Charn talked over them. “I speak from terrifying personal experience: You do not want to risk being caught here. I spent most of 1985 in this world, was hunted by fauns, betrayed by whurls, and forced to strike a vile bargain with a golem in the service of General Gorm the Obese. It was always twilight, nine months of shadows fighting shadows. If we are separated and you do not find your way back here, you will be left.”

God, he loved to talk, Peter thought. It seemed to Peter that Charn’s true calling was not hunting but lecturing.

They followed Charn down the meandering flight of rough stone steps. The branches of dead trees creaked and rustled, and ancient leaves blew around their ankles.

Once they all stopped at the sound of a great distant lowing.

“Ogre?” Peter’s father asked.

Charn nodded. The groan came again, a sound of aching despair. “Mating season,” Charn said, and chuckled indulgently.

Peter’s rifle thudded and banged against his back, and once the barrel caught on a branch. Mr. Fallows offered to carry it for him. His voice did not quite disguise an edge. For himself Peter was relieved to get it off his back. He felt he was already carrying too much. He hated hunting for the most part. There was too much waiting around, and his father wouldn’t let him bring his phone. Shooting things was fun, but often hours went by and nothiiiiiiing happened. He sent a mental prayer up to whatever barbaric gods ruled this world for a good quick piece of slaughter before he himself dropped dead, of boredom.

Christian Longs for Night

They went down and down. Christian heard the rushing of water in the distance and shivered with delight, as if he were already up to his waist in the frigid stream.

Charn led them off the steps and into the woods. A yard from the path, he touched a black silk ribbon hanging from a low branch. He nodded meaningfully and walked on into the poisoned forest. They followed a trail of the discreet ribbons for not quite half a mile and at last arrived upon the blind, set twenty feet off the ground. It was a shed resting on cross-planks in the boughs of a tree that resembled but was not an oak. A mossy rope ladder had been draped up out of reach on a high branch. Charn dropped it with the help of a long forked stick.

There were a couple camp chairs in the blind, and a wooden shelf holding some dusty glasses, and a dirty-looking paperback called $20 Lust if someone wanted something to read. A wide slot, about a foot high and three feet across, faced downhill. Through the trees it was just possible to see the flash of black water below.

Charn was the last up the ladder, and he only stuck his head and shoulders through the trap.