So dark, too, in the tunnel you venture from, the way its voices are so silent. Realize at some point that the others were as scared of you as the thing that drags the corpses of pale men through the forest.

“What men make of the future must be better than the past. If the world is to live, we must make better things.”

There, in the twilight, too, you imagine the salamander, hidden away against tree roots at the riverbank. The salamander, safe in subterranean hollows, in murky water, in among the river grasses, the algae and smooth rocks. While, above, the last pale man runs for safety, across the meadow and the fields and the forest. The dark bird following swift, close on the scent, and you realize the sound of it dragging its murdered burden comes to you from the past.

“I cannot see the destination sometimes. But I know the work must continue. 10, 7, 3, 0.”

The sound of the bird and the blood-red eyes and a sulfur smell and a scream and one will must win out. Another pale man has died. You imagine talons ripping through translucent skin, toward the visible heart beating its last. Delicate as a tree frog. Not up to the challenge.

“I search for it in entrails and in skulls. I must believe that it lives there.”

You find the damp part of the forest, where the moss is joined by the ferns and the ground curves down and water trickles continual. Where black iridescent damselflies glide and flit, still, then in the air again. Like something that could be torn apart in an instant, crumpled and thrown aside as if it had never existed. Find the places where the rotted wood of fallen trees gives shelter. Burrow deep like a fox. Hide your pack. Place the journal in a used plastic baggie, bury it in loam far from your hiding place. Until the next time.

The writing has come slower and slower, as you feel compelled to use blood for more and more of the words. But still you keep at it. A vague sense of needing a record. Something the salamander said to you. About commitment. About escape or no escape and there might come a time when it could not protect you. Or you think it said this. There have been too many demons to concentrate, to know for sure.