Chapter 5: Iron and Ash

Chapter 5: Iron and Ash

Time was a thief. Alex could feel it stealing the precious minutes he had left, each tick of the grandfather clock in the hall a countdown to the moon’s ascent. Lily was upstairs, barricaded in her room with a chair wedged under the doorknob and strict instructions not to open it for any voice but his. The promise he'd made her—I'll get the feather—echoed in the silent house, a vow that felt more like a death sentence.

He couldn't just walk into those woods. Not again. The ten-year-old boy in him had run, but the thirty-eight-year-old man knew that to face the Huldra was to face a force of nature, an ancient malice that had claimed his sister with casual ease. He needed a weapon. He needed an answer.

His first frantic search was in the attic, a dusty tomb of forgotten furniture and sealed boxes. He tore through his parents' belongings, his hands raw from pulling at brittle cardboard. They had never spoken of what happened to Ruth, not really. They had encased her memory in a thick wall of unspoken grief. But they had lived in Blackwood Creek their whole lives. They had to have known something.

He found it in a small, cedar chest tucked under the eaves: a leather-bound journal belonging to his grandmother. Her script was a faded, looping cursive, filled with recipes and local gossip. But tucked into the back pages, written in a shakier, more urgent hand, was an entry that made his blood run cold.

October 12, 1958. Another one gone. The Holloway boy. They say he wandered off, but we know. We all know. Old Man Abernathy came by, ranting about the pact, about the price the town pays to the woman in the woods. He said they played the game. He said they never learn. Mother told him to leave, said his talk was poison. But I saw the look in her eyes. She knows. She's just too scared to say it.

Abernathy. The name jolted a memory loose. Old Man Abernathy. A town eccentric, a recluse who lived in a house on the edge of the woods that was more library than home. As kids, they’d dared each other to touch his fence, convinced he was a witch. Alex hadn't thought of him in decades. He didn't even know if he was still alive.

He had to find out.

Abernathy’s house was exactly as he remembered it, a sagging Victorian choked by overgrown ivy and shadowed by the looming pines. A single, dim yellow light burned in a downstairs window. Alex’s knock sounded like a cannon blast in the oppressive quiet.

After a long moment, the door creaked open a few inches, held by a thick chain. A pair of sharp, intelligent eyes peered out from the gloom. The face was a roadmap of wrinkles, the hair a wild shock of white.

“What do you want?” the old man rasped, his voice dry as autumn leaves.

“Mr. Abernathy? My name is Alex Miller. My daughter…” Alex’s voice cracked. The words felt insane, impossible to say out loud. “She played the game. Foxfeather. Her pinecone was taken.”

The change in Abernathy was immediate. The suspicion in his eyes was replaced by a deep, weary dread. He fumbled with the chain and pulled the door open. “Get in. Quickly.”

The inside of the house smelled of old paper, woodsmoke, and something vaguely medicinal. Books were stacked to the ceiling, maps were pinned to every available surface, and strange, folkloric artifacts cluttered dusty shelves. It was the den of a man obsessed.

“Miller,” Abernathy said, his eyes scanning Alex’s face. “Of course. You’re Sarah and John’s boy. The one who was there. With your sister.”

Alex just nodded, his throat too tight to speak.

“I tried to warn them,” Abernathy said, shaking his head. “I tried to warn the whole damn town for sixty years, but they’d rather bury the truth than face it. They call it a game.” He let out a harsh, bitter laugh. “It’s not a game, son. It’s a tribute. An appeasement.”

He gestured for Alex to follow him to a large table covered in a sprawling, hand-drawn map of the Blackwood Forest. At its center was a clearing, marked with a single, ominous rune. Huldra’s Rest.

“Our town founders didn’t just settle here,” Abernathy explained, his bony finger tracing the creek line. “They trespassed. They built their homes on the edge of a territory that already had a master. The Huldra. A creature of the old world, hungry and possessive. It started taking their children, one by one, from their very yards.”

He looked up, his gaze intense, forcing Alex to meet his eyes. “So they made a pact. They couldn’t kill it, so they fed it. They devised a ritual, a lottery disguised as a child’s game, to offer it one of their own every generation or so. A sacrifice to keep the beast in the woods and out of the town proper. The Huldra is bound by the rules as much as we are. It accepts the offering given freely through the game, and in return, it leaves the rest alone.”

The spectral Ruth’s words to Lily clicked into place. The rules are very important. The Fox is fair. It wasn't a game; it was a contract. A blood-soaked treaty that had kept Blackwood Creek in a state of quiet, generational horror.

“But my daughter didn’t give herself freely,” Alex argued, his voice shaking with a desperate fury. “She was tricked. Lured by a ghost.”

“Its magic is in its lures,” Abernathy countered. “It preys on loneliness, on innocence. It’s always been that way. But you say you’re going in her place?”

“I have to,” Alex said, the words tasting like ash. “The pact wants a payment. I’m going to pay it.”

Abernathy was silent for a long moment, studying him. “A parent taking the place of a child… the pact is old. It may not have accounted for such a thing. You might have a chance. But you can’t go empty-handed. It is a creature of magic, and it must be fought with its own kind of logic.”

He turned and shuffled over to a heavy wooden chest. He lifted the lid, revealing a collection of strange objects. “It is Fae-kin, or close to it. Its power is tied to the natural world, the woods, the earth. But there are things of man, and things of nature, that it cannot abide.”

He pulled out a heavy, rust-pitted railroad spike. “Cold iron,” he said, pressing it into Alex’s hand. The metal was heavy and inert, but it felt solid, real, a piece of the human world to carry into that supernatural place. “It burns them. Breaks their illusions. It won’t kill the creature, but it will cause it pain. It will keep you grounded in what is real.”

Next, he went to a collection of dried branches hanging from the rafters. He snapped off a short, thin piece of wood with silvery bark and clusters of dried red berries. “And this,” he said, handing it to Alex, “is more important. Mountain Ash. The rowan tree. To its kind, this is a wall. A shield. It repels their magic, breaks their hold. Hold the iron to fight, but hold the ash to survive.”

Alex stood there, a rusty spike in one hand and a dead branch in the other. They were pitiful weapons against a monster that had devoured his sister and haunted his life. But they were something. They were a sliver of hope, a flicker of defiance in the face of absolute terror. He was no longer just a victim walking to the slaughter. He was a hunter.

“Thank you,” he whispered, the words inadequate.

Abernathy simply nodded, his ancient face a mask of grim resolve. “The creature enjoys its games, Mr. Miller. But it does not like it when the pieces on the board refuse to play their part. Be clever. Be brave. And break the circle.”

Alex left the house of the old historian and stepped back into the night. The moon was higher now, a cold, silver eye hanging over the forest. He could feel its pull, a silent summons from the clearing.

He walked to the edge of his own yard, to the indistinct line where the mown grass gave way to the wild, untamed darkness of the woods. He looked back one last time at the warm light in Lily’s window. He gripped the cold iron in one hand and the brittle branch of mountain ash in the other. His fear was a roaring inferno inside him, but for the first time in thirty years, it was matched by the cold, hard steel of his resolve.

The pact demanded a payment. And tonight, he would make it. He took a deep breath and stepped out of the light, surrendering himself to the waiting shadows of the trees.