Chapter 1: The Town That Shouldn’t Exist
The first time Elias Thorne heard about Blackwood, it was through a message that shouldn’t have existed.
It arrived in the dead of night, slipping into his inbox like a whisper. No sender, no subject, just a single line of text:
“Find Blackwood before it finds you.”
At first, he dismissed it as spam. A prank, maybe. He had received stranger things in his years as an investigative journalist—anonymous threats, cryptic warnings, the occasional attempt at intimidation. But something about this one unsettled him.
The timestamp was 3:33 AM.
Something about that detail stuck with him, though he couldn't explain why.
He stared at the message for several minutes before closing his laptop, pushing the thought aside. Blackwood wasn’t real.
Or so he thought.
The next morning, another message appeared. This time, there was an attachment. A single, grainy photograph of a missing person poster.
The face on the poster was smeared, unrecognizable, but the name beneath it stood out in bold letters:
MILO CARTER – MISSING SINCE SEPTEMBER 14, 2024
Elias frowned. That name rang a bell. He opened his archives, scrolling through years of articles until he found it.
Milo Carter had been a journalist. A damn good one, too. A few years younger than Elias, ambitious, relentless in his investigations. He had written a series of pieces on unexplained disappearances in small, forgotten towns. Then, one day, he vanished.
No body. No records. Not even a police report.
The world simply forgot him.
And now, somehow, his name was in Elias’s inbox.
The third message came hours later. This time, it was a set of coordinates. When Elias plugged them into a map, they pointed to a location deep in the woods of Oregon.
There was nothing there. No town. No roads. Just an empty stretch of wilderness.
Except… when he zoomed in, faintly visible on the satellite view, there was a blurred patch of land. As if something had been erased.
Elias felt a slow chill creep up his spine.
Blackwood.
The drive took nearly twelve hours.
Elias packed light—his laptop, a notebook, a voice recorder, and a gun he rarely carried but thought might be necessary this time. He had learned over the years that some stories were dangerous.
The road to Blackwood was not on any map. There were no road signs, no GPS markers. He followed the coordinates blindly, his car winding through dense, fog-covered forests.
The deeper he drove, the quieter the world became.
No birds. No rustling leaves. Not even the sound of his own tires against the road.
At one point, Elias checked his phone. No signal. No GPS. It was as if the world outside this road had ceased to exist.
Then, without warning, the trees parted, and Blackwood appeared.
It was a small town, tucked away in a valley, its buildings old but well-kept. The streets were eerily empty. No traffic, no pedestrians. Just stillness.
A faded “Welcome to Blackwood” sign stood at the entrance. No population count. No state emblem.
As he drove deeper into the town, a strange feeling settled in his chest—a wrongness that had no shape or reason.
The town felt… staged.
Like a place that had been built to be seen, rather than to be lived in.
Elias pulled up to the only motel in sight—a two-story building with a flickering neon sign that simply read “Rooms.”
A woman stood behind the front desk, her expression unreadable. She was pale, with dark eyes that never quite met his.
“You’re new here,” she said.
Elias nodded. “Just passing through.”
Her lips pressed together. “No one passes through Blackwood.”
A beat of silence stretched between them.
Then, she slid a key across the counter. “Room 6. Checkout’s at sunrise.”
Something about the way she said it made Elias pause. Sunrise. As if he wouldn’t be allowed to stay longer than that.
The first thing Elias did after settling into his motel room was head to the town archives—or what passed for them.
Blackwood’s library was a small, dimly lit building at the center of town. Inside, an elderly librarian watched him enter, her hands motionless on the counter.
“I’m looking for records,” Elias said. “Specifically missing persons.”
The woman’s gaze didn’t waver. “We don’t keep those here.”
Elias narrowed his eyes. “Every town keeps records.”
She shook her head. “Not this one.”
He hesitated, then changed tactics. “What about newspapers? Old reports?”
A strange silence followed. The librarian tilted her head slightly, as if listening to something Elias couldn’t hear. Then, without a word, she turned and walked into the back room.
When she returned, she was carrying a single, dust-covered box.
She placed it on the counter. “These are all that remain.”
Elias opened the box and started sifting through the contents. Most of it was damaged— pages torn, ink smudged, entire articles missing. But one thing stood out:
A crumpled newspaper, dated September 15, 2024. The headline read:
“LOCAL JOURNALIST GOES MISSING – BLACKWOOD POLICE DENY INVESTIGATION.”
His stomach tightened. Milo Carter.
The article was barely readable, the ink distorted as if water had seeped into the paper. But one detail caught his eye—a location.
“The Hollow Grove,” Elias read aloud.
The librarian flinched.
“What is it?” he pressed.
She shook her head. “You should leave before it finds you.”
Before what finds me?
But Elias didn’t ask. Instead, he tucked the newspaper into his bag and left the library.
The Hollow Grove sat at the edge of town.
A cluster of dead trees, their twisted branches reaching skyward like skeletal fingers. The air was thick with silence. Not even the wind moved here.
Elias stepped forward, his flashlight cutting through the darkness. He had been in dangerous places before, but this felt different.
Like the very air was watching him.
Then he saw it—a door.
It stood alone in the clearing, unattached to any structure. An old wooden door, slightly ajar.
Elias approached cautiously. His instincts screamed at him to turn back.
But he didn’t.
Because on the other side of that door, faintly illuminated by his flashlight, was a room filled with missing person posters.
Hundreds of them.
He stepped inside. The air was cold, damp. The posters covered every inch of the walls, each one marked with a name and date.
And then he saw it—his own face.
His own name.
His own missing person poster.
“ELIAS THORNE – MISSING SINCE MARCH 23, 2025”
The date was tomorrow.
A breath caught in his throat. He turned—but the door was gone.
And then, from the darkness, a voice whispered:
“You were never supposed to find this place.”
To Be Continued…
This version expands on the unsettling details—things like the silence of the town, the eerie lack of records, and the feeling that something is watching Elias.
