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The woods rustled quietly in agreement.

I didn’t know exactly when the wrongness started.

There was no thunderclap moment. No horror movie music cue.

Just…a shift.

I’d been walking for maybe half an hour, lost in the rhythm of my steps, when a faint tang crept into the air. It was subtle, kind of like the scent that rises when rain hits old iron, and I frowned and took another breath.

There it was again. Weird.

I shook it off and kept going.

A few minutes later, a dizzy rush swept over me, two seconds of lightheadedness, like I’d stood up too fast. I paused, one hand braced on a nearby tree trunk, waiting for the world to steady.

“Okay,” I muttered. “I drank the water. I did the hydration. What is this…”

The dizziness slipped away almost instantly. I didn’t have any nausea, or warped vision. There was only a faint hum beneath my skin, as if my blood had rushed somewhere and forgotten to come back.

I told myself it was altitude or low blood sugar. Or maybe the accumulation of too many nights of motel sleep and panic dreams. But when I started walking again, the woods felt…different.

The air was still warm, and the sun was still slanting through the trees. But a sudden hush fell over the birds, like someone had pressed pause. The path, which had been a comfortable width, seemed narrower now. I could still walk it easily, but the trees felt closer somehow. The shadows a little darker.

It was nothing I could’ve pointed to.

Just a subtle sensation, the sense that the world had inhaled and held its breath.

“Forest weirdness,” I whispered. “Just…tree vibes. Or concussion brain. Or leftover…emotions. Nothing to worry about.”

I still found myself glancing over my shoulder more often, though. Listening for…something.

A squirrel bolted across the trail ahead of me, its tail flicking, and my shoulders dropped an inch.

Just a harmless animal. Everything is fine.

The trail opened onto a small overlook where a chunk of rock jutted out just enough to give a little window down into the valley. A fallen log sat nearby, conveniently at sitting height, with moss growing along one side.

I sat down, grateful for the break.

From here, Blackwood was a scatter of rooftops and thin lines of road, nestled amid the green. The ranchland beyond looked like patchwork, fields and fences stitched together, the whole thing cradled by the taller mountains farther out. I wondered if one of those patches belonged to Sterling.

It should have been peaceful.

It almost was.

But sitting there, looking out at the line of woods that hugged the edge of town, a familiar image slid into my mind.

A different set of trees.

I’m on the window seat, knees hugged to my chest, staring out at the forest that started ten feet from the foundation and swallowed the rest of the world whole. Those pines grew so thick and tall that even on the brightest days, the backyard stayed in permanent dusk. Tonight, with the rain streaking the glass, the trees look like black bars welded together, locking me inside the house.

The front door closes downstairs with that soft click he uses when he wants the house to stay perfectly, terribly quiet.

A beat later, his footsteps creak on the stairs. He’s walking in a rhythm that makes the skin along my spine prickle, because he only walks like that when he wants me to feel every step.

I count them anyway, my breath trembling between each one, like some sick variation of hide-and-seek where hiding is impossible and seeking is punishment.

He appears in the doorway behind me, backlit. His suit jacket is already gone, and the sleeves of his button-up are rolled high enough to show his forearms. My gaze automatically trails down to his hands that left bruises shaped like his fingerprints on me more times than I can count.