Chapter 7: An Envelope on the Porch

Chapter 7: An Envelope on the Porch

The drive home was a long, silent scream. Daniel Sorez’s face was superimposed over the dark ribbon of asphalt spooling out before Brett’s headlights—not the cynical, broken-down survivor, but the other man, the one who had emerged in that final, terrifying second. The man with the eyes of a haunted ten-year-old, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated terror.

“Close it before it notices you’re looking.”

The warning wasn’t a memory; it was an active presence in the car, whispering from the empty passenger seat, chilling the air that blasted from the heating vents. The cynical story had been a shield, a wall of scar tissue built over a wound that had never healed. Brett had hammered on that wall with his arrogant curiosity until it cracked, and for a moment, he had seen the raw, writhing horror it was meant to contain.

The man who escaped was still running. After forty years, he was still looking over his shoulder, still terrified of the dark.

Brett’s hands trembled on the steering wheel. The shape he’d seen in the woods at Bluff Wood—the tall, thin smudge of a thing that moved without walking—was no longer a trick of the light. The rhythmic, scraping sound against Jameson’s house was no longer a stray branch. They were corroborating evidence. They were the approaching footsteps of the thing Daniel was running from.

Burn the letters.

The command echoed in his mind, Daniel’s desperate, raspy plea. It was the only sane advice he’d received in weeks. He glanced at the passenger seat, at the cardboard box sitting there like a container of radioactive waste. It held the entire history of his downfall. It was the reason Jameson was in a hospital with a shattered arm. It was the reason his own life was in ruins. He could do it. He could drive to the fire pit behind the commons—the same one Jameson had been heading for—and offer the whole cursed collection to the flames. He could turn the whispers to ash, cauterize the wound, and try to crawl back to a life that made sense.

He could pretend he’d never seen the shape in the trees. He could pretend Daniel Sorez was just a traumatized old man. He could pretend the world was safe.

The thought of it was a profound relief, a cool drink of water after days in the desert. Yes. That’s what he would do. He would burn them, delete the address from his email, and never speak of this again. He would beg Jameson for forgiveness. He would accept the consequences. He would be free.

Buoyed by this newfound, fragile resolve, he pulled onto his street. The familiar sight of his small, rented house should have been reassuring, a beacon of normalcy. But as his headlights swept across the front porch, his heart stopped dead in his chest.

There, propped against his front door, was a single, solitary envelope.

It was small and rectangular, and even from the car, he could see that it was the same sickly, time-yellowed color as Danny’s letters.

Brett’s blood ran cold. No. It couldn’t be. A prank? A coincidence? He killed the engine, the silence of the night rushing in. He sat for a full minute, just staring. The envelope didn’t move. It seemed to pulse with a malevolent patience, a thing utterly alien to the mundane world of mailboxes and welcome mats.

His resolution to burn the letters evaporated like mist in a cold wind. The pull of the mystery, the siren song of the abyss, was too strong. He was out of the car before he’d even made a conscious decision to move, his feet carrying him across the damp lawn as if pulled by an invisible string.

He reached the porch and knelt. It was identical. The paper was dry and brittle to the touch, the edges feathered with age. It smelled of dust and damp earth and something else… something cold, like the air in a deep cellar. He picked it up. His breath hitched.

On the front, written in a scratchy, spidery hand that looked like it had been formed by a palsied claw, was a single word.

Brett.

His name. Not printed, not typed. Written. By a hand that should not exist. The ink was a faded, rusty brown, as if it had been written with dried blood decades ago. He felt a wave of vertigo, the world tilting on its axis. The scraping sound hadn't been a warning. The shape in the woods hadn't been a threat. They were an observation. An assessment. The monster had been looking back at him, taking his measure. And now, it was sending him mail.

With trembling fingers, he tore the envelope open. The paper inside was just as old, just as fragile. The message was short, the same spidery script covering the page.

The boy lied to you. He ran, but he never escaped. He only built a cage of years around his fear.

You want the real truth. The story underneath the story. I can show you.

Go to the woods. The edge of Bluff Wood, where you were today. Sit in the first clearing you find for one hour. Do not move. Do not make a sound. After one hour, a guide will come.

Follow the deer.

The letter was signed with two words that made the bile rise in his throat.

Mrs. Everly.

Brett dropped the page as if it were on fire. He scrambled backward, his back hitting the rough brick of his house. He stared at the impossible invitation lying on his porch steps. A letter from a ghost. An invitation to a nightmare.

This was the choice. The final, terrible choice.

Daniel’s terrified face flashed in his mind. “Burn them! Forget you ever saw them!” The voice of the survivor, the man who had seen the truth and spent a lifetime trying to unsee it. He was screaming at Brett to run, to save himself.

But then there was Jameson’s face, contorted in pain on the floor of the dorm. He had sacrificed his only friend on the altar of this obsession. To turn back now would make that act a piece of petty, meaningless violence. It would mean he had brutalized his friend for nothing more than a ghost story. But if he went forward, if he proved it was all real, then his actions—however monstrous—were in service of a terrible, vital truth. He had to know. The desire was no longer a simple curiosity; it was a self-destructive, religious imperative. He had come too far and paid too high a price to turn back from the final revelation.

His obsession didn't just leave him with no real option; it had consumed all other options. There was no path back. There was only the path forward, into the trees.

Slowly, deliberately, Brett reached out and picked the letter up from the porch. He folded it carefully and slid it into his pocket. He turned his back on the safety of his home, on the sane world, and walked toward his car. The box of Danny’s whispers sat on the passenger seat, not as a collection of evidence to be burned, but as a holy text, its sequel now waiting to be written.

He was going to answer the call from beyond the grave. He was going to follow the deer.