Chapter 14: Whispers Beyond the Pines

Chapter 14: Whispers Beyond the Pines

The village didn't exist on any modern map.

Isabelle stood at the edge of the forest, the GPS on her phone blinking aimlessly. The screen showed a blank patch of green, yet in front of her, tucked between the mist-wrapped hills, lay a cluster of old stone cottages with moss-covered roofs and crooked chimneys, smoke curling lazily into the grey sky. It was as if the place had been forgotten by time—and deliberately so.

She had come alone, guided only by a name whispered to her during the failed ritual: Brackenridge. The word had echoed through her mind for days, accompanied by fragments of a language she didn't recognize but somehow understood. A name. A place. A warning.

Her boots crunched against the frostbitten earth as she walked into the village. The silence was unnatural. No birdsong. No wind. Just the occasional creak of ancient wood settling in its bones.

The first person she met was a boy, no older than ten, sitting on a fence post and watching her with unblinking eyes. He said nothing, only pointed to a house at the end of a narrow lane, its door painted blood red.

Inside, she found the woman the villagers simply called the Widow. No one remembered her real name, and she claimed to remember nothing of the world beyond Brackenridge. Her home smelled of lavender, old paper, and candle wax. Strange symbols had been scratched into the wooden beams, some of them matching those Isabelle had seen in her dreams.

"You've opened a door you don't know how to close," the Widow said as she poured tea into chipped porcelain cups. "And doors like that… they open both ways."

Isabelle showed her the broken shard she had kept from the mirror—the one that had cut her during the ritual. The Widow recoiled, her wrinkled face folding deeper in fear.

"This isn't just a curse," she whispered. "It's a cycle fed by memory and blood. If you truly want to end it, you'll need to go deeper. Much deeper."

That night, Isabelle stayed in a room above the Widow's house. She dreamt of fire. Of a tall man with no face. Of her own voice chanting in a circle of robed figures.

When she woke, the shard of glass was gone from her bag.

Only a single word remained, burned into the wood of the bedside table:

"Return."