Elián’s hands tightened around the steering wheel as the narrow forest road twisted deeper into the dark. The headlights of his car carved slivers of light into the dense black, the trees pressing closer the farther he went. She’d said she lived "in the woods," but this—this was something else. This was isolation.

He hadn’t told her he was coming. He couldn’t. She would have found a reason to cancel, to vanish again like smoke at sunset. He was tired of wondering, of never knowing what the hell was going on with her. Something wasn’t right. And tonight, he needed to see it for himself.

The car finally rolled to a stop on a patch of overgrown grass. There it was—her house. A crooked little thing, tucked between towering pines, dark windows watching him like eyes. He got out, the door groaning behind him, and made his way to the porch. Knocked once. Then again.

No answer.

The silence out here wasn’t silence at all—it was alive. Insects hummed, branches cracked, something rustled far off in the underbrush. He was about to knock again when a flicker of orange light caught his eye.

A fire. Deeper into the woods.

He hesitated, jaw tightening, then followed the light. Step by step, the dirt gave way to soft moss and broken leaves. The air grew colder.

Then he saw her.

Junie sat by the campfire, her back half-turned to him, black lace sleeves catching the firelight like spiderwebs. Her hair was tied up like always, neck pale in the glow. He opened his mouth to call her name, but the sound never left his throat.

Because something was moving behind her.

It emerged from the trees like a nightmare made flesh—tall, hunched, its skin pale and raw like exposed muscle. Its eyes were wide, unblinking, and sunken deep into its misshapen skull. It limped forward, dragging one clawed foot. Its jaw hung loosely, crooked and full of black teeth.

Elián froze. Every instinct screamed to run, but his feet wouldn’t move. His breath stuttered in his chest.

Junie turned to it and… smiled. Softly.

He watched in disbelief as she knelt beside the thing, murmuring words he couldn’t hear, her fingers brushing over its grotesque shoulder with the tenderness of a mother tending a wounded animal. The creature didn’t resist. It simply stared at her, chest heaving.

She pulled something from a small pouch beside her—gauze, a bottle, he couldn’t tell. And then she began to clean its wounds.

He couldn’t move. Couldn’t blink.

Then another shape emerged. And another. Five, six, maybe more. All different. One was furred, wolf-like but walking on two legs, its eyes glowing like dying coals. Another had too many limbs and dragged them like broken tree branches. One slithered across the ground, long and thin and almost translucent.

Elián’s stomach turned.

What the hell was this?

He felt cold sweat dripping down his back. His heart pounded in his chest, loud and raw. He backed up, a branch snapping under his foot—too loud.

One of them turned. Sniffed the air.

Junie didn’t flinch. Instead, she looked over her shoulder—right at him.

Her eyes, pale and piercing, didn’t widen in surprise. She didn’t call out. She just looked at him, as if she’d known he was there the whole time.

One of the creatures—a skeletal, spider-limbed thing—reached toward her. Elián’s breath caught. But it didn’t attack. It touched her hair. Gently. Like it was stroking a pet. Another rubbed its head against her shoulder.

She whispered something to it, and it melted into the ground beside her like an obedient dog.

Elián stumbled back again, bile rising in his throat.

No. No, this wasn’t real.

He tried to speak, to call her name, but all that came out was a hoarse breath.

She rose slowly, walking toward him with deliberate calm. The creatures didn’t follow, but they watched. Every one of them.

She stopped a few feet in front of him. In the firelight, her pale skin looked almost spectral.

“I didn’t want you to see this,” she said softly.

“What... what is this?” he rasped. His voice sounded foreign to him. “What are they?”