The Whispering Pines

He went into the storm to prove he wasn't crazy. Now, lost in the woods, he's discovered the voices are real, and they are hunting him.

"Just start. Just please, for the love of God, start."

The pull cord ripped through my gloves, a useless, scraping sound against the drone of the wind. The generator coughed once—a wet, pathetic sputter—and then fell silent. I gave it another pull. Nothing. A third, this time with all my weight, a grunt tearing from my throat that the wind snatched away immediately. The cord went slack in my hand.

I kicked the plastic housing, a stupid, childish act that sent a painful vibration up my leg. The silence in its wake was heavier than the noise had been. No hum of electricity. No refrigerator buzz. No light besides the weak grey afternoon filtering through the snow-caked windows. And the wind. Always the wind, scouring the logs of the cabin like it was trying to peel them back to get at me.

This was the point. Solitude. Disconnect. A real, honest-to-God writer’s retreat where the only voice I had to listen to was my own. Finish the manuscript, lick my wounds, figure out who I was without Chloe’s reflection staring back at me. A month, I’d told my agent. A month of off-grid focus. But the generator had only lasted five days.

I stumbled back inside, kicking snow from my boots. The cabin was already colder. I could see my breath, a pale ghost in the gloom. I lit the kerosene lantern on the table, the hiss and pop of the mantle catching flame a small comfort. Its light pushed the shadows into the corners, making them deeper, more absolute. The windows were just white squares now, the world outside erased by the storm.

I sat at my laptop, the battery icon a tiny, draining heart. 87%. Maybe three hours if I was lucky. The screen was too bright, a sterile blue-white rectangle in the warm, flickering lamplight. The page was blank. The cursor blinked. Blinked. Blinked. A tiny, rhythmic accusation.

And then I heard it.

*Lenny…*

The voice was thin, almost lost in a gust that rattled the window frames. I stopped breathing. It sounded like a loose shingle, a branch scraping the roof. It sounded like anything but what I knew it was.

It was Chloe’s voice.

I squeezed my eyes shut. No. Not here. This was the one place she couldn’t be. I had driven eight hours north of Toronto, then another forty-five minutes down an unplowed service road to get here. There was no cell service, no internet. She was a ghost of the city, a phantom of phone calls I wouldn't answer and texts I immediately deleted. She had no place here.

I forced my fingers back to the keyboard, typing nonsense. *The cold was a thing with teeth. The wind had a voice.* Cliché garbage. My hands were trembling.

*Lenny… where are you?*

This time it was clearer. It coiled around the corner of the cabin and slipped through a crack in the doorframe. I stood up so fast my chair screeched against the floorboards. I went to the door, pressed my ear against the cold, rough wood. All I could hear was the storm’s endless howl and the frantic drumming of my own heart.

I was just tired. Malnourished. I’d been living off canned soup and stale crackers. Stress. Grief. The mind does strange things when it’s starving and alone. It creates echoes. That’s all this was. An echo in the architecture of my skull.

I went back to the table, sat down, and stared at the blinking cursor. But I couldn't unhear it. The whisper was stuck in my ear, a tiny, perfect recording of her disappointment.

For the next hour, it was a kind of torture. Long stretches of silence where I’d start to relax, my shoulders unknotting, my breathing evening out. I’d type a sentence, maybe even two. And then the wind would shift, and it would bring her with it. *Why did you leave, Lenny? It’s so cold out here…*

It wasn't just in my head. I was sure of it. It was outside. It had to be. Some freak acoustic effect of the wind hitting the pines. A pocket of air carrying a sound from miles away. It had to be something rational, something I could find and see and understand. Because the alternative was that I was finally, completely, breaking apart.

I couldn’t take it anymore. The blinking cursor, the darkening room, the voice in the storm. I stood up, the decision made in a rush of desperate energy. I wasn't going to be haunted in my own sanctuary.

I pulled on my heaviest coat, my insulated boots, the gloves that were still damp. I topped off the lantern with kerosene, the chemical smell sharp and clean. The wick sputtered, then burned with a steady, determined light. I took a deep breath, unbolted the door, and stepped out into the white chaos.

The cold was a physical blow. It slammed into my lungs and stung my eyes. The snow was almost to my knees, a thick, powdery trap. The wind shoved me back against the cabin, trying to force me inside. But I leaned into it, my world shrinking to the bobbing yellow circle cast by the lantern.

