Jacob didn’t tell me how terrifying the spirit really was until much later. Previously, he had described the spirit as “someone who had followed him home from the fog.” In fact, the spirit had been observing both him and Adam the whole time. Jacob really didn’t want to remember all of the details because he was trying hard to forget something. He finally admitted that the spirit’s evil smile scared him the most.
It’s easy to understand why Jacob was disturbed. The spirit was dressed entirely in black and continued to stare at both of them, the whole time they were jogging over at the high school track. As the two boys were leaving the high school grounds along a fenced path, the fog appeared to clear. That’s when they felt secure enough to turn around, in order to see if anything was behind them. Sure enough, the black figure was following right behind them. Evil would prefer to follow behind without detection; however, once confronted, the watcher stared back at them with hatred, turned around, went back towards the high school. The boys followed the shadowy figure back towards the high school because “they had a hard time believing what had happened to them had been real.”
They didn’t go very far before the dark figure disappeared in front of their eyes. The boys were so shaken that they ran home at “break neck speed.”