Chapter 1: The Three Harbingers

Chapter 1: The Three Harbingers

The groan of the state park’s utility truck was as familiar to Leo Martinez as the ache in his own shoulders. He navigated the worn asphalt path, the dense canopy of Blackwood Reservoir State Park dappling the windshield with fleeting patterns of sun and shadow. In the passenger seat, Zach, all wiry energy and a mouth that never stopped, was halfway through a story about a disastrous Tinder date. In the back, nestled amongst rattling tools and the scent of gasoline, was Alex, the new kid, barely twenty and still possessing a belief in things like ‘lunch breaks’ and ‘quitting time’.

“So I tell her, ‘Babe, if you think that’s a red flag, you should see my credit score,’” Zach cackled, slapping the dashboard. “Never heard from her again.”

“Tragic,” Leo deadpanned, downshifting as they approached the turn-off for the Aspen Grove campsite. “A modern romance for the ages.”

Their task for the morning was simple: a busted water pump at campsite four. Routine. Everything about their job was routine, a predictable cycle of mowing, clearing, and fixing the things weekend warriors managed to break. It was a life Leo understood, a legacy passed down from his father, whose thirty-year service pin still sat in a box in his dresser. Keep your head down, do the work, get your crew home safe. His father’s mantra was Leo’s own.

The air grew heavier, cooler, as they neared the reservoir’s edge. The water today was the color of bruised slate, unnaturally still, mirroring the stoic pines that lined its banks. There was a quiet here that always felt less like peace and more like something holding its breath. Leo had felt it his whole life, a subtle wrongness humming just beneath the park’s idyllic surface.

He killed the engine, and the sudden silence was broken only by the distant call of a loon. “Alright, let’s see the damage.”

The pump stood near the water line, a relic of cast iron and faded green paint. A family’s abandoned cooler and a child’s forgotten shovel lay nearby. As Leo knelt to inspect the housing, Zach let out a low whistle.

“Well, there’s your problem, boss.” He pointed not at the pump, but at what was sitting on top of it.

Three toads. They were large, their skin a mottled camouflage of bog-green and mud-brown, covered in grotesque warts. They sat in a perfect, unnatural line, their black, unblinking eyes fixed on the men. They didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe.

“Huh,” Alex said from behind them. “Never seen ones that big before.”

“It’s the Toad Curse,” Zach announced with theatrical gravity. “Three of ‘em. That’s the trifecta of bad juju. Explains the pump. This campsite’s haunted.” He grinned, but his eyes kept flicking back to the motionless amphibians.

Leo snorted, grabbing a wrench from his belt. “The only curse here is thirty-year-old plumbing and a budget that gets cut every fiscal year. Give me a hand, Alex.”

As they worked to unseat the rusted bolts, the toads remained, silent sentinels on their iron perch. Leo tried to ignore them, focusing on the familiar mechanics of the pump, the satisfying rasp of metal on metal. But he couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched by those cold, lidless eyes. His father used to tell him stories, strange tales whispered late at night about the old town that lay at the bottom of the reservoir, about the things that slumbered in the deep. Some places have teeth, Leo. Best not to show them you’re bleeding.

With a final, protesting shriek of metal, the housing came loose. When Leo looked up again, the toads were gone. Vanished, with no sound, no ripple in the nearby grass to mark their passage.

“See?” Zach said, nudging Alex. “They did their evil and scrammed. Classic toad move.”

Leo just shook his head, a faint unease prickling his skin. “Let’s just get this done.”

---

Late afternoon found them by the main beach, loading the last of the brush they’d cleared from the walking trails. The day was winding down. The sun, lower in the sky, cast the reservoir in a friendlier, golden light. Families were packing up picnic baskets, their laughter echoing across the sand. The unease from the morning had faded, replaced by the dull, satisfying exhaustion of a day’s labor.

Then came the scream.

It wasn’t a child’s shriek of fun. It was a raw, jagged sound of pure panic that sliced through the peaceful atmosphere like a shard of glass.

“Ethan! Oh God, Ethan! ETHAN!”

Leo dropped the rake he was holding. He and his crew exchanged a single, wide-eyed glance before breaking into a run towards the water’s edge.

A crowd was already forming around a frantic woman in a floral sundress. Her face was a mask of terror as she pointed a trembling hand towards the placid water. “He was right here! He was just… he was just digging in the sand! I only looked away for a second!”

A little red bucket lay on its side near the gentle lapping of the waves, a tiny castle of wet sand slowly dissolving beside it. Park rangers were already moving, their professional calm a stark contrast to the mother’s hysteria. One spoke into his radio while another began scanning the shoreline.

Leo’s training kicked in. He knew these woods, these shores, better than anyone. “Zach, check the bathhouse. Alex, with me. We’ll check the reeds down east.”

His mind raced with possibilities. The kid wandered off, got turned around in the woods, maybe he was hiding. All logical, all explainable. But as he pushed through a thicket of cattails, his boots sinking into the soft mud, a cold dread began to coil in his gut. It was the same feeling from the morning, amplified a hundred times.

He was scanning the shoreline, looking for any sign—a small footprint, a broken branch—when his eyes snagged on a half-submerged log just a few feet away.

And his blood ran cold.

They were there. Three of them. Mottled green and brown, their warts looking like tiny, morbid jewels in the fading light. They sat in a perfect, silent line, their unblinking black eyes aimed not at him, but at the chaos unfolding further down the beach.

Zach’s joke from the morning slammed into him with the force of a physical blow. The Toad Curse strikes again. Three of ‘em. That’s bad juju.

It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t a coincidence.

Leo stared at them, his heart hammering against his ribs. The air suddenly smelled of swamp rot and thick, ancient river mud. He felt a malevolent intelligence in their gaze, a chilling awareness that was older than the park, older than the dam that had created this lake. He was looking at an omen. A harbinger.

He looked from the three silent toads to the vast, darkening expanse of the Blackwood Reservoir. The water was no longer golden but had returned to its inscrutable slate-gray, swallowing the last of the sunlight. The search parties’ calls of “Ethan!” sounded thin and hopeless, already being devoured by the immense, waiting silence of the woods.

Leo knew, with a certainty that defied all logic, a certainty that came from a place of half-forgotten ghost stories and primal fear, that they weren’t going to find the boy. Something had laid claim to him. And as the last sliver of sun died behind the pines, Leo felt for the first time that his father’s promise—get your crew home safe—might be one he was no longer equipped to keep.