Chapter 5: The House on Bluff Wood

Chapter 5: The House on Bluff Wood

The scraping sound from Jameson’s house echoed in Brett’s head, a dry, skeletal rhythm that had replaced his own heartbeat. It was the sound of a world without rules, and it had propelled him through the pre-dawn gloom, his headlights cutting a lonely path through the darkness. The guilt over Jameson was a hot, physical ache in his chest, a wound that refused to scab over. But the fear was colder, deeper. The mystery was no longer confined to the yellowed pages on his passenger seat; it had climbed out and was walking the earth. It was walking right alongside him.

As the sun began to bleed a pale, watery light across the sky, the manicured lawns of suburbia gave way to overgrown fields and then to dense, looming forest. He turned onto Bluff Wood Road. The asphalt quickly crumbled to gravel, and the trees pressed in on either side, their branches interlocking overhead to form a dark, claustrophobic tunnel. He was entering its territory now. He could feel it.

1414 Bluff Wood Road wasn't so much a house as a skeleton. It was a two-story farmhouse, once white, now a leprous gray, its paint peeling off in long, curling strips. Windows gaped like vacant eyes, many of them shattered. The porch roof sagged in the middle, threatening to collapse. Weeds and thorny vines had conquered the yard, strangling a rust-eaten swing set and creeping up the siding as if the woods were actively trying to digest the structure and drag it back into the earth. It was a place of profound neglect, a perfect tomb for a box of secrets.

He killed the engine. The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by the frantic chirping of unseen birds and the low whisper of wind through the pines. He got out of the car, the box of letters tucked protectively under his arm. Every shadow seemed to coalesce and stretch, every rustle of leaves a footstep. He scanned the treeline, a solid, impenetrable wall of green and black that bordered the back of the property. The scraping sound could have come from a place like this. A long finger, dragging against the world.

He forced his legs to move, his sneakers crunching on the gravel drive. He wasn't sure what he was looking for. A sign? A clue left behind? An echo of the boy who had been lost here? He circled the derelict house, peering through a grimy window into a dusty, empty living room where sunlight streamed through the grime, illuminating dancing dust motes. It was just a dead house. The horror wasn't in the building; it was in the land it sat upon.

He walked toward the back of the property, toward the edge of Bluff Wood. The air grew colder here, the light dimmer. He felt a palpable sense of being watched, the same primal dread that Danny had described in his letters. He hears everything in these woods. He hears you breathe and he hears your heart.

That’s when he saw it.

It was a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision, deep within the woods. Something tall and dark, unnaturally so, vanishing behind a thicket of ancient oaks. He froze, his heart seizing in his chest. A deer, he told himself, his rational mind scrambling for purchase. Just a deer.

He took a cautious step forward, squinting into the gloom. Nothing. He was letting his imagination, fueled by sleeplessness and Danny’s words, run wild. He was about to turn back toward the relative safety of the open yard when he saw it again.

Further to the left this time. It hadn’t moved from one spot to the other. It had simply ceased to be in one place and begun to be in another. It was taller than any man, impossibly thin, like a vertical charcoal smudge against the backdrop of the forest. He could make out no details, only its silhouette, a stark, wrong shape that didn't belong in nature. It stood perfectly still, and Brett knew, with a certainty that bypassed his eyes and drilled straight into his soul, that it was looking at him.

He remembered Danny’s words, a frantic whisper in his memory: He wasn't walking. He was just there.

Panic, pure and absolute, erupted in his throat. This was it. The Watcher. The thing with the static face. It was real. It was right there. His obsession had led him straight into the monster's jaws.

He didn't scream. The sound was frozen in his lungs. He just started backing away, his feet stumbling over roots and rocks, his eyes locked on the spot where the figure stood. He had to get to his car. He had to get away. The letters, the truth, none of it mattered anymore. All that mattered was escape.

He turned to run, a choked sob finally breaking from his lips.

“Can I help you?”

The voice, sharp and female, cut through the air like a gunshot. Brett cried out, spinning around, his arms coming up defensively.

A young woman stood on the sagging porch, her arms crossed over her chest. She was in her late twenties, with practical jeans, muddy boots, and a wary expression on her face. A crowbar dangled from one hand.

“This is private property,” she said, her voice firm but not unkind. “You’re trespassing.”

Brett’s mind raced, his terror momentarily shoved aside by a new, more mundane threat. He looked from the woman to the woods, where the shape was now gone, and then back again. He had to say something. He couldn't tell her the truth.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” he stammered, his voice hoarse. He clutched the shoebox tighter. “I didn’t mean to trespass. I’m looking for… family history.”

The lie came tumbling out, patched together from the fragments of Danny’s story. “My grandfather passed away recently. Going through his things, I found a box of old letters. From a relative I never knew. A young boy. His name was Danny.” He held up the box as evidence. “The letters stopped abruptly, but they were all written from this area, from a cabin near the woods. I was just… hoping to find where he might have lived. To find out what happened to him.”

The woman, Maggie, as she introduced herself, watched him, her eyes searching his face. She saw his haggard appearance, the dark circles under his eyes, the genuine desperation in his voice. She saw the old box clutched to his chest like a holy text. His story, though a complete fabrication, was colored by the real, raw emotion of his ordeal. It was believable.

Her expression softened with pity. “My uncle owned this whole property,” she said, gesturing with the crowbar. “He passed a few months back. I’m just trying to get it cleared out before the bank takes it. I don’t remember him ever mentioning a family with a boy named Danny.”

Brett’s heart sank. A dead end.

“But…” she continued, tapping the crowbar against her leg thoughtfully. “Your story does remind me of someone. Uncle Mike was a bit of a soft touch. Years ago, probably back in the nineties, he let some guy live out here for a while. A real troubled drifter, he said. Let him stay in the old groundskeeper’s cabin back in the woods in exchange for odd jobs.”

Brett’s blood turned to ice. “A cabin?”

“Yeah, it’s mostly collapsed now,” she said with a shrug. “Anyway, this guy was strange. Kept to himself. My uncle said he was always writing, scribbling away on scraps of paper. Said he was running from a bad past.”

“What was his name?” Brett asked, his voice barely a whisper.

Maggie thought for a moment, her brow furrowed. “Something strange. Soren? Sorez? Yeah, that was it. Dan Sorez.”

The name hit Brett like a physical blow. My name is Daniel Sorez but my mom calls me Danny. It was him. The boy from the letters. He had survived. He had escaped.

“Is he… do you know where he is?” Brett asked, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice.

“God, no idea. That was ages ago,” Maggie said. Then her eyes lit up with a flicker of memory. “You know what, though? Uncle Mike was a packrat. He kept files on everyone who ever worked for him, even for a week. Tax purposes or something. Come on.”

She led him into the dusty, decaying house, to a small office where a mildewed filing cabinet stood against a stained wall. After a few minutes of wrestling with a rusted drawer, she pulled out a thin, yellowed folder.

Inside, on a single sheet of paper, was a social security number, a list of odd jobs performed, and a forwarding address in a town three counties over. Underneath it, written in her uncle’s shaky hand, was a phone number.

Brett stared at the paper, his hands trembling. He had come here chasing a ghost, a monster in the trees. He was leaving with a name and a number. The impossible, supernatural horror now had a living, breathing witness. He had a solid lead, a thread he could pull to unravel the entire nightmare. As he thanked the woman and walked back to his car, he didn’t dare look back at the woods. He didn't have to. He knew what was there. And now, he knew the name of the man who had seen it too.