Vance Holloway hunted people in these woods, and one had gotten away. He kept a shelf for his trophies inside an old bootlegger's hideout, half-buried in the earth. Twelve carvings sat there now. One slot stayed empty. He had cut it for the camper who ran three years ago, and every night he came home to that gap and said nothing. Tonight the forest would not stay quiet. New campers had pushed deep into his ground. Their lights bled through the trees. Their music thumped like a bad heart. Vance crouched near the ridge and watched the far tree line, where his mark always crossed. No deer moved. No fox. The noise had scattered everything he needed to hunt unseen. He could not work in this light. He could not hear a footstep over their laughter. So Vance decided to drive them out. He circled their camp through the dark. His uncle taught him this patience long ago, on nights just like this one. Chester Grimwald used to grip Vance's shoulder and whisper that fear did more work than any blade. Vance had believed him. He still did. He found the skull of an elk near their tents and set it on a stake. He smeared deer blood across three trees. Then he went to the poisoned flowers that grew low by the creek, the ones with the red and purple blooms. He cut a bundle with a rag over his mouth. He crushed the leaves and spread the pulp on the path to the water. By midnight one camper stumbled to the creek. He touched the wet leaves, then rubbed his eyes. His throat closed. He dropped to his knees and gagged. His friends dragged him up, shouting. They saw the elk skull on the stake. They saw the blood on the bark. One screamed that something was out here. They ran. Tents left standing. Lights left burning. Their trucks tore down the fire road before dawn. The forest went silent again. Vance stood in the empty camp and breathed the quiet like water. It worked. He had his dark and his stillness back. Then he saw the tracks. Not boot prints. Long bare feet, four of them in a line, pressed deep into the mud beyond the creek. The toes ended in points. The stride was too wide for any man. Something tall had circled the camp while Vance worked. Something had watched him bait the trap. He knew the stories. He had kept to his own ground for years to avoid them. The thing that left these tracks did not fear blood or bone. It hunted the hunters. Vance had cleared his woods of noise. He had also called something out of the deep dark, and it now knew his face. He looked once at the tracks, then back toward his buried shelf and its empty slot. To finish his collection, he would have to hunt with a predator on his own trail.

Three nights passed and Vance did not sleep. The thing with pointed feet came each dark hour and walked its slow circle around his camp. He heard it press the mud. He heard it stop, then move again. He could not hunt his escaped camper while this predator ringed him in. He could not even cross the creek unseen. So he decided to stop hiding and set a trap of his own. He planned it like his uncle taught him. Bait the ground. Draw the hunter into the open. Vance dragged a fresh deer carcass to the clearing beside the old canvas tent. He hung his knives on the weathered rack near the fire, blades wet and red, so the smell of blood would carry. He smeared more on the tent flaps. Then he climbed into the dark timber above and waited with his rifle. The creature came near midnight. It smelled the carcass and stopped its circle. For the first time it broke pattern and stepped toward the bait. Vance sighted down the barrel. His hands stayed steady. He fired twice into the tall shape below. The thing screamed. Not like an animal. It thrashed the tent to rags and tore the blade rack from its post. Then it ran, crashing north through the trees, dragging one leg. Vance climbed down and found black blood on the dirt and pointed prints leading away. It bled. It could be hurt. And it was gone from his camp. He followed the blood trail before dawn. It ran toward a low stretch where no light touched the ground. At the edge of that hollow he found two people instead of a monster. A girl in a wide hat crouched over the tracks, reading them the way Vance read them. A young man in an orange jacket stood behind her, watching the trees, ready to bolt. "You made these," the girl said. She pointed at the blood, then at Vance. "You shot it." She did not ask. She stated it and waited. The young man stared at Vance's face. His mouth went tight. "I know you," he said. "You were at Camp Harrow. Last summer." He took one step back. "You're the reason I ran." Vance did not move. He knew this face too. Three years older now, but the same. This was the camper who got away. The empty slot on his shelf had a name at last, and the name was standing ten feet from him. "I got lucky that night," the young man said. "That's all it was." Vance had driven the predator off his ground. He had won back his dark and his quiet. But he had also led two witnesses straight to his blood trail, and one of them was the very prize he hunted. His trap had worked. Now the escaped camper knew Vance was still hunting, and he would run again unless Vance moved first.

