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It’s been a while since I’ve heard the beep of a heart monitor or the rushed steps of hospital staff. The last time I was here, I was the one in the bed, waking up after two days with a concussion, broken ribs, and a back injury that never really got better. Evelyn was sitting next to me with a hole in her head where her eye used to be. That entire night has been burned into my brain ever since, like a bad dream that comes back to haunt me every once in a while.

It was my turn to sit by the bedside now. Finn was okay - I mean, as okay as one can be after getting third degree burns. He can’t use his left arm for a while but at the end of the day, he didn’t lose more than a few patches of skin and some feeling on his left side. Once the pain medicine kicked in, he spent most of his time complaining that his facial hair would never grow in right and wondering if this would finally kick his smoking habit.

I wish I had his strength, you know. His ability to look fear in the eyes and decide that he’s stronger than whatever brings him down - it’s really something. Meanwhile, I’m still having nightmares about something that happened years ago.

They said they’d keep Finn overnight and then probably release him in the morning with a strict regimen for keeping his bandages clean. I was surprised they’d let him out so soon, but looking around, I could see why. The hospital was far busier than I’d ever expected. The emergency room was filled to the brim, people coming in with all sorts of freak injuries from the earthquakes and the snow storms.

These weren’t all people from Pinehaven, either. People from the other side of the mountain were all whispering, mentioning strange lights, holes in the dirt, weird new folk showing up in town.

I hate to admit it, but I think our problem is starting to spread.

​

I sat there, scrolling through my phone, checking my messages every few moments. Nothing. I was starting to get worried.

Finn grunted as he adjusted his pillow, giving a long sigh when he finally leaned back again. “Expecting a phone call?” he asked.

I looked up, stammering quietly. “Uh, no. No, not really.” I answered. “Just…hoping things back in town are okay.”

Finn gave a soft laugh. “If they weren’t okay, I’m sure we’d know by now.” He winced a little when he took a deep breath, rolling that burned shoulder. “Lyn knows what she’s doing, she’s got her big girl pants on. If something goes wrong, she knows who to call. Give your blood pressure a break, bud, you make me anxious just lookin’ at ya.”

I snorted under my breath. He was right. Offering one last glance at the phone, I finally let the screen go black, stuffing it back in my coat pocket with the sound all the way up just in case. For a brief moment, I let my eyes wander to the window where the snow was falling heavier now, covering the roads and obscuring the lights of distant traffic.

“You know,” Finn started. “I’ve been meaning to apologize. I know that I keep a lot of things from the two of you - things that would have been helpful to know a lot earlier. About the forest, about what we do out there…It was wrong to keep it a secret.”

I turned back to Finn and moved my chair a little closer to his bedside, dropping my voice. “Nothing stopping you from catching me up to speed now, though, right?”

Finn wore a tired smirk, rolling his eyes. “Can’t get nothin’ past you.” He commented with a chuckle. For a long moment, he was silent, looking out the window at the snow and the distant trees. “People know. It’s not really a secret anymore, not since the day the fog rolled in. What people have been seeing, experiencing…it’s getting smarter every day, we think. That’s why we were trying to burn the bodies, so they can’t keep multiplying. You saw how well that worked out.”

The entire time he spoke, I had been wringing my hands and letting one of my legs bounce anxiously. I didn’t like any of this. The idea that the forest was starting to learn ways around our tricks was a terrifying thought - it brought up the question of what we would do if all our usual methods stopped working.

“Has this happened before?” I asked. “The forest…has it outsmarted us in the past?”

Finn nodded his head slowly, eyebrows cinching together in pain when he moved his neck. “Yeah. Yeah, it has.” He said. “The Bell used to be an actual bell. You knew that, right?”

“Right.”

“They didn’t like the sound…Didn’t take long for them to figure out that bringing down the belltower would make it go away. Foggy weather came around and the whole operation would go under. Military would get involved. Folks from old Pinehaven rebuilt and rebuilt dozens of times before the radio tower went up in the 80s and finally brought some stability.”

My pulse quickened when I thought about the earthquakes, those shakes in the ground underneath the watchtower. It was starting to lean more and more every day. Then there was the night of the fog, the night my doppelganger almost lured me away, leaving the station without an operator…

“You think the forest is going to try again?” I asked with a sick feeling in my stomach. “To bring down the tower?”

