Serlock Pines

Two

Caleb awoke in the middle of the night to a soft who. A distant owl would call occasionally from deep in the forest. He couldn't tell what time it was but the night was just as dark as it was when he had fallen asleep, so he figured it hadn't been long.

The stars seemed off as well, a little less bright perhaps? But again Caleb just chalked that up to a few hours probably having passed. Still, the lighting, or darkness rather of the surrounding forest was certainly unsettling. There was something about it that seemed just a little unnataraul.

He got up and stretched a bit, looking around himself and in the woods he noticed the dead quiet was still the same. He let out a sigh and shrugged, walking over to the tent to wake up Adam for second watch and probably go back to sleep.

"Hey, Adam, wake up bud." Caleb said at a moderate volume as he approached the tent.

He got no response. He heard no shuffling or movement in the tent. Rolling his eyes Caleb pulled the tent flap back. To his horror it appeared Adam and Joe were both gone, they're sleeping bags empty. Adam's pack was gone and his camera, but Joe's was still there.

"You guys?" Caleb asked the air. He again got no response.

"You guys?" Caleb asked again, this time shouting and again getting no response.
Caleb's heart started beating faster, what was this? Some kind of joke? It wasn't funny if so.

Caleb looked to his left and his right, he heard the owl again and other than that it was just more dead silence. The absolute quiet wasn't helping the situation either.

Who the owl called out once more. Caleb began frantically going over what could have possibly happened in his head, continually deciding the worst case scenario must have been what had happened. He paced back and forth over and over again, unsure of what to do, trying to calm himself from his racing thoughts.

"You guys come on this isn't funny!" Caleb shouted, Half hoping they would come out of the trees and declare it was a prank, however no such thing happened.

Caleb backed up a few steps and inspected the now extinguished campfire. He looked around some more until finally he saw a trail of what looked like three sets of footprints leading away from the entrance of the tent. The tracks then spiraled around leading behind the tent. Caleb blinked at that and then walked back l around to the tents entrance.

Wait...three? He thought, why would there be three? Who else was here? It appeared he wasn't too far off when he considered this just have been the worse case scenario. Though, that didn't bring him any comfort either. He was now regretting his decision to come with more than anything, there was no way this was going to end well.

Another ten minutes passed, Caleb trying various calming techniques to right his mind before trying to think at all. Looking around once more, having no other leads and realizing how even the nearby owl was silent, it set in that Caleb didn't have much of a choice but to go after his friends. He let out a long sigh and cursed under his breath.

Caleb grabbed his pack out of the tent, took a long drink of water and followed the tracks down behind the tent and south of the campsite, nervous as all hell about what secrets the silent forest might hold.