Chapter 2: They Don’t Forget

Chapter 2: They Don’t Forget

She Who Sees the Dark

My name is Zack. I used to be a ghost hunter. That’s all. Not now. Not after what happened on that back road just outside Remus, Michigan. So I’m writing this down for the person who thinks chasing ghosts is a good idea, or, in case something ever chases after you.

Five years ago it was all EVP recorders and infrared cameras and notebooks full of local legends. I believed in the supernatural, yeah. But curses? It always sounded like something from a movie. The kind of stories kids tell in the dark to make their friends jump.

Then we heard about the house.

A lonely thing, paint flaking off in scabs, windows missing like teeth, a crooked silhouette against a forest that seemed ready to swallow it whole. The locals didn't come near it. They said a jealous husband in 1952 killed his wife for looking at another man. He took her eyes. Left her to walk blind in the dark forever.

They say her spirit still roams the halls, hands outstretched, looking for what was lost. 'If you go in,' they whispered, 'she'll take your eyes as well.

I should have listened. But at twenty-six, hungry for proof, you say you are braver than ghosts.

So Trevor, Lyle, Jess and I went along. The moon was hidden by clouds on a night cold enough to numb your bones. The house seemed to wait, to hold its breath for us. Jess attempted to laugh away the tension. “Ladies first?” she said. She was always like that.

Inside, the air was thick and sour, the floorboards creaking under each step. We set our cameras. We called into empty rooms. We shot nothing but gloom. The house creaked and sighed but after an hour we were giggling in relief. Old shadows and dust.

And then it got strange.

Whispers on our recorders, There but barely, guttural, frantic. A woman’s voice: “Where are you at? I can't see....

Cold spots touched us with invisible fingers. I saw a flash of gray hair go around an upstairs corner, gone before I could blink. Jess’s camera caught a face in the window, hollow eyes, a mouth twisted in a scream.

We left before dawn, telling nervous jokes about haunted houses. We didn’t expect her to come back home with us.

It began with nightmares. I’d wake up in a sweat, heart racing, sure that someone was at the foot of my bed. Sometimes I could hear a whisper, ‘I’m coming to find you…’

And then they started dying.

Trevor was the first. Found in his apartment, eyes scooped out, face twisted in fear. They called it a 'ritualistic homicide'. I knew better.

Two months later, Lyle. His car crashed in a ditch, his eyes gone, sightless even in death.

Jess called me, her voice trembling. 'I see her everywhere Zack. I think she was in the house the next day. Same injuries. Same story.

I tried to turn away. Nothing but coincidence, I told myself. But guilt ate away at me, hollowed me out. “I stopped eating and sleeping. I saw her in every mirror, every window after midnight. Long gray hair, hollow face, mouth working in the dark without a sound.

She wouldn’t succumb to logic, or locks.

One night I heard her on my staircase, her fingernails scraping the wood.

“I’m gonna find you… Zach I'm going to take your eyes and keep them for myself. I spun around. She was crawling, her head snapping up, black tears weeping from empty sockets. Her hair matted into ropes and the air heavy with grave dirt and rot.

I ran, locked myself in the bathroom, I was so terrified I didn't know what to do but hide, or tried to hide pressed back to the door. The whispers got louder--"I'd like to see them return…”

Then she was everywhere. Smiling from my rearview mirror, pressed against shop windows, teeth flashing in the shredded flesh when I shut my eyes.

I was going crazy. I boarded up the windows, covered all the mirrors, and stopped answering my phone. But the thing that stalks you in the dark, you can't hide from.

I sought help, desperate. The internet is a crazy place. But sometimes you meet someone who knows. That's how I found Maya, a witch doctor in Grand Rapids. Her apartment smelled of incense, jars of bone and root on the walls.

She listened, never laughed at me, she listened to every word I said. “You’ve brought it back,” she said. How did I do that?She was trapped in that house, but you gave her a thread, By seeing her.” by going in there asking her to communicate with you guys you opened up the door she attached herself to you. She knows you're open to this kind of thing because you're a ghost hunter, your mind is open and she knows that.

“Can I stop it?” “I asked, voice shaking.

She nodded her head. “But it doesn’t come cheap. That world–you’ll never see it again. No more ghost-hunting. Walk away. She'll get you to come back.”

I nodded. I’d had enough. Maya sang over me, burned sage, drew symbols on my skin. It was like ice cold water through my veins. When I left, the world looked brighter. The whispers faded, the weight of watching lifted.

I destroyed all the pictures, all the tapes, every sign of that nite. Abandoned Remus Began again Quitted ghost-hunting

But in the dark I hear her sometimes yet:

“I’m gonna find ya…” And steal your eyes

If you're reading this because you're curious, because you want proof, listen. Don't hunt the dead for fun. Some stories are cautionary. Some ghosts are the work of curses. Check your work, and never, ever go looking for She Who Sees in Darkness.

Her empty sockets, her cold hunger to see, will tell you what she is. And you will find, as I did, that some things are better left in the dark.

