The Whispering Pines

The dense fog clung to the ancient pines like a shroud, muffling the sounds of Sarah’s boots crushing damp leaves. She’d ignored the locals’ warnings about the forest—“No one walks in after dark and comes back the same”—dismissing it as 迷信 for tourists. But now, as the first tendrils of night curled through the trees, she felt eyes on her, watching from the shadows.
The trail had vanished an hour ago. Sarah’s flashlight flickered, casting distorted shapes on the gnarled tree trunks. Then she heard it: a faint, breathy whisper, too low to understand, but undeniably human. “Hello?” Her voice cracked. The whisper answered, closer now, like a chorus of voices overlapping in a language that wasn’t quite English.

She stumbled into a clearing she didn’t remember passing. At its center lay a circle of stones, moss-covered and cracked, with a single rusted lantern hanging from a branch overhead. Inside the lantern, a pale blue flame flickered, casting light on the bones scattered at her feet—small, fragile, like a child’s. The whisper rose to a crescendo, and Sarah realized with horror that the voices were coming from the trees themselves. Their bark seemed to twist, forming faint, faces, mouths moving in silent screams.
A cold hand closed around her wrist. She spun, heart lurching, but there was no one there—only the feeling of fingers digging into her skin, growing colder by the second. The lantern’s flame died, plunging her into darkness. The whispers turned to laughter, hollow and echoing, as the ground beneath her trembled. Sarah screamed as something tugged at her legs, dragging her toward the stone circle. The last thing she saw was a pair of glowing eyes in the trees, and the faint outline of a figure—human, but wrong—stalking closer, its mouth stretched into a grin that split its face.
When the sun rose, the forest was silent. No trace of Sarah remained, save for a single flashlight lying in the dirt, its beam still flickering—pointing toward the whispering pines, where the faces in the bark seemed to smile, ever so slightly, at their newest victim.