When he mentioned about Rock, I furrowed my brows in confusion and looked to my side. Rock was resting his head near me, sleeping peacefully while my hand lay on his head. When did he fall asleep? Do dogs sleep that much in general?

“How did you calm down the energetic dog?” He asked while leaning against the doorframe.

I shrugged, hoping he forgot what I said to him before. “I don’t know, should I wake him up?”

"Yes, and come down for lunch before it gets cold.” He said before disappearing from my view.

Rock woke up the moment I got up, and I asked him to follow downstairs for the lunch.

~~

The ringing of the phone made the 8-year-old boy awake in the middle of the night. He made his way to the kitchen for some water. He passed by his older brother’s room. After fetching himself some water, he sneakily walked towards his brother’s room door.

He turned its cold knob and opened it, only enough to get a peek inside. The door made a creak sound on opening, he expected his big brother to shout at him and tell him to shut the door and get out. But all he was greeted with was silence and stillness from the dark room.

“Sammy, what are you doing here?”

The little boy turned around as if caught red-handed. “I wanted to see whether Kevin had come back or not, mom.”

His mother sighed and crouched to the level of his younger son. “Well, your dad is still looking for him; he will be back by morning.”

There was a hint of relief on the little boy’s face. “Really? But mom, he also broke the rules; will he be grounded for it or not?”

On hearing his words, his mother bit back her cheek from inside, doing her best not to let the worry slip onto her face. "Yes, for sure, Kevin would be grounded for it; just you wait.”

The little boy huffed, "Yes, or it would be unfair.”

His mother, Aurora Watson, raised her eyebrows. “You would be grounded too if you are not back in your bed by now. It is already past your bedtime sweetie.”

The little boy’s eyes widened, and he immediately dashed to his room, muttering 'Goodnight mom’ out loud.

He entered his room, making sure not to step on his mini cars sprawled across his room, and hopped onto his bed. He covered himself in his blanket. Only to take it off minutes later as it was a hot summer night like the other days.

After tousling here and there on bed for some minutes, sleep took over him, thinking that he would see his annoying big brother in the morning even though he did not want to, but he was himself worried about him because Kevin was late to come home before too countless times, but still their dad never went out late at night to bring him back home, unlike tonight.

Meanwhile in the living room, Aurora was walking back and forth, thinking to herself, “Matthew is still looking for Kevin; he will be back by morning hopefully.”

Aurora brushed past her red hair. Waiting that any moment Matthew or Kevin would call her or the doorbell would ring and she would see her older son at the front door or maybe he would sneakily enter from the kitchen's back door. She hoped he had not entered the area the town’s people feared the most.

~~

The boy gasped for air the moment he awoke by the nightmare. The nightmare he had now forgotten a few seconds later. He got up on his legs and dusted off his red hair to remove any dirt. He looked around and was greeted with the forestry scent of forest.

He squinted his eyes in hopes of making the silhouette of trees and bushes clearer; at least the full moon was grateful enough to slip its light onto the forest’s ground floor through the gaps left in between the forests’ top strata.

Swiping through his phone for flashlight, he racked his brain to recall about the events that had occurred after he had made eye contact with the unidentified creature in the broad daylight. But to his dismay, he could not, and his head throbbed.

“I might have obviously tried to sprint away from it, but where am I and where is it?" he thought, which made his spine chill even thinking about it. Even though he could not make out clearly what the creature exactly looked like, the fear of ambiguity about it and these dark woods around him were making it hard for him to think clearly.

He shook his head and moved his phone around in all directions to get a clear picture of where he was; was it another part of the forest, or was it the same where he had walked before? He could not tell the difference; all trees, bushes, and paths looked the same. The cricking sound of crickets resonated everywhere.

“Maybe I could climb a tree and then look around from its high place to get some idea about where I am? Or I could search for any other light source than my phone and the moon.” He thought to himself, well aware that he had terrible forest navigating skills.

He carefully climbed the tree and thought twice before stepping on any branch that could or could not hold his weight. There was the resinous smell of the trunk he was holding onto—a smell with which his younger self was more familiar. Securing his position on one of the firm branches, he raised his head as high as he could to get a better view of the forest from above.

The boy would have appreciated the moonlight gently falling on the canopy of the woods. But his eyes were looking in all directions, desperate for a source of light or something familiar to his sight.

Alas, there was none.