The Red Thing You Drag Behind You

“Some burdens roll. Some you carry. And some you drag behind you, hoping the dust hides how much they bleed.”

"Why on earth did I think this was a good idea?" I mumbled under my breath, the words tumbling out on a sigh of frustration, barely audible above the soft crunch of dust beneath my bare feet. The red kayak resisted every tug, scraping obstinately through the thick ochre soil like a stubborn child being dragged to school. My fingers throbbed around the handle, the plastic warm under the relentless Clivilius sun.

The barren landscape yawned in every direction—an endless plain of sunbaked red and orange, broken only by occasional wind-carved stone. Above me stretched a sky of impossible blue, so pristine it seemed almost artificial, a dome of calm set against the chaos I felt inside. Every step I took felt simultaneously like progress and punishment.

Ahead, a curious ring of small, hand-stacked rock piles framed a scattered arrangement of random goods. It looked like someone had tried to impose order on the wilderness, their effort both earnest and ultimately futile. A half-collapsed folding chair, two plastic crates, and a blue tarp flapped lazily in the breeze, all surrounded by those little cairns, as if someone had laid claim to this tiny patch of nowhere.

The kayak’s vibrant red felt out of place here—too loud, too polished, too… human. It matched the torn shreds of fabric that clung to my frame like an accusation. I had found nothing in Luke’s room that fit or helped—no clothes, no gear, just dust and an empty wardrobe. In the end, I’d had to drag the ruined dress back over my sore skin, the fabric stiff with dried blood and dirt. Its hue, once bold, now mirrored the kayak like some cruel cosmic joke, as if the universe had dressed me to match the burden I was dragging.

Some wild flash of intuition had told me this was the right item to bring across first. That maybe it would be useful somehow—practical, portable, contained. It had seemed clever in the moment. But now, sweat dripping down my spine, arm aching with every pull, I was beginning to question my own judgement.

The desert gave no answers. Only silence. Only heat.

Bringing the kayak through the Portal might’ve been an act of blind hope—or just one more mistake in a night already full of them.

"Beatrix?"

The voice sliced clean through the haze of my spiralling thoughts, its unexpected clarity anchoring me back to the present. I stopped mid-step, breath catching as I turned slowly toward the sound. A figure was making its way across the parched terrain, the heat distorting his outline until, mercifully, the features resolved into someone familiar—Paul.

Relief, subtle but undeniable, washed through me. My shoulders slumped an inch as I exhaled, my limbs momentarily remembering what it was to feel safe, or at least safer. Paul—Luke’s older brother—was one of those rare people whose presence offered a strange kind of steadiness, like gravity you could trust. There had always been something grounded about him, something that made you feel like, if the world were to tip sideways, he’d somehow find the right angle to stand on.

His gait was purposeful, dust kicking up at his heels as he closed the distance.

"You look like shit," Paul announced, stopping just short of arm’s reach, his eyes sweeping over me in a clinical but not unkind assessment.

"Like you look any better," I shot back, lips twitching in the ghost of a smile. It was the kind of automatic banter that had once come easily to me, but now felt more like muscle memory than humour. The exhaustion behind the words dulled their edge; I doubted either of us truly found it funny.

"Here, let me take that," he offered, reaching for the kayak without hesitation. His hands, weathered and capable, gripped it with the ease of someone used to lifting awkward loads. I didn’t argue. The relief of letting go was immediate—my fingers tingled as circulation returned, and the strain in my shoulder eased, though the deeper ache within me remained unmoved.

Paul adjusted his grip and, without a word, subtly altered our course. It wasn’t a question or a suggestion—just a quiet assumption of direction, and I welcomed it. My brain, still fogged by adrenaline, trauma, and the constant throb of minor injuries, had long since stopped making decisions. At least any good, rational ones.

I followed him, the dry air burning in my throat with every breath as the two of us trudged forward. The dust beneath our feet clung to the soles of my feet and ankles, determined to mark every step, every stumble.

There was a steadiness in Paul’s presence, a silent strength I didn’t realise I’d been craving until I fell into step beside him. His height, once simply a detail, now offered a strange sense of protection—a moving shield in a world that had lost all sense of predictability.

And so, in the absence of certainty, I followed the only constant I could find: Paul’s footsteps, leading us deeper into Clivilius.

The early morning sun, a fiery orb suspended in a cloudless sky, spilled golden light across the ochre dust and the barren, sprawling horizon. Its warmth caressed my bare arms, a striking contrast to the memory of the sterile chill that had clung to the kitchen tiles just an hour before. The air here was dry, carrying with it the faint scent of baked earth and distance—a silence so vast it swallowed sound. Still, I could feel the remnants of the night’s terror coiled in the pit of my stomach, like a storm cloud reluctant to dissipate.

