The Voices in the Pines

The pickup's suspension groaned as we bounced through another deep rut in the forestry track. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and steered around a fallen branch that had not been there the previous autumn. Dense ranks of spruce and Scots pine pressed in on both sides, their branches scraping against the load bed where our gear was lashed beneath tarpaulins. We had been crawling along minor roads and gated forestry tracks for nearly two hours since leaving the A9.

"Take the next left," my father said from the passenger seat, pointing towards a fork ahead. "It should be about another mile after that."

I turned where Peter indicated. The four-wheel-drive pickup lurched across a badly washed-out section, and in the rear-view mirror I saw Callum Price brace himself against the door while Gareth Hughes grabbed the handle above his window.

"Christ, Dan," Gareth said. "Trying to shake my teeth out?"

The track, if it deserved the name, was scarcely wider than the pickup. Pine needles and broken twigs crackled beneath the tyres.

Excitement grew in my chest as we drove deeper into the forest. Months of planning, counting down the days at work and checking the same gear lists again and again had led to this. My shoulders already felt looser. The constant irritation of emails and phone calls faded with every mile we put between ourselves and ordinary life.

"There," Peter said, leaning forwards. "The clearing's just ahead."

I slowed as the trees opened around the rough stalking camp our party had used, with the estate's permission, for nearly twenty years. The clearing lay among plantation spruce, silver birch and rowan, with older Scots pines rising beyond them towards the Monadhliath Mountains.

Afternoon sunlight came through gaps in the canopy, laying patches of gold across the bracken and needle-covered ground. I parked at the edge of the clearing and switched off the engine.

The silence came at once. It was the deep, almost physical quiet found only far from a public road: no traffic, no electrical hum and no distant neighbours, only wind whispering through pine needles and the occasional call of a bird. We were roughly 8 kilometres from the nearest public road.

I climbed out and stretched until my back cracked after the long drive.

"Home sweet home," Gareth said, already heading for the load bed.

He climbed up with his usual energy and began loosening the ropes securing our gear. Callum joined him while I lowered the tailgate. We had packed with practised efficiency: tents, sleeping bags, cool boxes, cooking equipment and locked cases containing our rifles, shotgun and ammunition. Every item had its place, loaded in the reverse order from which we would need it.

Peter walked around the clearing, inspecting the firepit we had built years before. Its ring of blackened stones remained in place, although winter storms had scattered a few of them. He began restoring the ring with the precise movements of a man who had established more camps than he could count.

I carried the main tent to the flattest ground, about 6 metres from the firepit. The heavy canvas smelt of pine resin and woodsmoke from countless trips. Callum appeared with the poles, and we laid everything out together.

"Pegs are in the side pocket," he said, reaching for them before he had finished speaking.

We had done this often enough to need few words. I held the central pole while Callum drove pegs into the hard-packed earth. Each rhythmic blow travelled through the trees. Peter joined us, tightening the guy lines and adjusting their angles until the tent stood square and solid.

Gareth unloaded the cooking supplies and arranged them on the rough wooden table someone had built at the site years ago: cast-iron pans, a blackened enamel coffee pot, bags of rice and pulses, tinned food and everything else we would need for five days in the forest. He stacked the cool boxes in the deepest shade.

I returned to the pickup for the firearms, handling each locked case with the care they demanded. There was my Tikka T3x, Callum's Sauer 100, Peter's old BSA sporting rifle and Gareth's lawful side-by-side twelve-bore shotgun. We all held the necessary firearm certificates, and the estate permission and stalking documents were secured with our other papers. I carried the cases into the tent one at a time and set them against the far wall, where they would remain dry and accessible.

The sun had sunk lower by the time we completed the main work. I helped Callum string a tarpaulin between two trees to shelter our supplies. Gareth unpacked the camp chairs and arranged them around the firepit.

"Coffee?" Peter asked, already filling the pot from one of our water containers.

We all nodded. Some traditions did not require discussion.

I gathered kindling from the margins of the clearing: dry twigs, loose birch bark and fallen pine branches. One advantage of returning to the same camp was knowing where to find what we needed. A hollow log on the eastern side of the clearing nearly always contained dry wood protected from the rain.

Callum had the fire going within minutes and fed it with thicker branches as the flames took hold. Smoke climbed vertically in the still air. Peter placed the coffee pot on a flat stone at the fire's edge, close enough to heat but not so close that it would boil over.

While we waited, I unpacked my stalking equipment: binoculars, rangefinder, gralloching knife, rope and breathable carcass netting. I checked every item and put it where I could find it in the darkness before dawn. The others did the same, moving quickly and methodically.

Gareth spread an Ordnance Survey map across the table and weighted its corners with stones. We gathered around while the coffee brewed, its rich smell mingling with the woodsmoke.

"Same areas as last year?" Callum asked, tracing a ridge with his finger.

Peter studied the map. "The forestry contractor has cut a new extraction track through here." He pointed north-east. "That may have altered the deer's movements."

We discussed routes, boundaries and meeting points, each choosing a familiar area. I would take Rowan Ridge to the west, where I had found good sign the previous season. Callum wanted the burnside to the south. Peter planned to work along a boggy margin where plantation spruce met a pocket of older Caledonian pinewood, while Gareth meant to stalk slowly through the birch and rowan to the east.

When the coffee was ready, Peter poured it into our metal mugs. I wrapped both hands around mine and felt the heat seep through. The first mouthful was perfect: strong, bitter and carrying that faint metallic taste which somehow made camp coffee better than anything brewed at home.

We reviewed the plan as the light faded: departure time, PMR radio channel 3, the midday check-in and what to do if anyone brought down a deer. It was the same conversation every year, but no less necessary for that. In the morning we would spread over several square kilometres of forest, and everyone needed to understand the arrangements.

I went to the pickup for my sleeping bag and paused to look at the sky. The first stars were appearing between the branches. There was no light pollution here. By full darkness, the Milky Way would span the visible sky.

The temperature was already falling with the sharp autumn cold that would send us searching for extra layers by morning. Back at the fire, Callum had begun preparing supper. It was nothing elaborate, only tins of stew heated over the flames. We ate from bowls, passing around a sliced loaf and a block of mature Cheddar. After the drive and the work of establishing camp, the simple food tasted far better than it had any right to.

Peter told stories about stalking the area when he was younger, when a man might pass an entire season without seeing another person among these trees. Gareth cleaned his shotgun by the fire, wiping the barrels with an oiled cloth. Callum sharpened his knife and tested its edge carefully against his thumbnail. I leant back in my chair, filled with the deep contentment of being exactly where I wanted to be.

The following morning would bring the true work: the early alarm, the cold walk through darkness and long hours of waiting and watching. That evening was for the fire, the stories and the company of men who understood why we returned year after year.

As the woodpile diminished, I went to gather more. My torch beam cut through the darkness beyond the circle of firelight. The forest felt vast and alive around me. A rustle in the bracken and the creak of a branch overhead reminded me how much moved unseen after sunset. I returned carrying an armful of dead pine and birch that would burn slowly and hot.

The others had drawn their chairs closer to the fire as the cold deepened. Our conversation became quieter and less frequent. The drive and the physical work were catching up with us.

"We should check the forecast," Peter said. "Make sure that front is still holding off."

Before reception had vanished, I had downloaded the latest Met Office forecast. I checked it again, then switched on the battery radio and found the BBC Highlands weather bulletin. Both agreed: clear weather for the next two days, with an overnight low of 1 degree C. It was excellent stalking weather, cold enough to keep the deer moving without making us thoroughly miserable.

We put away the remaining equipment as the fire subsided. Food was suspended between two trees beyond the tents to discourage scavengers. Water containers stood where we could find them easily. Torches, head torches and ammunition were kept within reach.

The camp looked orderly without being fussy, arranged for usefulness rather than appearance. It held everything four men needed for five days and little that we did not.

I made a final inspection of my equipment for the morning, working through the familiar list in my head: rifle, ammunition, knife, rope, firearm certificate, estate permission, stalking papers and high-visibility waistcoat. Everything was present. The others performed the same ritual.

Gareth banked the fire, raking the embers together and covering them with ash so they would retain enough heat to help us relight it in the morning. Callum checked the suspended food and tested the knots once more.

I surveyed the camp. The tent stood firmly against the night breeze, and our equipment was protected. The clearing felt like a small outpost carved from the forest, a temporary home we recreated each autumn.

Peter was already making his way towards the tent, placing each foot carefully among roots and stones. Since sunset, the temperature had dropped by about 8 degrees C. My breath turned white in the torchlight.

Inside, I spread my sleeping bag across the camp bed and removed my boots. The smells of canvas, woodsmoke and gun oil enclosed me like tradition itself. One after another, the others settled into their places.

The tent walls stirred in the breeze. An owl called nearby, its voice carrying cleanly through the still air. Callum muttered something about his cold feet. Gareth was already breathing deeply, possessing the enviable ability to fall asleep anywhere within minutes.

I lay on my back and listened to the forest. Tomorrow we would move through it with purpose and skill. Tonight we were simply four men in a tent in a remote corner of the Highlands, enjoying the relief of being away from everything.

The last sounds I heard before sleep were Peter's quiet snoring and the distant movement of wind through the pines.

My watch alarm buzzed at 04:30, scarcely audible but enough to wake me. I found the button in the darkness and silenced it before it disturbed the others.

My breath misted in the cold tent. By touch, I pulled on my thermal layers and stalking clothes, each stage familiar from years of repetition: woollen socks, long johns, trousers and the heavy flannel shirt that still smelt faintly of woodsmoke from earlier trips.

My fingers were already stiff by the time I laced my boots. The others stirred as I moved. Gareth grunted, rolled over and pulled his sleeping bag higher. Callum sat up on his camp bed and rubbed his face.

Peter was awake already. He probably had been for some time. During the stalking season, some internal clock always seemed to rouse him before any alarm. We dressed with little conversation, relying on nods and gestures.

Condensation from our breath coated the tent fabric, and a cold drop struck the back of my neck as I ducked through the flap. Outside, the darkness was complete. There was no moon, and the canopy concealed the stars. Beyond the camp lay black forest in every direction.

I switched on my head torch and began the morning routine. The fire came first. Beneath their coat of ash, the previous evening's embers retained a trace of heat. I stirred them with a stick, added dry kindling and blew gently until orange flames rose. Soon there was enough light to work without the head torch.

