Dead Battery

The spring morning did not care about the paranormal. It was aggressively, stupidly alive. Thick yellow pollen coated the black hood of the rented Ford Transit van parked at the edge of the tree line, turning the vehicle into a bruised, fuzzy lemon. The air smelled violently of wet dirt, crushed bluebells, and the sharp tang of pine needles baking in the clear sunlight. It was a Tuesday.

Three people stood just inside the boundary of the woods, sweating in expensive, dark, heavily zippered outdoor gear that had never seen actual weather.

Chad adjusted the heavy gimbal rig, his knuckles white around the grip. His phone, clamped into the center of the contraption, was displaying a live feed of his own face. He was twenty-nine but styled his hair like a nineteen-year-old, a desperate swoop of bleach-blonde that currently stuck to his forehead in wet clumps.

"The connection is garbage," Chad said. He smacked the side of the gimbal. "I'm dropping frames. Kelsie, check the hotspot."

Kelsie did not look up from her iPad. She was twenty-eight, running on three hours of sleep, a violently pink energy drink, and the low-grade panic of a woman who knew her credit card was maxed out. She tapped the screen with a chipped fingernail.

"It's fine on my end," Kelsie said. "We have three bars. Just keep walking. You're losing the chat. They're complaining about the glare."

"They can deal with the glare," Brayden muttered. He was carrying the ring light. It was a massive, unwieldy halo of LEDs attached to a heavy black battery pack strapped to his back. The straps dug into his shoulders, pinching a nerve that made his left pinky go numb. He hated the woods. He hated the bugs. He hated the way the yellow pollen stuck to the sweat on his neck, making him feel like he was being breaded for frying.

"We need them to not deal with it, Brayden," Chad said, walking backward over the uneven ground, keeping the camera pointed at his own face. "We need the engagement. If we don't hit ten thousand concurrents today, the energy drink sponsor drops us. I'm not going back to selling phones at the mall."

They pushed deeper into the trees. The woods of Blackwood Ridge had a reputation on the internet. A local legend claimed a settler town had vanished here in the 1840s. The reality of the forest, however, was just a mess of overgrown oak, aggressive brambles, and a carpet of slick, decaying leaves left over from autumn, now pushing up bright green shoots of spring grass.

The ground was soft. Too soft. Spring rains had saturated the limestone bedrock below the soil, dissolving the ancient stone into a porous, unstable sponge. The omniscient perspective of the forest knew this. The water table had dropped over the winter, leaving vast, empty caverns just inches beneath the topsoil.

Chad stepped backward, his heel sinking past the moss and into the black mud.

"Bro, this is completely chalked," Chad said, his voice rising in pitch. He stared at the screen. "The chat is literally dead. They're saying we're faking the scary vibes because it's too sunny."

"Tell them to wait until we find the graveyard," Kelsie said, swatting a gnat away from her eye.

Chad took one more step back.

There was no sound of tearing rock. There was no dramatic rumble. The ground simply ceased to exist beneath Chad's feet.

One second, he was standing there, complaining about the chat. The next second, he dropped straight down, like a heavy stone dropped down a well. A single, sharp "Hey!" escaped his throat before he vanished into the earth. The gimbal, the phone, the bleach-blonde hair, gone.

A cloud of dry brown dirt puffed up from the perfectly circular hole left in the forest floor, drifting into the bright shafts of spring sunlight.

Brayden stopped walking. The heavy ring light bumped against his shoulder. He blinked.

"Chad?" Brayden said.

Kelsie looked up from the iPad. "Did he trip? Tell me he didn't break the gimbal."

"He didn't trip," Brayden said. His stomach turned over, a cold, heavy lump dropping into his pelvis. He walked forward, his cheap sneakers squeaking on the wet leaves. He reached the edge of the hole.

It was about four feet wide. The edges were perfectly sheer, cutting through layers of brown dirt, gray clay, and thick, pale tree roots. Brayden peered over the edge. It was dark. Impossibly dark. The smell of ancient, stale air drifted up, carrying the scent of raw iron and cold mud. There was no bottom visible.

"Chad!" Brayden yelled, his voice cracking.

Kelsie jogged over, the iPad clutched to her chest. She looked down. All the color drained from her face, leaving her pale beneath her expensive contouring makeup.

"Oh my god," Kelsie whispered. "Oh my god, where did he go?"

"He just fell," Brayden said. He dropped to his knees, ignoring the wet mud soaking into his jeans. "Chad! Can you hear me?"

Silence echoed back up. Not even the sound of shifting dirt.

