His head lolls to the side, and a scent cuts through the drysuit and corruption—salt and cedar, impossibly clean and wild. Familiar in a way that spikes my pulse.
I glance back toward the cabin. Seems so far. Too far. But I can't leave him here, can't let whatever's happening to him finish its work while I go for help that might not come in time.
I readjust my grip, ignoring the protest in my lower back, and pull again. Forty feet. Fifty. My breathing comes in harsh gaspsnow. A root nearly trips me, and I catch myself at the last second, the unconscious man's weight threatening to topple us both.
The corruption is spreading faster. I can see it crawling up his neck, black tendrils branching like root systems beneath his skin. Whatever limited time we had is running out.
Halfway to the cabin, the fog begins gathering.
Not dispersing with the rising sun as it should, but condensing. Coalescing. Taking shapes that look almost solid if I don't look at them directly. When I turn my head to focus on them, they dissolve back into mist. But from the corner of my eye, they look like figures. Like shadows given form.
The cabin appears through the trees—weathered wood and a tin roof, the front porch sagging but solid. I manage to get the unconscious man up the three steps, my shoulders screaming protest, and kick the door open.
Inside smells like old wood and the peppermint tea I've been brewing. My sleeping bag is rolled out in one corner next to my camping stove. Photography equipment covers every flat surface—cameras, lenses, memory cards, the portable printer I use to check color balance. Not exactly a medical facility, but it'll have to do.
I drag him to the sleeping bag, roll him onto it as gently as I can manage. His eyes move beneath closed lids, rapid and erratic. Dreaming, maybe. Or delirious.
The shadow corruption has reached his jawline now. Up close, the inky tendrils look organic and wrong, like poison threading through his veins. I press my fingers to his wrist, checking his pulse again. Still too fast. His skin is getting hotter.
I need water, something to cool him down. Maybe fever reducer if I have any in my first aid kit. I'm rummaging through my supplies when the temperature drops.
Not gradually. Not the normal cooling that comes with morning shade. This is instant, violent. My breath mists in theair. Frost forms on the cabin windows in fractal patterns that branch too fast to be natural.
And the shadows gather.
I spin toward the door just as they materialize—three figures made of smoke and malice, their forms constantly shifting between solid and vapor. No faces, but I feel them looking at me. Feel their hunger, their wrongness, the way they trigger my hindbrain to scream predator, run, hide.
They don't move like normal things. They flow, defying physics and geometry, bending around corners that shouldn't accommodate their mass. The temperature drops another ten degrees as they fully manifest, and my breath comes out in white clouds.
One drifts toward me, and I stumble backward. It's not here for me though. I can tell by the way it angles past, dismissing me like I'm furniture. An obstacle, not a target.
They're here for him.
The three shadow creatures converge on the unconscious man with terrible purpose. They flow past like water around stone, reaching with appendages that seem to multiply as I watch. Fingers become tendrils become claws, all grasping toward the man on my sleeping bag.
The protective instinct that surges through me is instantaneous and overwhelming. I don't think. Don't plan.
I grab the first weapon I can reach—a heavy-duty Maglite I keep for night photography—and swing it through the nearest shadow. The flashlight passes through vapor, hits nothing solid. But the shadow recoils anyway, pulling back with a sound like wind through a narrow canyon. Not hurt, exactly. Annoyed.
They can be affected. Good to know.
I flip the Maglite on, pointing the beam directly at the closest shadow. It hisses—actually hisses, a sound that vibrates in my chest cavity—and dissolves where the light hits it. But it doesn'tdisappear. Instead it reforms in the darker corners of the cabin, already reaching for him again with renewed determination.
Light hurts them, but it's not enough. They'll just keep coming, keep reforming, until they get what they want.
My eyes fall on my camera bag. Specifically, on the external flash I use for low-light work. The powerful strobe that can light up an entire grove of redwoods. The one that outputs 200 watt-seconds of pure white light.
I snatch it up, mounting it on my backup camera body with hands that shake only slightly. The shadows are circling now, testing, looking for an opening to reach the man they're drawn to. They move in coordinated patterns, one feinting left while another probes right. Hunting behavior. Pack tactics.
One lunges forward, faster than the others, and I don't hesitate. I trigger the flash.
The cabin explodes with light—harsh, clinical, unforgiving. Every shadow cast into stark relief, every corner exposed. The strobe's output is designed to freeze motion, to capture detail in the darkest conditions. Against creatures made of shadow, it's devastating.
The shadows scream—I feel it more than hear it, a vibration in my bones that aches through my teeth and makes my vision blur. They scatter like smoke in a windstorm, retreating through the walls and floor and ceiling, leaving frost patterns in their wake that crack and splinter across the wood. But they don't go far. I can sense them outside, waiting. Patient in a way that suggests they have all the time in the world.
My hands tremble as I lower the camera. The strobe light recycling whine fills the sudden silence. I've just defended a stranger from shadow creatures that shouldn't exist using photography equipment.
The absurdity of it would be funny if I weren't terrified.
