The asphalt of Route 9 simply surrenders to the ferns. Ivy kills the engine, but the silence that follows is not empty; it is a heavy, damp thing that tastes of old iron and wet cedar. Fog presses against the windshield like a living palm, blurring the world until the hood of her car is the only certain thing left in the universe. She traces the jagged handwriting on the letter in her lap, the ink twenty years too fresh to be real.
She is waiting where the road forgets itself. Ivy grips the steering wheel, her knuckles white beneath the dim glow of the dashboard lights. The village of Blackbrook is not on the GPS, and it is not on the paper maps she bought in the valley, yet the smell of woodsmoke is drifting through the vents. It is a sharp, inviting scent that defies the suffocating mist. She reaches for the door handle, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
High beams cut two yellow tunnels into the shifting white wall of the forest. The pines are too tall, their needles black and weeping with condensation. Movement flickers at the edge of the light, a hitch in the fog that shouldn't be there. A silhouette detached from the treeline and took a slow, deliberate step into the glare of the headlights.