Finn wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was staring out the window, watching as the frost covered the glass and turned the night sky into a hazy gray. “I think it already is.” He said simply. We didn’t say anything for a long while after that. Finn looked into the snowy horizon, I looked down at my shoes, and we just sat there in silence, together but miles apart. Then, he spoke again.

“Steven.” He said quietly.

“Hm?”

“My first name…It’s Steven.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. So many years of mystery solved, and so simply. “Nice to finally meet you, Steven…Mind if I keep calling you Finn?”

“I’d prefer it, actually. The full name never really suited me.” He wore a tiny grin, finally looking over at me again. “You should go home, buddy. You look tired.”

I cleared my throat and straightened up in my chair, hands on my knees just trying not to slump over. “I’m fine, really, I can stay until they–”

“Shut your mouth, Esperanza.” Finn chuckled weakly. “Go home, clean up, and sleep in your own bed. I’ll let you both know when they say I can leave. Don’t worry, I’m safer here than either of you. This is like a vacation for me.”

I wasn’t going to argue with him. The dawn was on its way, the dark sky about to welcome the sunrise in an hour or so. Going home to my apartment, being closer to the tower - it was awfully tempting. Funny how even when we’re far away from that place, it draws us back in one way or another like a toxic friend we just couldn’t live without.

“Fine. But call if you want us to bring you anything. O-or if there’s an update about your–”

“Go home, Dan.”

He waved me towards the door, annoyed. But before I left, I stopped in my tracks one last time, squinting at him from the other side of the room. “Are you sure you don’t want–”

“I said go home, Dan.”

​

The drive home was quiet at first, the road empty. There was no moon in the sky and no stars to light the way, only the dull yellow glow of the truck’s headlights on the snowy pavement. As I drove around the winding mountain path, I tried to keep my eyes away from the treeline. Every time I glanced to my side, I thought I saw a shadow between the trees, keeping up with the speed of the vehicle no matter how fast I went. It was better to simply not look.

The snow was falling heavily now. It created a white vortex out in front of me, slick pavement underneath the tires of Lyn’s truck. I tried so hard to keep my gaze fixed in front of me at all times, watching the curve of the road…But something caught my eye. That magenta light. It was shining above the trees now, rising into the sky like a beam that went straight upwards. I only glanced at it for a split second, and then–

Something darted in front of the truck, quick as lightning. I slammed on the breaks, the rubber squealing on the wet road as I began to spin out of control. My heart was pounding, a yell stuck in the back of my throat as I braced myself for a steep fall off the mountainside. It didn’t come. The truck stopped just short of the edge, one of the tires hitting a pile of rocks and forcing my head forward into the steering wheel.

My ear was ringing, my head aching. The radio station was just static.

After I had caught my breath, I stepped out of the car on legs that felt like jello. Shivering from a mixture of anxiety and the cold air, I walked out into the road and squinted my eyes in the darkness, expecting to see some startled traveler or injured animal staggering away. At first, I didn’t see anything - no animals, no people. Then I heard a rustle in the bushes. At the treeline, a dark figure stood silently, just watching me from afar with bright white eyes. The moment I turned my head, it began to walk back into the woods, disappearing between the pines until I was alone on that cold, snowy mountain once more.

I guess he wasn’t really gone after all.

​

When I got to my apartment, I got rid of my shoes and my hearing aid and let myself rest in the comfortable quiet of a lonely room. I checked my phone one last time. Nothing. I texted Evelyn a message: “I’m home now. Finn is okay. Do you need me to come up there?” It took a while, but she messaged me back eventually, saying simply: “I’m fine. Get some sleep.” In hindsight, that message should have been my first hint that something was wrong. It wasn’t like Lyn to not have at least one outrageous thing to say.

I had that dream again, the one with the procession of shadows and the light coming from the ground. By now, I’m sure you can tell how it ended. I was still drifting towards the light from a distance when suddenly, my body stopped. Something was holding me back.

I thought I could hear the distant hint of a voice, but it was far away. Muffled. It wasn’t until I felt hands grab my shoulders that I began to fall out of the dream and back into my own freezing cold, solid body.

