The storm broke before dawn.
Rain slapped the motel windows like fists, a relentless battering that rattled the glass and churned the air outside. The wind howled low and uneven, a force that felt too large to belong to this world, as though something massive were inhaling and exhaling across the woods. Mara hadn't slept. Not even a fleeting moment of rest had passed since the night before. She hadn't even tried to close her eyes. Every time she did, the mirror in the bathroom flickered in her mind, the edges of her reflection warping, the glass breathing in a way that felt alive.
It had changed again since last night.
The crack had spread across the mirror, a jagged line stretching from the top-right corner. It hadn't been there before, but now it was, snaking down the glass like a fault line, waiting for the moment it would shatter completely. Mara stood in front of it, toothbrush in hand, staring into the fractured reflection.
A drop of water ran upward, defying gravity, crawling across the glass like a slow-moving tear. Mara blinked. The drop was gone. Just like that. Disappeared into nothingness.
The mirror wasn't the only thing that was wrong.
The motel owner was gone too.
Mara had made her way to the lobby earlier that morning, hoping to get some sense of what was going on, but there was no sign of the man who had checked her in three nights ago. The room behind the front desk was unlocked, the cash drawer full, and the stale coffee in the lobby pot still warm. There was nothing else. No sign of the man with the eye patch who had greeted her like he'd known exactly who she was. No name on the registry. No trace of him anywhere.
Except for one thing.
A scrap of paper, torn and crumpled, was tucked under the ledger. It had been scrawled hastily, the handwriting jagged and uneven, but the message was clear:
"Don't follow the roots."
Mara's stomach twisted. She didn't know if it was the words themselves or the fact that they were the same as what she had seen before, in the basement of the diner. But either way, it was enough to make her skin crawl. She grabbed her jacket, stuffed the recorder and Samantha's sketchbook into her bag, and headed for the door. The storm had passed, but the fog still clung to the streets like a suffocating veil, thick and impenetrable.
She didn't know what she was looking for anymore.
But something about the eastern ridge — the one Mia had mentioned — tugged at her. She knew it was near Dead Elk Hollow. The woods had an oppressive, suffocating quality about them, like they were holding something back, something ancient and forgotten. And if she didn't find it now, she might never get another chance.
The path toward the ridge was strangely clear. She could feel the weight of the fog pressing down on her, but it didn't obscure her way. Each step felt heavier than the last, like the land was pulling her into it, urging her forward.
An hour passed. Maybe two.
And then she saw it.
At first, it was just a flicker of movement. A glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye. But when Mara turned her head, her breath caught in her throat. A deer. No — not a deer.
This one was different.
The creature had been split in two, its body twisted unnaturally. Its antlers were embedded in the trunk of a nearby tree, the spine bent and snapped in a grotesque curve. The ribs of the deer were wrapped around the bark like the creature had tried to phase through the tree and been caught halfway. The dark liquid of its blood pooled around it, staining the moss beneath.
It was still fresh. Still bleeding.
Mara felt the bile rise in the back of her throat, but she didn't back away. She couldn't. Not yet.
She reached into her bag, pulled out the camera, and snapped a photo. The camera's screen flickered, and Mara paused, staring at it. What she saw wasn't the same as what she was looking at. The deer was gone. Just a tree. Smooth and unmarked. No blood. No twisted creature. Nothing.
Her heart pounded in her chest.
She stepped backward.
Crunch.
Mara looked down.
Roots. But not normal roots.
These were thin, jagged, like the spines of a dead creature. They writhed and shifted beneath the soil, pushing upward like something was buried deep beneath the earth, trying to claw its way out.
A chill ran through Mara's bones.
She turned and fled.
The wet moss beneath her boots was slippery, her feet sliding with each desperate step as she scrambled up the slope, moving through the underbrush, thick with rot and the acrid scent of decaying plants. The air was thick now, almost sweet, but with an underlying sickly tang — like something dying, something that had once been beautiful and was now turning to dust.
Mara didn't stop running until she reached the chapel.
Or what was left of it.
It had once been a place of worship — the first church in Durn Hill, a small white building with a steeple that had probably looked beautiful in its time. But now, the wood had turned gray and weathered, the roof sagging with the weight of time. Mold clung to the sides, and the steeple leaned at an unnatural angle, like a broken tooth. Most of the windows had been boarded up from the inside, and the front door hung slightly ajar, its hinges rusted and warped.
She stepped inside.
