The One Who Warned Them

I told them not to go.

The wind was already wrong that night—too warm for autumn, too quiet for the ridge. I could feel it, in my bones and behind my eyes, that strange kind of pressure before something happens. But when I told them, they laughed. Like always. Like I was the joke.

“Don’t be weird, Cass,” Mark said, pulling his hoodie tighter. “It’s just a hike.”

It was never just a hike. Not in our town. Not on Hollow Ridge.

They had all gathered at the trailhead just before midnight—Mark, Ella, Reece, and Tara—armed with flashlights and a bottle of cheap bourbon someone had stolen from their older brother. I stood a few steps behind them, trying to make my voice heard through their laughter.

“They say people hear voices up there. Bells in the trees. You know what happened to Milo Hayes, right?”

“He got high and got lost,” Reece muttered. “Probably wandered into a ditch and never came back.”

I looked at Tara, hoping for backup. She was the only one who ever paused when I spoke, but tonight even she avoided my eyes.

“I’m serious,” I whispered. “The forest changes after dark. The map doesn’t matter. Time doesn’t either.”

Mark scoffed. “God, Cass. You sound like those old women in town who wear black lace and read tarot cards behind the diner.”

“I’m not trying to scare you. I’m trying to stop you.”

That’s the thing. They always think you’re just scared. Just being cautious. Just overreacting. But I wasn’t. I saw what the others ignored. I felt what crept behind the trees.

And I remembered.

When I was nine, my uncle disappeared up there. The search lasted weeks. My aunt never spoke again. Every fall since then, I’d felt the forest calling—not with words, but with a pressure like fingers tapping behind my eyes.

They went anyway.

Four laughing shadows swallowed by the trees.

I waited. For ten minutes. For twenty. Then for hours. I sat on a log near the trailhead as the night grew still, colder, quieter. I don’t know why I stayed. Maybe I thought they’d come running back, cheeks flushed, apologizing. Maybe I thought it would change, for once.

But it didn’t.

At 3:12 a.m., I heard the first scream.

It echoed from deep in the ridge, high and sharp, and then it stopped. A long silence followed, and then a second scream—shorter, more like a gasp. And then nothing.

I ran.

But not into the woods. No. I ran home. I told the sheriff. I told my parents. And when they asked me what happened, I said exactly what I’d warned the others.

“They didn’t listen.”

Search parties combed the ridge for three days. Dogs refused to go past the third mile. Flashlights flickered and died. GPS systems spun like broken compasses. The trees shifted. The trails circled. By the fourth day, they found one shoe, a torn hoodie, and Mark’s phone—screen shattered, stuck on a video that played only static.

No bodies. No footprints. No blood.

Just... gone.

The town whispered. Some blamed a bear. Some said the teens had run away. But others—especially the old women in lace behind the diner—looked at me with knowing eyes.

“You warned them,” one whispered, sliding a mug of tea across the counter. “But the ridge chooses.”

Now, every October, I walk by the trailhead.

The wind still feels wrong. The silence still presses. Sometimes, I swear I hear laughter coming from inside the trees—faint and distant, but familiar. Sometimes I hear my name.

They never found the others.

But every year, another group thinks it’s just a hike. That the stories are myths. That I’m just the quiet, strange girl who never smiles.

I still warn them.

Most don’t listen.

But once in a while, someone does.

And they live.