"Luke brought you in?"

Paul’s voice interrupted the stillness, unhurried yet marked by something deeper—curiosity, yes, but also a quiet vigilance. It wasn’t an accusation. Just... interest. A probing nudge at the edges of a story he clearly knew wasn’t being told in full.

"No," I replied tersely, the word rasping out of my throat like sandpaper. I didn’t look at him. Couldn’t. The memories of what had happened in that house—what had chased me through it, what I had run from and what I had left behind—clung to me like an unwelcome smell. I wasn't ready to speak of it. Not yet. The truth felt too tangled, too raw, and saying it aloud might make it real in a way I wasn’t prepared to face.

The silence that followed stretched thin and taut. Paul didn’t press. But I felt his gaze on me, a sidelong glance that lingered. It wasn’t invasive—more like a gentle attempt to measure the shape of my silence, to read between the lines I refused to speak.

I inhaled deeply, trying to steady myself. The air, though dry, burned my lungs with its purity—so different from the artificial sterility of inside, and yet no more comforting. My fingers curled tighter around the Portal Key. Its surface, still cool despite the growing heat of the morning, was a jarring contrast to the warmth that enveloped us. Its weight in my hand was disproportionate—less about mass and more about meaning.

With care, I extended my arm, opening my palm and offering the device to Paul. A quiet, deliberate gesture—not just an invitation to inspect, but a reluctant trust, the only truth I could give in that moment.

"From Cody?" he asked, his voice steady, though a flicker of something passed across his features—recognition, perhaps, or the beginning of a theory forming behind his eyes.

"No," I replied, firmer than I felt. The edge in my voice surprised me, as did the ripple of unease that coursed through me at his familiarity with the name. I watched him closely, every micro-expression noted, catalogued, filed away.

"Oh, then who?" Paul pressed, his eyes narrowing just slightly as they shifted from the Portal Key back to me. His face was calm, but his interest had sharpened. He was probing now, not rudely, but with a quiet insistence that suggested he knew more than he admitted—or at least, that he suspected I did.

Rather than answer, I seized the opportunity to deflect. I needed to know more. If Cody was involved… if he had made himself known to others… "What do you know about Cody?" I asked, a little too quickly, my tone edged with suspicion. I didn’t mean it to sound accusatory, but it came out sharp, pointed. My gaze locked onto Paul’s, unflinching.

"Nothing, really," he said after a beat, though there was an openness in his face I couldn’t quite reconcile with the name he had casually thrown out. "Luke mentioned the name when Joel arrived. But I haven't…" His voice faltered slightly, trailing into silence. The ellipsis in his sentence was louder than his words—an acknowledgment of unfamiliar terrain, a boundary he hadn’t crossed but was aware of.

"Joel? Jamie's son, Joel?" The words tumbled out, breathless, jumbled. My mind reeled, caught between relief and dread. I hadn’t expected that name—hadn’t prepared myself to hear it in this place, in this context.

"Yeah. You knew?" Paul asked, frowning slightly as he tried to make sense of my reaction. Confusion clouded his face, but I barely noticed. My thoughts were spiralling, fracturing into overlapping questions with no clear answers.

"Joel is here?" I repeated, the words breaking free in a voice that sounded foreign to my own ears—thin, disbelieving. I wasn’t speaking to Paul anymore, not really. I was thinking aloud, the puzzle pieces tumbling through my mind.

"I thought Luke wasn't going to bring him here," I murmured, barely conscious of speaking. The admission left my mouth before I could stop it, before I could weigh the danger of revealing too much. But it was too late—the thread had already been pulled, and the fabric of silence between us had begun to unravel.

"He didn't, apparently," Paul replied, his tone outwardly neutral, though I caught the subtle falter beneath it—a flicker of doubt, a tremor of confusion that mirrored my own. He was still piecing things together, just as I was.

Why would Luke bring him here? I thought Cody took care of it? The questions looped in my head like a scratched record, insistent and sharp-edged. Each repetition dug deeper, unearthing more uncertainty. I turned my gaze outward, scanning the arid expanse before us. The vastness of Clivilius only heightened my sense of isolation. The ochre earth stretched out like an accusation—empty, silent, unwelcoming. And in that silence, my thoughts multiplied.

"We think he came down the river," Paul added, his voice low and pensive, as though speaking too loudly might unravel the fragile logic holding the theory together. It made sense, in a way. The river—one of the few continuous lifelines in this landscape—was a plausible route. But plausible didn’t equal comforting. The storm of unease within me refused to quiet.