Coffee came next. I filled the blackened enamel pot from a water container, its metal handle so cold that it stung my palm. While the water heated, I checked my Tikka again. The bolt moved smoothly, the scope was clear and the correct ammunition was secure in my pocket. Everything was as it should be.

The others emerged from the tent like ghosts, high-visibility stalking waistcoats over muted outdoor clothing and cased firearms in hand, moving with the caution of men not yet fully awake. Once clear of the sleeping area, we prepared the rifles and Gareth's shotgun safely for the day. Then we stood around the strengthening fire, warming our hands and waiting for the coffee. None of us spoke much.

When it was ready, I filled our mugs. The first mouthful scalded my tongue, but I scarcely cared. Heat spread through my chest and woke me properly. We ate quick breakfasts of oat bars and dried sausage, whatever we could manage at that hour. With the day's stalking ahead of us, eating felt more like an obligation than a pleasure.

By 05:15 we were ready. I shouldered my rucksack, which held water, rope, knife and the other essentials. Peter checked his compass, although he could probably have navigated those woods blindfolded. Callum tested the PMR radios and received a reply from each of us. Gareth bounced lightly on his toes, eager to be moving.

"Channel 3 if anyone gets something down," Peter reminded us. "And check in at midday regardless."

We separated at the edge of camp and headed towards our chosen areas. My head-torch beam moved between the trunks as I found the deer path running west towards Rowan Ridge. Frost crisped the needles and dead leaves beneath my boots. Behind me, the others' lights spread like fireflies before vanishing among the trees.

The walk to my ground took forty-five minutes. I knew the route well enough to maintain a steady pace in darkness. It climbed gradually past a massive Scots pine that might have stood there before my grandfather was born, then crossed a dry gully which carried water only after heavy rain or spring thaw. My breathing settled into a rhythm, every exhalation visible in the beam.

I reached Rowan Ridge as the eastern sky showed its first grey suggestion of dawn. The portable high seat from the previous year still stood there, but winter storms had left it in poor condition. I would not risk climbing it before inspecting every fixing in daylight. Instead, I chose a place at the foot of a broad Scots pine with clear views along two intersecting deer paths. I settled against the trunk and switched off my light.

Darkness pressed close while my eyes adjusted. This was the part many people found hardest: remaining still and quiet long enough to become part of the forest rather than an intrusion. Peter had taught me patience. Given time, the woods would wake around me.

The first bird called as the sky brightened. Coal tits and treecreepers followed, then hooded crows farther away. A red squirrel scolded somewhere overhead, probably objecting to my presence. I rested the Tikka across my lap with the safety engaged but kept it ready.

Despite my gloves, my fingers grew numb, and I flexed them periodically to restore the blood flow. Daylight returned in stages beneath the canopy. First the separate tree trunks emerged, then the bushes and young spruce. At last colour came back: the brown of dead bracken, the grey of bark and the deep green of pine needles. The temperature had scarcely risen, but at least I could see.

For two hours I watched and listened. A hind and her calf passed about 30 metres north of me, placing their feet delicately among the undergrowth. They were not part of our agreed cull, and I was hoping for a mature stag. A great spotted woodpecker hammered at a dead trunk nearby, the blows carrying through the forest like somebody knocking on a door.

By 09:00 I needed to move. My legs had cramped after so long in one position, and I had seen no fresh sign immediately around me. I rose slowly, my joints objecting, and began stalking along the ridge from ground level.

Step, pause, examine. Step, pause, examine. I covered perhaps 50 metres in fifteen minutes.

The ridge fell steeply to the north, providing a view into a hollow where a narrow burn still ran despite the dry autumn. It looked spring-fed. I studied the area through my binoculars, checking every shadow and doubtful shape.

Movement caught my eye near a bend in the burn. It was no more than a flicker, but I froze. I waited with the binoculars steady.

There it was again: brown hide between the trunks, followed by antlers catching the filtered sunlight. A stag moved slowly along the burnside. The scrub concealed much of him, but the glimpses suggested a large, mature animal with an impressive head. My heart beat faster, and I made myself breathe evenly. He was about 140 metres away and partly screened by saplings.

There was no responsible shot from my position. I would have to draw closer or wait for him to enter an opening. The wind favoured me, carrying his scent towards me rather than mine towards him. If I moved carefully, I could descend the slope unseen.

I began downwards, testing every step before committing my weight. Dry leaves were my enemy. One careless footfall would warn those sensitive ears. The stag continued feeding beside the burn, unaware of me.

I used the trunks for cover and kept something solid between us whenever possible. At approximately 70 metres, I found what I needed. A fallen tree offered a stable rest, and beyond it lay a clear shooting lane towards a small opening the stag was approaching. I lowered myself behind the trunk and rested the Tikka across it.

The scope brought the animal into sharp detail. He was a magnificent mature twelve-pointer, with the heavy body of a stag weighing approximately 100 kg. Extracting him would be hard work, but he was a suitable animal under the estate's stalking plan.

I released the safety and controlled my breathing. In through my nose, out through my mouth.

The stag stepped into the opening and turned broadside, presenting his left flank. I settled the crosshairs just behind the shoulder, over the heart and lungs. My finger took up the trigger's pressure.

The shot broke cleanly, driving the butt into my shoulder. Through the scope, I saw the stag lurch and sprint into the cover. The rifle's report rolled along the hills and announced my presence to everything for miles.

I remained behind the fallen tree for a full five minutes, fixing in my mind the place where the stag had stood and the line it had taken. Peter had taught me that lesson early: never pursue at once. A well-hit deer seldom travelled far, but pushing a wounded animal too soon could turn a 50-metre follow-up into a chase lasting kilometres.

Once sufficient time had passed, I approached the place where the stag had been standing. Bright, frothy blood marked the leaves. It was a lung shot, exactly where I had intended.

More blood streaked the bushes through which he had crashed. The trail was easy to follow, with spray on both sides suggesting an exit wound. I found him 40 metres into the dense growth, lying against a fallen tree.

His eyes had already glazed. He had been dead before I reached him. I felt the familiar combination of satisfaction and sadness that accompanied a clean kill: respect for the animal, gratitude for the meat and pride in a careful shot.

I raised the radio. "Daniel here. Stag down near the burnside, north-west edge of Rowan Ridge."

Callum's voice crackled back. "Good work. I'm about twenty minutes from you. I'll head over."

"Received."

Gralloching a deer was never pleasant, but it had to be done promptly. I rolled the stag into position and opened the body cavity from sternum to pelvis, taking care not to pierce the stomach or intestines. Steam rose into the cold air. I worked methodically, removing the internal organs so the carcass could cool and drain properly. The heart showed the clean channel left by the bullet.

Callum arrived as I finished, his bright waistcoat visible through the trees before I could distinguish his face. He gave a low whistle when he saw the animal.

"That's a fine stag," he said, counting the tines. "A proper twelve-pointer. Must be close to 100 kilos."

"He's a big one," I agreed. "Give me a hand."

We fitted the extraction rope and began the long haul towards camp. Even between us, it was exhausting. The carcass caught against fallen timber, stones and clumps of heather. We stopped repeatedly to recover our breath and reset the rope. My shoulders burned and my lower back began to ache before we had covered 100 metres.

"Why do they always fall in the worst possible places?" Callum gasped during one pause.

"One of the laws of stalking," I said. "The bigger the stag, the farther it falls from camp."

Eventually we found a rhythm: pull for thirty seconds, rest for thirty. The burnside gave way to gentler ground, which helped. By the time the clearing appeared through the trees, my waistcoat was soaked with sweat despite the cold.

Peter and Gareth had already returned and were sitting beside the fire with mugs in their hands. They rose when we dragged the stag into view.

"Now that is a deer," Peter said, coming over to inspect it. "I haven't seen one that size in this forest for years."

Gareth fetched his camera from the tent. "We need photographs before you hang him."

I posed beside the stag while he took several pictures. The attention embarrassed me slightly, but I knew I would value the memory later.

We used the pickup-mounted capstan winch and a gambrel secured to a sound branch to lift the gralloched carcass for the remaining work. Callum removed the hide in one piece. He had always been better at that than I was. We planned to let most of the meat cool and condition before packing it into the cool boxes, but the backstraps and tenderloins were for that evening.

The sun was sinking towards the western ridgeline by the time we finished. Callum built up the fire and set a cast-iron frying pan over it. He had learnt to cook from my mum during the years he had spent with the Mercer family before she died, and he could do things with venison that made my mouth water at the thought.

"Steaks?" he asked, although he knew the answer.

"Absolutely."

I helped prepare the meat while Peter and Gareth dealt with the cleaning. We cut the fresh backstrap into thick steaks and seasoned them with salt, pepper and a little garlic. Callum had brought butter from home. He let it foam in the hot pan before lowering the steaks into it.

The smell was extraordinary, rich and wild in a way no shop-bought beef could imitate. We ate like kings while darkness settled. The venison was pink in the centre and crisp at the edges. Gareth cooked a pot of rice, and we shared a bag of prepared salad that was still mostly fresh. It was simple food, but after a day in the forest it surpassed any restaurant meal.

The beer came out once we were comfortable around the fire. It was nothing special, only cold cans of whatever had been on offer when we stopped for supplies, but it went down easily after the day's labour. Peter produced a flask from his jacket and passed it round. The whisky burnt warmly down my throat, mingling with the satisfaction of a successful day.

"Remember that ten-pointer I took here in 1992?" Peter asked, already beginning one of his stories. "The season was almost finished. I hadn't seen anything worth taking for two weeks."

I had heard the tale before, but listened again. Around a fire, even familiar stories were worth retelling.

Gareth followed it with an account of a red-deer stalking trip on the Isle of Mull, complete with extravagant gestures and sound effects. The flask made another circuit. Stars crowded the gaps between the trees.

The temperature fell steadily, but the fire kept us comfortable. I added another log and watched the sparks spiral upwards. Every muscle ached from the day's work, but it was a satisfying pain, earned by effort rather than a day at a desk.

Callum told us about nearly falling from a portable high seat the previous season, which set us all laughing. Empty beer cans collected at our feet. Nobody became drunk. We meant to stalk again the next day, but the pleasant warmth of the drink softened the cold.

"A good day," Peter said during a lull. "Meat in the cool box, everyone safe and the weather holding."

