Chapter 1: The Crooked Mile

Chapter 1: The Crooked Mile

The final stretch of the journey was a single, winding dirt track the locals called Whisper Creek Road. Alex thought a more honest name would have been the Crooked Mile. The ancient pines crowded in on either side, their branches interlocking overhead to form a suffocating green tunnel that swallowed the sunlight. Inside the rattling SUV, the silence was as thick as the humid summer air.

His father, Mark, gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white as he navigated another bone-jarring pothole. "See? Character," he announced to no one in particular. "You don't get this in the suburbs."

Alex muttered under his breath, "You also get cell service." His phone had been a useless brick for the last twenty minutes.

"That's the point, Alex," his mother, Sarah, said from the passenger seat, turning to him with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. She looked tired, but her voice was laced with a determined optimism that grated on his nerves. "To disconnect. To reconnect with each other."

His younger sister, Maya, was slumped against him, asleep, her stuffed rabbit clutched to her chest. At twelve, she was still young enough to find this whole 'back to nature' fantasy exciting. Alex, at sixteen, knew it for what it was: a desperate attempt to glue their fracturing family back together with pine sap and rustic charm.

The cabin, when they finally reached it, was less 'charming' and more 'decrepit.' It was a dark log structure sinking into the forest floor, with a sagging porch and windows like vacant eyes.

"It's got good bones," Mark declared, his voice booming with forced confidence as he killed the engine.

Sarah was already out of the car, her hands clasped together. "Oh, Mark, it's perfect. An adventure."

Alex’s adventure began with hauling dusty boxes into a room that smelled of mildew and forgotten things. He watched from his new bedroom window as his father inspected the property line with the air of a king surveying his domain, and his mother wandered towards the treeline, her hand trailing over the bark of a birch tree as if greeting an old friend. She was the reason they were here. She’d found the listing online, sold them all on the dream of campfires and starry nights, an escape from the city’s relentless hum.

An hour later, as the last of the boxes were stacked inside, Sarah clapped her hands together. "Alright! Who wants to christen the woods with a hike?"

Mark grunted, wrestling with a generator. "Give me an hour to get the power on. You and Alex go. Scout a trail for us."

Alex felt a familiar knot of anxiety tighten in his stomach. He wanted nothing more than to retreat into his room, find a corner with a working outlet, and lose himself in his phone's downloaded games. But the pleading look in his mother’s eyes was an expert-level guilt trip.

"Fine," he sighed.

The woods were immediately cooler, the air thick with the smell of damp earth and decay. His mother walked ahead, pointing out types of ferns and fungi, her voice filled with a botanist's delight. Alex followed, his sneakers sinking into the soft loam, feeling the oppressive silence of the forest press in on him. It wasn’t a peaceful quiet; it was a watchful one. The kind of silence that feels like it's holding its breath.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Sarah asked, spinning in a small clearing where a shaft of light broke through the canopy.

"It's trees, Mom," Alex said, pulling his phone out instinctively. No signal. Of course. He checked the time. They’d been walking for maybe fifteen minutes.

They followed a barely-there trail of flattened leaves and broken twigs. The path twisted, turning back on itself in ways that felt unnatural. Alex kept glancing over his shoulder, the unsettling feeling that they were being herded growing with every step.

Then, through a break in the trees, he saw it. A skeletal frame of rusted metal clawing at the sky.

"What the hell is that?" he breathed.

They stepped out of the woods and into a nightmare. Before them lay the remains of a small amusement park. A Ferris wheel stood frozen, its cars dangling like rotten fruit. The painted horses of a carousel were peeling, their garish smiles warped into leering grimaces. The place was utterly silent, strangled by weeds and vines.

"Wow," Sarah said, her voice a soft whisper of awe. "How strange. It must have been from a local fair, decades ago." She walked towards the carousel, enchanted by the decay.

Alex felt a cold dread wash over him. This wasn't 'strange.' It was impossible. There was nothing on any map, no mention in the cabin's listing. An entire amusement park, left to rot in the middle of nowhere? They had walked for maybe half an hour, tops. You don't just stumble upon something like this.

"Mom, we should go back," he said, his voice tight.

"Oh, don't be such a worrier," she chided gently, tracing the faded paint on a wooden horse. "It's just a piece of history."

He reluctantly followed her as she continued past the rusted rides, the trail picking up on the other side. His skin crawled. He felt like they were trespassing on a grave. The path grew narrower again, the trees thicker. The air became heavy, colder, carrying a faint, medicinal smell like antiseptic and sorrow.

Not five minutes later, they broke through the trees again.

The amusement park was gone, as if it had never been there. In its place stood a sprawling brick building, three stories high, with barred windows and a collapsed roof. Its red bricks were stained black with age and water. A rusted sign lay half-buried in the overgrown lawn, the letters barely legible: Blackwood Ridge Asylum.

Alex’s blood ran cold. He felt his breath catch in his throat. This was even more impossible. An asylum? Here? He had researched the area before they came, a habit born of teenage boredom. He’d scoured satellite maps, read local history blogs. There was nothing. No park, no asylum. Just miles and miles of uninterrupted forest.

He yanked his phone out again. The compass app spun uselessly. He took a picture of the building, his hands shaking. He had to have proof. This wasn't a trick of the mind.

"Mom," he said, his voice cracking. "Look. This is wrong. All of this is wrong."

For the first time, a flicker of unease crossed his mother’s face. The romanticism of the abandoned fair was one thing; a derelict mental hospital was another entirely. The sheer oppressive misery of the place was a physical force.

"You're right," she said, her voice losing its cheerful edge. "This is... unsettling. Let's head back."

The walk back was the most terrifying part. There was no sign of the asylum behind them, no glimpse of the Ferris wheel. The path seemed to straighten, to welcome them home. The woods, which had felt labyrinthine and menacing on the way in, now felt short. Impossibly short.

They burst out of the treeline and were standing at the edge of their own clearing. The cabin sat there, solid and real. His father was on the porch, wiping grease from his hands with a rag.

"Hey!" Mark called out. "How was the little walk? Generator's up and running."

Alex looked at his phone. The time was displayed in stark white numbers. They had been gone for fifty-seven minutes.

Fifty-seven minutes.

"Dad," Alex began, his voice trembling as he held up his phone to show him the picture of the asylum. "We found... something. Things. The woods, they're not right."

Mark squinted at the screen. "Kid, you probably just got turned around and found the old caretaker’s house for the lumber company that used to own this land. It's a big forest. Easy to get mixed up."

"No, it wasn't a house, it was an asylum! And before that, an amusement park!" Alex's voice rose with panicked frustration.

"An amusement park?" Mark chuckled, shaking his head. "Your imagination is running wild, son. Must be the country air."

Alex turned to his mother for support, his eyes begging her to confirm his story. But Sarah just gave a weak, placating smile.

"It was probably nothing, honey," she said, patting Alex’s arm. "Just some old ruins. We were gone for a while, it’s easy to lose track of time out here."

She was downplaying it. Denying it. Choosing her fragile dream over the terrifying reality he had just shown her.

He was alone in this.

The generator hummed to life, and the lights inside the cabin flickered on, casting a warm, deceptive glow. But Alex didn’t look at the cabin. His gaze was fixed on the wall of trees they had just emerged from. It wasn't just a forest. He knew it now, with a certainty that chilled him to his core. It was a place where miles could be crossed in minutes, where forgotten nightmares waited just off the path.

The crooked mile wasn't the road to the cabin. It was the forest itself. And they had just walked right into its trap.