Chapter 1: The Whisper on Route 61

Chapter 1: The Whisper on Route 61

The hiss of eighteen wheels on wet asphalt was the only sermon Jack Renner needed. It was a sound of purpose, of distance being devoured. Point A to Point B. That was the simple, beautiful logic of his life, a logic he’d clung to since trading his Army logistics fatigues for a flannel shirt and a Peterbilt cab. Tonight, Point B was a lumberyard in Duluth, and Point A was a foggy, forgotten crossing on the Canadian border. The cargo: three stacks of prime Minnesota pine, heavy and silent under a tightly strapped tarp. A milk run.

His rig, a machine he knew better than any person, carved its way south on U.S. Route 61. Rain sluiced across the massive windshield, and the wipers beat a hypnotic rhythm, a metronome for the deep-night hours. Inside his cab—his kingdom—the air was thick with the scent of stale coffee and the warm hum of the dash lights. He was tuned to an AM station broadcasting a rerun of an old radio drama, the crackle and pop of the signal a familiar companion in the crushing emptiness of the northern woods.

The border crossing had been strange. Usually, it was a tired wave-through from a guard who’d rather be sleeping. Tonight, the guard had been young, his face pale and slick with rain under the harsh sodium lights. He’d taken the manifest, his eyes lingering on the shipper’s name: Blackwood Logging.

“Just lumber,” Jack had said, his voice a low rumble.

The guard had nodded, but his gaze kept flicking to the massive, tarp-shrouded load behind Jack’s cab. He’d tapped the clipboard with a pen that wouldn’t write. "Yeah. Lumber." He’d leaned closer, lowering his voice conspiratorially. "Listen, man. You hear anything… anything at all from back there… just keep driving. Don't stop for anything until you see city lights. You understand?"

Jack, a man who had coordinated supply lines through war zones, had given the kid a flat, unimpressed look. "It's wood, son. It doesn't make a lot of noise."

The guard had just swallowed hard and waved him through, a flicker of something that looked like pity in his eyes. Jack had dismissed it. A rookie spooked by shadows, fed a local ghost story by the old-timers. He’d seen it a hundred times.

But now, an hour deep into the black belly of the Superior National Forest, the kid’s words were an irritating burr in his mind. The trees, ancient and impossibly tall, pressed in on the highway, their branches clawing at the edges of his high beams. It was like driving through a tunnel bored through the heart of the world. And the radio was starting to act up.

The old-timey drama dissolved into a wash of static. Jack grunted, twisting the dial. He found another station, a preacher hollering about salvation, but it too was quickly consumed by a fizzing hiss. He settled on silence, letting the engine’s drone and the rain’s drumming fill the void.

That’s when he first heard it.

A whisper. So faint it was almost subliminal, a thread of sound woven into the static he’d just tuned out. It was sibilant, like dry leaves skittering across pavement. He couldn’t make out words, just the idea of a voice, thin and dry.

Radio interference, he told himself, tapping the dashboard. High-tension lines hidden in the trees. Every problem had a logical solution.

He took a long sip of lukewarm coffee from his thermos. The whisper faded, replaced by the familiar symphony of the road. He relaxed his grip on the wheel. But as he glanced at his passenger-side mirror, a flicker of movement snagged his attention. A shadow, darker than the surrounding night, seemed to detach itself from the trees and flit along the edge of the road, keeping pace with his rig.

He blinked, focusing. Nothing. Just the rain-slicked guardrail and the endless wall of pine. A trick of the light, of tired eyes playing games in the strobing reflections of the wet road. He’d been driving for ten hours straight. It was time for a break.

He remembered a rest area, a small, lonely turnout about a mile ahead. Just a gravel lot and a brick outhouse, but it was a place to stop, to stretch his legs, to check his straps and prove to himself that everything was exactly as it should be. The desire for a quiet, predictable night was fraying at the edges, replaced by a low-grade, gnawing unease.

The rest area was even more desolate than he remembered. A single, buzzing light pole cast a sickly yellow-green glow over the empty lot, making the puddles look like pools of bile. He killed the engine, and the sudden silence was deafening, amplifying the sound of the rain drumming on the cab’s roof.

He swung himself down, his boots crunching on the wet gravel. The air was cold and smelled of pine needles and damp earth. He did a walk-around, his heavy-duty flashlight cutting a clean white beam through the gloom. Tires were good. Connections were solid. He ran a hand over the thick vinyl tarp covering the lumber. Everything was secure. The kid at the border was a moron. The whispers were the radio. The shadow was a deer.

He was about to climb back into the cab when he heard it again. Not a whisper this time. A sound.

Scrape. Splinter.

It came from the trailer. From inside the trailer.

Jack froze, every nerve ending suddenly on high alert. His Army-honed discipline kicked in, pushing down the initial spike of fear. He listened, holding his breath. Silence. It must have been the load settling, the wet wood groaning under the straps. Plausible. Logical.

But he had to be sure.

With a grunt, he hauled himself up onto the flatbed, his boots finding purchase on the slick metal. The rain was heavier now, soaking through his flannel shirt. He moved to the center of the load, where the tarp was cinched down tightest. His fingers fumbled with the cold, stiff buckle of a ratchet strap, finally loosening it. He needed to see. He needed to put the irrational thought to rest.

He peeled back a corner of the heavy, wet tarp. The flashlight beam sliced into the darkness beneath. At first, all he saw was the rough, raw ends of the stacked pine logs. The familiar smell of cut wood filled his nostrils, but it was tinged with something else. An undertone of rot, something sickly and sweet, like moss growing in a crypt.

He swept the beam across the logs. And then he saw them.

Deep gouges in the wood.

They weren't the clean marks of a saw or an axe. These were savage, frantic furrows, splintering the dense pine as if it were styrofoam. There were three of them, running parallel, each score as thick as his thumb and dug impossibly deep. They looked like claw marks. Giant, powerful claw marks.

Jack’s blood ran cold. He leaned in closer, his logical mind scrambling for an explanation. A bear that had climbed on the load before they tarped it? Vandals at the logging site? But the marks were fresh, the raw wood inside the gouges pale against the darker, rain-dampened surface. And they looked… wrong. They weren't carved into the wood so much as torn out of it.

His flashlight beam followed the tracks to where they disappeared deeper into the tightly packed stack of lumber. The angle was all wrong for an attack from the outside. The horrifying realization hit him with the force of a physical blow. The gouges looked like they had been made from the inside.

He stood there, rain plastering his hair to his skull, the beam of his flashlight trembling slightly in his hand. The kid’s warning echoed in his ears, no longer sounding like the babbling of a spooked rookie, but like a dire prophecy.

The quiet, predictable night was over. Something was in his cargo. And it was desperate to get out.