Chapter 3 : Whispers in the Mist
527 Words
The morning fog was thicker than the night before, draping the small town like a silent curtain. Clara stood outside the clinic with a steaming cup of coffee in her hands, gazing toward the barely visible ridge in the distance. The air was rich with the scent of damp earth—and something more elusive. Unease.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the man she'd met in the woods. Liam. Even after she got home, his eyes lingered in her mind—those storm-gray eyes, quiet and haunted, like a warning before thunder.
“What are you doing, Clara,” she muttered to herself, shaking her head. She had come here to escape the chaos, not get wrapped up in a new kind of mystery.
She had just unlocked the clinic door when a sharp knock startled her. The bell above the door hadn’t even stopped ringing.
It was Nancy, her middle-aged neighbor, clutching her trembling hunting dog.
“He ran off last night,” Nancy panted, her face pale. “I found him by the edge of the woods this morning—like this. Spooked out of his mind.”
Clara crouched to examine the dog. No wounds, but its body was rigid, eyes wide with raw fear.
“It looks like extreme trauma,” Clara murmured. “Are you sure he was only out for one night?”
Nancy nodded but bit her lip and said nothing more.
Clara soothed the animal with gentle hands, but inside, something stirred. This wasn’t the first strange case. Since her arrival, she’d heard whispers—pets vanishing, some returning changed. Others attacking their owners without warning.
It all seemed to point toward something hidden, something feral.
She couldn’t help but think of the man by the stream. Of the way he had stood so still, so silent. Like he belonged to the forest more than to the town.
By late afternoon, Clara returned to the trail behind the clinic, drawn back to the place where she had first seen Liam. Sunlight filtered through the thinning mist, casting watery light over the brook. She knelt down, running her fingers over the moss-covered stones.
“You shouldn’t be out here alone.”
The voice drifted through the fog like a breeze.
She turned quickly. Liam stood not far away, wrapped in shadow, wearing that same dark coat that seemed to swallow the light around him.
“Do you always haunt the woods?” she asked, trying to mask her unease with humor.
“I’m warning you, Clara,” he said, stepping closer, voice low. “There are things that wake in these woods. They don’t care how kind you are.”
“You mean things like you?” she snapped, the question escaping before she could stop it.
He didn’t answer. But he didn’t deny it.
Silence stretched between them like a taut wire.
“You know something,” she said quietly. “The missing animals. The ones that come back terrified. What’s out here, Liam?”
He looked at her, pain flickering in his eyes. “You want the truth? Then be ready for it. It won’t come gently.”
- Writer
