The silence in the cabin's gloom was louder than the creature's roar had been. Dust motes, disturbed by Alex's frantic entrance, swirled in the single sliver of moonlight spearing through a cracked shutter. He remained on the floor, back against the splintered door, lungs burning as he fought to quiet his ragged breaths. Every nerve screamed at him to run, but the rational part of his mind—the journalist, the observer—whispered a colder truth: running was what prey did. And in the Blackwood, he was prey.
He listened until his ears ached. No growl, no scratch, no heavy footfall. Only the sigh of the wind through the pines, a sound that now felt like mockery.
Get up. Assess.
Pushing himself up on trembling legs, Alex fumbled for the flashlight he'd dropped. Its beam, weaker now, cut through the darkness. The cabin was a single room, long abandoned. A rusted iron stove sat cold in one corner. A rickety table lay overturned, one leg broken. On the far wall, crude shelves held dusty glass jars, their contents unidentifiable lumps in the shadows. But it was the wall near the fireplace that caught his light.
Carved into the wood, not with tools but with what looked like savage, deep gouges, was a symbol. A circle intersected by a jagged, crescent-shaped line—like a moon being torn apart. Beneath it, names were scratched, faded but legible in the beam's harsh light. Abigail Miller, 1882. James Hooper, 1905. Michael Greene… His blood ran cold. Greene. Lily's last name.
This wasn't just a hunter's shack. It was a record. A memorial, or a warning.
A sharp crack outside—a breaking branch—jolted him back. The creature was still out there, patrolling, waiting. He couldn't stay. Dawn was hours away. He edged to the shutter and peered out. The forest was a wall of black. But to his left, through a narrow gap in the trees, he thought he saw a faint, irregular flicker—not the steady yellow of a house light, but the orange, dancing glow of fire.
Another cabin? Someone else out here?
It was a direction, at least. Better than staying in this tomb with its grim ledger. He took a final look at the carved names, committing them to memory, then turned to the door. Bracing himself, he listened again. Nothing. He inched the shattered door open, the sound of the wood scraping against the floor impossibly loud.
The cold night air hit his face, sharp with the scent of pine and that underlying, coppery tang. He moved, not running now, but in a low, deliberate crouch, using every tree trunk as cover, his eyes straining against the dark. He aimed for the flickering light, its promise of human presence a lifeline.
The light led him to a small clearing. In its center, a low fire burned within a ring of stones. Seated on a log beside it, staring into the flames with an unblinking intensity, was Thomas Jenkins. He held a long, gnarled walking stick across his knees. He didn't look up as Alex staggered into the firelight.
"Took you long enough to find the fire, boy," Jenkins said, his voice a dry rasp. "Sit. It won't come near the flame. Not this kind, anyway."
Alex stood frozen, caught between relief and a new, deeper wariness. "You… you knew I was out here?"
"Heard the Beast give chase. Knew you'd either end up in the old trapper's cabin or as a stain on the forest floor." Jenkins finally lifted his pale eyes. "Saw the light from your fool torch bobbing about like a firefly begging to be eaten. You city folk have no sense of the dark."
Alex slowly approached the fire, its warmth a physical shock against his chilled skin. He sank onto a rock opposite Jenkins. "What was that thing?"
"That," Jenkins said, poking the fire with his stick, sending up a shower of sparks, "was the reason Millfield exists, and the reason it's dying. The Blackwood doesn't give up its secrets to those who come crashing in with questions and flashlights."
"Lily Greene is missing," Alex said, his voice harder now. "Her name is carved in that cabin. Along with others. Going back over a century."
Jenkins's face didn't change, but the firelight deepened the crevices around his eyes. "The forest takes its due. Always has."
"That's not an answer. That's a ghost story." Alex leaned forward. "You called it the Beast. But that was no animal. It stood on two legs. It had… hands."
For the first time, a flicker of something other than grim resignation crossed the old man's face. It looked like pity. "Aye. It has hands. And a mind, though the moon drowns it most nights." He looked past Alex, into the encircling dark. "You want answers about the girl? Start with the history you're so quick to dismiss. Millfield wasn't founded by pious farmers seeking freedom. It was founded by those running from something. And what they ran from followed them. Sank its roots deep."
"The Blackwood family," Alex stated, remembering the name from his scant research and the town's whispered avoidance of the forest road that bore their name.
Jenkins grunted in acknowledgement. "Sebastian Blackwood owns most of the land the town squat on. His family has been here since before the town had a name. They have… an understanding with the forest. And with the things in it."
"An understanding?" Alex's journalistic instincts were fully engaged now, the terror compartmentalized into a driving need for the facts. "You mean they control that creature?"
A harsh, bitter laugh escaped Jenkins. "Control? No one controls the storm. You weather it. You bargain with it. The Blackwoods are the bargain. Their blood is the price." He fell silent for a long moment. "Lily… she was a curious one. Knew her herbs, her old tales. Went poking around where she shouldn't. The stones have ears. The trees have eyes."
"The Whispering Stone Circle," Alex said, recalling a phrase from an old local guidebook dismissed as folklore.
Jenkins's head snapped up. "Who told you that name?"
"I read it. What is it?"
Before Jenkins could answer, a new sound cut through the night—not a howl, but the distant, rhythmic baying of hounds. Human voices, faint and organized, called out. The search party was expanding its grid.