"We need to call someone," Kelsie said, her fingers flying over the iPad screen. "We need to call 911. Or the fire department. Who do you call for a hole?"

"Call 911," Brayden said, his breath coming short and fast. He leaned further over the edge, shining the ring light down into the pit. The bright white LEDs illuminated about twenty feet of sheer dirt walls before the light was swallowed by the dark. "I can't see him. I can't even see the bottom."

Kelsie tapped her phone, holding it to her ear. She pulled it away, stared at the screen, and tapped it again.

"It's not dialing," she said.

"What do you mean it's not dialing?"

"I mean it's not dialing, Brayden!" Kelsie yelled, the panic finally breaking through her professional vlogger detachment. "I have zero bars. The hotspot is dead. The stream is down."

"You just said we had three bars!"

"I know what I said!" Kelsie pointed at the sky. "Look!"

Brayden tilted his head back. The bright blue sky, which had been perfectly visible through the budding branches just five minutes ago, was gone.

The trees were moving.

It was not the wind. There was no wind. The massive, ancient oaks and tall pines were physically leaning inward. The thick trunks groaned, a low, structural sound like the hull of a wooden ship taking on water. The branches above them were twisting, interlocking, weaving together like a massive green net. The bright green spring leaves overlapped, shutting out the sun.

Beneath their feet, the ground vibrated. The thick, pale roots that stuck out of the sides of the sinkhole began to slide backward into the dirt, retreating into the earth like pale, blind worms.

"They're moving," Brayden said, his mouth dry. He scrambled backward away from the hole. "The trees are literally moving."

"They're blocking the signal," Kelsie said, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. She stared at the iPad. The "No Service" icon blinked in the top corner. "They know we need the signal."

"Trees don't know what a cell signal is, Kelsie!" Brayden yelled. He grabbed the battery pack on his back, making sure the connection to the ring light was secure. The woods were getting dark. The overlapping canopy was choking out the daylight, turning the bright spring morning into a deep, sickly twilight.

"We need to go back to the van," Kelsie said. She shoved the iPad into her backpack. "We get in the van, we drive down the mountain, we get the cops."

Brayden froze. His eyes locked onto Kelsie's face. The heavy battery pack suddenly felt like a tombstone strapped to his spine.

"Kelsie," Brayden said slowly.

"What?"

"Who was driving?"

Kelsie stared at him. Her mouth opened slightly.

"Chad," she whispered.

"And where does Chad keep the keys when he shoots?"

Kelsie looked at the perfectly round hole in the earth. "In his back pocket."

"The keys are in the hole," Brayden said. He rubbed his face with his dirty hands. The yellow pollen smeared across his cheeks. "The van keys are in the hole."

"We can break the window. Hotwire it."

"It's a 2026 Transit, Kelsie. You can't hotwire it with two wires like a movie. It's basically a rolling computer. If we don't have the fob, it's a giant metal brick."

A sharp, cracking sound echoed through the twilight woods.

They both whipped around. The ring light cast a harsh, flat white glow across the tree trunks, creating long, distorted shadows that stretched deep into the woods.

About fifty yards away, something was standing between two large oak trees.

It looked vaguely human, but its proportions were entirely wrong. The arms were too long, the knuckles dragging against the wet leaves. It wore the rotting, dirt-caked remnants of 19th-century clothing—a tattered wool coat that hung off its skeletal frame. Its skin was the color of old cement. Its jaw hung open at an impossible angle, revealing a black, empty mouth.

This was Elias. Elias had died of exposure in 1842 after getting lost looking for his stray cow. He had spent the last hundred and eighty years wandering these woods, fueled by a blind, miserable rage. He hated the living. He hated the noise they made. And he really, really hated the bright white ring light.

Elias let out a wet, rattling hiss. He raised his long, gray arms and lunged forward, moving with terrifying, supernatural speed.

"Run!" Brayden screamed.

He turned and sprinted, the heavy battery pack throwing him off balance. Kelsie was right beside him, her backpack slapping against her shoulders. They tore through the underbrush, thorns tearing at their expensive nylon jackets.

Behind them, the hissing grew louder. The dead man was closing the distance. The sound of his rotting boots tearing through the dead leaves was a frantic, terrifying rhythm.

Brayden risked a glance over his shoulder. Elias was twenty yards away, his jaw unhinged, his hollow eyes locked on them. He was a nightmare made flesh, a terrifying manifestation of the haunted woods.

Then, Elias stepped on a thick, moss-covered tree root.

The ghost's ankle rolled.

