Joe was exhausted. He was starving, thirsty and freezing. He'd been sitting naked in the same spot for nearly twelve hours, leaving his legs and back stiff from the solid, unforgiving seat. He'd sit for another twelve if he had to. If the legends were true, and he told himself over and over with a growing desperation they had to be, it would all be worth it in the end.
He knew going into things that it could be a fool's errand. It certainly sounded crazy enough on the surface. Making a deal in the dead of night with a mysterious creature in the woods? It was nonsense. The rational part of his brain was telling him to get up and walk away, that he was just wasting his time. The angry part of his brain, though, was telling him to stay put.
Joe had spent weeks hiking through the surrounding forests trying to find the spot he needed. It couldn't just be any fallen tree; it needed to be a Hemlock, and it needed to be remote. It had taken him days of searching the internet to find a suitable forest within a day's drive, and even then it took several weekend trips of nearly getting lost in unmarked wilderness before he found the perfect spot.
It was a five hour drive and a three hour hike, but that was fine with him. It just gave him more time to think about why he was doing this in the first place. He'd wanted to forgive and forget, but Hunter's torment was relentless. If his friend had just turned him down Joe could have moved on. He knew when he confessed his feelings it was a long shot. Hunter seemed firmly straight, but then again, to most people so did he. And they'd been friends for years. They'd even lived together for a brief stint in college, so at worst Joe was expecting to be told his friend didn't swing that way. He'd get his feelings off his chest and they'd all move on.
What he hadn't expected was to be laughed at. Hunter didn't just gently turn him down, he made him feel foolish. He'd called Joe crazy, amongst several other names, and became furious at the fact that Joe would have even considered the possibility that he might be gay as well.
Even after that disappointing response, Joe could have chalked it up to a shock reaction. He wasn't just admitting that he had feelings for the other man, he was coming out at the same time. People always reacted differently when learning that the person they thought they knew was really someone else, but no one had responded quite like Hunter. He mocked Joe constantly, telling all of their friends about his declaration of love and outing him to several people in the process. Then he'd just stopped speaking to him altogether.
The whole experience left Joe angry on a level he'd never even thought possible. He was humiliated and betrayed by Hunter, but he was furious with himself. Even now, after everything that had happened, the thought of his friend's lean, athletic body and bearded face made his stomach flutter. The first thing he saw every time he closed his eyes was the image of his friend when they'd lived together, his deceptively charming grin flashing in his direction while Hunter lounged in his boxers. He could trace the lines of definition covering the other man's lean, muscled torso, counting the wiry auburn hairs dusting his modest pecs and trailing down his firm abs before exploding out the bottom in a dense coating around his supple thighs. His cock still throbbed whenever he thought about the way his friend's surprisingly round bottom bubbled out the back of his boxers, or the way Hunter's soft, shaggy brown hair had felt whenever he'd given it a rough tousle.
Joe knew his feelings were foolish. He was in better shape, with a larger build and more definition than Hunter had. He was more hung, having a solid two inches over his friend's meager five, and with his short, raven hair and olive skin, he was the more handsome of the two. Joe had absolutely zero difficulty landing interested men; the problem was that he didn't want them. His heart only wanted Hunter and retribution, and it wanted them at the same time.
So he'd sit on the log for day's if he had to. He'd strip down, anoint himself with the pungent oils, and offer to pay whatever price was asked if it meant he'd get his wish. Alone in the pitch black forest with nothing but his rage to keep him company, he'd wait.
It was the lack of sound that caught his attention first. His mind had filtered the constant rustling of leaves and snapping of small twigs as white noise, barely registering after hours of sitting in its midst. He didn't know how long the nocturnal forest had been silent, but he knew he wasn't alone. The startled young man was afraid to turn his head for fear of what he'd see. He could sense the shape on the log next to him, could smell a musty, spicy aroma that made his eyes water. His heart was pounding in his chest and only the stiffness of his legs kept him from getting up and running.
"Gonna cost ya." The voice was hoarse and raspy with age, sounding like rattling leaves from a breeze rustling through the treetops.
Joe swallowed hard and tried to sound confident. "I'll pay." He shuffled the bag on the ground over towards the thing sitting next to him, getting a quick glance of the bare, gnarled feet and filthy toes capped by hooked, curling nails.
The deep, guttural noise could have been a laugh. "Not with that."
"Whatever the price...I'll pay it." Joe tensed when a bony, inhumanly strong hand reached over and cupped his jaw. He winced in pain as the fingers closed like a vice, forcing his head to turn and look at the withered crone. Her white hair was long and stringy, hanging off her mostly bald scalp in patches and descending down to mingle with her tattered, patchwork clothes. The woman's pale, wrinkled skin was mottled by dirt and moss, her eyes a sickly, jaundiced yellow, and what few teeth she had were nearly as black as the forest around them as she smiled at Joe. She held the young man's head in place, her eyes boring into his as a drunken dizziness washed over him. Joe felt like he was floating, the forest around him disappearing into a sea of black. Even the woman vanished until all that remained were the diseased eyes, glowing with an internal radiance as they grew to twin suns hovering in the void.
"Guess you will," she rasped, finally letting go.