​

My eyes flew open. I was standing out on the street, barefoot and dressed in a pair of pajama pants and no shirt. The snow went up to my ankles. I was shivering from head to toe. An older man was shaking me by the shoulders, snapping his fingers in my face to get my attention.

“Son! Ain’t you freezin’?” His voice sounded far away, but I could read his lips. “You hearin’ me, son?”

I nodded my head, brain still catching up as I looked around at the cold, white world that surrounded me. The old man just shook his head and kept walking, too impatient and too tired to deal with the problems of some strange, half-naked man wandering around in the snow.

The walk home was humiliating, but not nearly as upsetting as the thought sitting in the back of my head: what would happen if I reached my destination? What would happen if there wasn’t someone to stop me from falling in?

The sky was cloudy, the streets quiet. People were leaving, more and more of them moving away every day since the fog invaded the village. I got home, cleaned myself up, and checked my phone, finding just one message waiting for me. It was Finn. “Is Lyn okay? She isn’t responding.”

She didn’t respond to me either. I called her once while brushing my teeth, then again as I shoved on a pair of winter boots. In both instances, she didn’t pick up. I made one final attempt to call the radio station’s main line, hoping to catch her on the air, but it continued to ring, completely ignored.

I didn’t waste any time getting to the radio station, squealing into the long gravel drive and parking right outside the fire escape. When I raced up the stairs and threw open the door, I found the station utterly and completely empty. The radio was playing, the line-up was set, but Evelyn was not there. Her coat and hat were both gone, her bag missing, her headset sitting on the desk abandoned.

I rushed to the lookout window, hoping to see a glimpse of red hair or a plaid jacket somewhere out in the clearing; maybe she was in the shed, fiddling with the security cameras, harassing that damn bird again. I didn’t see anything except for that pulsating magenta light still shooting up into the sky. It was stronger now than it had ever been, like a beacon.

The shotgun was back in the cabinet. I grabbed it and slung it over my shoulder, not even bothering to grab more supplies before I raced down the stairs and through the snow. Nothing was waiting for me out there, except for the flutter of wings - Bartholomew the bird, sitting at the treeline and watching me with those hazel human eyes. He gave a shrill chirp, like an alarm that made my head hurt. Like a warning.

I had no reason to believe that Lyn was at the pit, but I felt it somewhere deep in the core of my body. She had to be there. I followed the light, running as fast as my feet would take me, heart like a jackhammer trying to carve its way through my chest. Shadows flanked me on both sides, rumbling sounds in the distance moving the earth beneath my feet. I was terrified, of course I was terrified. But I remembered the last time I had failed Evelyn, on that night I will never forget for the rest of my life. I let her suffer once. The forest took a piece of her as its own and I wasn’t going to let it happen a second time.

​

I heard her voice before I saw her. She was screaming, but not in terror or panic. She was screaming in anger. I heard the shatter of glass, the yells of a struggle, the colorful language of a woman utterly unhinged and furious.

The purple glow was brighter than ever. I entered the clearing and stopped, frozen in place, watching Evelyn stand at its edge while chucking glass bottles into the pulsating void beneath her feet. She was crying - or more accurately, wailing. Her body language was weak and clumsy, as if she struggled to stand while grabbing bottles of alcohol from a bag and tossing them in one by one.

“Lyn!” I called out, rushing towards her just in time to see her fall to her knees at the edge of the pit. “Lyn, what are you doing?! What the hell is this?”

She grabbed a bottle of vodka and chucked it as far as she could, stumbling and almost falling in the process. I watched the bottle drop into the hole and disappear, going so far into the earth that it didn’t make a sound.

“This place! It’s a fucking nightmare!” She shrieked, grabbing another. She tried to throw it, but her arms were weak - it shattered in her hand, leaving her with bloody fingers. “I coul-I couldn’t take it anymore! I t-tried and tried b-but it keeps coming back! All this bullshit! Dad’s face! Jenny’s body! I just c-can’t stand it! They won’t leave!” She took a deep, sharp breath and sobbed loudly. “Why won’t they g-go away?!”

She collapsed into miserable wails, her hands going to her face and leaving smears of blood against her cheeks. I suppose I never realized she still saw them, but I understood why. You see, I was lucky in a way - I wasn’t from Pinehaven. The forest had never taken anyone I knew, anyone I cared about. Evelyn’s life was bound to the roots of this place, tangled in the bones of people she loved. She spent every day staring into the graveyard of every person she had ever known, aware that those souls were suffering and forced to watch. It was like living next door to your family’s murderer and playing by their rules.

