rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and propped his chin up with his hand, eyeing Laurie intently now. He needed to know what the hell she was doing out here before he did anything else, because if there was even the slightest chance that she felt the same as him in regards to what was in the forest… oh, this was going to be the best day ever.

“I dreamed about you,” she confessed, shyly, avoiding his piercing gaze. “It started when I got furloughed from work during the lockdown. I didn’t - I didn’t have anything to do in the day so I mostly just got high off of mushrooms and started looking into local folklore.” Laurie glanced up at him through her eyelashes and shot him a small smile. “Led me to Parnag Fegg, these woods, what it means to worship him, what devotion means… and then my dreams started becoming weird. I think that’s what I get for doing mushrooms before bed. I didn’t know that you were the person I was looking for. But when I stepped out of the fog last night and saw your silhouette? It was the same as what I saw in my dreams. I’ve been looking for you this whole time and I don’t know why. I’m meant to be here with you. For what reason? I don’t know. Is that weird?”

Zach thought back to his dream. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think that’s weird at all. I’ve been out here long enough.”

“How long?”

“Probably about five months,” he said. “Going by the last time I managed to get a haircut anyway.” Granted, his hair was still well above his shoulders. It certainly felt messier than it used to.

“Long time to be on your own out here.”

“No, I was with someone for two months… my - my ex-wife,” Zach mumbled. “Didn’t really work out, so we went our separate ways.”

Laurie shuddered and twitched again, which had Zach sitting straight again to pay more attention to her.

“How so?” she then asked, gripping onto her cup too tightly to stop the shaking in her hands.

“She takes a more scientific approach to what lies in the forest. Mine is more artistic,” Zach said cryptically.

“How so?” she repeated.

It wasn’t that Zach thought Laurie was prying a little too hard, it was that he couldn’t tell her what his art was. He couldn’t tell her that he killed people, surely? Or that he would put them to sleep and take photos of them to appease his god before killing them? That he’d occasionally drop copies of the photos off to his ex-wife as a ‘just in case?’

“How do you show devotion?” he countered. “For the spirit in the woods?”

“I draw. I journal. I take mushrooms,” Laurie finally took a sip of her coffee, but her face fell when she swallowed. She set the cup down on the ground next to her, lying back down on the bed. “Which I don’t think I should have done last night.”

“You said it yourself you didn’t know about the fog,” Zach said with a frown. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she squirmed on the bed, throwing the duvet off as she very obviously broke out into a cold sweat. “Something. I might - I might throw up.”

Zach froze for a moment before jumping to action.

The first thing he found was a shallow bowl.

He held it out for Laurie as she leaned over the side of the bed and violently gagged - almost choking at one stage - before a completely undigested mushroom dropped out of her mouth, a trail of saliva leading up from it to her lips. Zach was both horrified and curious about the fact that it looked like one of the ones from her bag.

As if she’d never eaten it at all.

Laurie stared down at it confused, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“What the fuck?” her voice came out hoarse and she cleared her throat. “That’s - I ate that last night.”

She sat up properly, now seemingly completely fine. No tremors. Nothing.

Zach stayed crouched by the camp bed for a moment, eventually sitting down on the ground and putting the bowl down.

“What did it feel like? The fog?” he asked her.

She mulled over the question carefully, picking up her coffee and taking a more hefty chug of it without issue. “It felt like something was inside me. Something living. I don’t know what it wanted to do. Well - it rebuilt that mushroom.”

“Communication,” Zach whispered, eyes wide as he still stared at the reconstituted mushroom, lost in his own thoughts. “What would happen if we…? No. I couldn’t… Not her…”

“Sorry?”

Zach jumped a little, turning his attention back to Laurie in the real world. She was worried, and rightly so.

Even though he wasn’t in the mindset of killing her, he did want to have an experiment of his own.

“I had a strange dream last night,” he said. “Getting close enough to the fog granted me a vision. Is that how you view your dreams? As visions?”

She nodded.

“And you said you draw?”

She nodded again.

“Good. We might be on the same page yet.”

Zach stood up and went to rifle through one of his first aid boxes for the sleeping pills he kept on hand. He didn’t overtly present them to Laurie - in fact, he simply slipped them into his pocket obviously enough for her to have more questions - and went to sit next to her on the camp bed.

