It's been some kind of a day.
Weak winter daylight, and not many hours of it, and the woods are full of things that might be movement, might be breaking twigs or footfalls or whispers. Might be there at all.
It's trying, is what it is. Wearing on already worn nerves.
Jackie puts her hand on the trunk of a tree, leans heavily in the gathering gloom, and takes a long breath.
"Old Fred," she says, trying not to sound pissed off. "He reckoned that — anyone who looked right at you, they were never seen again."
There's a long pause, enough to make her feel stupid for talking to herself.
"Did he?" it says, very close behind her, soft and mildly curious.
"That's what he said. He said anyone who saw you, you'd — well, something would happen to them." Jackie probes her teeth with her tongue, for something to do with herself. "Seems to me you've been working, today, on getting me to look."
"If I wanted someone to never be seen again," it croons, even closer now; she desperately tries not to shiver, sure that the faintest touch of breath on her neck is her imagination, just her imagination — "I don't think it would make any difference whether they saw me, Jackie."
The woods feel very large and old and indifferently dangerous, just then. She thinks about her heavy flashlight; but what is she going to do, really? Shine it at — whatever it is? Menace it, like she might save herself by bopping it on the head?
She turns around, slowly. And keeps going, a shuffling three-sixty, and even further.
Just trees.
She presses trembling fingers to her tight chest. "You ain't funny," she says, in a small voice that sounds more frightened than she'd like.