If he gave them the satisfaction of seeing him scared, he’d never hear the end of it. Shit, he’d fucking die first.

With this thought in mind, Gary kept moving forward across the grass. Whenever the light from his watch went out he’d thumb the button and start moving forward again, sweeping it from left to right. He passed the tents and left the campsite without even realising it.

Ten paces on from the severed foot Gary found a tail, and a further ten paces on from that he found another foot.

The game can’t go on much longer, he thought hysterically, we’re going to run out of pieces soon.

A wild urge to laugh swept over him, and then quickly disappeared five paces later when he found the next item.

This time it was an eye.

Gary stared down at the thing with sick fascination, taking in the red gore and matted hair that still clung to the back of it, the way the wide blank pupil stared up at the stars.

That faraway part of his mind was back again, shouting at him to just turn around and get out of there, that none of his friends would ever cut out a rabbit’s fucking eye just to teach him a lesson, but now he barely even heard it.

He stepped over the eye and moved forward again, his legs seeming to move independently from his brain.

All his jumbled emotions – the uncertainty; the anger; most of all the fear – felt distant as he moved across the grass. It was like they belonged to someone else.

Just got to keep following the trail, he thought. Like Hansel and Gretel, lost in the woods.

Gary’s feet were numb from the dew. Every now and then he’d step on something – a couple of thin twigs, once a small and pointy stone – but he hardly even felt it.

He heard a whispering sound, much closer this time, and suddenly realised the copse of pine trees was now directly in front of him. They stood tall and clustered around him like ancient wooden sentries. The darkness between them seemed almost solid.

Just on the border of the trees Gary found another foot, and then as he stepped over it and into the copse his light fell on a larger shape. It was 10 paces into the trees, and before he’d even reached it he knew what it was.

The rabbit’s body was a mangled pulp of flesh, bone and hair. Its eyeless, earless face stared up at him from the grass. Patches of drying blood lay on the grass around it.

From somewhere behind Gary, a tree branch snapped.

The sound jolted through him like an electric shock, and the strange blanket dampening his emotions was suddenly whisked away. Gary realised with terror where he was, and what was lying on the grass in front of him.