TRAPPED IN HIS TERRITORY

THE TOWN THAT AWAITS

Bethlehem's pov

Chapter One

The fan on the ceiling buzzed with a dying sort of hum, the kind that made you wonder if it was seconds away from falling. Its blades cut lazily through the heavy summer air, pushing the heat around rather than cooling it. My shirt clung to my back, and my thighs stuck to the cheap plastic chair I’d been hunched in for the better part of an hour, fingers poised above the keyboard but doing nothing useful.

Across from me, Emma was sprawled out on her bed like a satisfied cat in a patch of sunlight. Her dyed auburn hair spilled across her pillow in tangles, one leg dangling lazily off the mattress, the other bent and bouncing to the muffled beat of music leaking from her earbuds. A faint vanilla sweetness,her lotion,hung in the room, mingling with the sharper bite of lavender spray and the dry musk of old textbooks stacked haphazardly against the wall.

She cracked one eye open. “Are you seriously going to sit there staring at your laptop all afternoon?”

“I’m not staring,” I muttered. “I’m working.”

“You haven’t typed in like… twenty minutes.”

I glanced down at the glowing white void on my screen. She wasn’t wrong. My cursor blinked at me like it was mocking my failure.

With a long sigh, I snapped the laptop shut and leaned back in the chair, scrubbing my hands over my face.

Emma tugged one earbud free. “You know what your problem is?”

“Please. Enlighten me.”

“You’re allergic to fun.”

I gave her a look.

She smirked, rolling onto her stomach, chin propped in her palms. “I’m serious. You hide out here like some hermit-writer hybrid, with your little nightmares and your empty Google Docs, and then you wonder why you feel so bored.”

“They’re not nightmares,” I said quickly. “Just… dreams.”

“Uh-huh. Dreams that leave you staring at walls like a possessed doll and jumping every time the AC turns on. Totally normal.”

I pressed my lips together and said nothing.

Because the truth was, she wasn’t entirely wrong.

The dreams weren’t the kind that made you wake up screaming, drenched in sweat. They were quieter, stranger, harder to shake. There was always a forest. Always fog. Always that creeping sensation of being watched, like something just beyond the trees was pacing me. Sometimes, I could almost make out a figure in the distance,tall, broad-shouldered, half-swallowed by mist. The details always slipped away when I tried to focus, but the feeling stayed. Heavy. Clinging. As if I’d brushed against something alive.

Emma rolled onto her side, eyeing me with her usual mix of amusement and concern. “Okay, real talk. Are you going on the trip or not?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Bethlehem.” She dragged my name out, exasperated. “You literally told me, not even two weeks ago, that you wanted to ‘break your pattern.’ Sound familiar?”

I shrugged, twisting a loose thread from my shorts. “It’s just a trip.”

“It’s a weekend in a mountain town that looks like it belongs in a gothic novel. With folklore. With legends. With—” she spread her arms dramatically “—the kind of creepy-charming architecture you drool over on Pinterest.”

I almost smiled. “Pinterest?”

“Yes, don’t mock me.” She sat up straighter, eyes glittering with excitement. “Come on, Beth. It’s Halestone. A town older than half the states in this country. Nobody ever goes there. Do you know how rare that is? No i********: tags. No TikToks. It’s like stepping into a ghost story.”

“I know.” My voice was quieter now.

Because I had looked it up.

Or at least, I’d tried.

The internet gave me almost nothing. A couple of blog posts from a decade ago that looked like they’d been copy-pasted from each other. A grainy video of a winding road cutting through an ocean of pine trees, the camera shaking as if whoever filmed it was desperate to get out of there. No official tourism site. No Yelp reviews. Not even a proper map.

A town that barely existed.

Emma mistook my hesitation for stubbornness. “You need this,” she said softly.

And maybe she was right.

Campus life had started to feel like a loop I couldn’t break,wake up, go to class, smile when expected, laugh on cue. Everything felt muted, like I was performing myself instead of living in my own skin. A trip could be good. A small reset. One bus ride, two nights. No consequences.

So why did the thought of it tie my stomach into knots?

I didn’t say anything.

Emma flopped back down onto her bed with a dramatic groan. “Fine. Be mysterious. But if you bail on me, I’m haunting you in your weird dream forest.”

That pulled a laugh out of me, small but real.

That night, the heat finally broke.

Rain tapped against the dorm window in soft, steady rhythms, a sound I’d always found comforting. The hallway outside was quieter now,occasional bursts of laughter, the creak of pipes, doors slamming shut one by one as the building settled into night.

I stood under the shower until steam fogged the mirror and my skin flushed pink. The hot water pounded the back of my neck, loosening tension I hadn’t even realized I was carrying. My phone buzzed three times on the sink: once from my mom, asking if I was eating enough, and twice from Emma, reminding me to pack early. She was already making lists of outfits, determined to make even a dusty mountain town into her runway.

When I finally crawled into bed, oversized T-shirt sticking slightly to my damp skin, the dorm felt unusually still. The fan hummed faintly above. Emma was already half-asleep, her breathing slow, earbuds still in.

I reached over to turn off the lamp. My hand hovered for a second before I clicked it dark.

No dreams tonight, I told myself. Just sleep. Just rest.

But the second my eyes closed, I knew it wouldn’t be that simple.

Because the darkness wasn’t the ordinary kind.

It pressed heavier. Thicker. Like the air itself had weight.

Like the world was waiting for something.

And me—

with it.