Chapter 2: Silent Passenger

They Never Forgave Me

If you drive for a living -- rideshare, taxis, whatever -- you end up with a story you can't explain. Those stories return to you at nights when the city sleeps and the rain smudges the streetlights into a greasy smear. They return to you, sometimes all at once. Like headlights not attached to any car you know, in your rearview.

My name's Dave. I drove for almost ten years. Uber, Lyft, anything that paid the rent. I’d seen all kinds: drunk college kids, crying divorcees, couples screaming in the back seat like I was invisible. You learn to shut it out. Eyes on the road, meter ticking. But there is one ride I will never forget. A ride that changed everything.

Late October. A nite when the wind howled and the rain came sideways. The kind of storm that makes the city hunker down. I’d been driving since dusk, chasing surge pricing through water-slicked neighborhoods. Burning eyes, cold knuckles on the wheel. I was just about to call it a nite when the ping came. Just after midnight. Pickup: The old park near the lake.

There is nothing out there. Park gates chained shut. Only the lake and the trees and the darkness. But there was a person waiting, a woman, her hair plastered to her face, her white dress plastered to her skin. She didn't wave, didn't holler, just stared at my car coming up. I considered driving on. Something was wrong. But I opened the doors.

She slid into the back, water blooming on the upholstery. My hands were shaking, even with the heater blasting. And she looked out the window. Not at me. I looked at the app. It just said "Drive." No destination.

“Where to?” My voice broke.

She was silent. I tried again, more softly. "Miss, address?

Nothing yet.

The storm was a-raging. Thunder over the lake. Windshield wipers losing the battle. Sometimes I looked back in the rearview and saw her eyes, dark and wide and bottomless. No flickering. Not alive. Not really. I told myself she was on something. Or afraid. Maybe something's chasing me. Maybe I just lost.

We drove for hours. The city slipped away behind us. The road narrowed, the trees closing in. Only the rain, and her ragged breathing. I thought about pulling over and telling her to get out, but she was so goddamn quiet I couldn't.

And then she disappeared. One minute there, and the next--nothing.

I looked at myself in the mirror. The back seat is clear. The door wouldn't open. Just a wet seat and the foul smell of salt water. Like mud of lakes and rotting leaves.

Heart pounding. I got out and staggered into the rain, stared into the nite. Nope. Trees. Wind. The hiss of water on asphalt.

I never saw her after that. But then the real horror started.

Next week I woke up coughing, sheets drenched in sweat. Water was in my dreams, water, black, cold, endless. Swollen and pale under the surface of her face, eyes wide trying to get to me.

I would see her in the bathtub water the bathroom mirror the sink water I would see her in my windshield my back mirror in my car and should be sitting in the backseat I would see her in everything that made a reflection Sometimes the radio crackled and I heard her voice, a whisper too soft to make out.

I tried to ignore it, but the signs only got worse. My car would sputter and die near lakes and rivers. The engine choked, as if something was squeezing it from the inside out. Mud and dead reeds in the floor mats even when I hadn't been near the water for days.

And then the accidents. The woman found some other drivers. A friend. Rob. His car left the road a mile from the lake. drowning in his chair, water to his ankles, not enough to fill a cup. Sara vanished during her shift. Her car was discovered abandoned by the water's edge, the seats wet, footprints leading to the water and stopping at the edge.

I phoned the police. They didn't believe a word. Probably beat it with the fare," said one. But the instant I said the word lake the detective’s eyes grew cold.

I began to dig: forums, legends, anything. The stories date back decades. Drivers disappearing on rainy nights around the lake. Those who left pools and decay behind. Always a woman. Always quiet. Always after midnight.

Some say killed by a cab driver, driver tossed in the water. The rest say she drowned herself, betrayed and forsaken, cursing the roads and those who discover her.

But all agree:

If you pick her up and you don’t help her If you don’t talk to her If you don’t show her kindness She marks you. She walks you home. In the Darkness Waits. Pulls you down.

I tried everything: sage, rosaries, salt. Nothing did . I quit driving at night. Nevertheless she came, out of my dreams, water dripping from her mouth, whispering, “You left me. I’m not going with you anywhere.”

I turned into a ghost myself, hiding from friends, family, anyone who could see the terror in my eyes. I did relocate. Altered my name. Sold the car for scrap metal. But still, some evenings I hear her breathe. I can still smell the lake on the breeze.

So if you’re ever driving alone, a storm howling, see a woman in white on the roadside, don’t stop. But if you do, don't forget her. Offer to help. Give warmth. Ask if she is cold? It might save your life.

Because some passengers never deboard.

Some rides don’t end.

And some ghosts we will never forget or forgive

Chapter 2. They Don't Forget

The man who crawled

You might want to turn on a lamp before reading this. I can’t fault you. Funny thing, darkness. It gets into your bones and makes you cold even in a warm room. Even writing this my hands are shaking and I know tonight will be another sleepless one. But the thing is I can't keep this in. Perhaps if I write everything down, the nightmares will stop. Like.

I'm Denise and I didn't believe in ghost stories. Not the kind my grandma muttered over a fifth of whiskey, not the ones traded at sleepovers, or campfires, not even the ones stitched into the wallpaper of old houses. I was a skeptic until Charles Road. That's when the world turned sideways and I learned the kind of lesson you learn too late. Some stories don't care what you believe. They follow you around anyway.

