AI The bracken scraped the backs of her calves as she pushed through it, boots crunching dead leaves she’d expected to be crisped by November frost. Instead, the earth under her soles was soft, loamy, dotted with clover that shouldn’t bloom this late in the year. She’d punched out of her Golden Empress delivery shift an hour early, tucking her bike by an oak tree off the park path, and followed the faint thrumming of the Heartstone tucked under her delivery uniform shirt. The silver chain had burned through her hoodie fabric an hour prior, a steady, warm thrum that had led her straight to this patch of trees.
She pushed through the last frond of bracken and froze. The clearing opened up before her, ringed by gnarled oak trunks that twisted overhead, their branches weaving a canopy that blocked out the moon and stars. She’d mapped Richmond Park a dozen times for delivery routes; these oaks weren’t supposed to grow this close together, their bark furrowed with ancient ridges that looked like cracked skin .
She reached up, tugging the Heartstone out from under her shirt. The crimson gem, no bigger than her thumbnail, glinted faintly in the dim quiet, pulsing warm against her palm, brighter now than it ever had before. The unknown benefactor’s text had pinged three days prior: Follow the stone. It will show you the truth behind the scar. She’d deleted the text immediately, blocked the number, but the stone had sat in her junk drawer until last night, when it had started thrumming while she folded delivery uniforms. She’d chalked it up to a faulty battery in the pendant’s hidden charm , until it pulsed through her bag while she was dropping off dumplings in Twickenham, leading her straight to Richmond Park.
The air here didn’t smell like wet park grass and pine. It smelled like jasmine and clover, sweet and heady, with no bite of cold wind. She took a step forward, boots sinking slightly into the loamy earth, and noticed the wildflowers spreading across the clearing: bluebells, buttercups, primroses, all in full bloom, their petals bright even in the near-dark. She’d never seen bluebells in November, not even in the mild Welsh winters her mom talked about.
She knelt, reaching out to brush a finger over a bluebell petal. It withered the second her skin touched it, crumbling into fine black dust that drifted away on a breeze that shouldn’t exist. She pulled her hand back, staring at the dust. No wind stirred the remaining flowers; they stood perfectly still, as if frozen in time.
Her work phone buzzed in her pocket. She fumbled it out, squinting at the screen. 11:27. That was the time she’d walked out of the delivery shop, an hour and a half prior. She pressed the power button, but the screen stayed dark. No low battery warning, no startup chime—just blackness. She shoved it back into her pocket, her palms starting to prick with sweat. At 25, she’d spent too much of her adult life rationalizing away things that didn’t add up. Just a weird microclimate, she thought, tucking a strand of shoulder-length black hair behind her ear. Local park secret.
A sound pricked at her ears. Not the distant bark of a fox, or the hoot of an owl, which she’d expected in the park. A wet, clicking noise, like a tongue lapping at water. She turned her head, scanning the clearing. Nothing. The oaks stood silent, their branches hanging still.
She exhaled evenly. Stupid. She’d followed a hunch, left a shift early, hauled her bike up to Richmond Park in the rain, and now she was chasing a ghost. She started to turn back, towards the bracken, when the clicking noise came again, closer this time.
This time, she saw it, just at the edge of her vision: a flash of pale skin, moving between the oak trunks. She whipped her head left, and nothing was there. Just the smooth, dark dirt of the clearing, the wildflowers swaying slightly —wait, no, the flowers hadn’t moved a second ago. She blinked, and the sway stopped.
She stepped back, her boot catching on something half-buried in the dirt. She knelt, brushing away the loam to reveal a small, carved stone disk, its surface etched with a crescent moon. Her breath caught. She’d gotten that scar on her left wrist when she’d fallen into a dried-up creek bed when she was seven, a piece of carved stone slicing her open. Her mom had called it a stupid childhood accident, a discarded trinket half-buried in the mud.
The Heartstone stopped thrumming. For ten seconds, the clearing was silent, so silent she could hear her own heartbeat thudding in her ears. Then, a whisper slithered through the air, soft and rough, like gravel ground into dust.
Rory.
She stood up fast, knocking over a patch of bluebells. “Who’s there?” Her voice came out quieter than she’d intended, tight with nerves. She’d never been good at reacting to fear, just rationalizing it away until it was too late.
The whisper came again, closer this time. Not your name. Find the scar.
Pins and needles prickled up her left wrist unbidden. She pulled up the cuff of her hoodie, bright blue eyes locking on the thin, crescent-shaped scar curving across her skin. The same shape as the stone disk she’d just uncovered.
She scanned the clearing again, this time slower, looking for any sign of the person who’d spoken. The oak trunks loomed over her, their branches still twisted overhead. She fumbled the penlight from her delivery keychain, clicking it once. The beam cut through the dark, illuminating a cluster of bluebells that had just wilted into black dust, and then a flash of pale skin just ten feet away, between two oaks. She flickered the light, but the shape was gone , leaving only the smooth, dark dirt and the creaking oaks.
A low, humming sound started, deep and resonant, vibrating through the dirt under her boots. It didn’t come from any direction, it just was, filling the clearing, pressing against her eardrums. The wildflowers started to wilt, one by one, their petals turning black and crumbling away. She stepped back, tripping over a root, catching herself on the trunk of one of the oaks.
Her hand slid against the bark, and she pulled it back, staring at her fingers. The bark had sluffed off, revealing a smooth, bone-white surface underneath, no grain, no texture, just pearlescent, living flesh. She yanked her hand away, stumbling back, her eyes locked on the oak trunk. The bark grew back, fast, covering the bone-white surface in rough, dark ridges, but she’d seen it.
The humming got louder, and the movement at the edge of the clearing started again, multiple shapes this time, all tall and thin, their arms hanging down past their knees, their heads tilted at angles that shouldn’t be possible for a human. She blinked, and one of them stepped into the path of her penlight, and she got a clear look: no eyes, just two hollow black sockets, a mouth stretched wide in a permanent, jagged line. She flickered the light away, gasping, clutching at the scar on her wrist, which now burned like it was being pulled open.
She backed up until she hit another oak trunk, her pulse hammering in her throat. The shapes were closing in, moving slow, deliberate, their pale forms flickering in and out of sight as they circled the clearing. The air smelled like iron now, mixing with the jasmine, and the ground trembled slightly under her boots. She could feel the Heartstone in her fist, cold and heavy, no longer warm, no longer pulsing.
A branch creaked overhead, and she looked up, just in time to see a thin, pale hand reaching down from the canopy, fingers curling towards her hair. She ducked, feeling the wind of the fingers pass over her head, and the hand slammed into the dirt where she’d been standing, leaving a small, circular indentation in the loam.
She fumbled for the bracken again, but when she turned towards the edge of the clearing, the bracken was gone , replaced by more oak trunks, more of the smooth, bone-white bark. She was trapped, surrounded by the tall, thin shapes, their whispers winding through the air, all saying the same thing: Find the scar.