We nodded. The trip meant more than stalking. It was the fire, the stories and time with people who mattered. There were no mobile phones, emails or timetables beyond those imposed by daylight and weather. We were simply four men in the woods, continuing traditions older than any of us.

The fire lowered as the evening passed. Gareth yawned first, triggering the rest of us. We had all risen before dawn and expected to do so again.

I stood and stretched until my joints clicked. "I think I'll turn in."

"Good idea," Callum said, already preparing to bank the fire.

We followed the nightly routine, securing the food, checking our equipment and making the fire safe. The stag hung well away from the tent beneath breathable carcass netting, protected while it cooled. The firearms were made safe and returned to their proper places inside the tent. Everything was in order.

I climbed into my sleeping bag, exhausted but content. The stalking would continue the following morning, but the first day had given me everything I had hoped for: a clean kill, good food and time with my father and friends.

Beyond the tent, an owl called in the distance and wind moved through the pines. They were ordinary forest sounds, reassuring in their familiarity. I closed my eyes and allowed exhaustion to pull me under, already anticipating another dawn among the trees.

Cold woke me shortly before midnight. My sleeping bag had shifted, exposing one shoulder to the frigid air beside the tent wall. I pulled the fabric over myself and tried to settle again, but something felt wrong.

The forest was too quiet.

There was none of the usual nocturnal rustling, no owl and no distant animal calls to provide the background to sleep.

Callum's camp bed creaked as he sat up. Peter's breathing changed from the slow rhythm of sleep to something alert. We had all recognised the same absence, the sense that something had disrupted the forest's natural order.

"Are you lot awake?" Gareth whispered from his corner.

"Yes," I said, already reaching for my jacket. "Something isn't right."

We dressed quickly in the darkness, moving with the careful efficiency of men accustomed to trusting their instincts. I found my boots by touch, laced them and picked up the torch beside my bed. The tent zip sounded unnaturally loud when I opened it.

Outside, the night crowded close. The fire had dwindled to faintly glowing embers, just bright enough to show the ring of stones. I added kindling and then larger pieces as the first flames caught. The others joined me, their faces emerging from shadow as the light strengthened. None of us needed to explain why we were awake.

Years outdoors had taught us to recognise the feeling of a forest holding its breath. Every small mammal, insect and night bird had fallen silent. In my experience, that suggested either a large disturbance nearby or approaching weather. The clear sky ruled out a storm.

I fed more wood into the fire until it became a proper blaze. The warmth was welcome, but the light mattered more. It forced the darkness back to what felt like a tolerable distance.

We sat in the camp chairs, none of us yet willing to give voice to what we were thinking. Peter broke the silence.

"This reminds me of a night up here about fifteen years ago. Everything went quiet, as if the whole forest had been-"

A sound from the darkness cut him off.

A child was crying somewhere among the trees.

It was not a scream or a wail, but the desperate, hiccuping sobs of a young child in serious distress. We all turned towards it. The voice seemed to come from the north-west, perhaps 180 metres away.

"What the hell?" Callum said.

He stood, his hand moving instinctively towards his rifle case. The crying continued for about ten seconds and then ceased as abruptly as it had begun.

We sat motionless and listened. My thoughts raced through possible explanations. There were no houses for miles, no recognised campsite and no walking path likely to bring a family into that part of the private forest. The nearest public road was roughly 8 kilometres away.

"Someone could be lost," Peter said, although his tone suggested he did not believe it. "Perhaps a family came in without permission and a child wandered away."

Gareth was already pulling on his waistcoat. "We should look. If there really is a child out there-"

"Wait."

I caught his arm as he reached for his torch. "Think about it for a moment."

"Think about what? There's a child crying in the forest."

The sound came again, this time from the east.

It had the same pitch and the same desperate rhythm, but its position had shifted by at least ninety degrees. No lost child could have crossed that distance through dense forest so quickly and without making another sound.

The crying lasted longer this time, perhaps twenty seconds. Every hair on the back of my neck rose. The tone was right and the cadence convincing, yet beneath it lay a quality that was profoundly wrong, like a recording played back at an imperfect speed.

"That isn't the same direction," Callum said quietly.

We waited in tense silence. Five minutes passed.

Then the crying began to the south, closer now, perhaps 90 metres from the camp. It was identical to the earlier calls: the same apparent age, the same degree of distress and almost exactly the same duration. No child could move so fast through thick forest in complete darkness.

"It's circling us," I said.

Peter shifted in his chair. The firelight troubled the lines of his weathered face.

"In forty years of stalking, I've never heard anything like it."

"Could it be an animal?" Gareth asked, without conviction. "Foxes make some horrible noises."

"That is no fox."

I had heard plenty of foxes over the years. Their calls could resemble a woman screaming, but this was different. This was the precise imitation of a human child, produced with disturbing accuracy.

The crying came from the west, completing a circle around the clearing. Each repetition felt more wrong. The pattern was too exact and the sound too consistent. Whatever made it seemed careful and intelligent. It was testing us, waiting to see how we responded.

Callum prepared his Sauer and checked its chamber. "I don't like this. Perhaps we should-"

Peter raised a hand.

From beyond the firelight came the sound of breathing: heavy, rhythmic breaths like those of someone who had been running hard. They came from the direction of the most recent cry but seemed much lower, close to the ground.

I brought my Tikka to the ready and released the safety. The breathing continued without drawing nearer or moving away, maintaining its steady rhythm just beyond the reach of our sight.

"Who's there?" Gareth called, his side-by-side twelve-bore in his hands.

The breathing stopped at once.

The silence that followed was worse. We remained with our weapons ready, searching the darkness beyond the fire. Nothing moved. No branch stirred. Even the wind had died.

Then the crying began again, but the apparent age had changed.

Instead of a young child, it sounded like an adolescent. The distress was clearer and nearly formed words, but never quite did. The voice came from directly above us.

I tipped my head back and swept my torch through the branches. The others did the same. Our beams crossed among the upper limbs but revealed nothing.

The crying continued for nearly a minute, travelling through the canopy from one side of the clearing to the other. There was no movement of branches and no snapping of twigs. Whatever was above us moved in complete silence apart from its hideous imitation of human suffering.

"We need more light," Callum said, his voice taut.

We built the fire higher, adding logs until the flames climbed nearly 2 metres. The widened circle of light brought a little comfort, although I knew that was probably psychological. We had no proof that fire would stop anything determined to approach us.

At least we could see one another clearly and read the fear in each other's faces.

The crying stopped again. We waited with our weapons ready, scarcely breathing. Time stretched. My watch showed that only twenty minutes had passed since the first call, but it felt like hours. The muscles across my shoulders had tightened painfully, and I forced myself to loosen them.

"Maybe it's gone," Gareth said.

As if answering him, crying erupted from several directions at once.

North. South. East.

Three apparent sources, each slightly different in age and tone, all unmistakably shaped to resemble children in distress. They overlapped in a dreadful confusion of false sobbing. My rational mind understood that it could not be what it seemed, yet every instinct urged me to run out and help those children who were not there.

Whether one thing was throwing its voice around us or several creatures had gathered beyond the light, I could not tell.

"That isn't natural," Peter said. "Nothing in this forest makes sounds like that."

The crying to the north grew louder and more desperate. It now resembled a girl of seven or eight, sobbing for her mother. The voice possessed the breathless catches of a child who had cried for so long that she could barely inhale between sobs. Every detail was perfect except for a subtle wrongness I still could not identify, something that made my skin crawl.

Peter stared into the darkness.

"We should try to help," he said suddenly. "If there is even a chance it's real-"

"It isn't real."

I kept my voice firm. "Think about it. Three different voices from three directions, moving through the trees without making any other sound. Something is trying to lure us out there."

"You don't know that," Gareth argued, though I could see the doubt in his eyes. "What if you're wrong? What if there really are people out there who need help?"

The crying to the east changed. It became the voice of a younger child, perhaps four or five years old, high and thin and broken by the hiccupping gasps children make when they are truly terrified.

It called out a single word that almost sounded like "Mummy", but not quite. Whatever was producing the sound could not form the word properly.

Gareth stood and took several steps towards the east, his side-by-side twelve-bore raised.

"I can't just sit here listening to this."

"Don't."

I stood as well and moved to block his path.

"I know it's hard, Gaz, but you have to trust me. Nothing good is making those sounds."

"How can you be so sure?"

Before I could answer, the breathing returned. This time it came from the south, much closer than before: heavy, wet breaths like those of someone with fluid in their lungs.

It travelled slowly from left to right, remaining just beyond the reach of the firelight. I could almost feel eyes watching us from the darkness, studying our reactions.

The crying from all three directions grew louder, more desperate and more painful to hear. The western voice seemed to age until it belonged to a child of twelve or thirteen. Words began to emerge through the sobbing.

"Please." "Help." "Hurt."

The pronunciation was wrong, like that of something speaking a language it had only ever heard and never practised.

Callum moved closer to the fire, his knuckles white around the stock of his Sauer.

"What do we do?"

"We stay where we are," I said. "We keep the fire high and wait for daylight."

"That's hours away," Gareth protested.

"Then we wait for hours."

The breathing to the south grew louder, and beneath it I heard something else: a soft movement through the needles and dead leaves. It was not quite the sound of footsteps. It was more like something sliding or dragging itself across the ground.

Whatever was out there was large, far larger than any person. The crying voices continued their performance, but I concentrated on the dragging noise as it slowly circled our camp.

Peter lowered himself heavily into his chair.

"In all my years out here, I've never known anything like this."

"Because most people who meet it probably don't come back," I said without thinking.

The words hung between us, their meaning impossible to avoid.

The dragging sound stopped directly behind my chair. Something was there, something large and patient, waiting just beyond the light. The breathing was so close that I imagined damp air touching the back of my neck, although I knew it could not be near enough for that.

Every instinct urged me to turn, shine my torch into the darkness and see what stood there. Some deeper instinct kept me facing the fire.

"Nobody moves," I said quietly. "Nobody goes beyond the firelight for any reason."

The crying intensified. All three voices wailed at once from separate parts of the forest. The sound awakened an almost unbearable protective instinct in me, but the wrongness remained beneath the surface emotion. The voices were too precise and too consistent.

Real frightened children did not cry with such mechanical timing.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, everything stopped. The crying cut off in the middle of a sob. The breathing ceased. The dragging sound ended.