The three of them stood at the edge of the Hollow. Evan Mercer, the camper who escaped him three years ago, kept the girl between himself and Vance. She was his shield. Vance could not reach for a knife without the girl seeing and screaming. One shout would send Evan running into the dark, and the empty slot on Vance's shelf would stay empty. He needed to split them apart. The girl crouched over the tracks again. She wore a wide hat and a red bandana, and she read the ground like she owned it. "A counselor walked in here two nights ago," she said. "Didn't come back. These prints aren't his." She looked up at Vance. "You know what made them." "I've seen it," Vance said. True words cost him nothing. "Tall. Bare feet. Toes come to a point. I shot it twice. It bled black and ran." The girl stood. "Show me where." That was the crack Vance wanted. "The blood runs into the Hollow," he said. He pointed down the dark slope, away from Evan. "Too narrow for three. You track it. I'll cut the far side and drive it back to you." Scout Riverside nodded once. She trusted the plan because it matched how she hunted. She stepped down into the shadow alone. For a moment Evan stood exposed, no girl beside him, ten feet of open dirt between him and Vance. Vance moved. He drew the knife from his belt and closed the gap. Evan turned too late. He got one arm up. The blade opened his forearm, not his throat. Evan screamed and swung his other fist into Vance's ear. They went down in the leaves together. "Scout!" Evan shouted. "He's the one! Run!" Vance drove his knee onto Evan's chest and raised the knife. Then a branch cracked behind him. He looked up. The girl had not gone into the Hollow. She stood six feet off with a rock in her fist. She threw it. The stone struck Vance's temple. His vision went white. He rolled off Evan, and the two of them scrambled up the slope, Evan bleeding, the girl dragging him by his orange sleeve. Vance got to his knees. Blood ran into his eye. By the time he stood, they were gone through the trees, crashing north, away from the Hollow and away from him. He pressed a hand to his temple. His prize had been under his blade. He had felt the knife bite. And he had lost him anyway, because the girl never turned her back. Now both of them knew his face and his knife. They would not wait at his blood trail again. They would go for help, or they would go for a gun. Evan carried a fresh wound Vance had given him, and a name to put beside it. The hunt was open ground now, and Vance was the thing being tracked.

Blood ran down Vance's jaw. The rock had split his temple, and the trees swam when he turned his head. He pressed his bandana to the wound and forced himself north, toward his camp. He needed to stop the bleeding and grab a rifle. But something moved with him. A wet sound circled the brush, always at the edge of sight. The wounded creature had found his blood trail, and now it hunted him. He stumbled into the clearing where his tent sagged between dark poles. Lanterns hung dead on the timber. His weapons waited on their rack beside the cold fire, blades still crusted from old work. He grabbed the longest knife and pressed his back to the tent. His own tricks would not help him now. The skulls, the poisoned blooms, the smears of blood meant nothing to this thing. The circling stopped. Vance held his breath. Then it stepped into the lantern light, and he understood why his fear had a shape. It stood taller than a man, on bent hind legs, its skin stretched tight over ribs like old rope. Antlers branched from its skull, wide as a doorway. Black blood leaked from two holes in its chest, his gunshots, healing wrong. Its yellow eyes found him. Its long fingers ended in points. This was the thing that left the pointed tracks. This was what he had shot and failed to kill. Up close, it was worse than any story he told to scare campers off. Vance did not run. Running is how prey dies. He watched its wounded side, the one that dragged. When it lunged, he went the other way. Its claws tore through canvas where his throat had been. He drove the knife into its ribs, deep, twisting. It shrieked and swung an arm that knocked him across the fire pit. Coals scattered. His shoulder struck the weapon rack and knives rained into the dirt. He came up with two more blades. The creature turned, slower now, black blood pouring from its side. Vance threw the first knife. It sank into its shoulder. He threw the second into its neck. The thing staggered back into the trees, crashing through brush, gone. He stood alone in the wrecked camp, chest heaving. He had driven it off. He was alive. But three of his blades were gone, buried in a creature that healed from bullets. It would come back. It always came back. Vance wiped the blood from his eye and looked north, where Evan and the girl had fled. They would return with a gun, or with others. And this thing would be hunting all three of them now, drawn to the same blood trail through his woods. His trophy was still out there, wounded and running. If Vance wanted the camper who got away, he would have to reach him before the antlered thing did.

