Page 11 of Pareidolia

The flame from the candle flickers and goes out… then everything is still.

There’s the rain, the rumble of thunder…

And red eyes.

Eyes like fire—like blood.

A voice that spills beneath my skin and makes my bones vibrate.

“I know you, little monster…”

A flicker, a flash of red. Fluttering wings…

“You taste like death.”

CHAPTER 4

NOX

These trees hold fear and blood in their rings; crimson circles bear witness to the death that’s happened over the centuries since I settled here.

An ancient terror.

I am the shadows that live in the depths of the forest, the thing that people whisper about beneath their breath.

A creature with wings.

The reason hikers go missing.

I’m so much more than humans could possibly understand. I’m older than the ground I walk on.

And I’m hungry. The small group of campers I found wasn’t enough. Their emotions, their fear and desire to live. Their regret at all the things they’d never get to do…

It’s a dull flavor. The same taste I’ve had on my tongue since settling into the forest, day in and day out, save for one fleeting moment.

It’s strange—there are always enough hikers to keep me full, but it feels like centuries since I’ve been… satisfied. The one time I thought I might have tasted something worthy of truly filling myself with, it faded before I could grasp it. I haven’t found the same taste since.

But there’s something different about the body in my arms. Something familiar. I plucked him from the ground and dragged him into the trees—the straggler from the group I’d killed earlier.

He’s already broken, gasping for air with lungs that rattle wetly as they fill with blood.

It’s not him I’m interested in. The emotions rolling off him in slowly fading waves are more of the same: regret, terror, fury, shock.

Shock that someone in the forest was a bigger monster than the one he’d seen killing his friends.

That is what’s interesting. I can almost taste it on him, soft little licks of the man who was holding him over the edge of the fire tower. From a distance, a human might have thought it was an accident.

But I couldn’t taste an ounce of remorse in the air.

Only excitement.

Longing.

And…

Emptiness.

They’re the same emotions from years ago. From the body of a boy who fell from the very same tower. It’s a flavor I’ve been chasing since then, a taste that lingered on the back of my tongue and told me that I’d never be satisfied until I had it again.