It was almost midnight because it had to be. Jennifer and I missed the last show in Ionia and decided to take the long way home. Charles Road is nothing special, a gravel snake through the middle of nowhere, trees on either side that look like they’re waiting for something. There were no houses for miles. The darkness that nite pressed down so hard it felt thick, like you could scoop it up with your hands.

We laughed and told jokes and stories about other teenagers and the silly things they do, laughing the kind of laughter that sometimes tries to drown out the silence. And then--Bam. The car lurched and tilted. “I got a flat tire. And with it died my laughter.

I swore and pulled over. The headlights were no good, they just stabbed into the black and didn't come back. No car. No cricket. Only the wind, shaking the branches, the world listening with its breath held. I picked up my phone. No service. Jennifer tried her own. She has no phone service either.

We sat there a while, trying to pretend it was all a joke, waiting for some miracle to happen. Then we heard it, a voice low and ragged like stones grinding together.

“They’re mine… they’re mine…

Give them to me give them to me they're mine we heard voice say but the voice sounded like somebody was gargling something or something was caught in their throat

It was tight. Too close for comfort.

I looked in the side mirror. That was when I saw him. Or what was left of him. Man crawling in the middle of the road. There were no legs. Just bloody stumps. His hands clawed into the gravel, pulling him forward. His clothes were torn, dark-stained. His face was a wreck, hate and pain twisted into something that had no place among the living. His eyes were crazy under a mop of hair.

He pulled himself faster, leaving behind him a streak. My heart stammered. I locked the doors, said softly to Jennifer, Stay. She was beyond panicked—her breaths came in gasps, her hands clutched the door handle. "We’ve got to go, Denise. "We gotta get outta here!" "

She threw open the door. I tried to grab her arm to stop her getting out but she pushed me back and opened up the door and took off. I slammed the door and watched her vanish into the Darkness. And then she was gone, swallowed by the dark before I could even scream her name. My voice got stuck in my throat and the only answer was that voice, closer now echoing inside my skull.

“Hand ’em over… The legs are mine….”

He was in the rear now. His ravaged face grinned at me in the mirror. I saw hands scrabbling under the bumper, long fingernails scraping on metal. His breath rattled. Broken glass in a paper bag.

My hands flew to my ears; I rocked back and forth in the driver's seat. Get out. Get out. Get out. I whispered it like a prayer, like words ever saved anyone out here.

The time bled and hung. There was only the wind, the ping of cooling metal, and that terrible wet dragging sound. I don’t know when he left. Maybe it was the first gray light at dawn, maybe he just got bored. All I know is, when I finally looked, he was gone.

my hands were shaking so badly I could barely dial but finally the phone got a signal. 911. The cops arrived. They found the car, they found me, babbling, half-crazed. Down the road, in the ditch, they found Jennifer. Her legs were gone at the hips, her body twisted. Cops said animal attack, killer at large. But I knew it. I knew it.

My legs are...

After the funeral, sleep was a stranger. Jennifer’s face haunted me, her terror, her final moments. I began digging. Looking for answers. I found it in old newspapers and messageboards:

November 1999. A drunk driver ran off Charles Road and struck a man walking home. The man lost both legs, bled out in the gravel, screaming for help that never arrived. The driver took off. They didn't find the body until morning. They used to say that he never left. Now on some nights he prowls the road looking for legs to replace what was taken.

I left Ionia. car sold . I changed my number. I tried to escape from what happened. But in the night I still hear that voice scraping, hungry, and patient. Sometimes I close my eyes and he's there crawling, crawling always, hands outstretched, wanting.

Charles Road, midnight. If your car stops, don’t get out. Do not look back. Don't listen to the voice that calls from the dark. Some roads are long in the mind. Some scars never fade away. And some ghosts? They crawl crawl crawl and never stop.

The Crawling Man is always waiting for you. He wants what was taken from him.

Chapter 2 They Don’t Forgive

The Limb Collector

I was just an ordinary teenager. I used to have a normal life, playing video games and watching movies with my friends. Now I am living in fear. I'm afraid of my own shadow. Thinking about her makes me so sick to my stomach I want to throw up. Ok so I guess I will tell you my story now.

I won’t tell you my name. Another reason why I won't give you my name . I don't want her to know I'm thinking about her . Because I don't want people to think I'm batshit crazy .Not after what happened in that house, not when I can still see the terrible images of her on the edge of my dreams. Just a dumb kid from Morley Stanwood, Michigan . . . seventeen years old. The kind of kid who figures a dare is worth more than your own hide. The kind who don't believe in ghosts until one starts following you home it's too late to change things you really caught its attention

Jake thought of it. He was the ringleader, all right. "Nobody lives there," he said, grinning with those chipmunk teeth that made you want to punch him just for the hell of it. “Come on, Denise. Nothing scares the whole town. So Jake and Tyler and I waited till after midnight, the witching hour for those who give a damn, and drove down the old dirt road, headlights flickering off the weeds and the broken windows of the house everyone called Gory Michelle’s.

