72 - The Wooden Bridge
Moon and Kai kept walking, slow and cautious, their breathing steady but shallow.
The forest around them whispered — not in words, but in the rustle of leaves that bent without wind, in the faint scraping of something that followed just out of sight.
Then, the sound of water.
The soil under their boots changed.
It went from the dry crunch of leaf-litter to something soft, cold, and damp. Each step made a faint shlkkk sound, as though the ground itself was sucking lightly at their soles, reluctant to let go. The air thickened, carrying the smell of wet earth and something faintly metallic — like old coins soaked in rainwater.
Ahead, the weak glow of the streetlamps fractured and faded, swallowed by a yawning black emptiness.
The trees broke apart, and in their place lay water.
Not a pond. Not even a wide river.
A lake — vast, unbroken, stretching so far that the opposite shore was lost to shadow. Its surface moved in the slightest, slowest ripples, as though breathing.
A single bridge spanned it. Narrow, its spine crooked like the back of some ancient thing. The planks were warped and uneven, their edges frayed into splinters. They looked soft in places, almost sponge-like, as if they'd been soaking in the lake for centuries but still somehow held together.
The lake's skin wasn't bare. Strange leaves drifted across it, too broad and round to belong to any tree they'd seen. Between them, flowers floated — wide-petaled things in shades that shifted between pale gold and sickly green. Each emitted a faint glow, just enough to outline its own shape in the dark. But the glow wasn't gentle. It was greedy. Predatory.
It reminded Moon of deep-sea creatures — the kind that light up to draw other things close enough to eat.
Some petals twitched against the current.
Not drifting — moving.
Adjusting their faces toward the shore. Toward them.
The silver-tree trail they'd been following vanished at the lake's edge.
They both stopped.
And the memory surfaced, sharp and uninvited:
> "Before you step inside anything — a building, a monument, a place that feels alive — find the rules.
If there are none… don't enter."
Moon's eyes swept the lakeshore.
Kai's hand tightened slightly on his arm, pointing toward a darker lump near the base of a stunted willow.
A shape, half-hidden behind a curtain of leaves.
They moved closer, their steps careful, and the form took shape — a sign, old and leaning, one corner sunk into the mud.
Its surface was warped and pitted, the wood swollen from years of rain. Dark rot spread from the edges inward, curling the grain. Moss had claimed the bottom third in a shaggy green fringe, and the letters that remained were scored deep, as if carved with a blade.
A tangle of bushes clung to its face, and as they pushed them aside, the damp branches scraped against their gloves, leaving streaks of cold moisture. The smell hit them — mold, rich and sour, mixed with the sharp tang of wet bark.
They cleared the last of the leaves away.
The text emerged.
The Cursed Bridge — Rules
Rule 1 – Walk as if the bridge is watching.
Step slow. Step soft.
The planks groan when they're angry — and the angrier they get, the quicker they call the thing beneath the lake.
Never make them groan twice in a row.
Rule 2 – Rotten wood remembers.
Some planks rot from the inside, but they only break when they want to.
Step only on the dark, damp ones — the dry planks are hollow, echoing with the screams of the last person who fell through.
Rule 3 – The floating head.
If you see a head drifting on the water, stop instantly.
Do not blink. Do not shift your weight.
It's not a drowning victim — it's bait.
And whatever is holding it will only let go if it thinks you are stone.
Rule 4 – When the water stirs without wind.
Ripples mean something has risen.
Turn toward them and wait.
When it surfaces, its face will not be its own.
Crouch, hug your knees, hide your head until you hear a single drop fall into the water.
If you move before that drop falls, the lake will trade places with you — and you'll be the one rising next time.
Rule 5 – Reflections lie.
Do not look into the water for more than three breaths.
At first, you'll see yourself. Then you'll see what the lake wants you to be.
If the reflection smiles first, it's already too late.
Rule 6 – Never look back once you step off.
The bridge hates being left alone.
If you turn, you might see someone following you — wearing your face, your clothes…
and waving for you to come back.
---
Even reading the rules made their skin tighten and their throats dry.
The forest had been dangerous — but this bridge felt hungry.
There was no choice. They stepped on.
The first step onto the bridge spoke.
The wood moaned — not the sharp squeal of old timber, but a low, drawn-out groan that seemed to vibrate up through their legs. It wasn't just in the air; it was inside the planks, deep and heavy, like something shifting just beneath them. The sound traveled across the lake, vanishing into the black distance, and left behind a silence so thin it felt like the world was holding its breath.
They slowed. Stepped softer. Careful not to make the same sound twice in a row.