The forest returned to the oppressive silence that had woken us shortly before midnight. We sat motionless, waiting for the next horror, but nothing came.

"Is it over?" Callum whispered after several minutes.

I shook my head.

"I don't think so. It's waiting."

We remained on watch as the fire settled. I added more wood whenever it was needed, taking care never to leave the circle of light.

The silence continued, broken only by the crack of burning logs and our own guarded breathing. Midnight had passed. There were still hours to endure before dawn.

Gareth could not keep still. He paced around the fire with the shotgun cradled in his arms, peering into the darkness from different angles.

"This is driving me mad. What is it? What does it want?"

"Perhaps it feeds on fear," Callum suggested. "Perhaps it's trying to frighten us."

"Or it's trying to make us leave the fire," I said. "It wants us to investigate those voices."

Peter had been quiet for some time, staring into the flames. When he spoke, his voice sounded weary.

"My grandfather used to repeat old stories he'd heard in the Highlands. Tales of woodland things from before Christianity, things that borrowed human voices and used them to lead travellers astray. I never took them for genuine folklore, mind. They were just frightening stories passed from one person to another."

"You never told us any of that," Callum said.

"Because I didn't believe it. I thought they were tales for scaring children." Peter looked up from the fire and met each of our eyes in turn. "Now I'm wondering whether somebody, somewhere, saw something real."

The crying began again without warning.

This time it came from ground level all around us. Dozens of voices, all of different ages, all in distress. The sound was overwhelming, a wall of counterfeit human suffering that made coherent thought almost impossible.

Some voices called out words.

"Help me. Please. Mummy, it hurts."

Others merely wailed.

I pressed my hands over my ears, but it scarcely helped. The noise seemed to come from inside my skull as much as from the forest.

Gareth dropped to one knee and swept the twelve-bore from side to side, trying to cover every direction at once. Callum stood with his back to the fire, rifle raised, turning in slow circles.

Through the clamour, I heard the dragging noise again. It was closer now, and seemed to come from more than one place. The breathing returned as well, but this time it came from above, as though something large sat among the branches over our heads.

The combined sounds formed a hideous landscape of noise, threatening to crush rational thought.

Then I saw the eyes.

They appeared for no more than a second at the edge of the firelight: two points of yellow reflection like an animal's eyes caught in a torch beam. But they were much too high above the ground, at least two metres, and set too far apart.

They blinked once and vanished.

I knew they were still there. Still watching.

"There."

I pointed with my Tikka, but the eyes had gone.

"What did you see?" Callum demanded.

"Eyes. Something tall."

The crying voices began to move clockwise around the camp. Their circling made me dizzy and disorientated. I had to stare into the fire to keep my balance.

Whatever lurked outside the light appeared to have abandoned the simple attempt to lure us away. It was trying something else now. It was trying to drive us mad.

Peter suddenly rose and fired his old BSA sporting rifle into the air. The report tore through the chorus like a blade.

"Enough! Whatever you are, leave us alone!"

The crying stopped instantly.

The silence that followed was so complete that it seemed to have weight. We stood breathing hard, weapons raised, waiting.

The forest remained perfectly still for one minute, then two, then five.

Just as I began to hope it might be over, laughter came from the darkness.

It was a child's laughter, high and innocent, the sort of sound one might hear in a school playground. But, like the crying, there was something wrong with it. The rhythm faltered and the pitch shifted unpredictably. It sounded like something that had heard human laughter without understanding the feeling behind it.

The laughter moved through the pines, sometimes close and sometimes distant, at moments seeming to come from several directions at once.

It was worse than the crying. Tears made some kind of sense in a dark forest. The laughter suggested that something found our fear amusing.

"I can't take this," Gareth muttered. "I'd rather face whatever it is than sit here listening to it play games with us."

"That's exactly what it wants," I said. "It's trying to wear us down until one of us does something stupid."

The laughter changed. The child became an adult, and now a woman laughed from among the trees. It was rich and full, but possessed the same mechanical quality. It completed one circuit of our camp and then receded into the distance.

We waited, exhausted and tense, for the next assault.

Instead, we heard footsteps.

Heavy, deliberate steps approached from the north. They moved through the fallen needles and leaves without any attempt at concealment, coming slowly but steadily towards the camp.

The gait was wrong. Its rhythm suggested something walking on two legs, but its weight and balance did not sound human.

"Everyone stay calm," I said, sighting down the Tikka towards the noise. "Keep your weapons ready, but don't fire unless you can see a clear target."

The footsteps stopped just outside our circle of light.

Breathing followed, different from before. It was quieter and controlled, almost human, but not quite. The silence stretched between us and whatever stood beyond the flames.

Then it spoke.

The voice belonged to a young woman. She sounded frightened and lost.

"Please, I need help. I've been lost out here for hours. I saw your fire."

Every word was perfectly formed. The emotion seemed genuine. But I had listened to this thing's mimicry for too long. I heard the faint error in its rhythm, the mechanical quality beneath the fear.

"Please," the voice said again. "I'm so cold. Can I come to your fire?"

Gareth began to lower his shotgun, but I seized his arm.

"It isn't human," I hissed.

"How do you know?" he whispered.

"Because I know. Trust me."

The voice became more desperate.

"Why won't you help me? I can see you there. Four men with guns. I'm only one woman, lost and frightened. Please."

Peter called into the darkness.

"Step into the light where we can see you."

"I... I can't. I'm hurt. My ankle. Please, just come and help me. I'm right here."

The breathing grew laboured, as if the speaker were struggling through pain.

It was an impressive performance, but the thing would not, or could not, enter the firelight. That told me enough.

"We're not coming out there," I announced. "If you need help, you'll have to come to us."

The silence that followed was laden with threat.

When the voice spoke again, it had changed. It was still female, but older now, with anger beneath the words.

"You're going to let me die out here? What kind of men are you?"

Callum shifted uneasily beside me. I could see the guilt working on him, even though he knew as well as I did that no lost woman stood among the trees.

The thing in the darkness was exploiting the instinct to help and protect. It was a clever predator.

"Come into the light," I repeated.

The woman pleaded, accused and wept, but none of us moved. After a while her voice retreated between the trees, still begging us to follow. Darkness remained over the camp. Sunrise was nowhere near yet.

The crying began again, this time from everywhere at once. There were not merely three or four sources now, but perhaps a dozen surrounding us. Some sounded no more than twenty metres away, while others wailed in the distance, their cries carrying through the still Highland night.

Young children, teenagers and adults seemed to suffer together in the forest, their voices overlapping and answering one another in ways that made my skin crawl.

"Jesus Christ," Callum muttered, his knuckles white around his rifle.

The crying intensified. Beneath it came the wet breathing again, apparently from several moving positions. Large bodies pushed through undergrowth and broke twigs in every direction. They no longer appeared concerned with remaining quiet.

Peter rose from his chair with the BSA in his hands.

"Daniel, perhaps we should..."

"No," I cut in. "We don't help. We don't investigate. We don't leave this fire."

"But what if...?"

He struggled to finish. A lifetime of helping other people was at war with the evidence of his senses.

"What if even one of them is real? What if there's an actual person mixed up in all this?"

The breathing became louder and closer. I could distinguish several apparent sources around us, some high among the trees and others at ground level.

The rhythm was wrong for human lungs. It was too deep and too slow, as though whatever breathed out there was much larger than a person.

Gareth could not remain seated. He paced around the camp with the shotgun pressed to his chest.

"This is insane. We can't just sit here all night listening to it."

"We can, and we will," I said.

"Easy for you to say. You're not..."

He stopped and dragged a hand through his untidy hair.

"I can't explain it. Those sounds are doing something to me. I feel as if I have to help them."

Callum nodded slowly.

"I feel it too. Even knowing it's false, part of me wants to go out there."

The crying abruptly rose in pitch, becoming shriller and more painful. One young girl's voice climbed above all the others.

"Please, it hurts. Please help me."

The terror in it was so convincing that Peter took an involuntary step towards the sound. I caught his arm.

"That's what it wants. Can't you see? It's using our instincts against us."

"Perhaps we should try to sleep," Callum suggested, without conviction. "We could take turns keeping watch. We're all exhausted. None of us is thinking clearly."

"You want to sleep through this?"

Gareth gestured wildly towards the darkness and its dreadful chorus.

"He's right about the exhaustion," I said. "We have to try to rest. We'll take one-hour shifts. Gaz, you're too worked up to lie down, so you take the first watch."

Gareth laughed without humour.

"Yes, all right. I'll sit here and listen to children being tortured."

"They aren't children," I reminded him.

"I know that!" He was almost shouting. "But knowing doesn't make it any easier."

The breathing drew nearer, and a sliding, dragging noise came from the north, like a great weight being pulled across the forest floor. It advanced steadily towards us.

"Everyone, bring your gear over," I ordered. "Sleeping bags, whatever you need. We'll bed down beside the fire."

None of us wanted to enter the tents. We dragged out our sleeping bags and arranged them in a tight circle around the fire pit.

Lying flat felt too dangerous with the noises surrounding us. In the end, we sat on the bags with our backs towards the flames and our weapons across our laps.

The crying came and went in waves. Sometimes it faded until only one or two distant voices remained. Then it returned at full strength, a dozen apparent victims wailing together.

The breathing never entirely stopped. That wet, heavy sound circled us, pausing occasionally as though whatever made it had stopped to watch.

"Try to rest," I told the others. "Gareth can wake the next person in an hour."

Nobody slept. Every time I closed my eyes, the voices seemed to enter my head. The counterfeit cries of children aroused the urge to protect them even when I knew they were a lie.

A branch snapped loudly to the east, then another to the west. Whatever surrounded us was no longer attempting stealth. More wood cracked, some high in the canopy and some close to the ground.

It was moving and repositioning itself around the camp, whether one creature or several I could not tell.

Gareth shot to his feet.

"I saw something."

"Where?"

"There. Between those two pines. Something white."

We all looked, but at first saw nothing. Gareth kept the shotgun trained upon the gap, his whole body trembling with tension.

The crying from that direction grew louder and more demanding.

"There. Do you see it?"

I caught a glimpse of movement: something pale slipping between the tree trunks. It moved too quickly for me to distinguish any details, but it was undoubtedly there.

My finger settled against the trigger of my rifle.

"What was that?" Callum whispered.

