Page 82 of (Mostly) Human Resources

“Oh, I see, so you can blame me if we go the wrong way? No, thank you.” Nic looked at her with his crooked half-smile. “I think you should choose since you’re the Elliot expert.”

“Fine.” She looked in the direction the creek was flowing and then up the mountain. “I think—”

“Oh, hello.” Nic’s attention was diverted by something on the path ahead. He squatted down and started poking at whatever he’d found. Alexys stepped up to get a better look.

Moss. The man was poking at a bit of moss.

Like it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.

“Your plant obsession,” Alexys sighed, “is bordering on concerning.”

“You don’t understand, Keane.” He answered her without looking up, his attention fully fixed on the moss. “I’m almost certain this moss isn’t indigenous to Appalachia.” He was getting animated. “I was really hoping for mushrooms, given the rumors I’ve heard about mycelial networks, but this is stillveryinteresting.”

When Nic pulled a bunch of plastic baggies from his backpack, becauseof coursehe needed to recover weird moss and noxious weeds. Who didn’t?

She watched as he began to carefully scoop some of the moss into the bag. “You aren’t sure, are you? Color me shocked.” He barely paid her any mind, too busy carefully collecting his newest sample and tucking it safely into his backpack.

“Remind me again how this is relevant?”

“If I had to guess,” Nic said as he rose to his feet, “that moss came from the Hollow Walker.”

Alexys made a face of disgust. “What? I don’t understand.”

“It’s the moss, it’spartof the creature. That’s why people have found it in these parts without it being indigenous. Get it?”

Alexys screwed up her face. “You mean it leaves behind bits of itself? Like a shedding dog?”

“That’s an incredibly crude way of putting it, but yes.” He pointed to some different moss growing on a nearby tree. He tried to explain howthatmoss was completely different from the moss on the path,couldn’t she tell,but she couldn’t. It all looked like moss to her.

“Okay, but what does it mean? Are we close to where it lives?” The thought actually filled her with dread. “Because I for one …”

Her voice was swept away in a sudden gust of cold wind. She tucked her head low and winced at the biting chill that found its way under her sweater. An eerie whistle came from somewhere down the creek—a moaning, lamenting sound that rang of death. The kind ofwind that blew through a cemetery and whistled between gravestones.

Alexys instinctively clutched at Nic’s arm and looked toward the sound. The faintest of movements in the darkness between the trees caught her eye. A huge, lumbering shadow slowly made its way toward them.

“What’s—”

“Turn off your flashlight,” Nic hissed in her ear. His arms were around her in an instant, folding her into his chest. They stood in complete darkness, pushed up tightly against each other and holding their breath.

The shadow was impossible to fully discern out in the darkness, but they could hear it moving through the trees. Heavy, slow footsteps that shook the earth, snapping branches as it forced its way through. The moaning whistle grew louder as it approached.

Every instinct in her body told her to run. To scream. But Nic’s hold on her was firm, assured. They should have made camp somewhere, when they still had the light, instead of stumbling around in the dark like two idiots.

How stupid were they?

Time seemed to slow as the moaning—the whistling—grew louder. She could almost see its massive form eclipsing the trees, heading straight toward them.

The Hollow Walker.

They’d finally found it.

CHAPTER 43

“There are enough overlapping biological traits between newly discovered creatures (commonly referred to as cryptids) and those already existing within our ecosystems for us to believe most could be genetically linked. However, not all have these overlaps which leaves us to question where they truly originate from.”

Jaws and Maws: A Study of Carnivorous Cryptidsby Makenna Petera

They weresocompletely dead.