I recognized the flush of her face, the slur in her voice. She wasn’t just hysterical, she was drunk. All those bottles…

“Lynny, where did these–”

“Don’t call me that!” She screamed at me, weak fists punching at my chest. “I’m not your Lynny! I was hers! Jen was here first, b-but now she’s gone and I’ll n-never get her back and you know why? Because of this s-stupid! fucking! place!” She kicked her bag, glass breaking under her foot. “I-it took Jenny, it took my dad, it almost took Finn and now it’s trying to take you!” She punched my chest again and again, letting out all of that anger until she had no more energy to spare. Each smack from her fist was weaker than the one before it. “Y-you can’t go too…Please, you can’t…”

I grabbed her wrists, holding them still as she finally leaned her head against me and sobbed into my coat.

“Hey, hey, shh...” I shushed her softly, rubbing the center of her back. “I…I wasn’t gonna’! I’m staying right here. Just breathe. Evelyn, breathe. No one’s going anywhere.”

She bonked her head against my shoulder, squeezing me tight just to have something to hold onto. I could imagine her world was spinning, those memories of abandonment and rejection all flooding back while her mind was soaked in booze. She just needed that one stationary, reliable thing to keep hold of before she fell, like a carousel out of control.

“N-nothing that goes in there *ever comes out...*That's why it's calling you, Danny. So you f-fall in and never come out.” She said with a sniffle. Her gaze was locked on the pit in front of us. “The bottles j-just appeared. They kept coming back. Throwing them in w-was the only way to get rid of them for good. ”

I looked down at her face, wiping the tears and blood away from her cheeks. Then, without a second thought, I let go of her and stood up, grabbing her bag and lifting it up with a grunt.

“Then we’ll get rid of it all!” I told her, turning the bag over and emptying every single bottle into the pit all at once. They fell, clattering against the dirt on their way down before disappearing into the void of purple light, never to be seen again. I threw the bag to the side, letting it lay limp and empty at long last.

Immediately, I could see a weight lift from Evelyn’s shoulders. She sat there in the snow, wiping her nose on her sleeve, one blue eye looking up at the sky with relief. That burden was gone. It wasn’t coming back.

“Come on, freckle-face.” I grabbed Evelyn under her arms, trying to pull her up to her feet. “We’ve gotta get out of here.”

She managed to stand, pigeon-toed and holding onto my neck for dear life. “Thank you, Danny…” She slurred quietly, voice muffled in the fabric of my coat. She groaned in discomfort and rested her head against my shoulder, but then I felt her entire body go limp in an instant. Her head lolled back, her arms falling to her sides. She was out in a cold, dead faint.

Jesus, Lyn…What the hell am I going to do with you?

​

“You could just leave her here.” The moment I put her back down long enough to adjust my hold, I heard something from between the trees. It was that voice again. My voice. It was like a malicious hiss in the wind, whispering through the pines from no direction in particular. “So many of your problems would be gone…No one to stress about, no one to make a mess of things. No more stupid mistakes. Or are you afraid you’d be lonely without a pet alcoholic to take care of?”

I stood and turned, facing my shadow from across the pit. He was standing there, mimicking my movements, following me like a mirror image from side to side as I stepped around the cavern. The way he moved was like an old recording, jittery and fuzzy around the edges.

“You’re not real.” I pointed at him and he pointed back. “You’re just a trick of the mind, trying to–”

“Trying to help you.” The shadow said. He stopped mimicking my movements, standing completely still. I noticed that bristle in his shoulders again, the way he seemed to puff up as if spines were coming out of his back like a disguise slowly beginning to slip. “There’s no tricks here. I’m just saying what you’re thinking…What you won’t admit out loud. Leave her here with me, and I’ll let you go. For good.”

I looked at Evelyn, her unconscious body lying immobile while snowflakes collected in her hair. And I looked at the doppelganger, whose white eyes were focused on me with a cold, unblinking stare. I think I’m starting to understand what Finn meant about the forest evolving. It’s looking for new tactics, new ways to get what it wants. It wants the tower. It wants to weed us out, one by one, until 104.6FM is left abandoned like the ghost of an idea that almost worked.

