Against the Night's Shadow

The cold wind cut down through the trees with a wail like a tortured banshee, chilling the bones and making it hard to stand. The friends hunched deeper into their jackets and stepped on. The snow crunched underfoot as they pushed up the slope. Suddenly Charlie stopped. His hand shot out, fingers gritted on his friend's coat sleeve and pulled him back.

"What?" said Jack, his breath frosting in front of him. "I didn't see anything."

"I heard something," said Charlie, eyes scanning the forest around them for movement. Then he noticed, barely visible through the snow flurries, something laying on top of one of the boulders that dotted the slope. He pushed forward again and this time his friends followed suit. As they drew closer they could make out what it was. A body! They approached cautiously and peered over the rock. It was an old man, lying face down in the snow with his jacket over his head.

"Hey!" said Jack, prodding the man with his foot but there was no response and he wasn't moving at all.

"He's dead," said Paul quietly, turning away from the corpse to stare out into the white wilderness that surrounded them. "How could he die out here? I mean we're miles from anywhere."

"Maybe someone got lost in this weather," said Charlie, pulling his own jacket tighter around him to block out some of the freezing wind that howled around them like a banshee in heat. He'd never seen snow like this before, so heavy that you couldn't even see more than five feet in front of you by mid afternoon when they'd started up this mountain in search of somewhere to camp overnight before continuing on their trek tomorrow morning to get home before their parents worried too much about them being away for so long.

The storm had caught them out in the middle of nowhere at midday yesterday and it had taken them most of today to hack their way through it until they'd finally stumbled across this little valley with enough shelter underneath some huge boulders for them all to huddle together for warmth whilst they waited for it to pass. "Well somebody must have been looking after him or he wouldn't be lying here now would he?" said Charlie with a laugh that echoed off through the trees which seemed to make everything just seem even more eerie than before if that were possible. "Come on guys let's get back to camp."

They climbed wearily back up onto flat ground again and picked their way carefully along towards where they thought their camp might be but as they got closer they realized that something was wrong because it didn't look right any longer - one of their tents was missing! They threw themselves down into the snow and stared at each other as if hoping someone else might know what was going on but none of them did so eventually Paul shook himself free from his daze and crawled forward a little further until he could see inside their tent where he found two things; firstly one of the stoves was missing which meant someone had stolen it - probably Jack who would do anything for a hot cup of coffee - but secondly there was another tent pitched up next to theirs - what did that mean? Was this guy stealing their stove?

Charlie gave Paul a thumbs up sign and Paul crawled backwards over to where Charlie lay peering into the tent and then pointed inside at whoever was inside there before gesturing outside where he wanted Charlie to move so that he could crawl over beside him without being seen by whoever was inside there with them now apparently trying to steal their stuff!

Charlie gave him a puzzled look but Paul just shrugged helplessly back at him whilst making the same signals again before crawling behind him towards where Jack lay now checking over one of his guns which thankfully hadn't been stolen yet though most of their ammo had gone which would make things pretty tricky if someone tried anything clever against them too!