Let me tell you about Michelle. She was a church lady, the kind that would give you cash after Sunday service and bake pies that made your teeth ache. That was what was so bad about it. Her mode of death. They say two men broke in and robbed her, and then they killed her. And that’s not all. They chopped her up and put her in a box in her own closet. Days later the police found her, but all that was left were pieces and blood. Some folks say she never quite left. And on top of it all, they never caught the guys who did that to her. We snuck in the back that night, flashlights cutting through dust and cobwebs. The glass under my feet crackled like brittle bones. Jake laughed, but it was a brittle laugh, a laugh that wanted to be brave. Tyler shoved me forward, and I played it cool. The house was nuts. The walls seemed to inhale and exhale, pulsing as if the place was remembering the night it became infamous.

We got to the stairs. We could hear every step scream beneath us. The closet door at the top of the hall was ajar as if waiting for us.

Jake made it even wider. That was when we caught the smell of old perfume and rotten meat, sweet and bitter. Inside was a box, darkly-stained and splintered around the edges. Tyler dared me to open it. I wish I would have said no. I got down, knees cracking and opened the lid. Inside: yellow, broken bones. Some in tatters of flowered dress, others still slicked with something black and unspeakable. Toes and fingers, a mouthful of decayed teeth. Jake gagged and made for the stairs. Tyler gawked.

And then the air was cold. Not right. Grave-cold. I heard a dragging sound, wet and slow, like someone dragging a sack of meat down the hall. I twirled my flashlight. There she was. Michelle Gory She looked almost human for a second. Stringy hair, a torn dress, saucer eyes. But as she did, her right arm dropped from her elbow and rolled around the floor, fingers scrabbling, crawling toward us. Her other leg bent, ripped off as if it were clay. She pulled at her own body. Her mouth was stretched so wide I thought her face would split in half.

"Give me your limbs," she rasped, voice like broken glass scraping rust. “I want to be complete.

We did run. Jake smashed a window and then crashed out on the porch, blood painting his face. Tyler walked by me. I fell back after them, looking behind me. She was coming in pieces, falling apart, her fingers crawling, her lips mouthing words I couldn’t hear. I scrambled back up, made it to the car, locked myself in, and watched Jake and Tyler go into the blackness.

That was the last I saw of them alive.

A few days later they found Jake's body in the woods. Cut into neat little pieces, bones stacked like firewood, arms and legs gone. Tyler was gone. Only his shoes and a trail of blood in the river were left.

I tried to forget. But at night I saw Michelle, all chaos and fury, outside my window, breaking down and putting herself back together again. Sometimes she was inside, at the foot of my bed, whispering: You entered my house. And now I’ll make you one of me.

The worst was when she walked into my living room. I woke to the sound of bone on wood scrape scrape. Here she was. Whole. Shivering. Pieces coming off and crawling back. I could not stir. She caught me by the hand, minus three fingers, mouth a black and bottomless pit.

“I’m yours,” she spat. I want what you have.

I ran and locked myself in the bathroom until morning. I emerged to find her gone but the floor sticky with bloody muddy footprints. I left town, went to relatives, and she followed. Some nights I see her picture in the moonlight, pieces falling apart and coming back together, over and over again.

They say I'm crazy. I guess I am." But I know what I witnessed. And I know it's my turn.

Don’t go in there, if you ever hear of the house in Morley Stanwood, Gory Michelle’s house. Not for a dare, not for a thrill, not for anything else.” Cause if you do, she’ll tear you up, and you’ll be just another box of bones in her closet.

And she won’t let you go.

CHAPTER 2: They Never Forget

What's in the basement?

I'm Toby. I am fifteen years old. If you are reading this you probably think I am making it up. I’d like to, but not that one summer in Kalkaska, Michigan when everything in our lives went to hell, my sister Brandy, and our whole family. Sometimes it seems that life is going the right way. You’ve got all of this and it’s great but that’s a lie and the truth. The dark is waiting to tear you apart to take everything from you.

When Mom and Dad told us we were moving, I groaned so loud I probably woke the neighbors. Brandy. Eighteen. Always rolling her eyes. Too cool for everything. She actually looked impressed when we arrived. The house sprawled on a hill with a big porch wrapping all the way around, pool out back and a basement that seemed to run straight down into the earth's core. Cool and dark and smelling of old stones and secrets. I remember looking at my mom and dad and asking him if we were Rich now because the house was so big they said kinda they were making more money now they just wanted to give us a better life

For a time everything was perfect. The people had day shifts at the hospital, so it was just us. Brandy bumping her music, me holed up with my Switch, both of us pretending we didn’t care that summer was passing and we didn’t know a soul. It was alright. Until the voices came.

I told myself it was just the house settling in. Old places creak and groan at nite right? But this was not that. Always after twelve. Always, from the cellar.” Soft and constant the whispers filled the vents, sometimes laughter, sometimes tears. Brandy heard them too, but she wouldn't admit it at first.

Curiosity is a funny thing. It shoves fear aside and makes you do foolish things. One night we put our ears to the vent in Brandy’s room, holding our breaths so we wouldn’t miss a word.

