Page 20 of Tenebrous

“How old is this?”

“1920s. Somewhere round there.”

My mouth goes dry. “That’s impossible.”

Miss Mary simply hums softly. “There are older ones to, and stories that go further back than the pictures.”

She tugs another newspaper free, then another. Near-ancient pieces of history detailing the town's founding and the opening of the mine. In every single one, the creature is there, watching. Always at the edge of the woods, like it’s been here longer than the town itself.

“What the hell is it?” I breathe out, running my finger gently over its silhouette.

Mary’s eyes drift toward the open door behind me, toward the forest beyond the windows. “My father said the miners used to call it magna belua. Great beast. But modernized stories have used a few different names over the years. It's lived beneath the mountain long before people started cutting trees down around it.”

I swallow hard, my vision blurring slightly. “That doesn't make any sense. The one in these photos doesn't have any horns.”

Her attention snaps to mine. “Horns, you say?”

“Yes. At least, from Dennis's drawings, anyway.”

The older woman's lips purse once more as she takes a newspaper clipping from my hands. “There are many things the human race will never know. It doesn't bother us as long as we don't bother it, and things have always been this way since the mine was flooded.”

That comment sparks something in my brain, and I sift through the papers until I find the one with a picture of the entrance. “Where is this, exactly? The opening to the mine. Gale said Dennis kept going there.”

“You won't find it,” she says slowly, squinting at me. “Earl filled it in once he learned that his son was spending all his time there.”

My brows hit my hairline. “Wouldn't… isn't that the opposite of not bothering the thing? Wouldn't that just piss it off?”

A spark of sorrow crosses over Mary’s features, and she gives me a pointed look. “Yes. Yes, it would.”

Seconds pass while I process what she's trying to say, and the breath leaves my lungs once her words finally click. “Dennis's disappearance. It was because of the sheriff messing with the mine, wasn't it?”

“The mine and the woods are its territory. We encroached where we shouldn't have, and now we must pay the price.”

“So leave,” I scoff, gesturing toward the old articles. “Give the thing what it wants and move somewhere else. Why the fuck is everyone still living here?”

She sighs, leaning against her walker. “Honey, I am almost ninety years old. My daddy and his daddy before him are buried here. There's nowhere else for me to go, and a lot of the townsfolk feel the same. Those who leave always come back to die.”

“My parents didn't.”

“Didn't they?” Her gaze holds mine, a gnarled hand stretching toward me to rest on my chest. “Have you not brought them with you, in here, Benjamin? In your heart?”

My throat clogs, emotion burning behind my eyes. It takes me far too long to blink away the moisture that threatens to spill from my lashes. “Who says I came here to die?”

Mary smiles sadly, her crooked fingers moving up to cup my cheek. “We all do, in one way or another. It is the curse we all must bear for what our forefathers have done. From Deadfall we are born, and to Deadfall we return. It's best you understand that now. Just like Dennis did.”

Mary’s words repeat in my head the entire drive back to the mill.

Those photos, the stories she shared, it all seems too outlandish to be true, and yet I saw the thing for myself. Even now, as I slowly crawl my way up the mountain in the rain, I can somehow feel it out there. Watching. Waiting. For what, I'm not sure.

The windshield wipers scrape across glass in a steady rhythm while fog hangs low over the road. Every few seconds, my headlights catch the trunks of towering pines stretching toward the sky before darkness swallows them whole.

I should leave this place.

The thought has been circling my head ever since I walked out of the gas station.

Nothing's keeping me here, despite whatever curse bullshit Miss Mary was spouting. Now that I know the truth of what's out there, at least partially, you'd think putting some distance between my taillights and Deadfall would be top priority.

Instead, I just keep driving toward the mill, no matter how much my mind screams at me to turn around.