Will Gworlekaju

the forest moan

It started with a map—an old, scorched scrap of parchment tucked inside a weathered copy of American Hauntings, which Leo found in a secondhand bookstore in a forgotten alleyway three towns over, a place that seemed to exist only in the periphery of waking life, where the clerk never spoke, and the lights buzzed as if trying to scream. Leo had always been drawn to the strange and the forbidden, the kind of man who collected myths the way others collected records, and when he unfurled the map on the scarred kitchen table of their shared apartment, the others gathered around: Maya, cynical and sharp, whose heart had calcified since her mother vanished without a trace during a camping trip ten years ago; Ethan, quiet and tender-eyed, a painter who dreamed of abstract terrors he could never quite explain; Rachel, the group’s warmth, her laughter constant, masking a bottomless fear she’d carried since childhood, when her twin sister had drowned in a lake that later disappeared. The map showed a forest none of them had heard of, a place called The Hollow, with markings too deliberate to be decorative—runes etched along borders, a small X in the center labeled "Heart Root." The four of them decided they’d investigate over fall break, intending it to be the kind of thing they’d look back on with pride or irony, a story to laugh about over drinks.