“We gonna get ‘em,” a little childish voice whispered.

We’ll make ‘em play,” another sang, all broken and sweet.

The next morning we didn’t talk about it, because we really don’t know what to make of it both of us were freaked out about it we were here in children’s voices in the basement saying they were going to get us to make us play that would freak anybody out at least I think it would I know it did us. Brandy tried to act tough. Or maybe she was. “Come on, let’s go see,” she said, as Mom and Dad left for work. “If we don’t, we’re just going to keep freaking out.

I wanted to say no but I followed her down the stairs. Every step was colder than the one before. The unfinished basement yawned, endless, boxes stacked high, furniture huddled against the walls, the air holding its breath, too still.

Then we saw them. I pointed at the boy. Told Brandy. Look.

A boy. His skin was a grayish color, and his eyes were black. Black as nite. He was so skinny he looked like he was starving to death. He was bent over her hunch over in a weird way. When he saw us he gave a howl that chilled my blood. Next to him a girl, thin as a skeleton, crawling on all fours, hair matted in filth, fingers scratching at concrete, bloody trails.

Want to play?" the boy asked, voice flat and cold.

Brandy squeezed my hand until it hurt. Nope. “We need to leave.

You have no choice," said the girl, grinning too big for her face. She whispered, “Let’s play.”

Before we could move the boy was up the stairs as quick as a shadow. The door slammed to, the lock clicked. We were stuck. The girl crawled closer, head at an impossible angle.

"We waited so long," she crooned. “No one ever comes down here. But now you’re gonna stay.”

I pounded on the door, I yelled for help. Only the boy’s laughter and the girl’s nails on the floor answered. Brandy screamed, sharp and panicked, but nobody came.

It was like forever. Minutes. Hours. And then suddenly the door flies open and there's Mom and Dad, faces white as ghosts. We fell into their arms, weeping, babbling the story.

They listened. What could they say? That night, after we got over the shock, Mom sat us down at the kitchen table. She looked older than I’d ever seen her. “It was a steal,” she said. There is a reason. The house was so cheap we got it, two kids lived here. They had been through hell. They'd had They got killed and… people say their spirits still haunt the basement.”

His hands shook as he drank his coffee. Dad called it small town gossip.

That nite Brandy and I locked our doors, left the hall light on, stuffed towels over every vent. But the house wasn't finished. The voices returned, whispering in the walls, under the bed, in the dark behind our eyes. Sometimes the basement door would open by itself and just as I was falling asleep I would see the boy and girl at the foot of the stairs reaching out with their hands, their faces all twisted up with hunger.

We tried to get out. Every time we packed something happened. The car wouldn’t start. The keys disappeared. Brandy got sick. It was as if the house itself wanted us to stay, to be part of its story.

Now I'm writing this up to my chin, in all the lights in my room. I can still hear them whispering and scratching and waiting. They want us to play it. And I think one day they will have their way.

If you're ever in a big house in Kalkaska, listen at nite. Be vigilant. Some games you can't win no matter how fast you run.

Chapter 2: Do Not Forget

Blood Trail of the Witch

If I had known how it would turn out I wouldn’t have taken that walk in the woods. But there is something about a dare, something about youth and invincibility that deafens you to every warning. My name is Dylan. I was twenty-one and the last of the group to hike the Trail of the witch is blood through Beaver Pond Forest last September.

There were six of us back then, me, my girlfriend Leah, my best friends Scott and Jamie, and the twins, Colton and Cassie. We'd been raised together in the same little town in Michigan, where the biggest thrill was a bonfire out in someone's pasture and most nights you could hear the coyotes howling at nothing in particular. So when Scott suggested a weekend camping trip down the old fire road through Beaver Pond, we were all over it. It was that sort of a place. The good people spoke of in whispers. Where hikers vanished. Places animals wouldn't go. But we played it down. Urban legends, we told ourselves, we were too old for that stuff.

The first day was good. The air was crisp, the trees gold and red, the sunlight flickered through the canopy like coins in water. We went on walking, laughing, telling stories, feeling we were untouchable. We found a clearing, pitched our tents and the sun was going down – the kind of light that makes everything look haunted. That night, as we toasted marshmallows over the fire, Cassie pulled out her phone and read about the “Beaver Pond Witch.”

Her name was Mercy Tully. In 1923 she was arrested for the murder of a neighbor's child, accused of little more than rumor and fear. The townspeople took her out into the woods, tied her to a pine tree, and left her there to die. The following spring they found her bones, her hands still curled as if she’d been clawing her way out. They buried her there, hoping she would stay.

‘Creepy.’ Leah pulled her sweatshirt tighter. “Let’s not talk about witches' way out here in the boondocks.”

But it was too late. The woods overheard.

I woke up to voices, faint, whispering, I could hardly make it out. I think it was asking me if I was asleep. Sure am pretty sure. I thought it was the twins, but the tent was zipped tight, no light in it. Now the fire had died to embers, its shadows flickering long and hungry across the clearing. I saw a woman just on the other side of the woods, tall, thin, with her hair matted around her face. I blinked. She was no more.