“I won’t show you my art just yet,” he said to her. “It might frighten you.”

She side eyed him.

“Right…”

“How do you feel about being part of a little experiment for me?”

The worry dropped from Laurie’s face to be replaced with consideration. She glanced between Zach and the mushroom with curiosity which only started to cause excitement to bubble in him. The fact she felt like she was meant to be here said it all.

“Alright,” she agreed.

“You can’t go!”

“I can and I will. No point in me hanging around here - I need to do something whilst I’m not working.”

“It’s only furlough,” Phillip reminded Laurie, watching as she plaited her long, blonde hair and all decked out in hiking gear. “You don’t need to do all this.”

She rolled her eyes and tied off the end of her plait with a hair bobble, grabbing the brush and stuffing it in her oversized hiking backpack. She looked around the bedroom: that seemed to be the last of her things.

“Just because you don’t understand doesn’t mean you need to put me down,” she told him, getting off the bed and going to slip her hiking boots on.

“Are you forgetting there’s a pandemic on?”

“Of course I haven’t, but I doubt I’m going to run into anybody in the fucking forest, Phil,” Laurie snapped. “Let me have this. I don’t care if it’s all some sort of mumbo-jumbo, I want to connect with the local folklore. Is that so bad?”

“It is when it’s like you’re in psychosis with it…” he muttered.

“Oh - fuck you!” Laurie picked up her backpack and got it on, storming out of the room as she did so with Phillip chasing after her. “I knew moving in with you was a bad idea anyway. I should have listened to my mum - you’re pathetic and have no vision for your life. It’s like all you wanted was to win me. What then? What did you think was going to happen?”

“That’s not fair, Laurie,” he sighed, hanging back as she stopped at the front door with her palm resting on the handle.

“And why is that your response to every argument?” she scoffed, turning to look back at him. “Do you feel that entitled to me that you think I’ll just give up a fight? That you think because you have me you can’t possibly lose me?”

Phillip was silent.

“Fuck sake. We’re done. I don’t know when I’ll be back. If I die, I’ll make sure a message gets to you. But I’m not missing, so don’t even try it.”

“Have you told your mum?”

“Yep. She expected this to happen sooner.”

Laurie didn’t even pick up her keys or wait for his response as she abruptly left the flat. She pulled a mask out of her pocket and hooked the little straps around her ears before making her way out of the building. Until she was out in the woods, she didn’t want to risk anything. And thankfully, she’d be risk free within about twenty minutes.

The streets were empty save for the odd person going on their mandatory daily walk with their dog. Laurie kept her head down if she was given odd looks about the size of her backpack. She was short in height around five foot two so it likely looked more comical than necessary, not to mention the fact that why would anybody be heading off with a giant backpack in these conditions regardless?

The moment she reached the edge of the forest she took off her mask and pocketed it, glad to be in a position where she’d be away from people. She was doing her own thing. Something that she needed to do.

Laurie entered the forest, shielded from the daylight and anything else that would come her way.

She took off the mask and slipped it back into her pocket with a smile on her face.

Where to go now?

She had no plan whatsoever: she wanted to let her intuition guide her as she explored the forest and tried to seek out the person she’d been dreaming about for the past several weeks.

If they were even a real person.

She’d not confessed to her boyfriend that she’d been dreaming of someone else every time she’d had the mushrooms they’d been cultivating. They were all in a plastic bag in the front pocket of her backpack - Phillip would soon find out she’d taken them all. The mushrooms had induced very odd dreams for her most nights of the week. Aside from pulsating walls and a distorted reality when she was awake, falling asleep gave her psychedelic dreams that would border on nightmares for anyone who wasn’t used to it.

Naturally she’d dreamed of the folkloric god she’d been researching for fun. That didn’t frighten her. Why would it? It didn’t matter to her that Parnagg Fegg was a local story to scare children from going too far into the forest. She wasn’t a child. There were ways to flatter Him. She supposed her dreams were one way - the creative mind at night when not working came up with glorious visions of red and green and standing stones.

Aside from the woodland god, there was a person. A man. She could never make out his face but he often appeared as some sort of backlit being, beckoning to her. 

As if he understood her.

What she could gather from him is that he wasn’t the tallest man in the world but she wasn’t the tallest woman in the world either. He had a lithe enough body, and his hair seemed to be growing out. That was all.