Vance ran north with a knife in each hand. The trail Evan and the girl left ended at a split in the ground. Two paths broke through the trees. One climbed a stony ridge. The other dropped into a wet gully. He crouched and read the dirt. Broken ferns went both ways. A smear of blood marked neither. He had lost them. Somewhere ahead, the antlered thing hunted the same two people, and if Vance chose wrong, it would reach his prey first. Then he heard a voice below, in the gully. Not a scream. A flat, clipped word. "Down. Stay low." Vance knew that voice. It belonged to the old man who taught him these woods, his uncle, Chester Grimwald. Nineteen years gone, and here he was, crouched behind a rock with a notebook pressed to his chest. Vance had not called him. The blood in this forest had. Chester did not look surprised to see him. He pointed a stubby finger up the ridge. "They went that way. Ten minutes ago. The boy and the girl." He tapped the notebook. "The tall one follows them. I counted its steps. It circles." Vance took the ridge. His boots slid on loose stone. He heard them before he saw them. Scout stood with a rock raised, the same weapon that split his head open days ago. Evan crouched behind her, holding a broken branch. Between them and Vance, the creature stepped from the trees. It was worse now. Black blood crusted its ribs where his knives still hung. Three of his own blades jutted from its hide, shoulder, side, and neck. The bloody rack of steel he kept in camp had ended up buried in this thing. Its antlers spread wide. Its yellow eyes moved from the campers to Vance and back. Scout saw him and did not lower the rock. "You," she said. Evan pulled her arm. "Both of you," Evan said, plain. "It's between us." Vance understood the shape of it then. The creature circled to cut one target from the others. It always did. It had done it to him. Now it stood deciding which of the three would die first. Vance was the one bleeding oldest. He was the reason it kept coming back. He made his choice. Not for the boy. For the trophy. If the thing killed Evan now, three years of hunting ended with someone else's blade. Vance would not allow that. "Hey," Vance said. He stepped into the open and spread his arms wide. "You want the one who shot you. That's me." The creature turned. It came at him fast, dragging its wounded side. Vance did not run. He waited until the last step, then went low under the swinging claw. He drove his knife up into the soft place beneath its jaw. The blade sank to the handle. The creature shrieked and threw him. His back struck a tree. Evan moved then. He grabbed the knife buried in the thing's side, Vance's own knife, and tore it free. He shoved it into the wound Vance had opened at the throat. Scout brought the rock down on the same spot, hard, twice. The creature staggered. Its knees folded wrong. It fell into the ferns and did not rise. Black blood ran out and stopped. Vance got to his feet. His prey stood three steps away, breathing hard, still holding the bloody knife. For three years Vance had wanted this moment. One clean strike. The last camper who got away. Now Evan looked at him over the dead creature, and he did not run. He held the knife the same way Vance held his. "Go on," Evan said. Flat. Tired. "Finish it. Or we're done here." Vance's hand tightened on his knife. Then Chester climbed the ridge behind him, notebook open, and spoke without looking up. "It's dead. Nineteen years. I was right." He crouched by the body and began to write. The old man did not care about the boy at all. Vance looked at the thing he had hunted and the thing he had killed. His trophy had helped him bring down a monster no one believed was real. Killing Evan now would prove nothing. The escaped camper was no longer the one that got away. He was the one who had stayed. Vance lowered the knife. He turned and walked back down the ridge, past his uncle scribbling in the dirt, past the campers he would never chase again. His collection would stay unfinished. He found, walking out of his woods for the last time, that he could live with that.