I told myself this was just a dream.

The following morning we noticed odd markings around our campsite. We saw scratches in the dirt, circles, little bones laid in patterns we didn’t understand. “Probably raccoons playing Dungeons & Dragons,” Colton said with a grin. But Jamie's face was paler.

We packed up, and hiked on, hoping to get to the old lookout tower by sundown. And that’s when things started to go south.

Colton was his first. One minute he was big-mouthed, talking like he wasn't afraid of anything, trying to act braver than the rest of us. The next he was in the lead, and then he was gone. We shouted and looked and doubled back. No tracks. No broken branches. Just silence, and the leaves’ breath.

“We should go back,” said Jamie, his voice shaking. “I feel odd here.”

“He’s playing with us,” Leah said. I bet he’s up at the tower laughing his ass off. You’ll see.

We plowed on. The woods darkened, the air grew heavy and wet. I started to see things: white flashes, a hand slipping behind a tree, hair like riverweed. The map was starting to make less sense. The trail wound back on itself and sent us round and round.

That nite Cassie was gone. She had gone for firewood. Her flashlight, still warm, illuminated a patch of freshly turned earth. No, Cassie. Only the trees, whispering her name over and over.

We were scared. We yelled at each other, at ourselves. Leah tried to call for help, but there was no signal, only static, and the sound of a woman crying on the tree line just on the edge of our campsite.

Jamie wanted to get moving now. ‘If we don’t, we’re next,’ he whispered. Wide-eyed. Desperate. "She's getting us one by one."

I didn’t get much sleep. He sat looking into the blackness, waiting for the woman to come into the firelight. I could feel her. She was bitter, hungry, her rage in the air. And so I slept, and dreamed of hands dragging me down, down into the earth.

Jamie was out by morning. His tent was empty, the zipper torn open. Bloody smears led into the trees. Leah sobbed on my arm. Dylan, we need to go. “Now.

We ran, crashing through the brush, unconcerned where the trail led. The woods closed in, tight, choking off. We stumbled into a clearing and there it was, the grave. The mossy stone, carved deep: Mercy Tully. The ground is full of bones, old and new, tangled with roots.

And Leah screamed. A cold wind blew by, whispering justice. Justice. Justice. Justice. Shadows rose into the shape of a woman, her eyes blank, a black wound where her mouth should have been.

"You disturbed my sleep," she screamed. “You made me laugh in my grave. Now you're going to stay and keep me company."

I grabbed Leah’s hand and ran. But the forest changed. Branches slapped our faces, roots ripped at our ankles. I heard Leah scream as she was dragged backward, her fingers slipping from mine.

I ran until my lungs burned, until I burst onto the fire road, the sun just breaking over the treetops. I was faced with. The woods were still. No Leah any more. Now they are all gone.

I'm home now but I hear them calling in my dreams. My friends. Shadows. Asking me to come back. To help. Sometimes, when the wind is right, I hear a woman laugh, cold and triumphant, echoing through the pines.

If you walk the Blood Trail of the Witch , recall Mercy Tully. And whatever you do, don't laugh at her grave.

Chapter 2 They Never Forgive the Lantern-Girl

Pitch a tent in the woods along Sanderson Lake and you will hear stories. Old stories. Stories about the Lantern Girl. Some folks will tell you she’s just an old wives’ tale, something to keep kids from wandering off after dark, maybe. But I know better. I saw her. And I got back alive by the skin of my teeth.

My name is Marcus.

The summer I turned seventeen, my friends and I went camping by the lake. It was me, my cousin Josh, his girlfriend Angie, and the twins, Mike and Maddie. We did all the usual things swimming, fishing, roasting marshmallows, the smoke and laughter thick in the air, sticky and sweet as honey on a summer night. As the sun went down we were lying around the fire telling ghost stories and daring each other to go further into the woods.

When Angie mentioned the Lantern Girl, Josh snorted, rolling his eyes. “Just shit old people tell you so you don’t get lost,” he explained.

But Maddie, Maddie who was always the first to notice what the rest of us didn’t, hugged her knees and shivered. “They say she is still looking for her brother. She’ll take you instead if she finds you,” she whispered.

I chuckled. Not too much. Always the way though, isn't it? You laugh until the stories begin to seem real. As the fire burned down and the shadows grew longer I listened to every snap and rustle in the dark. The woods around Sanderson Lake are old. Old in a way that makes your bones ache. In daylight it’s easy to get lost among the twisted oaks and pines. At midnight the darkness is alive.

I woke to a curious pale light drifting in among the trees. I had thought it was dawn, first, then I saw her, a girl, maybe thirteen, in a faded dress, her hair black and wet, hanging down her back like ropes. She carried a rusty lantern, casting a sickly bluish-white light.

I elbowed Josh. “Look at that?” I whispered. He just grunted and turned over, dead to the world.

I was filled with curiosity. I pulled on my boots, and came out of the tent. The Lantern Girl floated between the trees, her feet barely brushing the earth. From time to time she would halt, raise her lantern, and look into the darkness as if for someone.

