Jedburgh’s woods had always been a little spooky, but the morning after the blackout, they felt different. Wrong. Like something had crawled under the skin of the forest and was waiting.
Lillie Rae felt it the moment she stepped off the pavement and onto the dirt path behind the school.
Bear felt it too.
His fur stood straight up, and he kept glancing over his shoulder, ears pinned back. He didn’t bark — which somehow made it worse. He was silent, tense, alert.
Lilly Wilson hugged her jacket tighter. “I don’t like this. I really don’t like this.”
Madison Simpson grinned, trying to hide her nerves. “Relax. It’s just trees.”
“Trees don’t move on their own,” Lilly muttered.
Madison opened her mouth to argue — then froze.
Because a tree did move.
Not a lot. Not like a person. But the trunk… shifted. Just slightly. Like something underneath the bark had twitched.
Lilly grabbed Lillie’s arm. “Did you see that?”
Lillie swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
Bear growled — low, warning, the kind of growl he only used when something was seriously wrong.
Theo Grant stepped forward, squinting at the tree. “It’s probably just the wind.”
“There is no wind,” Lillie said.
And she was right.
The air was completely still.
No breeze. No rustling leaves. No birds. No insects.
Just silence.
A heavy, suffocating silence.
ns216.73.217.85da2
and then Add to home screen.