Jenkins stood abruptly, using his stick for support. "Time for you to go back to your world, Mr. Reed. Sheriff Walker's people are close. You tell them you got lost, scared by a bear. You leave the carvings and the Beast out of it."
"Why? If they're in danger—"
"Because panic gets people killed faster than the Beast," Jenkins hissed, his composure cracking. "And because some secrets are kept for a reason. You stir this pot, you won't like what rises to the top. For you, or for that missing girl." He fixed Alex with a stare that held the weight of decades. "Go. Follow the sound of the dogs. And forget the fire. You were never here."
Alex wanted to argue, to demand more, but the baying grew louder. The moment was over. He stood, casting one last look at the old man, who had turned back to the fire, a solitary sentinel in the vast dark.
He moved away from the clearing, the firelight fading behind him. Within ten minutes, he stumbled into the beam of a powerful lantern, held by a grim-faced Deputy.
"Reed? God almighty, we've been looking for you!" It was Sheriff Elena Walker. Her relief was brief, quickly replaced by professional scrutiny. Her eyes took in his torn jacket, the scratches on his face, the wild look in his eyes. "What happened? We found your tracks heading straight into the deep wood."
Alex opened his mouth, Jenkins's warning echoing in his head. The symbol. The names. The glowing eyes. The words that came out were the ones the town needed to hear. "I… I thought I saw something. A flash of color. I went after it, got turned around. Then I heard something big—a bear, I think—and I ran. I hid in an old cabin until I heard the dogs."
Elena studied him, her gaze sharp. She was a woman used to reading between the lines of frightened statements. "A bear," she repeated, her tone flat. "You're lucky. This isn't a city park. People get lost in the Blackwood and don't come out." She paused. "Did you see any sign of Lily?"
"No," Alex said, the truth of that at least feeling solid. "Nothing."
She nodded, a curt, tired motion. "Alright. Let's get you back. We're calling off the night search. It's too dangerous."
As they trekked back toward the town lights, a different glow now visible through the trees, Alex walked in silence. The sheriff's words, "People get lost in the Blackwood and don't come out," hung in the air. He thought of the carved names. Abigail Miller, James Hooper, Michael Greene.
They weren't lost. They were taken. And Thomas Jenkins, and perhaps the whole damned town, knew more than they would ever admit.
Back in his cottage, with the door locked and every light blazing, the adrenaline finally bled away, leaving a hollow, trembling exhaustion. He poured a whiskey, his hands still unsteady. The rational part of his mind tried to dismiss it as a traumatic encounter with a rare predator, amplified by fear and local myth.
But he closed his eyes and saw it again: the impossible anatomy, the intelligent malice in those yellow eyes, the grotesque parody of the human form. No bear. No wolf.
He pulled out his laptop, its glow a sterile contrast to the fire in the forest. He opened a new document. At the top, he typed: "Millfield Disappearances: A Chronology."
He started with the names from the cabin wall, adding dates. A pattern emerged, not regular, but clustered every few decades—1880s, 1900s, 1930s, 1950s. Then a longer gap until… Michael Greene, 1998. Lily Greene's uncle, he realized with a chill, after a quick search of old digital town records.
The most recent name before Lily was from twelve years ago. Another vanished hiker, never found.
He then created another document: "The Blackwood Family & Local Lore."
Searches yielded little. No social media, no business registries. Just old property deeds and a few charitable donations in the town's early history. A ghost family in the digital age. He found one grainy, century-old photo from a town founding anniversary: a severe-looking man labeled "Elias Blackwood" standing apart from the celebrating crowd, his expression unreadable.
His final search was for "Whispering Stone Circle." It yielded a single, scanned page from a self-published 1970s book titled Folk Tales of the Northern Appalachians. The entry was brief:
"Located deep within the Blackwood Tract, a formation of seven standing stones of unknown origin. Local legend claims the stones 'sing' on the night of the harvest moon, and that they were a place of treaty between the first settlers and the 'forest spirits.' Considered by most to be a fanciful story based on a natural glacial formation."
A treaty. An understanding. Jenkins's words came back.
Alex leaned back, the whiskey untouched. The puzzle pieces were there, jagged and dark, but they refused to fit a rational picture. A werewolf. A secretive family. A hidden stone circle. A town complicit in silence. It was the stuff of pulp novels, not front-page news.
Yet, he had seen it. He had smelled its breath.
His phone buzzed, shattering the quiet. An unknown local number.
He answered. "Alex Reed."
"Mr. Reed." The voice on the other end was cultured, smooth, and carried an accent he couldn't quite place—old-world, yet timeless. "My name is Sebastian Blackwood. I understand you had a… troubling experience in the forest tonight. I believe we should talk. For your safety, and for the safety of others. Tomorrow afternoon, perhaps? At my home."
The line went dead before Alex could respond.
He stared at the phone. The call felt less like an invitation and more like a summons. The shadow of the Blackwood had reached out and touched him, not with a claw, but with a velvet glove.
Outside his window, Millfield slept under a blanket of stars, peaceful and quiet. But Alex now heard the silence for what it was—not peace, but a held breath. And he knew, with a certainty that settled cold in his gut, that his investigation was no longer just about finding Lily Greene.
It was about surviving the truth. And the first step would be walking into the lion's—or the wolf's—den tomorrow.