Chapter 2: The People Without Shoes

Chapter 2: The People Without Shoes

The silence that flooded the car after the engine died was a physical thing. It pressed against the windows, thick and suffocating, amplifying the frantic thudding of David’s own heart. Outside, the figures in the doorways remained as still as statues, their gazes fixed on the metallic shell that had rumbled into their quiet world.

“We should go,” Abby whispered, her voice a strained thread of sound. “David, just… turn the car around. Slowly.”

“And do what?” he whispered back, his eyes darting from one shadowed porch to another. “Drive back through those woods? With them watching? It feels… it feels like if we run, they’ll chase.” His adventurous spirit had evaporated, replaced by a raw, primal instinct that screamed trap. The car, once a symbol of escape, now felt like a cage under the scrutiny of predators.

He was right. Turning their backs on this place felt more dangerous than facing it. With a shared, terrified glance, they reached a silent consensus. The only way out was through.

Opening the car door was like breaking the surface of deep water. The air that hit them was cool and heavy, carrying the same scent of rust and damp earth from the forest, but stronger here, as if its source was nearby. David’s sneakers sank slightly into the soft, dark soil of the street. Abby’s did the same. And it was then, as their eyes adjusted to the gloom, that they noticed the defining, impossible detail.

Every single resident, from the old man on the inn's porch to a woman holding a basket across the street, was barefoot. Their soles were dark with dirt, calloused and thick, as if they had never known the touch of leather or rubber. They walked—when they moved at all—with a silent, rolling gait, their feet seeming to caress the ground rather than strike it. The sight was so fundamentally wrong it made the hair on David’s arms stand on end.

“Don’t stare,” Abby murmured, her hand finding his and gripping it tightly. Her knuckles were white.

They walked towards the two-story inn, the largest and most central building. It seemed the logical place to start. Every slow, deliberate step they took felt like a performance for an unseen audience. The unblinking eyes followed them, turning in perfect, unnerving synchrony. There was no sound but the scuff of their shoes on the dirt—a harsh, grating noise in the profound quiet. They were the only ones making a sound. They were the anomaly.

The wooden sign above the porch was so weathered the words were barely legible: The Pines’ Rest. Welcome. It was a lie. Nothing about this place felt welcoming.

The old man who had been leaning in the shadows straightened up as they approached. He was gaunt, with slicked-back grey hair and skin the color of old parchment. But it was his eyes that seized David's attention and held it hostage. They were wide, dark, and utterly still. They didn't move, they didn't shift, and in the entire time it took for David and Abby to climb the three porch steps, he did not blink. Not once.

“We, uh… we were looking for Croft Pines,” David managed, his voice sounding hollow. “My grandfather’s map…”

The man simply smiled. It was a perfectly symmetrical expression, a precise arrangement of muscles that conveyed no warmth, no emotion at all. It was the smile of a mask. “You have found it,” he said, his voice a low, even monotone. “You are tired from your journey. You will need a room.”

It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact, as if their arrival and their needs had been predetermined. He pushed the heavy oak door open, gesturing them inside. The innkeeper—Silas, David would later learn his name was—moved with an unnatural grace, an economy of motion that was deeply unsettling. He didn't seem to walk; he seemed to arrive.

The interior of the inn was dark and smelled of woodsmoke, old beer, and that persistent, underlying metallic tang. A long bar of dark, polished wood dominated the room. There were no lights on, but a dim, grey illumination seeped in through the grimy windows. Silas moved behind the counter, produced a tarnished brass key from a drawer, and placed it on the bar with a soft click.

“Room four,” he said, his unblinking gaze fixed on David. “Up the stairs. Second on the right. Rest now.” He didn't ask for a name. He didn't ask for payment.

As David reached for the key, a flash of movement near the staircase caught his eye. A little girl, no older than eight, stood in the shadows. She wore a simple, faded calico dress and, like everyone else, was barefoot. She stared at them not with the vacant emptiness of the other townsfolk, but with something that looked like… pity.

She took a silent step forward, her eyes fixed on David’s sneakers. When she spoke, her voice was a clear, high-pitched whisper that cut through the oppressive silence.

“You woke it up,” she said simply.

David froze, his hand hovering over the key. “Woke… what up?”

The little girl pointed a small, dirt-smudged finger in the direction of their car. “With the wheels,” she clarified, her expression unchanging. “The turning and the turning. On its skin. It doesn’t like the turning. Now it’s awake. And it’s hungry.”

Before David or Abby could respond, the innkeeper spoke, his voice still a placid monotone, but with an edge of finality that brooked no argument. “Go on now, Maeve. Our guests are tired.”

The girl, Maeve, gave them one last, mournful look before melting back into the shadows of the hallway, as silent as a ghost.

“Wheels?” Abby asked, her voice trembling. “What did she mean, ‘on its skin’?”

The innkeeper’s placid smile didn't waver. “Children have their fancies. You are tired. You should rest.”

Numb with a fear too deep for words, David grabbed the key. They ascended the creaking staircase, the feeling of being watched now coming from the unblinking man behind them. The room was sparse and unnaturally clean. A simple iron bed frame, a washbasin and pitcher, a single window looking out over the silent, waiting street.

As soon as David closed the door, a wave of exhaustion, profound and debilitating, washed over both of them. It was more than just the fatigue from a long drive; it was a heavy, leaden pressure, pushing down on their limbs, fogging their thoughts.

“We have to leave,” Abby slurred, sinking onto the edge of the lumpy mattress. “David, that little girl…”

“I know,” he said, his own eyelids feeling like they were weighted down with stones. He fought to form a plan, to rally his panicked mind, but the oppressive tiredness was like a drug, pulling him under. “We’ll just… rest for a minute. Just a minute. Then we’ll go.”

He lay down on the bed next to her, fully clothed. The last thing he saw before his eyes slid shut was the grey, featureless sky outside the window. Sleep didn't come gently; it seized them, dragging them down into a black, suffocating abyss.

And there, in the crushing darkness, they dreamed.

It was not a dream of images, but of sensation. They were lying not on a mattress, but on the thin, fragile crust of something impossibly vast. Beneath them, something stirred from a slumber that had lasted for millennia. They could feel it—a slow, titanic shifting, a grinding of geological plates that vibrated up through the bedrock, through the foundation of the inn, through their very bones.

A low, resonant rumble filled their minds, a sound that was felt more than heard. It was the sound of a stomach contracting, of a lung taking its first, slow breath after an eternity of stillness. And with that stirring came a single, overwhelming, all-consuming thought, a concept beamed directly into their sleeping consciousness:

HUNGER.

It was not the simple hunger of an animal. It was a cosmic void, a patient, absolute craving for substance, for energy, for reality itself. It had been woken, and it wanted to feed.

David and Abby shot upright in the bed at the exact same instant, gasping for air as if they had been held underwater. The room was pitch black. The vibrations of the dream still echoed in their chests. They stared at each other in the darkness, their faces pale masks of shared terror.

It wasn't a nightmare. It was a memory. A message from the thing that slept beneath their feet. The thing their wheels had just woken up.