"I don't know, but it's real. We're not imagining any of this."

Breathing sounded directly behind us, so close that I almost imagined moisture against my skin.

We spun with our weapons raised, but there was only darkness.

The fire had burnt lower while our attention was elsewhere. I seized more wood and threw it on. Sparks spiralled upwards, and the renewed flames pushed back the darkness by a few metres.

Whatever lurked outside had grown bolder. I could feel presences watching and waiting, although I still could not know how many there were.

"We should keep to the shifts," Callum said. "We need to conserve our strength."

Gareth was beyond listening. He paced frantically and muttered to himself. The crying affected him more severely than it did the rest of us. His eyes darted wildly from one shadow to another, and every few seconds he snapped the shotgun up at some movement he thought he had seen.

"Gaz, sit down," I ordered. "You're making everyone nervous."

"Nervous?"

He gave another humourless laugh.

"We're surrounded by God knows what, listening to children being tortured, and you're worried about making people nervous?"

Peter tried a gentler approach.

"Gareth, we need to stay together. Try to keep calm."

"Calm?" Gareth's voice cracked. "How can any of you be calm?"

The crying stopped.

Every voice in every direction fell silent at precisely the same instant. Even the breathing ceased.

The change was so abrupt that I felt pressure against my eardrums. We froze, waiting for whatever would follow.

Then, from perhaps three metres beyond the firelight, came whispering.

Several voices spoke in hushed tones, too quietly for us to distinguish the words. The murmur moved slowly around us. At times it sounded like two speakers; at others, like dozens.

"What are they saying?" Callum asked.

"I don't think it matters."

The whispers grew louder but remained unintelligible. They resembled people discussing something important, yet the timing was wrong. Pauses fell in unnatural places, and the tone never varied.

It was another attempt to imitate humanity.

Gareth screamed, a raw sound of anger and fear, and fired one barrel of his shotgun into the air. The blast shattered the early morning quiet.

"Shut up! Just shut up!"

The whispering ceased at once.

Gareth stood panting, smoke drifting from the muzzle of the twelve-bore. We watched him carefully, all of us aware of how close he was to breaking.

"Feel better?" I asked.

"No."

He slumped back onto his sleeping bag and opened the breech. He replaced the spent cartridge with shaking fingers, then closed the gun again.

"No, I don't feel better at all."

The breathing resumed, faster and more agitated than before. Whatever was out there had reacted to his outburst. Movement passed through the trees, and branches broke in several directions.

Then the crying began again, but distorted. The voices sped up and slowed down like a damaged recording. Children's cries stretched into deep, groaning tones before snapping back into shrill screams.

The sound made my teeth ache.

"It's angry," Peter said quietly. "Gareth firing made it angry."

The warped crying swelled, chaotic and layered, until thought itself became difficult. Gareth covered his ears and rocked back and forth. Callum had gone pale, his jaw clenched. Even Peter's usual composure was failing.

I forced myself to think through the noise.

The thing, or things, had escalated repeatedly. First they had tried to lure us away. Then they had surrounded us. Now they were battering us with sound. They were intelligent and adaptive, and they seemed to be losing patience.

Branches cracked directly overhead. I looked up but saw nothing beyond the reach of the flames. More snapping came from different heights, as though bodies moved through the upper branches.

The breathing was everywhere now, a chorus of wet, laboured sounds that made the air seem thick.

"We're not going to make it to dawn," Gareth said flatly. "They'll keep doing this until one of us breaks."

"We're going to be all right," I insisted, though I was no longer sure I believed it.

The crying began to circle the camp in a coordinated pattern, first clockwise and then anticlockwise, accelerating with every circuit. The effect was sickening. I fixed my eyes upon the fire to maintain my balance.

Something large crashed through the undergrowth to the north.

We all turned towards it, weapons raised. The crashing travelled from left to right while remaining just out of sight. Similar noises began elsewhere.

Subtlety was over.

Gareth stood again, the shotgun ready in his hands.

"I can't do this any longer."

"Sit down," I commanded.

"No."

He backed slightly away from the fire.

"I need to do something. I need to make it stop."

"Gareth, please."

Callum tried to catch his arm, but Gareth pulled away.

"Don't you understand? They aren't going to stop. They'll keep this up until we go mad or daylight comes."

"We can endure it," Peter said. "We've managed this long."

Gareth shook his head violently.

"I can't. Those sounds... Every time I close my eyes, I see children suffering. I know it isn't real, but I see them anyway."

The crying reached another peak. It sounded like hundreds of voices now, of every age and in every degree of distress. The noise pressed against us from all sides. Beneath it, the breathing had merged into a continuous rumble, like an enormous engine running in the darkness.

I watched Gareth closely. He had reached his breaking point, perhaps already passed it. The shotgun trembled in his hands, and sweat ran down his face despite the cold.

He looked repeatedly towards the darkness and then back at us, like a trapped animal searching for an escape.

"Hold on," I told him. "That's all you have to do. Hold on until morning."

But the night seemed endless. Time moved differently beneath that assault. Minutes felt like hours, and the first trace of grey remained impossibly distant.

New noises joined the others: scratching like claws against bark and hard clicks that might have been communication. Beneath it all continued the dreadful crying, never allowing us a moment's peace.

Gareth took another step away from the fire.

"I'm going to frighten them off."

"No, you're not," I said.

"Just a couple of shots into the trees. Show them we're not frightened."

"Gaz, get back here."

But the night's torment had broken something in him. He stood at the edge of the firelight with the shotgun aimed into the darkness, his whole body shaking with exhaustion and adrenaline.

"I'm going to end this," he announced.

The crying ceased once more.

The sudden silence was almost worse than the noise. Whatever watched us seemed to be waiting to see what Gareth would do. The whole forest held its breath.

I understood the danger of that moment. The intelligence behind the voices had driven Gareth exactly where it wanted him: at the edge of the light, apart from the group, his judgement destroyed by hours of deliberate torment.

"Gareth," I said very quietly. "Step back. Please."

He turned towards me, and I saw the desperation in his eyes.

"I can't, Daniel. I'm sorry, but I can't sit here any longer."

The breathing resumed, softer now, almost encouraging. Something was waiting for him to make his choice, and I knew with terrible certainty what that choice would be.

Gareth stepped backwards, away from the fire. The shotgun stopped trembling. He had made his decision, and an unnatural calm settled over him.

"I'm going out there."

"The hell you are."

Callum began to rise, but Gareth swung the shotgun in his direction. He did not quite point it at him, but the message was clear.

"Don't try to stop me."

His voice was steady now.

"This has to end. Those things have tortured us all night, and I'm finished with it."

Peter spoke with all the authority he could muster.

"Gareth, if you walk out there, you aren't coming back."

"Maybe. Or perhaps I'll scare them off and we can all get some sleep."

Gareth managed a weak smile that did not reach his eyes.

"Either way, it's better than sitting here going mad."

I recognised that look. It was the expression of a man pushed beyond his limits, when action, any action, seemed preferable to enduring another second. The crying had entered his mind, found every protective instinct and twisted it against him.

"At least wait for dawn," I said. "It's only a few more hours."

He shook his head.

"A few more hours of this and I'll be chewing on the barrels."

He stepped fully outside the firelight.

"I'll fire a couple of shots and make some noise. Show them we're not frightened. Perhaps they'll leave us alone."

The breathing grew louder and more excited.

They knew. Whatever intelligence guided the voices recognised its moment of victory. It had broken one of us and separated him from the group. Now it only needed to wait.

"Gareth, please." Callum's voice cracked. "We need you here. We need to stay together."

For a moment, Gareth hesitated. I saw the conflict in his face: the rational part of him that understood leaving meant death fighting against the desperate need to end the torment.

Then another sound came from the forest.

A very young child was crying.

"Daddy, where are you? Daddy?"

Gareth's face went white. His daughter was four years old.

"That isn't real," I said quickly. "You know it isn't real."

"I know."

His voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

"But what if some other family is somewhere out there? What if..."

"There is nobody else," Peter said firmly. "No public campsite, no path and no public road for roughly eight kilometres. You know that."

Gareth turned towards the voice and raised his shotgun.

"Daddy, I'm scared."

"God damn them," Gareth muttered.

He looked back at us one last time.

"I'm sorry. I have to know."

Then he was gone.

He crashed into the undergrowth towards the false child's voice, and the darkness swallowed him at once. We heard his footsteps receding, branches snapping and vegetation thrashing as he forced his way through.

"Gareth, come back!" Callum shouted.

"Let him go," I said quietly, though every instinct screamed at me to run after him. "If we go out there, we're all dead."

"We can't just..."

"Yes, we can."

I seized Callum's arm as he started after Gareth.

"That's exactly what it wants. It broke him, and now it's hoping we'll follow."

Peter rose slowly, his rifle held in his weathered hands.

"Daniel's right. We stay here."

The child's crying moved through the forest, drawing Gareth farther away. We could follow his direction by the noise he made in pursuit. He was not trying to move quietly. He wanted to make enough noise to frighten away whatever waited among the trees.

I knew better. You could not frighten something that had spent the entire night demonstrating that it had no fear of human beings.

Gareth's movements faded with distance.

Then, much closer than expected, a triumphant howl rose behind us.

We spun with our weapons raised, but saw nothing.

The howl came again from the left, then from the right. It could have been several creatures celebrating, or one voice thrown impossibly through the trees.

"They were waiting," Callum said, understanding dawning upon his face. "They drove him exactly where they wanted him."

I nodded.

"And now they're making sure we know it."

The forest fell quiet except for the distant sounds of Gareth moving through the undergrowth. His course took him in a broad arc around the camp. The child's voice remained ahead of him, always just beyond his reach, leading him deeper into the pines.

Five minutes passed, then ten. It was close to 03:30.

Gareth was so far away that we could barely hear him. The presences around our camp had gone silent. Perhaps they had followed their prey. Perhaps they were simply waiting to see whether we would act.

Then Gareth's voice carried with perfect clarity through the still air.

"Where are you? I'm here to help."

I felt sick. He was fully committed now and beyond the reach of reason.

The false child answered with more sobbing and pleas for Daddy. Gareth began moving again, heading north into the deepest part of the forest.

"We have to do something," Callum said desperately.

"We are doing something. We're surviving."

I kept my rifle ready and scanned the darkness.

"Gareth made his choice."