With a loud, wet smack, the terrifying apparition of Blackwood Ridge faceplanted into the mud. His long limbs tangled in the brambles. He slid forward a few feet, completely eating dirt, and came to a stop with his face buried in a patch of crushed bluebells.

Brayden slowed down. He stopped, chest heaving, the ring light bobbing on his shoulder.

Kelsie stopped a few feet ahead. She looked back, panting, wiping sweat and pollen from her forehead.

"Did the ghost..." Kelsie started, gasping for air. "Did he just trip?"

Elias pushed himself up. He looked furious. The dignity of his terrifying charge was completely ruined. Mud coated the front of his ragged coat. A single bluebell was stuck to his gray forehead. He let out another hiss, angrier this time, and scrambled to his feet.

He lunged again. He took three massive, terrifying strides.

His toe caught a loop of thorny vine.

Elias pitched forward, his arms windmilling wildly. He crashed headfirst into the trunk of a pine tree, bounced off, and landed flat on his back in the dirt.

Brayden let out a sound that was half-sob, half-laugh. The sheer, absurd reality of the situation broke his brain for a second. The ghost was terrifying, but he was also incredibly clumsy.

"He's got zero coordination," Brayden said, his voice shaking. "He's got literally zero spatial awareness."

Elias sat up. He grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it at them in pure frustration. He let out a low, miserable moan, grabbed the tree trunk, and started hauling himself up again.

"Don't laugh at him!" Kelsie yelled, grabbing Brayden's sleeve. "It's making him mad! Keep running!"

They took off again, plunging deeper into the dark, shifting woods. The trees continued to move around them, trunks sliding through the soft earth, closing off the path behind them. The forest was funneling them, forcing them in a specific direction.

The battery pack on Brayden's back beeped. A sharp, high-pitched warning sound.

"No, no, no," Brayden muttered. He slapped the side of the pack. The ring light flickered, dropping to fifty percent brightness. The shadows around them immediately leaped closer.

"Is it dying?" Kelsie asked, her voice tight with panic.

"Chad forgot to charge it last night," Brayden said, panic rising in his chest. "He was supposed to plug it in, but he fell asleep watching TikToks!"

"I am going to kill him when we find him," Kelsie said.

They pushed through a thick wall of rhododendron bushes, the heavy green leaves slapping against their faces, dusting them with more yellow pollen. They stumbled out into a small, circular clearing.

The canopy above this clearing was completely sealed. Not a single drop of sunlight made it through. The only illumination came from the failing ring light strapped to Brayden's shoulder.

The ground here was different. It was perfectly smooth mud, completely devoid of leaves or grass. It looked like it had been swept clean.

In the exact center of the clearing, something was glowing.

A small, rectangular patch of bright, unnatural light.

Sound drifted toward them. It was tinny and distorted, echoing strangely in the damp air. It was a bouncy, heavily bass-boosted pop song—a trending audio bite from 2026 that had been inescapable on the internet for the last three months.

Brayden walked forward, the mud pulling at his sneakers. He pointed the ring light down.

It was Chad's phone.

The screen was cracked, a spiderweb of shattered glass radiating from the bottom left corner. It was half-buried in the smooth mud. The gimbal was gone.

The phone was playing a video on loop. A teenager doing a complicated hand dance in a brightly lit kitchen. The video ended, restarted, and the bouncy pop song played again.

Brayden dropped to his knees. He picked up the phone. The back of it was coated in thick, sticky mud. He looked around the clearing.

"Chad?" Brayden called out.

Nothing.

"Where is he?" Kelsie asked, walking up behind him. She looked at the smooth mud. "He fell down the hole. How did his phone get all the way out here?"

Brayden looked at the screen. The signal bar in the top corner showed zero bars. The battery was at twelve percent.

He looked down at the mud where the phone had been resting. There were no footprints. There was no sign that anyone had walked into the clearing and dropped it. The mud was perfectly undisturbed.

"He didn't drop it," Brayden said, his voice hollow.

"What do you mean?"

"Look at the mud, Kelsie. Nobody walked here." Brayden swallowed the acid backing up into his throat. He looked at the thick, pale tree roots that ringed the edge of the clearing. They were the same roots he had seen sticking out of the sides of the sinkhole.

The roots were moving. Slowly, quietly, they were sliding through the mud, pushing toward the center of the clearing.

"The roots brought it here," Brayden whispered.

Kelsie backed away. "Why would they do that?"

"Bait," Brayden said.

The battery pack on his back beeped a second time. A long, flat tone.

The ring light flickered once, spat a tiny blue spark, and plunged them into absolute blackness as the wet, tearing sound of the roots closed in from all sides.