Jamie must be devastated. The thought slammed into me with an almost physical force. I pictured his face—creased with worry, hardened by the years but never cold. The kind of man who carried grief quietly, letting it settle deep instead of spilling it out. The weight of Joel’s death must be crushing him.

"Did Luke say what happened to him?" I asked, my voice measured, though anxiety pooled beneath every syllable. There was a selfish edge to the question, and I hated myself for it. Part of me needed to know what exactly Luke had shared—what part of the tangled narrative had been exposed, and whether my name had been threaded through it.

"He told us about the blood and the truck," Paul answered, his voice calm, too calm, as if recounting a news headline instead of a traumatic incident. But his words were anything but sterile. The images they conjured—blood staining a vehicle’s metallic insides, the cold finality of violence—wrapped around my chest like a vice.

A shiver rippled through me, involuntary, raw. Luke told them everything, or at least enough. Enough to place me adjacent to the danger, enough for my presence to be scrutinised. My mind spiralled, calculating the consequences. Would Jamie—calm, steady Jamie—see me differently now? Would he hold me responsible, even just in part, for the nightmare that had unfolded?

The thought hollowed something inside me. Relationships built on trust were fragile things. And sometimes, a single thread—like one truth revealed too soon, or too late—was all it took to unravel them entirely.

"But Glenda stitched his throat and he seems to be making a remarkable recovery."

"Glenda?" The name lodged in my mind like a foreign object, sharp and unfamiliar. A new piece in a puzzle that was growing more convoluted by the minute. "And Joel's alive?" I repeated, the words escaping before I could temper them, laced with disbelief. My mind struggled to reconcile the image of a boy with a severed throat—lifeless, pale—with one who was apparently recovering. The notion felt surreal, like a cruel joke played by a universe that had already pushed me to my limits.

"Yeah," Paul confirmed simply. "And Glenda is the camp's doctor."

A flood of emotion surged within me—relief, incredulity, guilt—each emotion colliding with the next. My knees weakened slightly beneath me, the tension in my muscles slackening, as though I’d been holding myself rigid since the moment I first heard his name. Joel was alive. Somehow, impossibly, he had survived. And I had to see it with my own eyes.

"Can I see him?" The question burst out, urgent and raw, driven not by curiosity but by an overwhelming need to confront the truth. To know that the life potentially lost because of my involvement hadn’t been lost at all. Perhaps if I could just see him—whole, breathing, healing—I might quiet the voice of guilt whispering that I had helped lead him into this.

"I'm sure you'll see him soon enough." Paul's words, though intended to reassure, landed like a dull thud. Too vague. Too distant. Soon enough wasn’t soon enough. It wasn’t now, and now was all I had room for in my frantic heart. His response left the door cracked open but offered no promise, no timeline. I swallowed the disappointment, tucking it away beside all the other unresolved truths weighing down my thoughts.

Our walk continued in silence, the kind of silence that's so heavy, so thick, you feel like you could reach out and touch it—like smoke that refused to dissipate, curling around our limbs and clogging the air between us. Each step kicked up ochre dust that clung to our legs, the crunch beneath our feet a fragile reminder that time was still moving, even if the moment felt suspended. Neither of us seemed ready, or perhaps able, to break it. There were too many unspoken truths trailing us like shadows.

I noticed Paul's pace begin to slow, his previously assured steps faltering. His stride, once purposeful, now wavered slightly with every footfall, as if the act of walking had become a burden. His shoulders, once square, now seemed to curve inward, the proud frame caving in on itself, as if he was carrying a weight much heavier than the physical world could impose.

When our eyes met, it was like peering through a crack in a dam—behind his steady gaze were pools of unspoken anguish, telling stories of pain and fear that his lips had yet to confess. A storm unweathered.

"A… a shadow panther?" The words stumbled out of Paul's mouth, fragile as glass and laden with a dread that seemed to suck the air from our surroundings. His voice was thin, almost childlike, and utterly devoid of the stoicism he usually wore like armour.

"Huh?" My response was automatic, a knee-jerk reaction to the unexpected turn in our conversation.

"Your dress and cuts. Were they from a shadow panther?" His voice held a desperation now, a palpable need for confirmation that stretched far beyond simple curiosity. It was fear seeking recognition, shared experience aching to be named.

I didn’t answer straight away. Instead, I stared at him—silent, unmoving—as the memory came roaring back like a tide. My throat tightened. The image of the beast—the sheer darkness of it, its muscle and menace, the gleam of its eyes like voids swallowing the light—flashed with vivid clarity. My breath hitched, my mind flinching at the memory like a wound too tender to touch.

