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.

They drove in Leo’s sputtering SUV, following roads that grew less paved and more like veins cut through the skin of the earth, until the GPS stopped working and the sky turned heavy with unshed rain. When they arrived, The Hollow didn’t greet them with menace—it was quiet, still, almost reverent, as though it had been holding its breath. The trees were tall and blackened, their bark cracked like old porcelain, and moss veiled the forest floor like a corpse’s shawl. They stepped in, joking nervously, the sunlight dying quickly behind them, and the temperature dropped as though the forest refused to acknowledge the warmth of the outer world. Hours passed. Paths looped. Their markers disappeared. No birds called. No insects buzzed. They were alone.

That first night, they made camp by a creek that whispered like voices muffled behind a curtain. Ethan sketched in his notebook while Maya tried to get a signal. Rachel unpacked food, humming tunelessly. Leo stared into the darkness. "This place doesn’t want us here," he said. No one responded. The fire flickered as if struggling to survive. They heard something move just beyond the tree line—a dragging sound, deliberate and slow. Maya, flashlight in hand, stepped forward and called out. Nothing answered. When morning came, Ethan was gone.

His sketchbook lay in the ashes of the fire pit. The last page was filled with circles—hundreds of them, concentric and precise, drawn in frantic, layered pencil. Rachel wept. Maya cursed. Leo insisted they press deeper, to the Heart Root. "Answers are there," he said. "We’re meant to find it." Rachel disagreed, but she didn’t want to be alone. They walked. The forest twisted as they moved, the air thick with the copper tang of old blood. Sometimes they heard Ethan calling their names. Sometimes it was Ethan’s voice saying things he never would have said.

The second night, Maya woke to the sound of Rachel screaming. She and Leo found her knee-deep in the creek, eyes wild, holding something to her chest—a bloated, dripping doll that looked just like her dead sister. "She’s here," Rachel sobbed, "she wants me to come home." They pulled her back. The doll dissolved into rotting leaves. Rachel didn’t speak again. That day, they found a cabin, half-swallowed by roots, its windows boarded, its roof bowed like a dying man’s spine. Inside were more drawings—of people with no eyes, of trees growing out of open mouths. They found bones in the floorboards. One skull had Maya’s name carved into the forehead. They fled, but night fell like a closing trap, and Rachel vanished between two trees that hadn’t been there seconds before. Maya chased her, screaming her name, but the trees folded shut behind her.

Now it was only Maya and Leo. He had grown distant, whispering to himself, fingers brushing the bark like it spoke to him. Maya confronted him. "You knew this was real," she accused. He looked at her with a gaze as empty as the skull. "I didn’t know it would want you," he said. She struck him. He bled sap. His body cracked. She ran. The forest bent before her. Voices whispered in languages older than memory. She found a field where the trees grew in a circle, roots entwined around a pulsing, stone heart. Ethan was there, his face stretched into bark. Rachel hung from a branch by her hair. Leo stood in the center, smiling, eyes gone, mouth a hollow O. "We’re part of it now," he said. Maya fell to her knees. The ground opened. Roots wrapped her wrists. Her last scream echoed through the canopy and was absorbed.

Years later, a new group of hikers found a map inside a hollow tree. It smelled like old paper and blood. The map had an X labeled "Heart Root." One of them smiled and said, "Looks fun. We should check it out."