Chapter 2: The Girl Named Ruth

Chapter 2: The Girl Named Ruth

The silence that followed Alex’s outburst was a brittle, suffocating thing. In the gloomy kitchen, the only sounds were the hum of the old refrigerator and Lily’s tiny, hitched breaths as she stared at the two halves of her broken blue crayon. She wasn’t looking at him, but at the raw, red marks his fingers had left on her arm. The sight of them made shame rise in his throat like bile.

“Lily… sweetie, I’m sorry,” he began, his voice a hoarse croak. He reached a hand toward her, then let it fall, useless, to his side. How could he explain a terror that was thirty years old? How could he tell his eight-year-old daughter that the monster from her father’s nightmares was real and it had just learned her name?

“You’re mean,” she whispered, finally looking up. Her eyes, usually so bright, were clouded with betrayal. “Ruth is my friend. My only friend here.”

The words were a gut punch. He knew how lonely she’d been since the move, how she missed the city, her school, the life they’d left behind after the divorce. He had dragged her back to this dying town, this place of ghosts and shadows, and in her first attempt to find happiness, he had crushed it. But the alternative was unthinkable.

“Tell me about her,” he said, forcing his tone into a semblance of calm. It was the voice he used for nervous clients, measured and reasonable, an architect’s voice meant to build confidence. “Where does she live? What’s her last name?”

Lily sniffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “I don’t know. She just… comes to the edge of the woods behind the yard to play. She says her house is deep in the trees.” She paused, picking at a loose thread on her jeans. “She has dark hair like me. And she knows all the best games.”

Deep in the trees. The phrase sent a fresh spike of ice through Alex’s veins. He knew what was deep in those trees. He knew who owned them.

“Okay, sweetie. Okay.” He stood up, his movements stiff. “Why don’t you go watch some TV? I… I need to run a quick errand.”

She didn’t argue, just slid off her chair and padded out of the room, leaving him alone with the wreckage of their evening. He looked out the window, past their small, patchy lawn, to the wall of ancient pines that stood like silent, eternal sentinels. The woods didn’t just border Blackwood Creek; they held it hostage.

Panic was a wild animal clawing at the inside of his ribs, but he fought it down with logic. There had to be an explanation. A new family. A cruel, tasteless coincidence. Some kid whose parents didn't know the town's dark history. He had to find them. He had to stop this before it went any further.

He started next door with Mrs. Gable, a woman whose encyclopedic knowledge of the town’s goings-on was both legendary and terrifying. He found her tending to a row of sad-looking chrysanthemums, her back to the street.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Gable,” he said, forcing a neighborly smile that felt like a grimace.

She turned, her eyes, small and sharp as a bird’s, appraising him over the rim of her glasses. “Alex. Didn’t expect to see you out and about. Thought you’d be hiding in that house of yours.”

He ignored the jab. “I was just wondering, have any new families moved in on the street? Or maybe the next one over? My daughter, Lily, says she’s made a new friend. A girl named Ruth.”

Mrs. Gable straightened up, wiping her dirt-caked hands on her apron. She gave a short, dry laugh. “New families? Here? Lord, no. The only people moving in Blackwood Creek these days are the ones who can’t afford to live anywhere else, and even they’re scarce. The Millers moving back in was the biggest news this street has seen in five years.” She peered at him, her gaze unsettlingly direct. “No, Alex. There’s no new family. No girl named Ruth.”

Her certainty was a cold stone in his stomach. He thanked her mechanically and walked away, her words echoing in his head. No new family.

Fine. Maybe they were renting. Maybe they kept to themselves. The school would know. The school had records. It was a place of facts and files, a fortress against the creeping dread that was beginning to consume him.

Blackwood Creek Elementary hadn't changed in thirty years. It still smelled of chalk dust, floor wax, and boiled vegetables. He walked the same linoleum hallways he’d walked as a boy, the cheerful posters on the walls doing nothing to dispel the gloom that had settled over him.

The school secretary, a stern-faced woman with a nameplate that read SHARON, looked up as he approached the counter.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, my name is Alex Miller. My daughter is Lily Miller, in Mrs. Davison’s third-grade class.” He leaned forward, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. “She’s made a new friend, and I’d like to get in touch with her parents. Her name is Ruth. I’m not sure of her last name, but she should also be in the third grade.”

Sharon typed with a methodical, maddening slowness, her painted nails clicking on the keyboard. The sound was like a countdown clock. Alex’s heart hammered against his ribs. He watched the screen’s reflection in her glasses, searching for a sign.

Finally, she stopped typing and looked at him, her expression a blank wall. “I’m sorry, Mr. Miller. I have two Rachels and a Ruby, but there is no student named Ruth in the entire school.”

The floor seemed to drop out from under him. “No, that can’t be right. Are you sure? Maybe she just enrolled. She’s new.”

“I’m quite sure,” Sharon said, her voice laced with impatience. “I handle all enrollments myself. There have been no new students in the third grade this year. At all.”

He stared at her, his mind refusing to process the information. The walls of the office seemed to press in on him. No Ruth at school. No Ruth in the neighborhood.

A cold, horrifying thought began to bloom in the back of his mind. An impossible thought.

He stumbled out of the school and into the weak afternoon sun, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He got into his car and just sat there, clutching the steering wheel, the worn leather cool beneath his sweating palms. He looked at the school, at the children laughing on the playground, living in a world that made sense. A world without monsters.

Lily wasn't lying. He could see it in her eyes. She believed her friend was real.

And he wasn't crazy. The memory of that night, of the impossible creature with golden eyes and a cow’s tail, was burned into him, a brand on his soul. The game was real. The name was real.

So if the girl wasn’t a lie, and she wasn’t a product of his own madness, then what was she?

The answer came to him with the chilling certainty of absolute truth. The creature in the woods, the Huldra, hadn’t forgotten him. It had been waiting. It couldn't come for him directly, so it was using a lure. A ghost. A phantom with his dead sister's name, sent to whisper deadly games into his daughter’s ear.

He was no longer just fighting a memory. He was fighting a haunting. A malevolent intelligence that knew his deepest wound and was pressing its claws into the raw, exposed nerve. The girl named Ruth didn’t exist.

She was a trap. And his daughter was already walking into it.