"You cold bastard. He's our friend."

"And he's already gone," I snapped. "You didn't see those eyes. You didn't feel that thing breathing behind my chair. Whatever is out there, it isn't an animal we can frighten away. It's clever. It's patient. And it has just got exactly what it wanted."

Peter moved closer to the fire and added more wood.

"How long do we wait?"

"Until daylight. Then we look for him."

The silence stretched between us, broken only by the fire.

I strained for any sound of Gareth, but the forest had swallowed him completely. Whatever surrounded us remained quiet, perhaps savouring its victory.

About twenty minutes after Gareth left, two shotgun blasts rang through the trees in rapid succession.

Both barrels.

We leapt to our feet. The shots had come from the north, perhaps four hundred metres away. Their reports rebounded among the trunks and faded into silence.

We waited, hardly breathing, for another sound.

Nothing came.

"Gareth!" I shouted. "Gareth, can you hear me?"

My voice echoed back through the trees, a mockery of itself.

There was no answer.

"Gareth!" Callum's voice was raw with desperation.

Still nothing.

The forest had become completely silent. No crying, no breathing and no movement. Even the natural night sounds were absent. It seemed that the entire wood was holding its breath, waiting to see what we would do.

"We have to go after him," Peter said.

It was not a suggestion. It was the instinct of a father, even though Gareth was not his son by blood.

"No," I said firmly. "That's precisely what it wants. Either Gareth fired at something or it made him waste his last two cartridges. Going out there now would be suicide."

"So we abandon him?"

"We wait for daylight. The moment we can see properly, we search. Not before."

"He could be hurt. He could be bleeding to death."

"Or he could already be dead, and those things could be waiting for us to investigate."

I met Peter's eyes.

"You know I'm right."

He did not answer. The silence from the forest was answer enough.

Whatever had happened after Gareth fired both barrels, it had not frightened the voices away. Yet the crying did not return. Nor did the breathing. The wood remained quiet, as though the performance had ended.

Callum sank onto his sleeping bag.

"This is insane. This whole thing is insane."

"Yes," I said. "But we're going to survive it. We'll wait for daylight, find Gareth if we can, and then get the hell out of here."

"What if he comes back by himself?" Peter asked. "What if he's only lost?"

"Then he'll see the fire and make for it."

I did not believe that, and neither did they. Gareth was experienced enough not to lose himself so close to camp. The two blasts had sounded final and desperate, like the last act of a man cornered in the dark.

We returned to our positions beside the fire, but everything had changed. Before, we had been united by our determination to endure the night. Now guilt and grief ate into us.

Gareth was our friend. Callum and I had known him since university. Peter had treated him like family for years, and we had allowed him to walk into the darkness alone.

Yet I knew with cold certainty that following would have killed us all. Whatever intelligence lay behind the voices had worked upon us with terrible precision. It had broken the weakest link, drawn him away and waited to see whether the others would follow.

We had disappointed it by remaining at the fire. That did not mean it had finished with us.

An hour passed, then another.

After 05:30, the eastern sky began to show the faintest trace of grey. It was not sunrise, only the promise of it. We had survived the night, but at a dreadful cost.

Gareth was gone, and all three of us understood that the chance of finding him alive was almost nothing.

Callum broke the silence.

"What do we tell his wife?"

"The truth," I said. "That something in these woods took him."

"She'll think we're mad."

"Perhaps. But lying won't bring him back."

Peter rose and stretched, his joints cracking in the cold air.

"As soon as there's enough light to see properly, we go looking."

"Agreed," I said. "We follow his trail as far as we safely can. But if we see or hear anything that suggests this thing is still nearby, we retreat at once."

"All three of us armed and together," Peter said.

I looked towards the trees. Leaving the camp entirely unguarded would mean risking our transport and supplies, our only reliable escape from a place roughly eight kilometres from the nearest public road.

"We prepare together," I said. "Then one of us stays here as lookout while the other two follow Gareth's trail. We don't abandon the pickup, and we don't split any farther than that."

Callum tried to speak, but the words caught.

"And if we find..."

"If we find his body, we mark the position and bring the police," I said. My voice faltered despite my effort to remain matter-of-fact. "We don't attempt to recover him ourselves. Not with whatever did this potentially still out there."

The sky continued to brighten. Sunrise remained perhaps an hour away, but I could make out individual Scots pines and plantation spruces instead of a single wall of darkness.

The fire had fallen to red coals. We did not build it back up. Soon we would leave that cursed place for good.

"I keep thinking about all the times we've stalked here," Peter said quietly. "All those years. Nearly twenty of them. And that thing might have been out here with us the whole time."

"Perhaps," I said. "Or perhaps something changed. Perhaps the new extraction track disturbed it. Perhaps we went too deep this time and crossed into a part of the forest we should have left alone."

"Do you really think Gareth is dead?" Callum asked.

I considered offering him false hope, but he deserved honesty.

"Yes, I do. Those shots, and then that silence. Nothing good follows a sound like that."

By 06:30 there was enough daylight to begin preparing for the search. I filled my pockets with spare cartridges for the Tikka. Callum checked the scope and action of his Sauer. Peter pulled on his high-visibility stalking waistcoat so we could identify one another easily among the trees.

There was a bitter irony in it. We had come to Rowan Ridge as licensed stalkers, carrying our firearm certificates and the estate's permission. Now we were the quarry.

We moved with the practised coordination of men who had shared years of camps and stalking trips. Beneath every deliberate action lay grief, fear and a rage that none of us could safely express.

The sky gradually lightened. By 06:15, I could see perhaps 50 metres into the forest. It was still too dark for a safe search, but the normal morning sounds were beginning to return. Coal tits called tentatively, as if testing whether it was safe, and somewhere beyond the clearing a red squirrel chattered.

The crushing presence of the night seemed to be lifting, though I knew the danger had not passed. Whatever had surrounded us might be nocturnal, or it might simply be waiting for us to enter its territory.

By 06:30, there would be enough light to follow Gareth's trail.

"When we find the spot, we look for evidence," I said. "Blood, torn clothing, his weapon. But we do not spread out. We stay within sight of each other at all times."

"And if that thing is still there?" Callum asked.

"Then we leave immediately. No heroics and no revenge. We get out and let the police deal with it."

Peter gave a bitter laugh. "The police. Right. They'll think we're drunk or mad."

"Maybe, but that will be their problem."

We had originally meant for all three of us to search, but looking at the camp, I changed my mind. Someone needed to remain there as a lookout, guard the gear and keep a clear base in case Gareth somehow found his way back.

Peter did not like it, but he agreed to stay. He would begin packing the camp while Callum and I followed the trail.

I took extra ammunition from my rucksack and pushed it into my jacket pockets. Callum did the same, his movements quick and jerky. Neither of us had slept since Gareth disappeared at about 03:15. Now we were preparing to enter the same trees that had swallowed him.

Exhaustion made everything seem unreal, as though the nightmare had continued into daylight.

"Follow his trail, stay close and retreat at the first sign of anything," I reminded Callum as we left the clearing. "No heroics."

He nodded, his jaw tight.

Gareth's path was impossible to miss. Broken branches hung at chest height where he had crashed through them, and his bootprints were pressed deep into the soft ground. He had not tried to move quietly. He had pursued those cries like a man possessed, convinced that his four-year-old daughter was somewhere in the darkness and needed him.

I led with my Tikka ready while Callum watched our rear with his Sauer.

The forest sounded almost normal, but not quite. Birds called from the canopy, though fewer than usual, and our footsteps seemed unnaturally loud among the Scots pine, birch and plantation spruce. I forced myself to concentrate on the trail rather than the feeling that we were walking into a trap.

About 100 metres from camp, Gareth's path curved east. His tracks showed that he had stopped there and turned in circles, searching for the source of the crying. He had doubled back twice, his bootprints overlapping in the damp soil.

I could picture him standing in that exact place, exhausted, confused and desperate while the voice moved around him.

"He was already lost here," Callum said quietly. "Completely turned round."

I studied the tracks and nodded. "It led him in circles, just as it moved the crying around our camp."

"Predator behaviour."

"Confuse the prey, wear it down, then strike when it is vulnerable."

We continued east, each step taking us farther from camp and deeper into a part of the forest I did not recognise. After all the years Peter and I had stalked there, I thought I knew the ground around our camp. Yet Gareth's trail led us down a steep slope into a dry gully I could not remember ever seeing.

The trees were older there, their trunks heavy with moss. Rowan and birch crowded beneath the pines, and dense thorny growth made progress slow. Gareth's path showed increasing desperation: snapped branches, torn vegetation and long skid marks where he had lost his footing on the descent.

Drops of blood clung to several thorns. He had cut his hands or torn through his clothing as he fought his way downhill.

At the bottom of the gully, something glinted among the wet leaves. It was Gareth's torch. It lay in the dirt, still switched on, though its beam was barely visible as the batteries failed.

I picked it up and examined it. The lens was clean and the casing intact.

"No damage," I said. "He dropped it while he was running."

Callum pointed along the stony floor of the gully. "His prints carry on that way."

The rocky ground did not preserve them clearly, but there were other signs: a broken branch at shoulder height, a scuff across a mossy boulder and more spots of blood on the leaves.

We had gone perhaps another 50 metres when Callum's voice tightened.

"Daniel. Over here."

Gareth's side-by-side twelve-bore lay across the trail.

The breech was open. Both barrels had been fired, and the two spent cartridges remained lodged in the chambers. The smell of burnt powder lingered faintly in the damp air. The wooden stock was cracked and splintered, as if Gareth had swung the gun like a club after firing it.

The ground around it was dark with blood.

Far too much blood.

"Jesus," Callum whispered.

I crouched beside the shotgun, trying to read what had happened. The blood was not pooled in one place. It covered an area several metres across, splashed over stones and leaves and smeared across tree trunks at shoulder height. Drops clung to low branches.

Gareth had made his stand there. He had fired both barrels at something, then used the broken shotgun to defend himself.

And he had lost.

"Gareth!" Callum shouted suddenly. "Gaz, can you hear us?"

His voice struck the trees and faded. Nothing answered except our breathing.

I wanted to tell him not to shout, that the noise might draw whatever had done this, but I understood his desperation. Some part of both of us still hoped Gareth might call back.

There was no body. No torn clothing. No human remains. Only the blood and the ruined gun.

