The Black Harvest of Sterling Hill

The Black Harvest

There’s a place in Connecticut the locals call the Silent Circle, a patch of forest that devours everything living. No birds sing, no crickets chirp, and no sunlight breaks through the canopy. At its center lies Sterling Hill—a town erased from history after the Black Harvest of 1894.

Tina Marchand, a hardened investigative journalist, heard the rumors. An entire town gone overnight. The few who spoke of it did so with trembling hands, muttering phrases like “the harvest” and “the screaming tree.” Ignoring the warnings, Tina decided to uncover the truth.

The Road to Darkness

The drive started like any other. Narrow roads twisted through skeletal trees as the late-autumn chill seeped into her car. Then the GPS died, its screen showing a blank, static-laden map. Her phone refused to connect.

The first sign of wrongness came with the mist. It seeped from the ground, crawling up the trees in thin, writhing tendrils. Her car headlights dimmed, unable to cut through its thickness. The silence pressed down on her like a weight—no rustling leaves, no distant hum of life. Just the engine’s sputter and the faint tap-tap of her heart.

She found the town at the end of the road, marked by a decayed archway. A crooked sign dangled from rusted chains, its lettering barely visible through years of weathering:

“Sterling Hill. Do Not Enter.”

The air turned colder when she stepped out of her car.

A Town Frozen in Terror

Sterling Hill looked eerily untouched. Cobblestone streets wove between homes with warped roofs and shattered windows. Everything stood still—too still. Tina’s camera snapped photo after photo of empty streets and sagging buildings.

That’s when she saw the first figure.

At the town well stood a woman, her back to Tina. Her dress, a faded Victorian style, clung to her emaciated frame.

“Hello?” Tina called.

The figure didn’t move.

Tina approached slowly, her flashlight trembling in her grip. The woman’s face came into view. Her lips were pulled back into a grotesque scream, her eyes wide and glassy. Her flesh wasn’t flesh at all—it was ashen, like petrified wood, with veins of black ichor trailing down her cheeks.

Behind the woman, more figures emerged. A man crouched over a toppled barrel, his hands clutching his face. A child stood in the doorway of a bakery, its tiny hand raised in a frozen plea. Each figure was carved into horrific poses of terror, their bodies cracked and gray, their eyes locked on some unseen horror.

Tina stumbled back, bile rising in her throat. These weren’t statues. They were people.

The Whispers Begin

The first sound broke the silence like a knife across glass—a low, raspy sigh.

It came from everywhere and nowhere, reverberating through her skull. Tina swung her flashlight wildly, illuminating nothing but the mist curling unnaturally close to her feet. The whispers followed.

"She’s here. Let her see."

"Another for the roots."

The voices overlapped, growing louder, more insistent. Tina clutched her head, trying to block them out, but they were inside her skull now, worms burrowing into her thoughts.

Ahead, the town center loomed. At its heart was a massive tree, its gnarled branches reaching toward the sky like claws. The earth around its base pulsed, black and wet. The air was thick with rot and the metallic tang of blood.

The Screaming Tree

As Tina approached, she realized the tree wasn’t alone. Dozens of figures knelt beneath it, their bodies tangled in its roots. Their mouths gaped open, yet no sound escaped. The bark of the tree glistened, shifting like it was alive, the wood pulsating in time with her heartbeat.

Then the faces appeared.

They pushed through the bark, one by one—distorted, screaming, their expressions frozen in eternal agony. A child’s face twisted alongside an old man’s. A woman’s lips peeled back into a hideous grin, revealing rows of blackened teeth.

The tree groaned, its trunk splitting open to reveal something worse. Inside, something writhed—a fleshy mass of twisting limbs and mouths that stretched too wide, too deep.

The whispers turned into a deafening roar.

"Feed the roots. Feed the harvest."

The thing lunged, impossibly fast, a root snaking out and wrapping around her ankle. Tina screamed, her flashlight falling to the ground as the world turned black.

The Price of Curiosity

She awoke in her car, gasping for air. The town was gone. The mist had cleared, and the road stretched endlessly before her. Trembling, she sped home, leaving Sterling Hill far behind.

But the nightmare wasn’t over.

Back at her apartment, Tina reviewed her footage. The first few photos were normal—abandoned buildings, empty streets. But then came the final image: the screaming tree. At its base was a figure.

Herself.

Her phone buzzed violently, the screen flashing static before a single message appeared:

"You saw it. You belong to it."

She glanced at her reflection in the dark screen. Her eyes were wrong—black veins spidering through the whites.

And behind her, just out of focus, stood the tree.

Its faces grinned.