The Tally of Unfinished Hikes

I’m not going to name the trail, either. Call it the Raven’s Folly loop, a name that would have felt poetic before we learned what it actually meant. The property was a cluster of old logging cabins near the town of Pine Hollow, a place that still had dirt roads and a general store that smelled of kerosene and stale coffee. We’d booked the last cabin on the map, listed as #12, but the caretaker, a wiry man named Ephraim, told us everyone just called it ‘the twelve.’ He gave us a look I couldn’t place—part pity, part warning—and said, ‘Mind the hour past dusk. The forest gets… talkative.’ I chalked it up to local color.

My partner, Marcus, and I had driven six hours from the city, eager for silence and stars. The cabin was exactly what we wanted: weathered pine, a stone fireplace, and a porch that overlooked a valley of fog. On the first evening, we unpacked, cooked chili, and sat outside as the sky bruised purple. That’s when I saw the first one—a man in a plaid shirt, standing at the edge of the trees. He was just… there, not moving, arms at his sides. I nudged Marcus, but by the time he looked, the man was gone. ‘Probably the caretaker checking on things,’ Marcus said, but his voice had a tightness.

The second day we hiked the loop. It was beautiful—ferns, moss, the smell of damp earth. At a switchback, we passed a cairn, a small stack of stones, and beside it, a child’s shoe, scuffed and bleached. I had the sudden, irrational urge to pick it up, but Marcus pulled me away. ‘Don’t touch anything,’ he said. That night, the sounds began. Not animal sounds, but rhythmic—like someone slowly tapping a stick against a tree trunk. It came from the forest, east of the cabin, and it counted. One tap, pause. Two taps, longer pause. Three taps, then silence. I tried to laugh it off. ‘Must be a woodpecker with a rhythm,’ I said, but we both lay awake until the tapping stopped just before midnight.

On the third day, we decided to leave. I called the caretaker, but the line was dead. When we tried to drive out, the truck’s engine turned over but died at the property gate, which we found chained and padlocked. ‘Someone must have mistaken our exit time,’ Marcus said, but I noticed the chain was rusted, as if it hadn’t been opened in years. We walked back to the cabin, and that’s when we noticed the stones. There were dozens of small cairns lining the path, each with a small object—a button, a key, a pair of glasses. At the last cairn, just by the porch, lay a baby’s rattle. I felt a coldness creep up my spine.

That evening, the taps returned, but closer. They seemed to originate from just beyond the porch, and they came in sequences. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. I started to count the pauses. There was a pattern, like Morse code, but the rhythm was uneven. Marcus, who had been a scout, whispered, ‘It’s counting us. One, two, three.’ Then the taps changed—four, five, six. ‘There are two of us,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s counting days.’ We didn’t sleep. We built a fire and sat back to back, listening. At some point, the taps stopped, and a low hum began, a sound like a distant sawmill.

The next morning, the fourth day, we tried the gate again. The chain was gone, but the padlock lay on the ground, open. We drove out without looking back. But as we descended the mountain, the radio, which had been silent, crackled to life. A voice, thin and reedy, said, ‘One, two, three, four.’ Then static. Marcus slammed the steering wheel. ‘We should have counted the stones,’ he said. ‘There were more than the days we stayed.’

We reached the main road, and I let out a breath. But then I saw it—in the rearview mirror, a small cairn on the shoulder of the road, with a single stone that looked freshly placed. I didn’t say anything. The drive home was quiet. Marcus kept glancing at the odometer, as if the miles were somehow a measure of our escape. When we finally got to our apartment, the phone rang. It was the caretaker, Ephraim. His voice was calm, but his words made my blood run cold. ‘Did you make it to the twelve? I tried to call. You were there four days, but the taps… they always start on the third day. They mark the ones that leave.’ I asked what he meant, but he just said, ‘You’ll see. When the counting comes to you.’

It’s been two weeks now. The taps haven’t followed us. But every night, just before I drift off, I hear a sound—a soft, rhythmic tapping, like a finger on glass. And I count the seconds between each tap, waiting for the pattern to change. Sometimes it’s one, two, three. Other times it’s four, five, six. But last night, it was seven. And I’m terrified of what comes after nine.