"Look at this," I said.

The bark of one tree had been torn at shoulder height, as though claws had raked across it or Gareth had seized it while something dragged him away. Beneath it, long grooves scored the earth. They were not bootprints or the tracks of any animal I knew. They were too deep, too widely spaced and too irregular.

Callum knelt beside them. "What made those?"

"I don't know, and I don't want to find out."

The grooves converged with a broad smear of blood and led to the base of a mature Scots pine. There, the marks continued vertically up the trunk.

I followed them with my eyes. Bark had been stripped away in long parallel scars, and blood darkened the trunk before disappearing among branches about 9 metres above us.

The meaning was unmistakable. Gareth had not simply been killed. Something powerful enough to carry a grown man had dragged him straight up a tree.

A branch snapped overhead.

Callum and I swung our rifles upwards. The crowns were woven into a dense green roof, and sunlight filtered through in shifting fragments. I saw nothing moving, but the same sensation from the night returned at once: intelligent eyes studying us from concealment.

"Did you see anything?" Callum whispered.

I shook my head, keeping the rifle trained on the branches.

Leaves rustled to our left, though there was no wind. We turned towards the sound and saw nothing.

"We need to go," I said.

"We can't leave him."

"He's gone, Callum. Look at the blood. Look at that tree. Whatever got him-"

A low growl cut me off.

It came from ground level, somewhere inside the thick bushes to our right. The sound was so deep that I felt it in my chest more than I heard it.

Callum and I moved back to back, rifles raised.

The growl came again, closer.

Something pale slid between two spruce trunks at the edge of my vision. It moved too quickly for me to make out its shape. My finger settled against the trigger, but I held my fire. Shooting at shadows would only waste ammunition we might need.

"Back to camp," I said. "Slow and steady. Do not run unless I tell you."

We began retracing our route, staying close and watching opposite sides of the trail. The growling followed us, sometimes from the right, sometimes from the left. Whether there was one mimic or several, I could not tell. Whatever moved out there kept just beyond our sight.

It felt deliberate. The same calculated intelligence that had manipulated Gareth during the night was now letting us know that we were being escorted.

Branches shifted above us without any wind. Then the growling stopped, and the silence was worse. When it made a noise, at least we knew roughly where it was. Now it could have been anywhere.

"Keep moving," I told Callum.

He needed no encouragement. We were both fighting the urge to run. Only the fear that flight might provoke a chase kept us walking at a controlled pace.

The trees pressed closer as we climbed out of the gully. Every shadow seemed capable of hiding something. I kept glancing into the canopy, expecting to see yellow eyes looking down at us, but there were only needles, leaves and tangled branches.

About 100 metres from camp, I heard it clearly.

Something heavy was moving through the canopy, keeping pace with us. It was not wind or birds. Thick branches bowed under its weight as it travelled from tree to tree roughly 9 metres above the ground.

"Do not look up," I told Callum. "Just keep walking."

He had heard it too. His knuckles were white around his rifle, and his breathing had become rapid and shallow.

Breaks appeared in the trees ahead. The camp clearing was close.

The thing above us accelerated. Branches cracked as it moved ahead, then stopped somewhere directly between us and the camp.

Waiting.

My mind ran through our choices. Go around it. Stand and fight. Call to Peter.

Before I could decide, a violent crash erupted behind us. Branches snapped like rifle shots as something massive tore through the undergrowth.

Callum and I ran.

Our exhausted bodies found reserves of speed I would not have believed possible. My boots slipped on wet leaves as we scrambled up the last of the slope, our rifles striking against our shoulders.

A howl burst from the place where we had been standing seconds earlier.

It was not the crying we had heard during the night, nor the whispers or the breathing. This was pure animal rage, deep and terrible, vibrating through the forest. It was no longer trying to lure us. It wanted us terrified.

It succeeded.

More crashing followed, but the sound was wrong - too fast and too high. I risked a glance behind me and saw something pale flash between branches overhead. It covered impossible distances with each leap. Trees shuddered beneath its landings, bending under a weight that should have broken them.

"Move!" I gasped. "Keep moving!"

The howl came again, closer. Branches broke overhead, showering us with leaves and twigs. A heavy limb spun down past my shoulder and struck the ground.

The thing was not merely following us. It was driving us, controlling our route back towards camp.

My lungs burned and my legs felt weak, but then the clearing appeared ahead. Peter was loading gear into the four-wheel-drive pickup. He had heard our approach and was already throwing the tent into the back without bothering to fold it.

He looked up as we crashed through the last of the undergrowth. His face went white.

"Start the pickup!" I shouted.

Peter dropped the camp stove and ran for the driver's door as Callum and I burst into the clearing. The howl followed us to the tree line, so loud that it seemed to come from several places at once.

I seized the nearest cool box and heaved it into the back. Callum threw in the sleeping bags, not caring that they were loose and muddy. Peter started the engine. Its deep rumble was the finest sound I had ever heard.

Gear still lay scattered across the camp.

"Leave it!" Peter shouted.

I grabbed the rifle cases. Whatever was out there was not getting our firearms or ammunition. Callum snatched up the rucksacks and our secure ammunition cases.

The howling stopped.

The silence struck harder than the noise.

Callum froze with a rucksack in his hands. We both turned towards the trees. Nothing moved between the trunks. There were no pale shapes or yellow eyes, only shadows in the full morning light.

"Get in," I hissed.

We threw the last essential items into the pickup: the rifles, ammunition, driving licences, bank cards and pounds in cash. I yanked open the front passenger door as Callum scrambled into the rear seat.

Then something stepped from the trees.

It stopped where the forest's shadow met the sunlight.

It stood upright like a person, but it was wrong in every proportion. It was roughly 2.2 metres tall, with arms and legs far too long for its narrow body. Its joints bent at angles that made my eyes ache when I tried to understand them. Its skin was the grey-white colour of something that had never seen sunlight, stretched tightly over a frame that appeared starved and immensely powerful at the same time.

Its face was worse.

The structure was almost human, but elongated and distorted, as if a person's skull had been pulled out of shape. Its mouth opened much too wide, exposing rows of teeth more suited to a shark than anything that lived in a Scottish forest.

Its yellow eyes were the same ones I had glimpsed in the darkness. They looked colder in daylight. Intelligent, patient and amused.

The creature opened its mouth.

"Daddy, where are you? Daddy?"

Gareth's daughter's voice emerged from it, exactly as we had heard it during the night.

Now I could see its throat working incorrectly. The movements of its mouth did not match the words. It was like a damaged recording played through a corpse.

"Drive!"

I slammed the door as Peter put the pickup into reverse. The creature took one step towards us, then another, moving with appalling smoothness despite its gaunt frame. Its head tilted sideways as it studied us.

Peter spun the wheel, lined us up with the forestry track and accelerated. The tyres churned loose earth before finding purchase, and the pickup surged forwards.

I twisted in my seat to look through the rear window. The creature had stopped where it first entered the clearing. It did not chase us. It merely watched.

As we struck the first deep rut, it raised one impossibly long arm. The gesture might have been a wave or a promise.

The pickup hit a pothole hard enough to snap my teeth together. Loose equipment flew around the back. A cool box burst open and scattered ice over the supplies we had managed to save.

Peter kept his foot down, driving the narrow forestry track far faster than was safe. Branches scraped along the doors. Callum gripped the rear seat, his face colourless and his eyes wide.

"What was that thing?" he asked, his voice cracking.

I could not answer.

My hands shook as I checked that my rifle was loaded. Some primitive part of my mind insisted that I needed a weapon, even though we were already fleeing.

In the mirror, I caught brief views of the track behind us. It was empty, bordered by ordinary trees and ordinary shadows. I believed the creature had already taken what it wanted, or perhaps it was unwilling to follow us into full daylight. That was only an inference. I knew nothing about it except that it had allowed us to leave.

Peter drove with practised skill, even at that dangerous speed. None of us spoke for the first mile, then the second. The forest flashed past in the morning sun, deceptively beautiful. If I had not known what moved in its depths, I might have admired it.

"Slow down," I finally said when we reached a straight stretch. "It isn't following us."

Peter eased off the accelerator but kept us moving quickly. His hands were rigid on the steering wheel and his jaw was clenched. In all his decades of stalking, I had never seen him flee from anything.

"Gaz is really gone," Callum said from the back.

It was not a question.

"Yes," I managed.

We reached a junction with a broader extraction track. Peter took the turn hard enough to send the remaining gear crashing against the sides of the pickup. Something glass broke in the back, but none of us cared. Possessions could be replaced.

One mile became five, then ten. The track improved by degrees, from rutted earth to gravel, then to a minor single-track road. The dense forest gave way to open patches of moorland and distant farms. Civilisation returned in stages, every mile placing more distance between us and the thing among the pines.

"We have to report it," Peter said at last. His voice sounded raw. "Gareth is missing. We have to tell someone."

"They won't believe us," Callum said.

"Would you?" Peter asked.

"We tell them he went missing during a stalking trip," I said. "We found blood and his shotgun. We say it looked like some sort of animal attack."

"That was not an animal."

"No. But that is what we say."

Peter glanced at me, and I saw that he understood. No one would believe the truth: a creature that borrowed human voices to draw prey into the darkness, moved through trees as if gravity meant nothing, and resembled some ghastly version of what a human being might have become.

The police would think we were drunk, traumatised or concealing an accident.

"What about his family?" Callum asked.

The question settled heavily over us.

How could we tell Gareth's wife that her husband had been taken by something that should not exist? How could we tell his little girl that her father was not coming home because a thing in the forest had used her voice against him?

"We tell them he died trying to help someone," I said. "He heard what he thought was a lost child and went to investigate. We say an animal attacked him. Quickly."

It was a lie, but I told myself it was a necessary one. The truth would only add horror to their grief. Let them remember Gareth as the man who had tried to save a child, not as prey broken down and taken by something ancient and calculating.

We drove for nearly two hours before reaching the outskirts of Aviemore. By then the adrenaline had ebbed, leaving us exhausted and hollow. Peter pulled into a petrol station and stopped. For a moment, we remained inside while the engine ticked as it cooled.

Ordinary people went about ordinary business around us, filling their cars, buying coffee and living lives untouched by what existed in the remote forest.

"I'm never going back," Callum said quietly.

"Never," I agreed.