Making us betray one another? It was a smart idea. It wasn’t going to work, though.

“What if I say ‘no’?” I asked, a hand going to the shotgun around my shoulders. I brought it down into position and was already putting my finger on the trigger. “What if I tell you that you, and every other rotten piece of shit in this forest, can go fuck yourselves?! What then?”

The shadow’s neck snapped to one side, head at an impossible angle. It began to circle the pit again, getting closer and closer as its limbs all cracked and morphed in front of my eyes into an elongated, skeletal shape. In moments, it no longer resembled me anymore. It was an emaciated, hunched beast that barely looked human, inky black skin pulled tightly to its bones like a vacuum-sealed corpse.

It let out a piercing shriek, breaking into a sprint towards me. This time, I didn’t run. I didn’t let it chase me back to the tower in fear. I pointed the shotgun directly at its chest, put my finger on the trigger, and I let a round fly into its body with a cloud of smoke and foul-smelling dust.

The creature staggered, its wound leaking a viscous black fluid that sizzled like acid when it hit the snow. It shivered and shook its bones, standing up tall with a bristled back and rushing for me a second time. I tried to reload the shotgun, my fingers clumsy and shaking, but it got to me first. I felt ice cold hands against my shoulders, claws digging through the jacket as the beast knocked me to the ground in a single motion. It was on top of me, grabbing me by the front of my coat and pulling me through the snow. It was dragging me as if I weighed absolutely nothing. The acid leaking from its body dripped onto my clothes and started to burn right through to my skin with a terrible, stinging pain.

I felt my head reach the edge of the pit. That deafening hum was louder, ringing in my one capable ear. It was going to throw me into the cavern, to watch me fall deeper and deeper until I vanished into nothingness. I would be just another ghost lost to the forest; another victim to the procession.

My hand reached wildly for the shotgun, struggling to stretch my fingers far enough to touch it. I dug my heels in as hard as I could, feeling my shoulders leave the safety of the snowy ground. The creature’s face had twisted into a featureless blob of skin and teeth, smiling wide all the way around its head. Those teeth chattered hungrily, dripping black slime onto my face with a smell that I could only describe as sour, toxic decay.

It was going to kill me. It was going to kill Evelyn. I had seconds to act or neither of us would make it out of here alive…all because of some goddamn, stupid shadow.

I flailed my legs, kicking the creature just enough to lunge out of the way and grab the shotgun. I didn’t have time to load it. I just took a heavy grip and bashed the beast as hard as I could across the side of its head. Black, acidic blood splattered across the snow as its teeth were knocked loose, jaw hanging loosely from its dead face. I bashed it again, and again, and again with the butt of the shotgun until my hands and arms were covered with hot, burning black liquid that formed steam in the cold air.

It gave me just enough time to stand. The beast was staggering to its feet, trying to gain its balance with its head caved in like a grape that had burst open. I rushed towards it one last time and kicked it square in the stomach with the flat bottom of my shoe. The shadow fell back, dropping over the edge of the pit and falling deeper and deeper into the center of the earth itself. It made no sound, no impact. It just…disappeared.

Nothing that goes in ever comes out.

​

I leaned against a tree, letting out a heavy breath. I wiped my face, almost frantically, getting rid of the tarry black substance that was still burning my skin. It would scar, I was sure, but the monster was gone. I had actually destroyed one of them.

The shotgun was placed on my back, Evelyn’s empty bag around my shoulder. She was still unconscious, her lips turning blue and eyelashes white with frost. I scooped her up under her knees and shoulders and began to carry her back to the radio tower, one quiet step at a time. I didn’t look back at the pit. I didn’t think about the rumble beneath our feet or the voices of the dead that were never far away. For the first time, I didn’t let that fear distract me for a second - and the best part of it all? I knew, with full certainty, I would never see my shadow again.

I got Evelyn back to the radio tower, carrying her up the stairs and into the broadcast room. I grabbed a couple of spare blankets from the emergency cupboard and stacked them up like a pillow on the floor, putting her on her back. She was still breathing, still alive…Just cold and drunk. Sick. Poor thing was going to feel terrible in the morning, I already knew it.