The darkness was immediate, pooling in the corners like oil. There was no light filtering through the broken windows. The only sounds were the faint creak of the building settling and the soft drip of water from the leaky roof. The pews were overturned, some split in half. Bibles were torn and scattered across the floor, their pages yellowing. Candlewax had dripped across the cracked wood in frozen veins, white and brittle against the dark.
Something had been here. Recently.
And something still was.
Mara's hand brushed against her coat pocket, and the recorder inside clicked on. She froze.
The low static crackled, and then, unbidden, came a voice. Hers.
"...skin made of splinters... bones under bark..."
Her throat tightened. She hadn't said those words aloud. Not once. She stared at the recorder in disbelief.
The static buzzed again, and then a whisper followed — a whisper that turned her blood to ice.
"It grew out of us. Not into us."
Mara's grip on the recorder tightened. The air around her grew colder, thicker, as though it were alive. The whisper faded, but not the feeling. Not the scent that emerged with it.
Wet leaves. Burnt teeth. The smell of decay, of something rotting.
She turned, eyes scanning the darkened chapel, and saw it.
A hole in the rear wall. Barely noticeable at first, but now it was too clear to ignore. A hole leading down into what looked like a cellar.
Her instincts screamed at her to turn back. To leave. But the pull of the place, the need for answers, was too strong. She stepped forward, the floor creaking beneath her feet as she descended the narrow steps into the earth-packed basement.
The cellar was small, cramped, the walls lined with broken wood and stained cloth. But it was the carvings on the walls that sent a chill down Mara's spine.
There were faces. Human faces, etched deeply into the wood, their features grotesque and warped. Trees. Faces. Trees with faces. Human limbs stretching and twisting into trunks. Mouths open in mid-scream. Eyes wide in horror. Each carving seemed to breathe, shifting in the dim light, like they were trying to move.
One panel showed a woman, her arms outstretched, roots emerging from her spine and binding her to the forest.
Underneath the figure, carved in near-biblical calligraphy, were the words:
"First to Feed."
Mara's heart thudded.
She took another step forward — and her foot hit something hard.
A jawbone. Human. Still with molars intact. It lay half-buried beneath a pile of debris.
Her stomach churned.
Mara stumbled back, bile rising in her throat. Her eyes scanned the cellar, and that's when she saw it. Something glinting beneath a wooden plank. She bent down, her fingers trembling as she pried it up.
A necklace.
A small silver pendant, star-shaped.
It was unmistakable. She had seen it before.
Samantha's school photo — the one pinned in the sheriff's files.
The necklace was sticky.
With blood.
Fresh.
Mara staggered backward, her mind reeling. The shadows in the cellar shifted. The carved faces seemed to watch her more intently now, their eyes following her every movement. One carving now had her face — twisted and etched into the wood, her eyes wide in terror, her mouth open in a scream that never came.
The weight of it crushed her chest.
Outside, the wind had gone still. Too quiet.
She couldn't stay in the cellar any longer. She turned and fled, the path back to the motel twisting beneath her feet. Trees loomed around her like strangers, their branches clawing at her coat as she stumbled through the dense fog. Every few yards, she saw more of the roots — thin, sharp, like the fingers of something buried deep beneath the earth, reaching out to pull her in.
And then, in the distance, she saw it.
The "flesh tree."
It was a sapling at first glance, its bark a reddish hue that didn't look natural. But as she drew closer, the sight turned her stomach.
There was skin.
Human skin, stretched around the base of the trunk. Patches of it, thin as parchment, stretched tight over the bark. In some places, strands of hair still clung to the surface.
And beneath it, faces.
Faint, almost fossilized. Eyes closed. Mouths open in mid-scream. One of them was unmistakable. Samantha's.
The necklace had not been lost.
It had been offered.
Mara fell to her knees, unable to scream. The horror was too massive. Too incomprehensible. She couldn't process it, couldn't think past the primal need to get away.
But as she stumbled to her feet, the words returned.
"Don't follow the roots."
Back at the motel, night had returned without her even realizing. The rain was gone, but the mirror in her bathroom had changed again. It had grown wider. Not cracked — but stretched. Like a mouth forced open too wide. And now, it whispered.
"It's growing. You're helping it."
Mara didn't sleep.
Instead, she sat on the bed, every light in the room on, staring at the open sketchbook in front of her.
And on the last page, not drawn by her hand, was the same image she had seen in the cellar.
The tree with faces.
But now, there were more. And hers was the last one added.