Chapter 1: The Invitation

Chapter 1: The Invitation

The blue light of the phone screen was a small island of comfort in the growing twilight of Chloe Mitchell’s bedroom. It illuminated the text from Ava, a vibrant explosion of caps lock and emojis that felt like a lifeline.

Ava 🎉🍕: SLEEPOVER. MY HOUSE. 8 PM. BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!!!! We’re breaking out the good ice cream and my dad’s scary movie collection. The one he says we’re “too young for.” 😉

A genuine smile, the first one all day, touched Chloe’s lips. A night of junk food, B-list horror flicks, and her best friend’s infectious laughter was exactly what she needed. The week had been a slog of pre-calc quizzes and a looming history paper. The thought of collapsing on Ava’s ridiculously plush beanbag chair felt less like a plan and more like a necessary act of survival.

Chloe: On my way! Save me the cookie dough.

She sent the text and checked the time. 7:42 PM. Perfect. She could make it with time to spare. Grabbing her pre-packed overnight bag, she slung it over her shoulder and jogged downstairs, the worn treads of her sneakers silent on the carpet.

“Mom, I’m heading out!” she called into the quiet house.

There was no reply. A flicker of unease, small but sharp, pricked at her. The house was… still. Not just empty-house quiet, but a profound, listening silence. The usual hum of the refrigerator was absent. The grandfather clock in the hall, a constant, ticking heartbeat in her life, was stopped, its long pendulum hanging inert.

A piece of paper was taped to the fridge, her mom’s familiar cursive scrawled across it.

Chloe-Bug, Had to run your dad to the clinic. He threw his back out again moving that old armchair. Don’t worry! We’ll be late. Car’s making a funny noise, so I took his truck. Left you dinner in the microwave. Love you! - Mom

Chloe’s stomach tightened. Not because of her dad—he threw his back out every autumn like clockwork—but because of the single sentence: Car’s making a funny noise.

She snatched her mom’s keys from the hook by the door and burst into the garage. The old sedan, a beige hand-me-down that had been in the family for a decade, sat under the flickering fluorescent light. She slid into the driver’s seat, the familiar scent of stale air freshener and gasoline filling her nostrils. She turned the key.

Click.

She tried again.

Click. Click. Whirrrrrr.

Nothing. The engine wouldn’t turn over. Dead. Of course, it was. On the one night she actually had plans. A frustrated sigh escaped her, fogging the cold windshield. Her small island of comfort was rapidly sinking.

Her first instinct was to call Ava and cancel. To curl up in her silent house and let the disappointment wash over her. But the image of Ava, probably already laying out snacks and debating between The Thing and Alien, made her hesitate. She couldn’t bail. It wasn’t just a sleepover; it was a ritual, a piece of cherished normalcy in the grind of junior year.

Her thumb hovered over Ava’s contact. No. She could still make it. Ava’s house wasn’t that far, maybe a forty-minute walk if she hurried. She checked the map on her phone. Her battery icon, a sliver of green, showed 48%. It would have to do. She always forgot to charge it overnight.

The route her phone suggested was the long one, a winding path that stuck to the well-lit suburban streets, a comforting string of streetlights and manicured lawns. But there was another way. A shortcut.

Her blood ran cold just thinking about it.

The shortcut cut directly through the Whisperwood Forest.

It was a dark, tangled expanse of state land that bordered their quiet town, a place of local legend and ghost stories. Older kids told tales of things that walked among the trees, of figures seen at the edge of your vision that were gone when you turned to look. They called them Glimmermen, for the way they were said to flicker in and out of sight. Chloe had always dismissed them as campfire stories, but the fear they’d instilled in her as a kid had never fully faded. It was solidified by a terrifying afternoon when she was ten, wandering off a marked trail near its edge and getting hopelessly lost for two hours, the setting sun turning every tree into a looming monster. She’d promised herself she’d never go in there again.

But the shortcut would shave a full twenty-five minutes off her walk. The difference between arriving fashionably late and missing the first movie entirely.

Don’t be a baby, she chided herself. It was just a path. A bit of dirt and some trees. The Glimmermen were a joke, something stoners made up to scare freshmen.

Decision made, she locked the front door behind her, the sound of the bolt echoing in the unnervingly silent house. The street was quiet, bathed in the orange glow of the streetlights. For the first few blocks, everything felt normal. She could hear the distant rumble of traffic on the main road, a dog barking two streets over. But as she walked, the sounds of civilization began to fall away. The houses grew farther apart, the pools of light from the streetlamps became more isolated, leaving deep stretches of inky blackness in between.

Soon, she was at the end of her street, where the neat pavement gave way to a cracked and crumbling access road leading to the forest’s edge. The air here was colder, carrying the damp, earthy smell of decaying leaves. Whisperwood didn’t so much begin as it loomed, a solid wall of blackness that seemed to absorb the light. The entrance to the path was little more than a dark slash in the thick undergrowth, a gaping mouth waiting to swallow her whole.

She pulled her phone out, its light a feeble weapon against the immense darkness. The path was barely visible, a muddy track that plunged immediately into the gloom. All the stories, all her childhood fears, came rushing back. The feeling of being watched. The snap of a twig in the oppressive silence.

Her phone buzzed in her hand, making her jump. It was Ava.

Ava 🎉🍕: WHERE R U?! The popcorn is getting cold!

Chloe took a deep breath, the cold air stinging her lungs. She couldn’t turn back now. It was just a walk in the dark. A ten-minute shortcut. She was seventeen, not seven.

Chloe: Car trouble. Taking the shortcut. Be there in 10.

She typed the message, her thumb clumsy with a sudden tremor she couldn’t control. She hit send, shoved the phone into her hoodie pocket, and pulled the hood over her head, as if the thin fabric could somehow protect her.

Taking one last look back at the distant, comforting glow of the last streetlight, Chloe Mitchell stepped off the paved road and onto the beckoning path. The moment she was under the canopy of trees, the world changed. The temperature dropped, and the last vestiges of town noise were instantly snuffed out, replaced by a silence so complete it rang in her ears.

The forest was waiting. And as the darkness closed in around her, a terrifying thought surfaced, unbidden and sharp as a shard of ice: She was no longer just a girl walking through the woods.

She was prey.