He stepped out of the dark corridor slowly, boots scraping against concrete as the space opened up around him.
Wider. Quieter.
Henry paused at the edge, eyes adjusting. Storage area—old factory, from the looks of it. Metal racks lined the walls, some collapsed, others standing with rusted frames.
Broken crates, scattered debris, dust thick enough that nobody had walked through here in years.
His hand went to his pocket out of habit, pulling out his phone. He flipped it open—
The top half came loose in his hand, screen cracked and dead from the earlier fight.
Henry stared at it for a second, then dropped the broken piece back into his palm. "No signal, no phone," he said under his breath, slipping it back into his pocket. "Perfect."
He wandered for a bit, trying to get a read on where he was.
It didn't help.
The factory gave way to nothing useful—more concrete, more rust, and eventually a set of broken doors opening up to treeline on every side. Dense, dark woods that all looked the same no matter which direction he faced.
He stood at the edge, hands on his hips.
"Middle of nowhere," he said flatly. "Fantastic."
He turned back toward the factory, then toward the trees, weighing his options.
Neither was great.
"Vampire nest, abandoned factory, woods that go nowhere," he muttered. "Whoever did this really committed to the bit."
***
On the other side,
Dean leaned against the Impala, arms crossed, glancing toward the gas station. "He's been in there fifteen minutes."
Sam looked up from the map spread across the hood. "You think he's okay?"
"I figured bad stomach," Dean said. "Man ate whatever that diner was serving last night."
Sam folded the map and headed inside without another word. He pushed through the restroom door, took one look around—
Empty.
He stepped closer to the door handle, and that's when he saw it. Burn marks, black and jagged, spreading across the metal like something had scorched it from the inside out.
"Dean," he called out.
Dean appeared in the doorway a second later, eyes dropping straight to the handle. His jaw tightened.
"Okay," he said. "That's not a stomach thing."
Sam pulled out his phone and took a few shots of the handle, getting close enough to catch the detail of the markings.
Dean watched from the doorway. "What is that, some kind of sigil?"
"Don't know," Sam said, already moving. "But Bobby might."
They stepped outside and Sam dialed, putting it on speaker as it rang twice.
"Yeah."
"Bobby, it's Sam. Henry's missing. Went into a gas station restroom fifteen minutes ago and never came out. There are burn marks on the door handle, black, spreading outward from the center like something scorched it from the inside."
"Burn marks," Bobby repeated. Pages turning. "Nothing else? No sulfur, no EMF?"
"Nothing," Sam said. "Just the marks."
Dean leaned against the Impala, arms crossed. "Bobby saying anything?"
Sam held up a hand.
More pages. Bobby went quiet for a long moment.
"Describe the pattern."
"Jagged. Branching outward from where his hand would've been."
Another pause, heavier this time.
"Where exactly are you boys?"
By the time Henry gave up on finding anything useful, the light was already gone.
He made camp at the base of a tree, a small fire burning in front of him. He dug through his pockets and came up with a few strips of tree bark, slightly bitter but edible enough. He chewed slowly, without enthusiasm, staring into the flames.
The woods were dead quiet.
No crickets. No rustling. No wind moving through branches. Henry paused mid-chew, looking out into the dark between the trees.
Forests were never this silent. There was always something—insects at minimum. He'd hunted in enough of them to know that. But this place had nothing moving in it, nothing breathing, nothing calling from the dark.
Not a single animal.
He looked back at the fire, still chewing.
"What kind of forest has no animals?" he muttered.
Then he heard it.
A sound from somewhere in the dark. Faint at first, then clearer—help me, dragged out and desperate, the kind of voice that had been screaming for a long time before it got quiet.
Henry's jaw stopped moving.
He stared into the treeline, head tilted slightly, listening hard.
It came again from the same direction. Same words. Same tone. Too clean for something genuinely lost and scared in the dark.
Henry slowly set down the bark.
"Yeah," he said under his breath. "That's definitely not human."
He didn't move toward it.
That was the first instinct and he trusted it. Whatever was out there wanted him to move toward it, wanted him on his feet and away from the fire and walking blind into the dark between the trees. That was the whole point of the sound.
He picked the bark back up and kept chewing.
The voice came again. Same direction, same desperate pull to it, help me stretched out like something that had learned the words without understanding what they meant.
Henry stared into the flames.
"Not my first time in the woods," he said quietly.
He reached for a thick branch near his feet, the end already catching the edge of the fire's light. He held it there until it caught, then stood slowly, impromptu torch in one hand.
He didn't go toward the sound.
He went parallel to it, wide and careful, keeping the fire at his back as long as he could.
*****
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