Peter nodded. "Nearly twenty years we used that camp. And that thing might have been out there the whole time."

"Perhaps it wasn't," I said, though I did not believe it. "Perhaps something changed. Maybe we went too deep this time and crossed into ground we should have left alone."

Even as I spoke, I remembered the confidence in those yellow eyes. Its patience. The careful way it had isolated Gareth and used the one voice he could not resist. That was not the behaviour of something newly arrived. It was the assurance of a predator that knew its territory completely.

"We need to find a phone," Peter said. "Call the police and get a search started."

There was mobile reception at the petrol station, but we decided to make the report in person at the local Police Scotland station. I knew the searchers would find nothing if we took them to the wrong ground, and even at that point part of me had already decided that I could not lead anyone back to the genuine camp.

As I climbed out, my legs felt weak. I looked towards the mountains. Their slopes were dark with distant forest.

Somewhere among those trees, the creature might already have been removing the evidence of Gareth's fate. Or it might have been sitting motionless in the shadows, waiting for another group of stalkers to venture too deep.

I turned away and followed Peter and Callum into the petrol station. We had calls to make, lies to tell and a lifetime of nightmares ahead of us.

But we were alive.

We had escaped. That had to count for something, although I knew I would never stop hearing those voices crying in the darkness or seeing that stretched face and its yellow eyes. I would never stop wondering what would have happened if we had followed Gareth out of the firelight.

Some knowledge came at a price. We had paid for ours with Gareth.

Hours later, I shifted in a hard plastic chair at the police station, my back aching. The place smelled of burnt coffee and floor cleaner, and the fluorescent lights made everything appear pale and unreal.

Detective Sergeant Morag Lennox sat opposite me, her pen moving across a notebook as I repeated the account for the third time.

"Your friend heard what he believed was a child crying," she said, without looking up. "Then he went to investigate alone."

"That's right."

The lie came more easily now. We had rehearsed it during the roughly fifty-kilometre drive from Aviemore and refined it while waiting to give our statements.

"We tried to stop him, but Gareth was convinced somebody needed help."

Lennox stopped writing and looked at me. Her tired expression suggested years of accidents, missing walkers and people who had entered wild country unprepared and never returned.

"This was at about 03:15?"

"Yes. We had heard the crying for a while. It sounded like a lost child. Gareth has a daughter about that age, and it got to him. We heard both shotgun barrels at about 03:30."

"And at first light you followed him?"

"Callum and I did. Peter remained at the camp."

"You found blood?"

"A great deal of it. His shotgun too, with both barrels fired. The stock was broken, and there were tracks we couldn't identify. It looked like some sort of animal attack."

Lennox made another note. Through the glass panel behind her, I could see Callum in another room giving his account to a constable. Peter had gone first. His calm manner and straightforward answers had lent credibility to the false version of our timeline and location.

We had agreed on the basic facts: strange cries in the night, Gareth leaving alone and physical evidence of an animal attack. Nothing about a pale creature walking upright, the voices moving through the trees or a mouth filled with too many teeth.

"We'll need you to show us where this happened," Lennox said. "You'll have to guide the search team to the campsite and the place where you found the gun."

My stomach tightened at the thought of returning, but I nodded. "Of course."

Several hours later, I was back in the forest, though nowhere near as deep as our actual camp. I placed our reported site closer to a recognised forestry track, shaving miles from the true location and keeping the police well away from the clearing.

Part of me could not face returning to the place where the creature had stepped into daylight. Another part believed that anyone I led there might be placed in danger. Beneath both excuses lay the knowledge that I was contaminating a missing-person inquiry and denying Gareth's family any realistic chance of recovering him.

The search was professional and thorough. Police officers, mountain rescue volunteers, search-dog handlers and a Forestry and Land Scotland wildlife officer worked in organised grids. Their high-visibility waistcoats moved between the spruce trunks as the dogs quartered the ground.

I led them to a shallow gully thick with bushes, a place similar enough to the real scene to support my story.

"About here," I said, pointing towards a group of pines. "This is where we found the blood and the shotgun."

They searched for three days.

The dogs followed traces that ended without explanation. Searchers found old feral-pig sign, but there was no blood, no shotgun, no clothing and no indication that Gareth had ever entered that part of the forest.

"Wild ground can swallow people," Lennox told me on the final afternoon as the teams packed their equipment. "Particularly if someone is injured, disorientated or moved by scavengers. But I won't pretend the account of the blood and the missing weapon is easy to reconcile with what we've found."

I agreed because admitting the truth was impossible. The police could decide that Gareth had fallen and been scavenged, perhaps by feral pigs or even injured by a large stag. Those explanations belonged to a world they understood.

Two weeks passed. I tried to return to ordinary life: work, bills and trips to the shops. Normality felt like a costume that no longer fitted.

I caught myself staring at tree lines and wondering what watched from the shadows.

Callum rang several times, his voice empty. He admitted that he had begun drinking more. He could not sleep without the television on because he needed its noise to drown out the memory of crying children.

Peter threw himself into jobs around his property. He built a shed he did not need and repaired fences that were not broken, anything to keep his hands and mind occupied.

We did not discuss that night. There was nothing we could say that would alter what had happened.

Then, on a Tuesday afternoon, my mobile rang. Detective Sergeant Lennox's name appeared on the screen, and my chest tightened.

"Mr Mercer, we've found something. Can you come to the station?"

I drove the roughly fifty kilometres in silence, my hands trembling against the steering wheel. They had found Gareth. They must have. A forestry worker or walker had discovered his body, or what remained of it.

I imagined being asked to identify him and having to face the call to his wife that I had dreaded. At least there would be closure.

Lennox's expression when I arrived told me it was not so simple.

"A contractor carrying out a forestry survey in a newly assessed section found this," she said, leading me into a small interview room.

The discovery had been made in the genuine forest area, miles from the false search site I had given them.

On the metal table stood a sealed evidence container. Through its transparent side, I saw pale, mangled flesh.

"It was lodged about 9 metres up a Scots pine," Lennox said.

My legs weakened, and I lowered myself into the nearest chair.

It was Gareth's hand. The tissue was torn and marked by deep parallel wounds. His wedding ring remained on one twisted finger, and I recognised it immediately.

Lennox did not ask me to identify him formally from that alone.

"The ring gave us the initial indication," she said. "Fingerprints and DNA have since confirmed that the hand belonged to Gareth Hughes."

I stared at the wounds. They looked like claw marks, but not marks made by any creature that should have existed in those woods.

"The post-mortem findings have been reported to the procurator fiscal," Lennox continued. "The trauma is consistent with a catastrophic animal attack. There is also evidence of scavenging, although the pathologist cannot say what species was responsible."

"What animal carries a hand 9 metres up a pine?"

Lennox was silent for a moment.

"The wildlife officer found older feral-pig sign in the wider area, and scavengers can move remains. A fall followed by animal activity is one working theory. An encounter with a large stag has also been suggested as a possible source of some injuries. But no, neither explanation adequately accounts for the hand being placed in that tree."

The honesty in her answer frightened me more than a convenient lie would have done.

"Did you find the rest of him?"

"No. Officers and mountain rescue searched the genuine survey area after the discovery. There was no body, no shotgun and no further confirmed remains."

I thought of the false gully where I had wasted three days of their time. My deception had kept them away from the only place where the blood and Gareth's weapon might have been found. By the time an unrelated forestry survey brought them into the true area, whatever evidence had once existed there was gone.

"What happens now?" I asked.

"The missing-person inquiry remains recorded, but the available findings support death following animal-inflicted trauma. The procurator fiscal will decide what can be released to the family. I'm sorry we couldn't recover more of your friend."

I signed the necessary papers, shook hands and walked out knowing that Gareth's death would be reduced to an uncertain wildlife incident. His wife would be told that an animal had killed him, while the police privately acknowledged that no known Scottish species explained everything they had found.

Perhaps that was kinder than the truth. She could grieve without knowing that something in the forest had used her daughter's voice to lure him away.

Callum lasted longer than I expected. Three months after the trip, he rang me late one night, drunk and crying about the sounds he still heard whenever he closed his eyes. He had tried joining colleagues for a day's stalking, but he panicked as soon as they entered dense woodland. He had claimed food poisoning to explain why he rushed back to the pickup.

He sold his rifles the following week.

Peter seemed to age five years in six months. The man who had stalked deer since he was old enough to accompany his own father, and who had taught Callum and me everything we knew about woodcraft and tracking, never picked up a rifle again.

Sometimes he began one of his old stalking stories, perhaps about the fine ten-point stag he took in 1992, only to fall silent halfway through and stare into the distance.

We both understood why. Every good memory of the forest had been poisoned by the knowledge of what else shared it.

Winter passed, and spring brought its usual eruption of green. Whenever I drove past woodland on the way to work, my skin crawled. I wondered how many forests concealed similar things and how many missing walkers or stalkers had heard a child crying in the darkness.

How many had followed the voice to whatever fate Gareth met?

Once, I considered researching it. I opened my laptop, intending to search reports of disappearances in the Highlands and old newspaper archives for accounts of impossible cries in remote forests.

My hand stopped over the keyboard.

I closed the laptop.

Peter had once mentioned old Highland tales of pre-Christian woodland beings that borrowed human voices, but he had never claimed they were authentic folklore, only stories repeated in isolated places. I no longer wanted to know whether those stories had any foundation. Some things were not worth learning. I had already paid too much for what I knew.

The dreams were the worst part. They were not nightmares so much as memories vivid enough to make me believe I was back at the camp.

The creature's face appeared in the darkness of my bedroom: the yellow eyes and the stretched, distorted imitation of humanity. Sometimes I heard the crying so clearly that I switched on every light in the house to convince myself I was alone.

One year later, almost to the day, I saw a news report about another missing stalker elsewhere in the Highlands.

A year later, a news report covered the disappearance of another stalker elsewhere in the Highlands. It was a different part of Scotland, but the country was just as remote. The reporter mentioned unexplained circumstances and cries heard by the man's companions, but the official account was much the same as ours: he had become lost in the forest and probably suffered an animal attack. The search was called off after five days.

I switched off the television and poured myself a whisky. I raised the glass in a silent toast to Gareth, wherever he was. Then I checked the locks twice, drew the curtains and tried not to think about what might be watching from the darkness outside.

Some nights, when the wind was just right, I could have sworn I heard children crying in the distance.