"A panther-like creature?" Paul pressed, his voice sharpening with urgency. There was something wild in his tone now, something cracking beneath the surface. He was reaching for something more than truth—he was grasping for survival, for confirmation that he wasn't imagining his own ghosts.

"Yeah," I admitted quietly. The word slipped from my lips like a confession, barely audible yet impossibly loud in the weighted air between us. It felt like saying it out loud might summon it, might make the terror real again. And yet, holding it in was worse. Acknowledging the encounter felt like unravelling a thread from a tightly wound spool of experiences, exposing a vulnerability I wasn't ready to confront. The memory of the creature’s assault was not just fresh—it was flayed open, raw and pulsing beneath the skin. A nightmare not yet finished.

Paul swallowed hard, the motion sharp and visible, a betraying flicker of emotion that mirrored the churn within him. His jaw tightened, a silent effort to regain composure, but his eyes—those were harder to mask. There was a flicker there, a shift, like a veil lifting briefly to reveal the rawness beneath. His reaction was a complex tapestry of fear and realisation, emotions that danced across his features—fleeting yet unmistakable.

“It was you who screamed last night, then?” His voice, though outwardly steady, carried an undercurrent I couldn’t quite define—was it guilt, concern, or perhaps even fear?

“I guess,” I replied, voice brittle with forced nonchalance. The shrug that accompanied it was more habit than choice, a reflex honed by years of hiding behind dismissiveness. But the truth clung to my skin like sweat: that scream had come from the very marrow of my being, born of a fear so primal it had ripped through me without thought or restraint. Pretending it was nothing now felt absurd, yet easier than revisiting the truth.

Paul’s silence deepened. He didn’t respond with words but in gestures: a slow blink, a subtle gulp, the quiet motion of wiping his eyes—each a muted proclamation of the turmoil within. His hands lingered at his sides, restless, twitching as if unsure whether to offer comfort or brace for more revelations. Whatever he'd heard last night, it hadn’t been forgotten. The echo of my scream had reverberated through more than just the desolate landscape—it had touched something in him too, unsettling the ground we all thought solid beneath our feet.

“Everything okay here?” I ventured, my voice no more than a whisper, barely enough to disturb the still air around us. It wasn’t really a question—it was a feeler, a cautious tap against the shell he was building around himself.

“We had an incident here last–” Paul began, then faltered. His voice wavered as if the words themselves had weight, too heavy to bear out loud. Whatever had happened here, he wasn’t ready to hand it over just yet. The sentence dangled in the air, unfinished, and more unsettling for its absence of closure.

Then, breath caught in my throat as we crested the final rise. The view below rolled into sight, vivid and immediate. Nestled against the burnt red earth, the camp came into focus, its details sharp in the morning light. A campfire smouldered gently, its flickering flames stubborn against the breeze, sending up tendrils of smoke like whispered warnings. Beyond it, a row of large, austere tents—almost military in appearance—stood in an imposing line, their symmetry out of place in the barren nothingness. My eyes widened at the sight. This was no casual setup.

My voice faltered, catching in my throat as I watched Luke’s figure storm past us. There was something unrecognisable in the way he moved—rigid, purposeful, yet barely restrained, as if his very skin struggled to contain the tempest within. His shoulders, normally squared with calm assurance, were hunched forward in agitation, and his hands moved in sharp, angry swipes across his face. He was wiping away more than sweat; he was battling back something raw and overwhelming. The sight stopped me cold.

“Luke!” The name finally broke free from my lips, escaping in a rush of breath that felt too loud against the weight of tension pressing down on everything. It wasn’t just a call—it was a plea, a tether thrown into a storm I didn’t understand, grasping for clarity, for answers.

I moved to follow, but Paul’s hand closed around my arm with sudden firmness, the grip gentle yet unyielding. It spoke volumes—wait, don’t. Not yet. His silent warning rooted me in place even as every instinct screamed at me to run after Luke. A knot of apprehension tightened low in my stomach, twisting with a sick sense of foreboding. Something was wrong. Something deeper than I could yet see.

What the hell happened last night?

The question echoed through my mind, bouncing against fragmented memories and unanswered fears. My gaze dropped instinctively to the gash on my arm. The skin around it had begun to bruise, a dull purpling that throbbed with each heartbeat. It stung, yes—but it was more than physical pain. It was a symbol, a mark left by the dark creature I’d faced… and one that others might now be whispering about.

The idea that rumours of shadow panthers might already be making their way through the camp sent a shiver down my spine. Would anyone believe me if they knew? Or worse—what if they already did?