All Laurie could figure out was that he must be in the forest somewhere.

He must believe in Parnagg Fegg too, whoever he was.

She would while away the time in the forest by sitting to draw in her little sketchbook or use a stick to draw in the dirt. She’d read somewhere that the spirit liked art, so she wanted to at least leave a piece of it for him in the forest as she trekked through it day by day.

Her sleeping bag was enough for her at night.

The deeper she went - the further she was from home - the stranger and more vivid her dreams became. Intentional marks across skin. Bright lights reflecting red and green. The man coming ever closer. It didn’t feel menacing when he seemed to get closer to her in her dreams. It felt comforting to some degree.

Laurie wondered if this was how she was connecting with nature and seeking out the secrets of Parnagg Fegg.

She wondered if the man would know more than her about it all. There was always that chance.

Five days and nights into her journey of slow discovery, a mist settled in in the forest just before Laurie went to bed.

She didn’t think too much of it. She scribbled a few notes about it in her journal as she munched down a couple of mushrooms before bed as per usual. 

But then it started to… creep towards her.

Envelop her.

Something was wrong.

This mist wasn’t a normal mist.

Laurie hurriedly swallowed the mushroom she’d been chewing on and packed up her things as fast as possible. The mist was more like a fog that she needed to navigate and escape. It didn’t feel right. It made her want to sneeze, as if pollen had gotten into her nostrils and she’d not taken any hayfever tablets. She put her backpack back on, and started on a trek.

But where the hell was she going now?

Even if she did have a map, it wasn’t going to help her now.

No matter which way she turned, there was no knowing what was the right way. She did her best not to panic and walked in a straight line as best as she could, hoping that she wasn’t double back on herself and what had been a peaceful journey over the last few days.

Things started flashing in front of her eyes.

Her dreams had become walking nightmares.

She could feel something in her throat, making its way down to her lungs; to her stomach. It was in her head and it was making her see things that weren’t there: the shadow of something that could have easily been one of her drawings straight off the page.

Laurie knew in her logical mind that whatever she was seeing in the fog with her wasn’t real, but she couldn’t help but walk towards the shadows that looked like Parnagg Fegg even if everything in her told her not to do that because there’d be nothing there.

It was in her eyes and her brain too - whatever it was; whatever was going on to make her feel confused.

She wanted nothing more than to throw up what was inside her. It didn’t matter that the mushrooms hadn’t digested, she was nauseated at the thought of them right now. As if-

As if the earth had connected with them.

Something had connected with them.

Is that why she felt so odd?

Is that why she had been dreaming so much recently?

What was in the damn fog?

The more she traversed into it the thicker it became.

The more disoriented she became.

At least Laurie was going in a straight line, right?

She used the trees as anchors when it felt too much to go on. She still pressed on, though. She wanted to get out and she was in too deep now.

After what felt like hours of the most nauseating experience of her life, Laurie noticed the fog beginning to feel like a mist again. She made a run for it.

But that made everything worse.

The fog felt like it was trying to claw her back in, the moment she exited. It was calling her to come back. She didn’t want to go back in there.

That was when she saw him, silhouetted against some lights from a makeshift tent behind him.

Was it the man from her dreams?

“You,” she said.

“Me?” came the reply, cutting through the blurred perception of her current reality.

“You!” Laurie repeated.

She looked between him and the fog behind her, slowly dissipating out.

As it went, so did her sanity.

Laurie collapsed.

And the psychedelic mushrooms well and truly kicked in.

Half conscious, eyes rolling into the back of her head, and convulsing on the ground, Laurie was stuck between reality and the worst trip of her life. Colours exploded behind her eyelids as if they were stars turning into supernovas at rapidly increasing rates. She wanted to claw at her constricted chest, as if the thing that had crawled in was squeezing her from the inside. Her limbs were out of her control, locked in place as she shook on the ground.

All through that, she could just about hear the man approaching her. 

She could only hope he was friendly.

“It’s alright…” he murmured. The words came to her through a fish bowl now. “Let me get this off you.”

