🪓 “Just Behind You” – The Hidebehind

A Hide Behind Encounter

The forest was too quiet. No birds. No rustling. Not even the wind dared stir the trees. Cole Simmons paused on the narrow trail, blinking sweat from his eyes. He was three miles past the last ranger signpost, deeper than he’d meant to go. His flashlight flickered in protest—old batteries. Of course. He tapped it, and the beam steadied.

He hated these deep woods. He had come only for the photo assignment—an outdoor magazine wanted dusk shots of the fir-lined ravine the locals called Devil’s Hollow. Cole had laughed at the name. Not anymore.

He was already late leaving.

Branches snapped behind him. He spun. Nothing. Just tall pines standing like silent sentries, their black trunks crowding the trail.

“Hello?” His voice cracked. “Ranger? Hiker?” Silence.

He forced a chuckle, trying to brush it off, but his skin prickled—the kind of goosebumps you don’t get from cold, the kind that say you’re being watched. He quickened his pace.

Five minutes later, he heard it again. Not loud. Just wrong. Like someone stepping lightly over dry leaves, staying just behind him. Cole snapped the flashlight around. Still nothing. The trees seemed closer now.

The trail, thinner. He didn’t remember that bend. He walked faster, then faster still, until he was nearly jogging. His backpack jostled with each step, camera gear clinking inside. He didn’t dare look back. He knew it would be there—and not there—all at once.

A sudden weight pressed on him, invisible, like gravity bending wrong.

And then came the breathing. Soft. Wet. Directly behind his left ear.

Cole bolted. No longer thinking—just running. Branches slapped his face; roots caught his boots. He lost the trail in seconds, crashing through undergrowth until he stumbled into a clearing—if you could call it that. A circle of trees loomed in perfect symmetry, their trunks twisted inward as if watching him.

He turned in place, heart hammering, light trembling in his hand. Every time he spun, the flashlight beam missed something. He could feel it—always just out of reach.

A branch cracked directly behind him. Cole didn’t turn. Didn’t move. He whispered, “I see you.”

A pause.

Then a cold, spindly hand gripped his shoulder.

And that was the last time anyone ever saw Cole Simmons.

Except, of course, for the ranger who found his camera bag, neatly placed in the center of the clearing, encircled by a perfect ring of fresh pine needles. Not a footprint in sight.

They say if you look at the photos on his memory card—the last ones—you can see something in the trees. Not in front. Not behind.

Somewhere… in between.