Chapter 2: The Fallen Oak

Chapter 2: The Fallen Oak

The moment his tires left the county road, the world changed. The distant wail of sirens and the glow of the highway vanished as if a switch had been thrown, plunging Jamie into a darkness so complete it felt like a physical substance. The Corolla’s headlights, weak and yellowed with age, cut a pathetic tunnel through the suffocating black, illuminating a road that was more memory than reality.

Cracked pavement immediately gave way to gravel and dirt, riddled with potholes that jolted the car’s suspension with bone-jarring force. Gnarled branches, like skeletal fingers, scraped against the windows, their screeching sending shivers down his spine. The trees grew unnaturally close on either side, their ancient trunks forming a dense, interlocking wall. Above, the canopy was so thick that not a single star, not a sliver of moonlight, could penetrate it. He was driving through a long, dark throat, and the forest was slowly swallowing him whole.

An oppressive silence descended, thicker than the darkness. Out on the highway, there had been the thrum of engines, the whisper of the radio. Here, there was nothing. No crickets, no night birds, not even the rustle of a small animal in the undergrowth. The only sounds were the groaning of his car, the crunch of his tires on the broken earth, and the frantic, ragged tempo of his own breathing.

“Get a grip, Thorne,” he muttered, his voice sounding thin and alien in the dead air. His hands were slick with sweat on the steering wheel. He was doing this for Sydney. For Jason.

The name hit him again, a fresh wave of grief that threatened to drown him. Jason. It was impossible. He pictured Jason’s easy grin, the way he’d thrown his head back when he laughed, a booming, infectious sound that could fill any room. He remembered the day Jason had given him the keys to the general store, not as a loan, but as a handshake. “You’ve got this,” Jason had said, his belief in Jamie absolute, a stark contrast to the quiet disappointment Jamie always saw in his own reflection. How could a man so full of life, so solid, so… permanent, just fall?

The thought was a venomous hook, pulling him down into a whirlpool of confusion and despair. He blinked hard, focusing on the treacherous path ahead. The road twisted, dipping into a shallow gully where stagnant, black water pooled. He eased the Corolla through, the tires spinning for a terrifying moment before finding purchase on the other side. His father’s warning, once a dismissible piece of small-town folklore, now echoed with chilling authority. You don’t go down Sparrow Road after dark.

He was beginning to understand why. This wasn't just an old, unkempt road. It felt… wrong. Malignant. As if the woods themselves were watching him, holding their breath.

He drove for what felt like an eternity, the journey measured not in miles but in the escalating rhythm of his own heartbeat. He risked a glance at the dashboard clock, but the display was dead. Just another thing that was broken. He was flying blind, fueled only by the desperate need to reach the other side.

That’s when he heard it.

It started not as a sound but as a deep, resonant vibration that trembled up through the driver’s seat. Then came the noise—a colossal, splintering CRACK that seemed to rip the fabric of the night in two. It was immediate, violent, and deafeningly close.

Instinct took over. Jamie slammed on the brakes, the tires locking and skidding on the loose dirt. The Corolla fishtailed wildly before lurching to a stop. Before he could even process what had happened, a cataclysmic BOOM shook the very ground beneath him. The car rocked on its worn suspension as a shockwave of displaced air washed over it.

Behind him, where the road had been just a second ago, there was now only an impenetrable wall of wood and leaves.

For a long moment, Jamie just sat there, his body rigid, his mind a blank slate of shock. His knuckles were white where he gripped the steering wheel. Slowly, shakily, he pushed the gearshift into park and killed the engine. The sudden return of the absolute silence was more terrifying than the noise had been.

He fumbled with the door handle, his movements clumsy and uncoordinated. He stepped out into the oppressive quiet, the beam of his headlights illuminating the scene. A massive oak, a titan that must have been centuries old, lay sprawled across the road. Its gnarled branches, thick as his own body, had gouged deep furrows in the earth. The air was thick with the fresh, sappy scent of its wound. If he hadn't braked, if he had been a second slower… the car, and he with it, would have been flattened into a sheet of metal and bone.

His legs felt weak. He leaned against the cool metal of the Corolla’s door, trying to get his breath back. An accident. A freak occurrence. Old trees fall. That’s what he told himself, but the thought offered no comfort. The timing was too perfect, too malicious.

He forced himself to walk towards the colossal trunk, his sneakers crunching on fallen debris. The beams of the headlights cast long, dancing shadows that played tricks on his eyes. As he got closer, he saw it.

It wasn't a jagged break, not the splintered, chaotic mess of a natural fall.

The cut was clean.

Impossibly, unnervingly clean. The pale heartwood of the oak shone in the headlights, marked with deep, parallel grooves. It looked as if some giant, serrated blade had torn through the trunk with deliberate, savage force. This tree hadn't fallen. It had been felled. Cut down with the specific intention of blocking his path. Of trapping him.

A cold dread, far deeper and more primal than his grief, washed over him. He was not alone out here.

As that horrifying realization cemented itself in his mind, a flicker of movement caught his eye at the very edge of the headlight’s throw. He snapped his head up, eyes straining to pierce the gloom.

For just an instant, he saw a shape. Tall, impossibly thin, and wrong. It wasn’t a deer or a bear. It was a silhouette that was vaguely, horribly humanoid, but it moved with an unnatural, fluid speed. Before his brain could fully register the image, the figure took one sideways step and melted back into the impenetrable wall of trees, vanishing as if it had never been there at all.

Jamie stood frozen, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He was staring into the black void where the figure had disappeared. Trapped. The road behind him was blocked by an act of deliberate malice, and somewhere in the silent, watching woods ahead, the thing that had done it was waiting.