Rory Dane pretended he never needed the audience. But the truth was that he measured his worth in the glow of the comment bubbles and the rising counter in the corner of his screen. He hiked for the views, sure. The mountains, the cliffs, the overgrown forests but he hiked mostly for the views. The ones that come with emojis and subscriptions or the occasional sponsorship offer. Tonight, after weeks of declining, he intended to climb out of the algorithm tomb the internet had tossed him in.
“Alright, people,” he said as he adjusted his phone and the chest mounted camera. “We are officially entering the Blue Ravine, home of the legendary Black Annis. Hag of the hollow. Eater of children. The blue skinned menace of the Midlands. Or, more accurately, home of bored locals who need a hobby.”
The chat fluttered with laughing emojis and mock warnings. Watch your back.
She hates influencers.
Ask her to like and subscribe.
Rory grinned as he walked the narrow trail between the ancient oaks. The evening was warm and strangely still, as though the forest was holding its breath. He narrated every footstep turning folklore into comedy and fear into currency. The viewer count ticked up, three hundred, then five, then seven. Not great but better than the cliffside camping disaster last week.
“See? Total normal forest,” he said. “No blue witches, no skin harvesting crones. Just trees that probably have more followers than I do.”
As he walked, he noticed the chat beginning to shift. Not the tone, still playful, but the pace. Messages cascaded faster than he could read them. Then the viewer number jumped suddenly, doubling, then doubling again. Fourteen hundred, twenty eight hundred. Four thousand.
He frowned. “Did somebody hack me? What is happening?”
A comment fixed itself on the screen a little longer than the rest. Why is your breath fogging? Rory exhaled deeply. His breath plumed white, curling from his mouth like cigarette smoke.
“Okay, that’s new,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “It’s like eighty degrees out.”
New comments now flood in.
Your skin looks weird Rory.
Is your face stretched?
There’s something behind you..
He spun around too fast, nearly falling over a root. Nothing but trees and gathering darkness.
“Nice try,” he said, shaking his head. “You guys are leaning into the theme a little too hard.”
But the cold didn’t go away. It seeped through the fabric of his shirt. Sank into his arms and washed over his neck like a sudden shadow of a passing cloud. The forest seemed unchanged but something in it felt off, as if a layer of the world had been peeled back.
The GPS pinged an error, then another. The map flickered, showing him in two different locations miles apart before snapping back to normal.
“Okay, I’ll admit, that was creepy.” He was breathing harder than he should. “Probably a glitch. Probably.”
He walked on, determined to keep the stream entertaining but the atmosphere had shifted. The forest around him had darkened, though the sun wasn’t fully down yet. It was as if the ravine had swallowed the light before it could reach the ground.
Chat erupted again. Warnings, desperate ones began flooding in faster than he could comprehend.
Don’t go in there, Rory.
STOP.
Something is wrong with the shadows.
You’re not alone.
He swallowed hard, the cold intensified, like the breath of something standing too close. But he saw nothing unusual, only the half hidden hollow before him. It was a bowl shaped depression beneath a tangle of roots. The sort of natural pocket he’d crawled into a hundred times for dramatic effect.
“Relax.” He told his audience with a shaky grin. “I’ll go check it out and show you it’s empty. This is classic Blair Witch misdirection. I know the playbook.”
The chat exploded with NOs.
He ducked and crawled into the hollow anyway.
Inside, the air felt like the deep interior of a freezer. His breath fogged so deeply that he had to wipe at the phone’s lens, but frost reformed at the edges of the frame. He crouched low, the roots overhead formed a sort of ribbed ceiling that pressed down in the darkness. Something about the space felt wrong. The shadows didn’t simply exist, they layered, like folds of fabric hung too thickly over a window.
His laugh came out brittle.”See? Just dirt and…”
A second voice repeated him, a fraction of a second later, “…and…”
He froze. His muscles locked all at once. He turned slowly. A long, blue hand rested on his shoulder.
The fingers were as thin as bones, ending in curved, iron-black talons. Veins like dark threads pulsed beneath blue skin the color of deep bruises. The hand squeezed. Slightly at first then with a dreadful familiarity as if it had found him before. It held him firmly but not necessarily aggressive, like it remembered him from long ago.
Rory didn’t scream. He just inhaled rapidly, breath rattling into the cold. “Who’s there?”
The chat feed went berserk.
RORY RUN!
GET OUT!
OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD.
It’s her! It’s Black Annis!
She’s right behind you!”
He stumbled and bolted forward, scrambling on all fours as the thing behind him shifted. The roots overhead groaned as something too large to be in that hollow moved through it. Rory scrambled out onto the forest floor, the chest mounted camera catching jagged angles of dirt and leaves as he rolled to his feet.
He ran.
Behind him something crawled, no scraped, across the ground, its limbs dragging like sticks over wet stone. He heard breathing that did not match his panting, it was a low rasp that carried the sound of hunger.
The view count shot up by ten thousand, then twenty. He didn’t know it but this is exactly what she wanted. New watchers gave her direction, new pulses to track.
“Please, somebody…” he panted. “Call the police…please…God…”
His foot caught on a stone, launching him, cartwheeling into a clearing. He crashed to the ground. The camera mount cracked, sending the phone tumbling several feet away. It came to rest at an angle upward, catching Rory’s legs and the huge arc of the valley behind him. He clawed at the earth trying to rise but something seized him by the ankles and dragged him back. His scream shredded the air.
The chat became a wall of horror:
STOP THE STREAM!
Get away!
DON’T WATCH! YOU’RE FEEDING HER!
It’s Black Annis! It’s really her!
TURN IT OFF!
TURN IT OFF!
Rory’s legs kicked wildly as he was dragged across the dirt. His jeans tore open at the thigh. Then came a wet, ripping sound, unmistakably real, accompanied by a dark splatter of liquid on the leaves. The cracking sound was short, sharp, snaps like frozen twigs breaking. He screamed, his throat raw. “Somebody help me…God…dear God…” The legs in the frame twitched one, twice and then stilled.
Chat messages blurred in a furious, useless avalanche, thousands of people typing and none could look away. They had become part of the ritual without evening knowing the rules.
The camera lay untouched for nearly a minute, pointed at Rory’s unmoving legs. Then, softly, footsteps circled the device. Slow. Deliberate. Too soft to be human, accompanied by the scrape of a claw on stone.
The viewer count plummeted. Ten thousand. Five thousand. Five hundred. Ten. One.
Just one.
The final message scrolled up.
I have seen all of you.
∼ Kathleen McCluskey
© Copyright Kathleen McCluskey. All Rights Reserved.
Pen of the Damned 