Chapter 2: The Hand in the Wood

Chapter 2: The Hand in the Wood

For a long minute, Jack stood frozen on the flatbed, the rain turning from a drizzle to a downpour, plastering his thin flannel shirt to his skin. His mind, a machine built for logistics and order, furiously tried to process the impossible data before it. The claw marks. The rot. The feeling of being watched.

Vandalism. The thought was a lifeline, and he grabbed it. Some kids with a crowbar at the Blackwood yard, screwing with the new guy. It had to be. They’d pried open the tarp, gouged the wood, and sealed it back up. A stupid, pointless prank. It was the only explanation that didn't shatter the foundations of his world.

With a curse that was lost in the drumming rain, he forced himself into motion. He slammed the corner of the tarp back down, his movements jerky and overly aggressive. He grabbed the ratchet strap and cinched it tight, grunting with the effort, putting his back into it as if physical exertion could crush the fear coiling in his gut. He was a professional. He had a schedule. Schedules didn't account for ghost stories or acts of God. He would get to Duluth, drop the load, and report the damage. Point A to Point B.

He practically threw himself back into the cab, slamming the heavy door shut. The familiar interior, his kingdom of coffee-stained maps and worn upholstery, no longer felt like a sanctuary. It felt like a trap. He cranked the engine, and its roar was a welcome violence in the oppressive quiet. He threw the rig into gear, tires spitting gravel as he pulled back onto the empty, slick ribbon of Route 61.

But the rationalization was a thin, flimsy shield. As he drove, every shadow the headlights threw seemed to twist into unnatural shapes. The dense wall of pines on either side of the road felt less like scenery and more like the bars of a cage. The feeling of being watched returned, ten times stronger than before. It was a physical pressure at the back of his neck, a prickling certainty that eyes were fixed on him from the darkness of his own trailer.

The whispers started again.

At first, they were the same sibilant, leafy rustle he’d heard before. But they were changing. Congealing. He could almost discern patterns, syllables that snagged at the edge of his hearing like burrs on wool.

...cold...so...cold...

He shook his head violently, turning the radio on and cranking the volume dial. A blast of static filled the cab, loud and abrasive. It was better than the whispers. It was a logical, explainable noise. But beneath the static, like a melody in another room, he could still feel the whispers, a vibration in his teeth. The faint, sweet smell of rot was seeping into the cab, a phantom scent crawling through the vents.

His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. His professional duty was a steel cable pulling him forward, toward Duluth, toward normalcy. But his survival instinct, honed in deserts half a world away, was screaming at him to stop, to get out, to run. The two forces were tearing him apart.

He kept glancing at his mirrors, a frantic, obsessive tic. The road behind him was empty. The tarp was still secure, a huge, black hump against the stormy sky. Everything looked normal. He was just tired, spooked by a prank and a weird border guard. He was losing it.

Then, in a fleeting moment as the truck rounded a gentle curve, the angle of the passenger-side mirror gave him a clear, sharp view of the front face of the lumber stack, right behind his cab.

For a split second, his brain didn't register what it was seeing. It was just a pale shape against the dark, rough-sawn ends of the pine logs. Something pale and out of place.

And then it resolved into a hand.

It wasn't a human hand. It was bone-white, the color of fungus that grows in total darkness. The fingers were impossibly long and thin, like the twigs of a winter birch, ending not in nails but in dark, splintered points. It unfolded itself from a narrow gap between two massive logs, the motion fluid and serpentine, utterly silent. It flexed, the knuckles rising like knots on a dead branch, and for a terrifying, heart-stopping moment, it rested there, exposed in the fleeting light from a passing mile marker.

Jack’s breath hitched in his throat. A strangled noise, half-gasp, half-sob, escaped his lips. The world narrowed to that single, horrifying image in the small rectangle of his mirror.

Rationalization was no longer an option. It had been murdered, brutally and instantly. He wasn't hauling vandalized lumber. He was hauling something alive. Something that had been packed in with the wood, silent and waiting. And now, it knew he was there. The hand was not a random movement. It was a gesture. A greeting. A threat.

As if sensing his gaze, the pale fingers curled, and the hand slithered back into the darkness between the logs, retracting into the wood with an unnatural smoothness, leaving nothing behind but a searing afterimage burned into Jack’s mind.

He stomped on the brakes, the air horn blasting as the rig jackknifed with a scream of tortured metal and burning rubber. The trailer swung wide, threatening to drag the whole rig into the ditch before Jack, acting on pure muscle memory, corrected, wrestling the massive machine back into a shuddering, shuddering stop in the middle of the deserted highway.

His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He was hyperventilating, the cab shrinking around him. He fumbled for his CB radio, his hand shaking so badly he could barely grip the mic. Who would he call? What would he say?

Before he could decide, his company-issued satellite phone buzzed loudly on the dash. The screen glowed with a single name: HARRIS - DISPATCH.

With a trembling finger, he answered, putting it on speaker. "Harris," he gasped, his voice ragged.

"Renner," came the reply. The voice was flat, devoid of warmth or curiosity, a voice that lived by schedules and fuel logs. "My board shows you making an unscheduled stop. Is there a problem with the asset?"

"A problem?" Jack laughed, a raw, unhinged sound. "Yeah, you could say that. There's something in the cargo! It's alive, Harris! I saw it!"

There was a pause on the other end, but it wasn't a pause of shock or disbelief. It was the measured silence of someone considering a variable. "The asset is lumber, Renner. It is secured. Your manifest is in order. What is your current twenty?"

"I don't care about my twenty!" Jack yelled, slamming his fist on the dashboard. "Listen to me! There is something in the goddamn wood!"

"Your contract is to ensure the integrity of the shipment and deliver it to the designated receiving point within the agreed-upon window," Harris stated, his voice dropping, becoming colder, harder. The bureaucratic drone was gone, replaced by something sharp and final. "You are to get back in your vehicle, proceed to Duluth, and do not stop again. Is that understood?"

The words hung in the air, a terrifying ultimatum. Harris hadn't questioned his sanity. He hadn't asked for clarification. He had simply given an order, an order that ignored the monster in the trailer and acknowledged only the schedule.

Jack looked from the phone to the rain-streaked rear window, to the black, silent mass of the tarp just feet behind his head. He was trapped. Caught on a dark highway between an ancient, unknowable horror behind him, and a cold, human conspiracy ahead.

"Renner," Harris's voice cut through the speaker, sharp as a razor. "Is that understood?"