It was cold and clammy on the forest floor, the kind of cold that makes your teeth ache. I kept following them and things got weirder. Overhead, trees leaned together, their branches interlocked like fingers, shutting out the sky. Mist slithered low, swirling around my ankles.

She stopped, turned. I anticipated empty sockets, emptiness. What I saw instead was a sorrow deep enough to make my heart stutter. "Have you seen my brother?" she breathed. Her voice was as thin as cobwebs. He found himself here. “A long time ago.”

She turned away, calling, "Eli? Eli, where are you?"

I wanted to run, but my feet were glued as if the earth had clutched at my ankles. The lantern's light beckoned me and I felt myself sinking, drifting after her.

Suddenly, footsteps behind me. White-faced Maddie, eyes wide. "Marcus, don't go with her," she whispered, grabbing my arm. “We must go back.”

But the Lantern Girl made a sign, her shape fading and blurring, and reforming at some distance. “Help me find him,” she begged. “Please don’t leave. Stay with me. “Please.

Her words wrapped around me, cold and in desperation. Maddie's grip on my hand tightened briefly but I felt it slipping. The woods were full of voices now, childish voices, soft, rising out of the fog. There were other shapes, other children, pale and flickering, all with the same look in their eyes. Longing.

Maddie was weeping. She isn’t looking for her brother. She is looking for us. She wants us to remain.”

Grief and rage twisted the Lantern Girl’s face. They always leave me,” she wailed. “Why do they always leave?

I tried to turn but my legs were heavy, the ground was like wet cement. The Lantern Girl came nearer, and her lantern bloomed, spreading long, creeping shadows. I thought of my baby sister, waiting for me at home. I thought of the sound of her laugh when she was afraid. Guilt stabbed me like a dagger.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “This isn’t our home.”

Maddie squeezed my hand hard and we stumbled backward. Together. Slug slow step by slug slow step. The screams of the Lantern Girl became shrill and frantic, and the other spirits howled with her.

We broke out of the trees into the clearing, the cold disappeared, the mist evaporating in the dawn. I turned around, and saw the Lantern Girl standing there, at the edge of the woods, her lantern flickering, her face a mask of heartbreak.

We never spoke of that nite, to anyone. But sometimes, when the wind blows just right, I hear her voice calling from the woods, still looking for her brother—or someone to take his place.

If you ever see a pale light moving among the trees near Sanderson Lake, do not follow it. Don't listen to her voice. 'Cause the Lantern Girl never forgets and she never quits looking.

Chapter 2: The Root Witch

They Never Forgive 

They called it the Hag Oak. People in Farley, Michigan knew better than to go near, but at seventeen you think you’re invincible. My name is Jason and if you are reading this, then take a lesson from me: old stories don’t care if you believe them or not.

Me and Tyler and Sam and Nikki, four kids bored on an August night thick with humidity and mosquitoes. It started as a joke. There’d been whispers about the tree, four hundred years old, standing sentinel at the edge of Carter’s Woods, its arthritic, groping branches, roots like something out of a nightmare. They said that a witch named Maud lived in its shadow. She cured, she cursed, she vanished. People said she never died, just sank into the heart of the oak, waiting.

So naturally we went there after midnight, flashlights jittering over the bark. Jack Tyler, bravado Nikki, spray paint Sam. “It’s just a tree,” she said, and flicked a lighter. 'What, is it going to eat us?

I was first. My hand shook as I pulled my knife over the bark. The tree shed a sticky, sweet amber sap. My initials. Then theirs. Four scars. Four red lines. One empty bottle shattered at the roots. We laughed, took pictures, and trudged home, not knowing the wind had died, or that the shadow of the tree behind us was long and hungry.

That night I dreamed of roots, wet and cold, slipping about my ankles, dragging me through the floor. I woke up in dirty sheets, dirt on my feet. It's whiskey.

The following morning Nikki texted:

Strange leg bruises. Looks like vines. Are you all right?

I shrugged it off. Then Tyler rang. His voice was brittle.

Can't breathe man. My entire room smells like wet leaves. There’s something in my closet.

Nerves, I told myself. But Sam didn’t come to school. His mother said he had been up screaming that branches were scratching his window. Later I passed his house and saw the muddy tracks in the grass, the shadow writhing in the light of his bedroom.

That night I had a visitor of my own. It began with a whisper. Dry and papery, like wind through dead leaves. I switched on the lamp and the shadows curled up into a hunched old woman. Insane hair. Eyes, like holes in the ground.

“You took what was mine.” She hissed. Now I shall take what is yours.

The room smelled of rot and the old earth. Roots broke through the floor curling for my bed. I sat bolt upright, breath burning in my chest, blankets soaked and muddy.

By sunrise, Tyler had disappeared. His bedroom window had been smashed, the curtains tangled with twigs and leaves. Nikki's mom called, hysterical—Nikki was in the hospital, skin scraped and cold as death, muttering about being pulled under, being made of roots and bones.

I was the only survivor. I ran to the Hag Oak in terror; Swollen to bleeding sap was the bark where we carved our names. I went down on my knees.

Sorry. Sorry. We didn't mean it!  Don't please. The earth shook. Roots snaked around my wrists and ankles, pulling me toward the trunk. I looked up and saw her. Maud, with her mouth full of leaves and dirt, her eyes empty.