The rest of the afternoon was spent tending to the radio, keeping a warm cloth on Lyn’s forehead, and waiting for her to wake up. I called Finn, telling him about what happened. He said I did a good thing. Still, running the broadcast felt lonelier than ever now, as the lights from the town grew dimmer every day and people began to leave one home at a time. Now and again, I wondered what would happen when we were the only ones left up here - maybe it would be better that way. Maybe this place would be best left as a ghost town.

It took a few hours, but as the sun was going down over Pinehaven and the sky was turning red and purple, Evelyn finally began to stir.

I sat down by her side, putting a hand to her forehead to feel her temperature. She was still freezing, even after hours inside and out of the winter’s chill. Her freckled cheeks were flushed, her lips a sickly blue, her pulse dangerously slow. In the corners of her mouth, I could see a black substance staining her teeth and gums…I wondered what was really in those bottles.

​

“Hey.” I spoke softly. “Hey Lyn, you with me?”

She grumbled, one eye cracking open and looking around the room before focusing wearily on my face. She looked confused, half between this reality and another. “Hey, Danny Boy.” She gave me that old familiar greeting, her raspy voice softer than it had ever been. “How long was I asleep?”

“Fifty long years.” I lied, giving her a shitty smirk. She scowled at me and lazily smacked my arm. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Just a few hours. How do you feel?”

“Ugh…Like stale dogshit stuck to the tire of an 18-wheeler.” She stuck out her black-stained tongue, still looking half-asleep and hardly able to keep her eye open. Her words were slurred and hoarse from screaming into the winter air, but I guess she still knew how to turn a phrase.

I raised my eyebrows. “Well, that’s um…that’s very specific.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a very specific feeling. Jerk…” She grimaced, likely sore and nauseous and dizzy. She was shaking with fever and I noticed the dark color of her fingernails, turning blue even in the warm room. I tried breathing against her fingers to warm them up, but it didn’t seem to be working.

“...Are you mad at me?” She murmured, a look of shame and disappointment on her face. I knew what she was referring to - She fell off the wagon in the most spectacular fashion I think I could possibly come up with.

“No, I’m not mad.” I told her. “You scared the hell out of me. I thought you were going to get yourself killed, but… But I wasn’t mad.”

She went quiet for a long moment, just staring off into space. I could see her single brain cell bouncing around in her head as she remembered those moments in the woods, those things that she said. The feelings she felt. “I didn’t mean it.” She finally spoke, voice quiet and low. “Those things I said, it wasn’t true…Comparing you and Jenny? It’s just, being here where she died every day, I… I miss her so much, you know?”

I nodded solemnly, breathing out a sigh. “Yeah, bud, I know.”

Evelyn’s lip quivered. She hesitated a moment, as if looking for the words, before her little pinky finger curled around mine. “But I think if you were gone, I’d miss you more. So…don’t go anywhere, okay? Pinky swear.”

I felt a tightness in my chest, it was a strange mixture of sorrow and almost some kind of relief. It was a cruel relief, wasn’t it? I didn’t like the idea of dying just to break Evelyn’s heart, but just to know that there was someone out there who would miss me if I was gone - someone who was afraid of actually losing me? It almost felt good in a sick, twisted sort of way.

“You can’t get rid of me, you know that already.” I told Evelyn, forcing a sad smile. “I’ll always stick around. Pinky swear. I’ll be like a stubborn weed or a - a bad stain on your favorite shirt.”

Evelyn chuckled sleepily. “I hate doing laundry anyway.” She sighed, her eye half-closed and weary. She was growing paler, her skin almost transparent and the blue of her veins peeking through the surface. “I’m sorry I punched you, by the way. That wasn’t very nice.”

I snorted. “It’s alright. You’re rarely very nice, and besides, your shitty little baby hands didn’t hurt me.”

She actually smiled then, even if it was pitiful, even if she was exhausted and sick. I heard a dry chuckle as she gave me that stupid, crooked grin of hers, smacking me limply on the arm. “You’re an asshole.” She whispered, but there was sweetness behind the way she said it. I think there always was.

Same to you, Lyn. Same to you.

This is Daniel Esperanza at 104.6FM. I don’t want to get ahead of myself here, but I think for the first time ever, I did something worth being proud of.

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