"Chloe?" I shouted, the word stolen from my mouth before it had fully formed.

Nothing. Just the roar.

I started walking, pushing away from the relative safety of the cabin walls and into the treeline. The whisper had seemed to come from the west. I aimed myself that way, one gloved hand held up to shield the lantern’s glass from the wind. Every step was a battle. Snow poured into the tops of my boots, melting instantly into icy water.

*Lenny… so close…*

The voice was right there, just ahead of me. It wasn't an echo anymore. It was a guide. I pushed forward, faster now, branches whipping at my face, dumping their loads of snow down my collar. The trees were thick here, their dark trunks a maze in the lantern light. Shadows leaped and danced, twisting into monstrous shapes at the edge of my vision.

I walked for what felt like an hour, though it was probably only fifteen minutes. The exertion made me sweat despite the cold. My legs burned. I paused, leaning against a thick pine to catch my breath, and made the mistake of looking back.

There was nothing behind me. No trail. No footprints. The snow was falling so thick and fast it was covering my path as I made it. A smooth, unmarked blanket of white stretched back into the darkness. The cabin was gone. Every landmark was gone.

Panic, cold and sharp, stabbed me in the gut. I was lost.

"Okay, Lenny, don't panic. Just... just retrace your..." My own voice was thin, pathetic against the storm. Retrace what? There was nothing to retrace.

And the whispers changed. It wasn't just Chloe anymore. A new voice joined hers, deeper, rougher. Then another, a high, childlike murmur. They overlapped, a chorus of disjointed words that I couldn't quite make out. They came from all directions at once, weaving through the trees, swirling around me in the wind. I spun in a circle, holding the lantern out, trying to pinpoint a source. But they were everywhere.

I was losing my mind. This was it. The final break. The thing I had run all this way to escape was happening right here, in the middle of a frozen, anonymous forest.

I had to keep moving. Standing still was death. I picked a direction—one that felt no different from any other—and plunged forward. I wasn't searching for the source anymore. I was just searching for a way out.

The chorus of voices grew louder, more insistent. They weren't calling my name anymore. They were just murmuring, a jumble of sounds like a crowded room heard through a thick wall. I tripped over a hidden root and went down hard, the lantern swinging wildly and nearly extinguishing. I scrambled back up, my knees soaked, my heart hammering against my ribs.

That’s when I broke through the trees and stumbled into the clearing.

They were tall, impossibly so. At least a dozen of them, scattered across the small, circular space. Figures made of woven branches, twisted limbs, and what looked like long strips of peeling bark. They were vaguely human-shaped, with spindly arms and legs and featureless heads, all angled toward the sky. They swayed in the wind, each with its own jerky, arrhythmic motion, like terrible, broken marionettes.

The whispering was coming from them. It emanated from the figures themselves, a low, thrumming hum of a thousand voices trapped in the wood. I stood there, paralyzed, the lantern held out in a trembling hand. The light played over their forms, revealing the intricate, nightmarish construction. They weren't carved; they were woven, grown, twisted into these shapes.

My breath hitched. My mind refused to process what I was seeing. It was impossible. A folk art installation left by some madman in the middle of nowhere. It had to be.

Then the lantern flickered.

The steady yellow light faltered, dimmed, then flared brightly for a second. The kerosene. I had been out too long. It flickered again, casting the clearing in a strobe of light and shadow. The swaying figures seemed to lurch with each pulse of light, their movements growing more frantic, more alive.

I fumbled with the fuel cap, my fingers numb and useless. Too late. The flame shrank to a tiny blue bead on the wick, the hiss died, and the world plunged into absolute darkness.

Silence. The wind died down in that exact moment. The chorus of whispers stopped. The only sound was the blood roaring in my ears.

It was a blackness so complete it felt solid, pressing in on my eyes. I couldn't see the trees, the snow, my own hand in front of my face. I was utterly, terrifyingly blind.

A sharp *crack* echoed through the clearing. The sound of a large, dry branch snapping under immense pressure. It was close. Too close.

Then came another sound. A slow, scraping drag. The sound of wood and bark and something heavy being pulled through deep snow. It wasn't the wind. It wasn't a tree. One of them had moved.

A dry, multi-jointed crack echoed from my right, and the heavy sound of something inhumanly patient began to drag itself through the snow toward me.