Clara Benson pressed her face to the window of the rattling bus as the first glimpse of Willow Creek came into view. Ten years had passed since she left the small town, but little had changed. The same winding roads. The same crooked signs. The same forest pressing too close, as though guarding secrets no one dared to speak of.
She had promised herself she'd never come back. But promises bend under the weight of funerals.
Her aunt, Margaret, had been found dead three days ago at the edge of the woods. The police had called it "an accident." Clara didn't believe that. Margaret Benson never wandered into the forest. She had warned Clara of it since childhood.
"Some things in those woods never die," her aunt used to whisper, pulling the curtains tight at night.
The bus hissed to a stop. Clara stepped off, her suitcase bumping against her leg. The cold autumn air bit her skin, sharp with the smell of pine and damp earth. Across the street, she spotted Sheriff Dalton leaning against his cruiser, hat low, cigarette burning between his fingers.
"Clara Benson," he greeted, his voice gruff with both recognition and hesitation. "Didn't think you'd come back."
"I didn't either," Clara replied. "But Margaret deserves better than an accident report."
The sheriff exhaled a long stream of smoke, studying her. "Be careful what stones you turn over. Some of 'em don't like the light."
Clara's gaze drifted to the dark wall of trees behind him. The woods seemed to watch her, their shadows shifting as though alive.
For the first time since childhood, Clara felt the same chill creep up her spine—the same one she felt the night she heard the story of the girl who vanished in the woods.
And now, the story was
about to begin again.