Chapter 4: Whispers on the Treeline

Chapter 4: Whispers on the Treeline

The slammed door echoed in Leo’s mind long after the sound had faded, a final, definitive rejection. Sadie’s warning, born of two decades of simmering terror, did not deter him. It did the opposite. It sharpened his resolve into a cold, fine point. If you look for it, it finds you. Good. He was tired of running.

The sun bled out across the horizon, painting the clouds in bruised shades of orange and purple. Dusk was coming, the magic hour when the world of men and the world of monsters drew closest. It was the hour Billy was taken. The hour Lily Patterson vanished.

Leo stood before the treeline, a line drawn between the sane, manicured world of the town park and the wild, primal chaos of the woods. The swing set behind him gave a low, mournful creak, a mechanical ghost in the growing twilight. This was the threshold. The place he had scrambled out of, screaming and bloody, leaving a piece of his soul behind. Now, he had to cross back over.

His hand went to his calf, where the four-pronged scar ached with a deep, resonant cold, a compass needle pulling him north into the gloom. He took a breath, the air already tasting different here—thicker, laced with the scent of damp soil and decay. Then, he took a step.

The transition was immediate, jarring. The temperature dropped several degrees. The ambient sounds of the town—a distant car, the barking of a dog—were sliced away as if by a curtain. Here, a different kind of silence reigned, heavy and watchful. It wasn't the absence of noise; it was the presence of a listening ear.

He pushed deeper, his sneakers sinking into a carpet of rotting leaves that muffled his footsteps. The forest floor was a treacherous web of gnarled roots, snaking across the path like petrified veins. The trees, mostly oak and pine, grew unnaturally close together, their branches interlocking overhead to form a dense canopy that greedily swallowed the last of the evening light. It felt less like a forest and more like the inside of a living thing, the woody columns like ribs in a vast, breathing chest.

Every sound was magnified, distorted. The hoot of an owl sounded like a mocking question. The rustle of a squirrel in the undergrowth was a sudden, heart-stopping skitter.

SNAP.

Leo froze, every muscle tensing. A twig had broken somewhere off to his right. The sound was sharp, definitive. It was the exact same sound he’d heard twenty years ago, the one that had heralded the chase, the one that had separated a child’s game from a primal hunt. He scanned the impenetrable shadows, his flashlight beam cutting a nervous, trembling path through the darkness. Nothing. He told himself it was an animal, a deer, a raccoon. But the memory, raw and vivid, screamed otherwise.

He kept moving, guided by a strange, nightmarish sense of direction. The path wasn’t one he could see, but one he felt, a cold trail left on his memory. The ache in his leg was his guide, a throbbing beacon leading him toward the heart of his trauma. Sadie’s words echoed in his head. It never left. It’s always there, just… waiting. He felt it now, that waiting presence. The weight of its ancient attention pressed in on him from all sides. The trees themselves seemed to lean in, their bark like wrinkled skin, their highest branches like skeletal fingers clawing at the sliver of remaining sky.

After what felt like an hour of tense, claustrophobic hiking, he recognized it. The clearing opened up before him, a wound in the dense woods. It was smaller than he remembered, the edges encroached upon by thorny brambles and invasive vines, as if the forest were trying to heal the scar on its landscape. In the center stood the ancient oak, its massive trunk twisted and scarred, its lowest branches drooping like the arms of a weary giant.

This was the place. The stage for the end of his childhood. He could almost see them: himself, eyes squeezed shut; Sadie, hiding behind this very tree; Billy, laughing, full of a life that was about to be extinguished. And huddled at the base of the oak, the feral girl with the mismatched eyes.

The air here was utterly still, devoid of any breeze. Leo swept his flashlight beam across the clearing, the light catching on the damp moss and pale, ghostly fungi clinging to the oak's roots. He was looking for anything. A sign. A clue. A pink ribbon from Lily Patterson’s hair. A footprint. Something to prove to Sheriff Miller, to Sadie, to himself, that this place was not just a repository for bad memories.

His light passed over the base of the oak, then jerked back.

There, nestled amongst the gnarled roots where the girl had crouched, was something that didn't belong. It wasn't a product of nature. It was small, no bigger than his palm, and pale against the dark, wet wood.

He moved closer, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. It was a bird, crudely carved from a piece of light-colored wood, perhaps birch or sycamore. The work was clumsy, the knife-strokes uneven, as if done by a child or someone with only one hand. There were no intricate feathers, just the basic shape: a head, a tail, a simple body. Yet, there was a strange, deliberate quality to it. It was new. The wood was clean, showing no signs of rot or weather. It had been placed here recently.

This was it. This was the proof. This was the tangible link between the then and the now. It was an offering, a message, a lure.

With a trembling hand, he reached down and picked it up. The wood was smooth, almost polished, warm from a heat that didn't seem to come from the air. He turned it over in his palm, his thumb tracing the clumsy lines. Who would leave this here? Why? It felt like a piece of a story he couldn’t read, a forgotten token from a nightmare. As he stared at it, a profound sense of wrongness washed over him. This wasn’t just a carving. It was an invitation.

A floorboard creaked behind him. No, not a floorboard. A root. A dry, wooden sound, right at his back. Close. So close he could feel the air shift.

Then, a whisper, brushing against the shell of his ear. It was a sound like dead leaves skittering across pavement, a voice broken and unused, yet horribly, intimately familiar.

“...po-lo.”