Undo what you have done," she whispered. Or among the roots fall.

I broke away, my hands raw and bleeding, and staggered home. In my dreams I heard her laugh. Next day I brought flowers Violets And lilies Scrubbed the bark Cleaned off our names I muttered my apology.

Then the whispering ceased. The mud was gone. Nikki recovered but never again did she enter the woods. Sam and Tyler. Lost. I know their parents are still putting up fliers. The forest took them. They were claimed by roots.

Now when I pass Carter’s Woods I see the Hag Oak, looming with outspread, gnarled arms. Sometimes Maud’s laughter is borne out in the wind. I tell the little kids:

Stay away. Don’t etch your name. Some trees remember. Some wounds never do heal. Some witches are patient, feeding their roots a soul at a time.

They can't forget.

Chapter 2 The Hanger's Complaint

I was raised in a house that moaned in all the seasons. It didn't matter whether it was summer or winter. The floors creaked as if they missed the weight of old souls, and the corners always grew shadows just a little too deep, as if the dark were piling up, gathering itself for something. When I was nine, I learned what real fear was. Not the monster under the bed kind. Fear lived in my house. Fear lived in my closet.

My name is Will. I was a nervous kid, prone to sleepwalking and nite terrors. But I had never been afraid of the dark until we moved into the blue house on Hemlock Drive that spring. My new bedroom had a big closet with a sliding wooden door that was never quite closed. It was always an inch gaping. As if it held its breath, waiting for the right moment to exhale.

I stayed awake that first night, listening to my parents clattering around downstairs and the closet door whispering along its track every so often. At first I thought it was the wind, or the house settling, like grownups do. Then I heard her.

“I will…”

The voice was like a ghost and soft as a lullaby sung in a mouth full of dust.

Come nearer please.

I looked at the closet. Lines were painted on the floor, pale blue light seeping through the cracks in the door. Although it was spring, I could see my breath. My arms are covered with goose pimples.

“It’s terribly cold here.” Do not close the door, please.

I shut my eyes and burrowed under the covers. The blue light was extinguished. Silence like thick syrup.

The next day I told my mother. She ruffled my hair. "New houses are hard, honey," she said. That closet is empty except for your clothes and a few of those old wire hangers.

But the voice would not be denied. And every night she would whisper when the house went quiet.

I was left here, Will. Could you help me out?

I left the closet door open a crack, fearing that if I closed it something would come out. My parents watched me and told me to shut the closet before I went to bed. I would sneak back and open it again, my heart thumping so violently it would hurt me.

When I woke in the night she was tall and thin in a faded dress, her skin yellow-grey like old paper. Her hair was caught in cobwebs. Her eyes punched two holes through the world. She twisted a wire hanger in her fingers, her lips drawn into a sad half-smile.

“Do you want to stay with me?” she asked, her voice echoing in the silence.

“It’s so lonely, it’s so dark.

I let out a loud yell. My father burst in, the lights were blazing, but she was gone. The closet door swayed gently back and forth, as though amused by my presence.

Then my parents got angry.

You're too old for this, Will. There's nothing in that closet. “Shut the door. Go to bed.

So I did it. That night I shut the closet door tight. I get it. The atmosphere became damp like that of a cellar. The room was at an all time low in temperature. I slept for the first time in months, but it was a deep and dreamless sleep.

I was awakened by the rattling of the door. Soft at first. Then he felt restless as though he were inside and trying to get out. I pulled the covers over my head. His voice took on a desperate note.

“Will, let me out please. It is pitch dark. It’s cold out there. Don’t leave me hanging, please.”

I shivered until the morning sun chased shadows away. I stumbled to the closet and pulled the door open. Nada. A row of wire hangers, one bent into a makeshift heart, a couple of scuffed shoes, and my shirts and pants.

I stopped talking about it. Every night the voice coaxed, pleaded, even wept. She said I could call her Clara.

My family abandoned me here. Locked me in the closet when I was very young and forgot about me until it was too late. I waited a long time.

One evening Annie my little sister came into my room with her teddy bear

I heard her singing, she said softly.

“I want to be a participant.”

My blood chilled.

“Don’t listen, Annie.” Don't speak to her. "Don't open the closet.

But Annie would not be deterred. That evening she came into my room and jimmied the closet door open. When I woke up she was gone. Everything except the ghost of an old perfume and the lingering chill was gone from the closet.

My parents ripped the house to shreds. The police came. Posters went up. Annie was never found again.

And the whispers changed. No more pleading. Only laughter will be heard. A laugh, cold and empty.

“Thank you, Will,” sang Clara. The isolation is not as bad.

I tried to put it behind me. I grew up. It was my decision to move out. The property was not sold. Once in a while on my way to work at night I see a faint blue glow in the upstairs window.

They say houses have memories. But some memories are easier to retrieve than others. If you ever hear a voice coming from your closet, don't talk back. Don’t open the door. Some doors should never be opened. And when they are shut they should stay shut.

If someone is singing from the closet, whatever you do, don't shut the door.