Chapter 3: Huldra's Rest

Chapter 3: Huldra's Rest

Sleep offered Alex no escape. It was a suffocating black blanket, and beneath it, the nightmares feasted.

He was ten years old again, standing in the twilight clearing. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and decay. Ruth was there, her red jacket a vibrant wound against the gloom, but her face was a pale, smudged blur. She held out her hand to him. “It’s just a game, Alex,” she whispered, but her voice was wrong, layered with another sound, like the rustling of dry leaves.

He reached for her, but his fingers closed on empty, cold air. She was gone. The woods fell silent, a silence so profound it felt like a physical pressure. Then, from the impenetrable shadows between the ancient pines, two golden lights ignited. They were not warm like fireflies, but cold and predatory, the eyes of something that had never known the sun. They fixed on him, and a voice slithered into his mind, a voice made of snapping twigs and forgotten whispers.

“You let go,” it said. “You left her for the Fox.”

Alex awoke with a choked gasp, his body drenched in a cold sweat that had nothing to do with the chill of the old house. The golden eyes were burned onto the back of his eyelids. He sat bolt upright, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. The silence of the house was a poor imitation of the silence from his dream. This wasn't just a memory playing on a loop; it felt like a summons.

He swung his legs out of bed, his feet hitting the cold floorboards. A desperate, primal need propelled him down the hall to Lily’s room. He pushed the door open a crack. In the sliver of moonlight filtering through her window, he could see the small shape of her huddled under a unicorn-themed comforter, her breathing slow and even. She was safe. For now.

Seeing her there, so peaceful and unaware, solidified his resolve. The panic of the past day—the frantic questions, the dead ends at the school and with the neighbors—coalesced into a single, terrifying certainty. He couldn't fight what he couldn't see. He couldn't protect her from a ghost that whispered through the trees. To understand the threat, he had to go back to its source. Back to the place he had spent three decades trying to forget.

He had to go to Huldra’s Rest.

He didn't change out of his sweatpants and worn t-shirt. He just pulled on a pair of boots, grabbed his keys, and crept out of the house, locking the door behind him. The pre-dawn air was sharp and bit at his exposed skin. The streets of Blackwood Creek were deserted, bathed in the sickly orange glow of the few remaining streetlights. The whole town felt asleep, blissfully ignorant of the rot that festered at its edges.

The drive to the trailhead took less than five minutes. He pulled his beat-up sedan onto the gravel shoulder, the crunch of the tires loud in the stillness. The path into the woods was little more than a scar in the treeline, an uninviting maw that promised nothing but darkness. He killed the engine and the world went utterly silent.

For a long moment, he just sat there, gripping the steering wheel. Every instinct screamed at him to turn back, to go home and barricade the doors, to pack up Lily and drive until Blackwood Creek was just a bad memory in the rearview mirror. But he knew it wouldn't work. The creature hadn't come for him in thirty years. It had waited. It had waited until he had something to lose that was more precious than his own life. It was a patient hunter. Running wasn't an option.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, he got out of the car. The forest air was colder here, carrying a damp, loamy scent that was viscerally familiar. He turned on his phone’s flashlight, its thin beam cutting a nervous swath through the oppressive dark, and stepped onto the path.

The woods closed in around him immediately. The canopy overhead was so thick it blotted out the stars, creating a false, suffocating midnight. The flashlight beam seemed weak, swallowed by the sheer volume of darkness. Every rustle of leaves was a footstep. Every creak of a branch was a limb bending at an unnatural angle. He walked past the fallen log Ruth had balanced on like a tightrope walker, her laughter echoing in the hollow chambers of his memory. He passed the cluster of birch trees whose white bark they’d pretended was paper for secret messages. This wasn't just a path; it was a gallery of ghosts.

As he got closer, the temperature dropped further. The air grew still and heavy, and the normal sounds of the forest—the chirp of crickets, the rustle of unseen things—died away. This was the unnatural silence he remembered. The silence of a predator’s territory.

Finally, the path opened up, and he stepped into the clearing. Huldra’s Rest.

It was exactly as he remembered it. A perfect, circular clearing ringed by towering, ancient pines that stood like the pillars of a forgotten temple. The ground was a carpet of thick, dark green moss that seemed to absorb all light and sound. In the center of this space, the air felt old and dead. He swept his flashlight beam across the clearing, his heart hammering, half-expecting to see the tall, warped figure from his nightmares waiting for him.

But there was nothing. Only trees, moss, and a silence that felt heavier than stone.

A wave of dizzying relief washed over him, so potent it made his knees weak. It was empty. It was just a place. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe his grief and fear were finally unspooling, creating monsters where there were only shadows.

Then his light caught something on the ground.

He took a hesitant step forward, his boots making no sound on the moss. There, in the very center of the clearing, was a circle. It wasn't the haphazard ring of twigs he and Ruth had made. This was new. It was a neat, deliberate circle made of a dozen pinecones, each one placed with an eerie precision.

His blood ran cold. The game. Lily’s words echoed in his head. You get a pretty stone, and a pinecone, and a feather. You put them in a circle…

This was where she had played. With Ruth. The ghost.

He knelt, his flashlight beam trembling. He traced the circle, his mind reeling. This was proof. His paranoia wasn't paranoia at all. It was instinct. The game was real, and it had been played here, in this unholy place. He counted the pinecones. There should have been three offerings for two players. Or more, if there were others. But his eyes followed the perfect curve and found a gap.

One space in the circle was empty. The offering from that spot had been taken. Just like Ruth’s stone.

His gaze drifted to the center of that empty space, and his world shattered. Lying on the dark moss was a small splash of color. A cheap, plastic pink.

He reached out a trembling hand and his fingers brushed against it. A small, pink barrette, shaped like a heart, with flecks of glitter embedded in the plastic. He had bought it for Lily two weeks ago at the pharmacy. He’d clipped it into her hair himself yesterday morning.

The relief he’d felt moments ago curdled into a black, suffocating dread that was infinitely worse than the nightmare. The game had already been played. The circle had been made. The Fox had already chosen.

It wasn't a warning anymore.

It was a receipt.