The forest path had seemed straightforward, the guide said, follow the red markers. But the markers had stopped appearing. The light had turned the colour of old teeth, and the trees were pressing closer than trees should, and the ground underfoot had gone from mud to something softer. She stopped and listened. Silence isn't really silence in a forest. There’s always birdsong, and wind in branches. But what Laura heard now was a different quality of quiet. The kind that meant everything else had already stopped. She smelled it then. Something sweet and overripe. Like a butcher's shop on a hot day with something floral laid over the top. She pushed through a screen of dead hazel into the clearing and gasped. Standing in a loose congregation thirty feet away, they stood. Long coats, dark with moisture, hanging to the leaf-litter. Wearing masks, bone-white, elongated, horned, with deep dark eye sockets. Like rabid rabbits. They were absolutely still in the way that only things which have been still for a very long time can be. As though they had been in this clearing since before the trees grew up around them. Laura's mind did what minds do, it reached for the rational. A procession or performance art. She was already composing the story she would tell. Then the one at the front tilted its head. Just slightly. The way a dog does when it hears a frequency you can't. She understood with a certainty that had no logic behind it, that the thing behind that mask did not have a human face. She stepped back and a twig snapped beneath her heel, obscenely loud. As one, they turned to look at her. Just their heads. Together, as if they just noticed her presence. The one at the front, the one that had tilted its head, raised one hand. A slow gesture, almost gracious. An invitation. From behind her, she heard breathing. She spun around; there was nothing. Just trees, and the dark between them, and the outline of something too tall and too still that might have been a trunk except that trunks don't have shoulders, don't have the elongated pale suggestion of a face angled downward, looking at her with the specific patient attention of something that has found exactly what it came for. She turned back to the clearing. They were closer. She hadn't heard movement. They were simply closer, the way things are closer in dreams, geometry quietly rewritten when you're not watching. She could see, now, that the dirty white coat the leader wore wasn't white from fabric. It was skin, pale, almost translucent. And the hands clasped at its waist, the long, too-long, wrongly jointed fingers, were moving. Slowly. Working at something. An opening, like a mouth. Wide, dark, desolate. Laura opened her mouth to scream. What came out was silence. The markers, the sign would later tell other walkers, were colour-coded red. Nobody had thought to mention what red meant.

Camp Explorer Five buses arrived just before dusk, full of squealing children and vomit. A peeling hand-painted sign above the road read Camp Explorer, Est. 1948, One by one, the children scrambled out, some nervous, some excited and little Johnny was completely covered in far too many people's vomit to care anymore It was late 1969, and their parents had all said the same thing in hushed voices: “It’s not safe anymore. Not when they are going to land on the moon.” Some parents whispered about radiation. Others blatantly said the aliens were just waiting for us to go up so they had permission to come down. Camp Explorer would keep their children protected and safe, tucked away in the middle of North Dakota; nothing would get to them through those woods. A tall man in a grey coat appeared from the main hall. His smile unusually happy, and his beady eyes staring just a tad too long. “Welcome, children,” he said. “You’re just in time.” The first few days were fun: swimming, rope swings, and cooking classes for the girls, with archery for the boys. They played games and told ghost stories around campfires at night. But every night, one child was called away. “Just a quick check-up,” the man in grey would say. By the morning, they were back, a little quiet but right as rain. On the seventh night, it was Tommy’s turn. He was led down into a hidden basement beneath the hall. The air smelled like metal, and the spark in the air just after a lightning storm. Rows of glass pods lined the walls. Inside each one was a kid from camp. Standing perfectly still. Tommy glanced along until he found his own face staring right back at him. “Those are clones, they’ll go home as you,” said the man in grey without a smile. Tommy tried to scream as everything went black. *** Back home, the parents welcomed their children with relief. The relief that they were right to send them away. They were blessedly unaffected by the moon landing. *** Years later, way after the camp was abandoned, hikers still gossip through the woods. They say if you wander too close at dusk, you’ll see them, one tall figure surrounded by a group of children in long coats that drag along the forest floor. Their faces hidden behind strange, expressionless masks with horns. They don’t chase you. They don’t speak. They just stand there, waiting, hoping for someone to finally take them home.

It was a tradition. Done every spring, for hundreds of years. The real reason had blurred. Some forgot it entirely; others twisted it to serve themselves. Thaddeus stood in the doorway of his cabin, back bent, hands gnarled, sight blurred. Still, he heard the whispers the wind carried and the wails of the chosen echoing in the gray dawn. Today was the propitiation. It was a condition that everyone participate. But over the years, that had changed until the ones forced into the circle were the lesser-thans: children of drunks, from overcrowded homes, or with no parents at all. Those were the ones who woke to find the colored egg. Thaddeus stepped back inside. He will go this year. The wind called to him, promising it would be different. He grabbed his worn flannel coat and shoved his arms through the frayed sleeves. Memories crashed in. His mother worrying her lip while they waited for his father to open the door. Would this be the year an egg waited on the threshold? It never came. The village resented them for it. The butcher stopped selling to his family, so his father raised their own cattle and pigs which were fatter, healthier than any others. This only deepened the spite. It wasn’t their fault. They had kept the agreement struck hundreds of years ago. By the time he reached the woods, the others were already there. The Mayor and his family stood in Sunday best, the other prominent families dressed the same. Nearby, a huddle of filthy children in ill-fitting clothes waited in silence. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. The Goddess wouldn’t be pleased. The group fell silent as figures emerged between the trees. The Goddess’ guards. Long pastel coats brushed the forest floor, pale rabbit masks hiding their faces. Rabbits meant fertility, renewal, prosperity. The Goddess’ promise. No one spoke. No one moved. Finally, the Mayor cleared his throat. “These are the children who found the colored egg. Take them and bless our village.” Thaddues knew that was a lie. The Goddess would never had selected them. The figures stepped forward in perfect unison. A woman shoved a child forward. “Go on now. We’ve got a celebration to start.” The guards shifted, making room for something still unseen. The air thickened, pressing inward. Something was coming. Slow. Deliberate. The guards lowered their heads. Fear rolled through the crowd, nearly visible. The Goddess was here. Thaddeus turned away. He didn’t want to see what came next. “Goodbye, my one true believer. You and your family have honored the agreement,” the wind whispered, brushing his cheek. “And now those who didn’t will suffer.” Thaddeus walked back toward his cabin. The screams followed soon after.