Chapter 2: What the Woods Remember

Chapter 2: What the Woods Remember

One month earlier, the air smelled of pine needles and damp earth, not salt and decay. The only ticking clock was the rhythmic chirp of crickets, and the only monster was the one Sam was trying to summon.

A crackling bonfire threw dancing shadows against the dense curtain of the Black Ridge woods. Five friends, flush with the freedom of a college weekend, sat around its warmth, their faces illuminated by the orange glow. Empty beer bottles littered the ground around their circle of logs.

"No, seriously," Sam said, his eyes alight with a feverish enthusiasm that always made Leo vaguely uneasy. He leaned forward, pushing a leather-bound book into the center of the firelight. It wasn't just old; it looked ancient, the cover cracked and worn, the pages yellowed to the color of bone. "This isn't like the Ouija board crap we did in high school. This is the real deal."

Nate snorted, taking a long pull from his beer. "What's it gonna do, Sam? Make my student loans disappear? Because if it can do that, I'm all in."

"It's a communication ritual," Sam insisted, ignoring the joke. He tapped the book's cover, on which no title was visible. "It's for opening a door. Just for a moment. Long enough to speak to… whatever's on the other side."

Isaiah, ever the pragmatist, adjusted his glasses. "You mean to induce a state of group hysteria through atmospheric suggestion. It’s a psychological trick, Sam. The power of suggestion in a spooky setting."

"It's not a trick!" Sam's voice was sharp. "The book calls it an invitation. A tithe for a truth. You offer something, and the… the Taker of Tithes… grants you a whisper from the void."

The name sent a small, cold shiver down Leo’s spine. He instinctively touched the small, silver crucifix he wore under his t-shirt, a habit ingrained in him since childhood. His grandmother’s voice echoed in his memory, a stern warning about not inviting things into a home they weren’t welcome in. He figured that applied to campsites, too.

"Dude, that sounds like a supernatural landlord," Nate laughed. "Does it take Venmo?"

"It takes blood," Sam said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks into the night sky. "Just a drop. To seal the contract."

Leo shifted uncomfortably on his log. "A contract for what? Sam, this feels… wrong."

All eyes turned to him.

"Oh, here we go," Nate groaned, though he was smiling. "Father Leo is about to give the sermon."

"It's not a sermon," Leo said, his defensiveness making his voice tight. "It's just… you don't mess with this stuff. It's disrespectful. To God, to the dead, to whatever."

"It's history," Isaiah countered smoothly. "These rituals are fascinating artifacts of human belief. Performing one is just anthropological research. Besides," he added with a smirk, "it's not real."

"Come on, Leo," James chimed in, his voice soft and placating as always. "It's just for fun. A ghost story by the fire. Don't be a buzzkill."

Peer pressure was a quiet, insidious thing. It was the collective weight of his friends’ expectations, their easy dismissal of a fear that felt primal and real to him. He looked from face to face—Sam's manic excitement, Nate's joking smirk, Isaiah's intellectual condescension, James's simple desire not to rock the boat. He was the odd one out. Again. With a sigh that tasted of defeat, he nodded. "Fine. But if a demon shows up, I'm telling it you invited him."

A triumphant grin spread across Sam's face. He opened the book, his fingers tracing a complex, star-like symbol on the page. With a stick, he meticulously recreated it in the dirt between them. Then, he produced a small pocketknife.

One by one, they pricked a finger and let a single drop of blood fall onto the center of the drawn symbol. When it was Leo's turn, his hand trembled. The pinprick of pain was nothing compared to the deep, resonant wrongness of the act. His blood soaked into the dark earth, and he felt a cold dread that had nothing to do with the night air.

They joined hands and Sam recited the words from the book, a guttural, nonsensical chant that the woods seemed to swallow whole. When he finished, they waited. The fire crackled. The crickets chirped. Nothing happened.

Nate broke the silence. "Well, that was disappointing. I didn't even get a whisper. Not even a coupon for my next haunting."

They laughed, the tension breaking like a fever. Even Leo felt a wave of relief. It was just a game. Isaiah had been right. They packed up the book, finished their beers, and one by one, crawled into their tents.

But the contract had been signed. The invitation had been sent. And the door had been opened, just a crack.

That night, Leo’s sleep was a black, suffocating ocean. He didn’t dream; he witnessed.

He was standing in a void, paralyzed, forced to watch as a scene played out in front of him. It was Sam’s bedroom. Sam was there, sleeping. A shadow detached itself from the corner of the room, a formless patch of deeper darkness that coalesced into a vaguely man-shaped thing. It had no face, only a sense of crushing, ancient hunger. Long, wrinkled, gnarled fingers, tipped with claws like shards of black glass, reached for Sam's face. Leo tried to scream a warning, but his throat was locked. The claws dug in, gouging out Sam's eyes in two swift, horrific motions. Then, a third claw drew a line across his throat. The vision dissolved in a spray of silent, dream-blood.

The scene shifted. Nate, cowering in his apartment hallway, staring at his front door. The sound of a lock turning, impossibly, from the other side. The creature was there, a flicker in the periphery, and then Nate was gone, too.

Then Isaiah, in his room, surrounded by useless crucifixes and lines of salt. He was lifted into the air by an invisible force, his body contorting in silent agony as the same precise, vicious wounds were carved into him. It was a perfect, frame-by-frame premonition of the horror Leo would witness for real weeks later.

Then James, strapped into an airplane seat, screaming at something no one else could see. The claws, impossibly, were there even at 30,000 feet.

Finally, the scene shifted to his own room. He saw himself, backed into a corner, shaking. The formless shadow loomed over him, and for the first time, he felt its presence directly—an abyssal cold, a predatory intelligence that had existed for millennia. The gnarled hand reached for him, the obsidian claws glinting in the dark.

Leo woke up with a raw, ragged scream lodged in his throat. He was drenched in sweat, his heart hammering against his ribs as if trying to escape his chest. He scrambled out of his tent. The fire was just a pile of glowing embers, and the pre-dawn woods were eerily silent. The air was frigid, holding a deep, unnatural chill that had nothing to do with the morning dew.

It wasn't a nightmare. He knew it with a certainty that terrified him more than the images themselves. It was a prophecy. A schedule.

The Taker of Tithes had answered. It hadn't sent a whisper. It had sent a full, detailed itinerary of their deaths. And Sam was first.