Up close, the boards looked ancient — their edges frayed into splinters, their middles bulging with swollen grain. They seemed brittle enough to crumble at the faintest breeze… yet each one they touched bore their weight. For a while.
Until Moon's foot found a dry plank.
Crack.
The sound was sharp, final — like a bone snapping.
The plank split down the middle, swallowing Moon's leg to the knee.
Cold surged up his skin — not the clean bite of water, but the slick, greasy chill of something that had been waiting. Something alive.
Something hungry.
A shape slid past his ankle — smooth, boneless, like a serpent's body.
Then it curled around him in fingers. Long. Jointed. Wet. Searching.
The nails — if they were nails — were too many, too thin, and they scratched gently over his calf, tracing the shape of the muscle as if measuring him.
And then…
A second hand joined the first.
It came from higher up, out of the broken plank itself, pale and slick, gripping his thigh from the opposite direction — meaning whatever held him wasn't beneath the lake… it was already inside the bridge.
Moon's breath caught.
The grip wasn't tight, not yet — but it felt as though it was tasting him.
Kai grabbed him under the arms and hauled hard. The plank's edges scraped his calf as he tore free, water spraying onto the boards in thick, dark spatters.
Moon looked down.
His shoe was soaked — not with lake water, but with a dense, sluggish liquid the color of rust. The smell hit them both instantly: hot iron, sharp and metallic, so strong it burned the back of the throat.
He ripped the shoe off and hurled it behind him.
Barefoot, the damp planks yielded under him, soft and springy, as though stepping on a swollen tongue.
They kept moving.
And they did not look back.
But if they had…
They would have seen her.
The woman from before — the one with the trembling voice who'd begged them to help find her child — was crouched low over the abandoned shoe. Her dress clung to her in wet folds, dripping steadily onto the boards.
Her jaw moved slowly, deliberately. She was chewing the leather, biting down until her teeth punched through it. Every bite made a faint crack… crack… crack, the sound of enamel grinding against something dense. Dark liquid ran down her chin and dripped between her fingers, where her nails had gone black and split.
Her eyes — if they were eyes — were fixed entirely on the shoe, unblinking. Not out of hunger. Not even curiosity. But devotion.
While with brothers
Came — two sounds.
From behind: the slow, grinding pop of joints twisting in ways they shouldn't.
From the lake: ripples spreading in perfect circles, though the air was dead still.
The rules screamed in their minds — ripples mean something has risen.
They turned toward the water.
A pale hand broke the surface first, dripping black water in long, sticky trails. The fingers were curled like claws, each tipped with a nail so thin it was almost translucent, yet sharp enough to catch the moonlight. They flexed once — slow, deliberate — as if testing the air before gripping the edge of the bridge.
Then it rose.
Not climbed — rose — its body pushing upward as though the lake itself was giving it back.
It was human-shaped, but wrong in ways the mind tried to reject.
The proportions were stretched, each limb slightly too long, the joints bending just a little too far. The skin was the sickly color of milk left out in the sun, patchy and swollen in some places, tight and paper-thin in others.
There were no eyes. No nose. No ears.
Only a mouth — torn impossibly wide, the lips cracked into deep fissures that oozed something dark. Teeth jutted at uneven angles, too many for a human jaw, long and yellow like old bone left in damp soil.
Its flesh was split in dozens of places — deep, deliberate-looking slits.
From each wound, pale maggots wriggled in slow pulses, sliding free before disappearing back into its body as though the thing was their home. One emerged from the corner of its mouth, fat and blind, and was swallowed without a thought.
It tilted its head toward them.
The grin widened, skin tearing further at the corners until wet strands stretched between the jaws. Something inside the throat clicked and gurgled, like a voice trying to form but too broken to speak.
The woman was walking toward them now.
Her neck hung loose, bent far to one side, the skin stretched thin over the bone — as if something inside her had forced it that way.
One hand clutched a rusted machete. The blade was nicked and blackened with old blood.
The other gripped the severed head of the old man who had once owned it. His face was locked in a scream, lips cracked open, tongue swollen. Flies swarmed his mouth and the wet stump at his neck, crawling over her fingers before taking off again in lazy, hungry arcs.
Her "child" trailed close behind.
It was pale, almost translucent, the skin so thin the veins shone through like a spider's web. The ribs jutted outward, sharp enough to tear cloth, and with each step something inside its torso shifted — pressing hard against the skin from the inside, making the flesh bulge, then slide away.
Her steps hit the planks in a slow, deliberate rhythm.
Kad… kad… kad…
Each one made the bridge groan deep in its belly, the sound sinking into the lake like baited hooks dropped for something below.
The flowers on the water shivered, their petals tilting toward the noise.
Somewhere beneath, something moved.
To be continued….