Where the Trees Watch – Chapter 27
The River Blackwood Tried to Hide
Walter stood near the edge of the trees holding a lantern low beside his leg while fog drifted heavily around him. The pale yellow light illuminated his tired face beneath the hood of his rain jacket, yet Ryan no longer trusted what faces meant inside Blackwood.
Not after Tower Four.
Not after seeing himself sitting calmly upstairs.
Ryan Mercer stared toward the ranger carefully while whistles echoed softly through the forest behind them. Lantern figures continued climbing the ridge below the tower in slow silent lines beneath the fog.
Mason whispered beside him, “Don’t go near him.”
Walter heard it.
“I’m real,” he said immediately.
The response came too fast.
Ryan’s stomach tightened.
Every copy in Blackwood claimed the same thing.
Walter slowly raised the lantern slightly. “If Claire reaches the river, you won’t get her back.”
Ryan looked toward the descending trail disappearing deeper into the forest behind the tower. Somewhere far below through the fog, he thought he heard faint movement between the trees.
Claire.
Still walking.
The ranger stepped closer into clearer view. “You don’t have much time.”
Ryan studied him carefully. The face looked exhausted, frightened, human. But after hours inside Blackwood, human meant almost nothing anymore.
Then Ryan noticed something.
Walter cast a shadow.
Small detail.
But every copy Ryan had encountered inside Blackwood seemed subtly disconnected from the world around them. Reflections delayed. Movements too smooth. Eyes slightly wrong beneath light.
Walter simply looked tired.
Mason noticed too.
Slowly, cautiously, he lowered the flashlight tripod slightly.
Ryan finally asked, “How did you get here?”
Walter’s expression darkened.
“I followed the whistles.”
The answer unsettled Ryan immediately.
“That’s exactly what you told us not to do.”
Walter nodded once. “Because the forest only calls people it already knows.”
Cold silence settled briefly around the tower while the lantern lights continued drifting closer through the trees below the ridge.
Then Walter looked directly at Ryan.
“It knows you now.”
The sentence carried a strange weight Ryan couldn’t fully explain. Almost like confirmation rather than warning.
A distant whistle echoed somewhere below the cliffs.
Farther away—
another answered.
Walter immediately turned toward the descending trail. “Move.”
This time nobody argued.
The three men hurried downhill through Blackwood while darkness deepened rapidly beneath the towering pines. The trail descending from Tower Four looked ancient and half-swallowed by roots and moss, barely visible beneath drifting fog curling between the trees around them.
The farther they descended, the stranger the forest became.
Massive trees leaned unnaturally close together overhead until the path resembled a tunnel carved through black wood and darkness. Long strips of faded cloth hung from branches everywhere now — old trail markers rotting slowly among the pines.
And occasionally Ryan noticed names carved into the bark.
Hundreds of names.
Some fresh.
Some ancient.
The forest remembered everyone who entered it.
Then they heard the water.
A river somewhere ahead moving heavily through darkness beneath the trees.
Walter’s pace immediately quickened.
“Faster.”
Ryan frowned while stepping over thick roots crossing the trail. “What happens at the river?”
The ranger didn’t answer immediately.
Finally he said quietly, “That’s where Blackwood keeps the forgotten.”
The words settled coldly inside Ryan’s chest.
The trail suddenly opened ahead into a massive clearing swallowed by fog.
And all three men stopped instantly.
A river stretched through the center of the clearing beneath pale moonlight filtering weakly through the canopy overhead. Black water moved silently between smooth stones while enormous dead trees leaned over both banks like broken skeletons.
But that wasn’t what stopped Ryan.
People stood inside the river.
Dozens of them.
Men.
Women.
Children.
Standing motionless waist-deep in the black water beneath drifting fog.
None moved.
None spoke.
They simply stared forward blankly while the river carried dark currents around them.
And among those silent figures—
Claire slowly walked into the water.