He began to wrestle with Laurie’s ridiculously large backpack, managing to carefully remove it from her. She couldn’t see what he did with it, but with the rustling she assumed he must have put it on. Then, strong arms scooped her up from the ground and she cried out - not from pain, from surprise. He made hushing noises at her as he walked with her in his arms through the forest and away from the awful fog she had stumbled through.

Laurie desperately tried to open her eyes to see where they were going but the supernovas were turning into tendrils that were joining whatever was squeezing at her lungs deep within. As if it was pulling her back into herself, trying to trap her somewhere nobody on earth could make out. For a moment she caught a glimpse of the real world once more, and saw a large camp made from tarpaulin and plastic sheets.

That was all she saw before she was semi conscious again, the tendrils turning into the veins of her eyelids.

“You have to calm down,” the man hushed her again. “Stop crying, it’ll only make it worse.”

Crying?

Had she been crying out this whole time?

Laurie hadn’t even been aware.

“For god’s sake…” he muttered more to himself than anything, setting her down on something soft. Something lightly rattled as she continued to shake, and she knew she’d been set down on a campbed.

She wasn’t so far gone she couldn’t recognise sounds and what things were. If anything, it was helping bring her back to reality. Besides, she was clearly far enough away from the fog now that real oxygen was starting to reach her brain and lungs again. That certainly helped to calm her down, and she slowly became more and more aware of her surroundings as the awful visions and tightness started to fade from her.

Laurie just about rolled onto her side and was able to open her eyes to a double-visioned sight of the man opening the front pocket of her backpack and pulling out the last of her mushrooms.

“Are you joking?” He turned and held it up to her. “You thought it was a good idea to take psychedelics and walk through that fog? What did you think was going to happen? Hmm? Stupid woman…”

She had no time to be offended, not even when he tossed the mushrooms into the corner of the tent somewhere. If ‘tent’ was even the appropriate way to describe the makeshift bungalow this man had clearly made for himself.

He approached Laurie on the camp bed, where she was finally able to make out his features.

Piercing, scrutinising blue eyes that had mischief dancing in them. His hair was growing out and greying - it had reached just before his ear lobes in length in a small waterfall of messy waves. The makings of a beard covered the lower half of his face, currently emphasising the shape of his rather plump lips. He wore a dark fleece over his shirt and jogging bottoms. He looked tired, and that was when Laurie realised she must have woken him up at this time of night.

“Can you tell me your name?” he asked.

Laurie tried to make her mouth work. “...Aur…”

He frowned. “Aura?”

She made a noise of discontent. “L…”

“Laura?”

She made an “e,” sort of noise at him.

“Laurie?”

“Hmm…” she hummed in agreement, rolling onto her back and her head swimming. She let out another whiny noise in protest of her dizziness, but at least everything was settling back to normal now. She was able to get a good look of where she was, and the tent really was more of a mini bungalow than anything.

She was in a corner on a camp bed, but in another corner there was a rudimentary set up for a kitchen, some cold boxes and other small storage spaces too, along with a few chairs and a table. There was plastic sheeting acting as a doorway leading to elsewhere in the large tent, and then an open set of sheets that led outside. A few rather fluorescent lights lit up the space inside.

“I’m Zach, by the way,” he finally introduced himself. Zach then reached up to press a calloused hand to Laurie’s forehead for a few seconds. “Hmm. You’re fine. Almost overdid it, didn’t you?”

“I - I didn’t…” Laurie’s voice caught in her throat, still breathless. “Water? My - my - bag.”

Zach dutifully went to get it for her, helping her raise her head and tip some of it down her throat. She wasn’t able to swallow properly and choked on the first sip so that idea went out the window. She coughed and spluttered whilst Zach set the bottle on the ground and sat down, his knees up and arms resting on them as he cocked his head to the side and surveyed her instead.

“What are you doing all the way out here?”

There was a lengthier answer to that question, but Laurie could only manage: “You. I - I think.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You came looking for me?”

“Maybe,” Laurie sighed, realising how tired she was now that her ordeal was over. She placed a hand on her chest, her heart racing away underneath it. She tried to take a few deep breaths to no avail.

“Rest,” Zach then said, standing up again and going to grab something out of storage. “You’ll need it after all that.” He came back with a duvet that was a little rough around the edges but that was to be expected considering he’d been living out here for… some time, at least, was all Laurie could garner.

He placed the duvet over her, and Laurie snuggled down gratefully under it.