Where the Trees Watch – Chapter 13
The Woman in the Red Jacket
The figure stood perfectly still between the trees below the hidden trail, partially obscured by drifting fog and the dense black pines surrounding her. Even from this distance, Ryan could clearly make out the faded red jacket hanging motionless against the darkness of the woods.
The same jacket from the recording.
Ryan Mercer felt his pulse quicken painfully while every instinct told him to step backward away from the hidden path. Beside him, Claire slowly lowered her camera without taking her eyes off the figure.
“Mason…” she whispered.
The guide had already seen it.
His face tightened immediately. “Don’t speak to her.”
Ryan frowned. “You think that’s the missing hiker?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
The woman below the trail still hadn’t moved. Fog drifted slowly around her legs while branches overhead creaked softly in the wind. The forest itself seemed darker around that section of trees somehow, like the shadows there carried more weight than the rest of Blackwood.
Then the woman tilted her head slightly.
Not naturally.
Too far.
Ryan physically felt cold spread down his spine.
Claire stepped backward instinctively. “Okay… no.”
The figure smiled.
Even from this distance, the expression looked horribly wrong. The mouth stretched too wide across her face while the rest of her features remained hidden beneath fog and shadow.
Then she raised one arm slowly and pointed deeper down the hidden trail behind her.
The whistle echoed again.
Closer now.
Ryan realized with growing horror that it came from somewhere directly behind the smiling woman among the trees.
Something else stood farther back in the fog.
Watching too.
Mason grabbed Ryan’s shoulder hard. “We’re leaving.”
The guide began backing away immediately toward the main trail, clearly done arguing about it. Claire followed without hesitation this time, her earlier curiosity completely gone beneath visible fear.
Ryan lingered one second longer staring at the woman below the path.
Something about her face bothered him deeply.
Not just the smile.
Recognition.
Then it hit him.
The face in the recording hadn’t been copied imperfectly.
It had looked unfinished.
Like something halfway through becoming human.
The woman suddenly took one slow step forward through the fog.
Ryan backed away immediately.
The movement felt deliberate, testing him somehow.
Then another shape appeared between the trees behind her.
Tall.
Thin.
Standing unnaturally straight among the pines.
And then another farther back.
More silhouettes slowly emerging through the fog behind the red-jacketed woman.
Watching silently.
Ryan turned and hurried after the others without another word.
They followed the mapped trail north through Blackwood for nearly two hours afterward without stopping. Nobody mentioned the woman again, though Ryan noticed Claire constantly glancing behind them now as if expecting to see the red jacket between the trees.
The deeper they traveled into the forest, the stranger Blackwood became.
The trees grew larger here, their trunks twisting unnaturally high overhead until sunlight barely reached the ground. Moss covered nearly every surface while thick roots pushed through the soil like veins beneath the trail. Several times Ryan noticed entire clusters of trees arranged in rough circles, their branches intertwined above like cages.
And the silence kept getting worse.
No birds.
No insects.
Nothing alive.
Only the sound of their own footsteps and distant wind moving somewhere high above the forest canopy.
Then, sometime late in the afternoon, Mason abruptly stopped walking again.
This time nobody asked why.
They all saw it immediately.
The trail ahead ended at a campsite.
Fresh campsite.
Tents.
Extinguished firepit.
Equipment bags still scattered around the clearing.
Yet no people anywhere.
Ryan slowly stepped forward into the clearing while cold uneasiness tightened through his chest. One of the tents had been ripped open from the inside. Another lay collapsed near the firepit beneath broken branches and mud.
Claire looked around nervously. “Someone was here recently.”
Ryan noticed plates of untouched food near the dead fire.
Still warm.