Chapter 6: The Man Who Never Left the Woods

The phone call had drawn a line in the sand. Before, Alex had been an archaeologist of his grandmother’s trauma, sifting through the fossilized remains of a fifty-year-old horror. Now, the dinosaur was alive, and it knew his name. The phantom clicking was no longer a phantom. It was a punctuation mark at the end of every silent moment, a wet, chitinous whisper promising that his turn was coming.

Paralyzing fear was a luxury he could no longer afford. Survival demanded action. He spread the artifacts of his inheritance across his floor—the letters, the drawing, the ghastly photographs—a makeshift evidence board for a crime that defied every law of nature. Three teenagers had walked away from the Malarial Werwolf fire. Brittney and Caroline were dead, both having met ends that were officially labeled suicide but felt more like the final moves in a lost chess game. That left one name, a name that hadn't been crossed off the list by time or tragedy.

Kyle Clifton.

The newspaper article from 1968 had been chillingly specific: "transferred from the county hospital to the Northwood Psychiatric Hospital for long-term care." Long-term care. A sterile euphemism for a place people went to disappear. Alex’s hands shook as he looked up the number. Was it even possible Kyle was still alive, let alone still there after half a century?

He concocted a half-truthful story, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. He wasn't a journalist or a paranormal investigator. He was just a grieving grandson.

He dialed the number. A tired-sounding woman answered. “Northwood Hospital, administration.”

“Hello,” Alex began, his voice strained. “My name is Alex Miller. I… my grandmother just passed away. Her name was Brittney Miller. I was going through her old things, and I found some photographs of her with an old friend of hers, a Mr. Kyle Clifton. I know it’s a long shot, but the last record she had of him was at your facility, a very long time ago. I just wanted to… I don’t know, let him know about her passing.”

There was a long silence on the other end, filled with the soft tapping of a keyboard. Alex held his breath. Patient confidentiality was a brick wall he was sure he was about to hit.

“Sir, I can’t confirm or deny if we have a patient by that name,” the woman said, her voice a practiced, detached monotone.

“I understand,” Alex said, his heart sinking. “It’s just… he’s the last one. From her childhood. I thought he should know.”

Another pause. Softer this time. Alex could almost hear the woman’s sympathy warring with her professional duty. “Sir,” she said, her voice dropping slightly, “our general visiting hours for the long-term residents in the east wing are from two to four in the afternoon, Tuesday through Saturday. Visitors must sign in at the front desk.”

It wasn't a confirmation, but it was an invitation. Alex’s blood ran cold with a mixture of terror and grim triumph. “Thank you,” he managed to say. “Thank you very much.”

The drive to Northwood took two hours, pushing him out of the familiar city suburbs and into the rolling, desolate hills of the countryside. The hospital was not a modern medical facility but a relic of a bygone era of mental health care. It was a hulking, red-brick behemoth, its windows small and barred, set atop a lonely hill overlooking a gray, windswept landscape. It looked less like a place of healing and more like a prison for the mind.

The air inside was thick with the scent of industrial cleaner, boiled vegetables, and a profound, underlying sadness. After signing in and handing over his driver’s license, a burly, bored-looking orderly named Frank led him down a series of long, sterile hallways. The linoleum floors squeaked under their shoes, the sound echoing off the pale green walls. A muffled, rhythmic banging came from behind one of the closed doors. From another, a woman’s voice sobbed quietly. This was a library of shattered minds, and he was here to read the oldest book in the collection.

“He doesn’t get visitors,” Frank said without turning around. “Not in the thirty years I’ve been here, anyway. Don’t expect much conversation.”

They stopped in front of a heavy wooden door with a small, reinforced glass window. Room 313. Frank unlocked it, the sound of the key in the lock unnaturally loud. “Fifteen minutes,” he grunted, before stepping aside.

Alex pushed the door open and stepped inside. The room was small, stark, and contained only a metal-frame bed, a small dresser bolted to the floor, and a single, barred window. But it wasn't the spartan furnishings that seized Alex’s attention. It was the walls.

Every inch of the pale green paint was covered in spirals.

They were drawn in what looked like soft pencil lead, thousands of them, overlapping and intertwining, a swirling galaxy of madness. Some were small and tight, others wide and sprawling. It was the obsessive, frantic work of decades, a testament to a mind caught in a single, unending loop.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to the door, was a withered, bird-like man in a gray jumpsuit. His hair was a wispy white crown around a liver-spotted scalp. When he turned his head, his movements were slow, reptilian. His eyes, sunk deep in their sockets, were vacant, clouded over by time and trauma.

“Mr. Clifton?” Alex said, his voice barely a whisper. “Kyle?”

The old man didn’t respond. He simply stared at Alex with a complete lack of recognition. His hands lay in his lap, his fingers twitching.

Alex took a hesitant step forward, pulling the old photograph from his jacket pocket—the one of the four teenagers by the campfire. He knelt down in front of the old man, holding it out.

“Kyle, my name is Alex. I’m Brittney’s grandson.” He pointed to the smiling girl in the photo. “Brittney Miller. Do you remember her? Or Caroline? Robert?”

For a moment, there was nothing. Kyle’s gaze drifted from Alex’s face to the photograph. His cloudy eyes seemed to clear for a split second. A flicker of something ancient and terrified sparked in their depths. His lips parted, and a dry, rasping sound came out.

Ch-click-click.

The sound shot through Alex like a bolt of electricity. It was the same sound from the phone, the same sound Caroline had described. It was real. It was here.

Kyle’s gaze lifted from the photo and fixed on Alex’s face. His withered hand shot out, grabbing Alex’s arm with a surprising, wiry strength. He leaned in close, his breath a foul, musty scent of decay and old food.

“The screams,” he rasped, his voice a dry rustle of dead leaves. “He gets so… full. On the screams.”

“Who?” Alex breathed, his heart pounding against his ribs. “Who gets full?”

“The man,” Kyle whispered, his eyes wide, seeing not the hospital room but a dark, fire-lit clearing from fifty years ago. “The tall man. The man who feeds on screams.”

His grip tightened on Alex’s arm. His other hand lifted, a trembling finger pointing to the vortex of spirals on the wall. Then, he pointed to his own hollow cheek. And then, his finger moved, crossing the small space between them, and pointed directly at Alex’s face.

“He marked her,” Kyle hissed, a sliver of lucidity cutting through the fog. “He marked Caroline. Then he came for Brit. Now… now he smells you.”

The door swung open. “Alright, time’s up,” Frank the orderly said, his voice bored.

As Frank gently but firmly pried Kyle’s fingers from Alex’s arm, the old man’s eyes locked with his. The terror in them was absolute, a pure, distilled horror that had been aging for half a century.

“It doesn’t want your life,” Kyle called out as Frank led Alex from the room, his voice rising to a panicked, desperate shriek. “It doesn’t just kill you! It wants your living! It wants to eat your fear, bit by bit, until there’s nothing left but a husk!”

The heavy door closed with a solid, final thud, cutting off the old man’s frantic clicks and whispers. Alex stood in the sterile hallway, his entire body trembling. He hadn't found an ally. He hadn't found an explanation. He had found a mirror. He had just looked fifty years into his own potential future and seen a broken man in a gray jumpsuit, drawing spirals on the wall of his cell, forever trapped in the woods with the man who feeds on screams.

Slowly, involuntarily, his hand rose to his own cheek, feeling the smooth, unmarked skin. For now.