He was young — mid-twenties, maybe — with a canvas bag over one shoulder and the specific, wind-scoured look of someone who had been moving on foot for days. His name, though neither Fen nor Callum would ever learn it, was Marwan. He had been hiking alone through the range for a week, following a route he’d planned for months.
He stopped just inside the door. He looked at Fen. Not at Callum. At Fen.
His eyes were wide and very alert, the way eyes get when adrenaline has been running too long and the body has started to metabolize the fear into something quieter and more dangerous.
“Don’t finish the coffee,” he said. Low. Almost no volume.
Fen’s hand was still around the mug.
The woman behind the counter said, pleasantly, “Sit down anywhere, hon. I’ll bring a menu.”
Marwan did not look at her. He looked only at Fen. He said, “How long have you been here?”
“Maybe forty minutes,” Fen said.
He nodded once, like she’d confirmed something. “You can still go. Forty minutes is still okay.”
Callum set down the menu. “Okay for what?”
Marwan didn’t answer. He looked around the diner — at the ceiling fan, the pie case, the radio — with the expression of someone reading a document they have already read before.
Then he turned and walked back out the door.
The bell chimed again.
Fen was already off the stool.
“Fen —” Callum started.
“Come on.” She didn’t raise her voice. She just said it like a fact.
She left cash on the counter — more than enough, she didn’t stop to count it — and pushed through the door.
The air outside hit her like cold water. It felt real in a way the diner had not, though she hadn’t noticed the diner feeling unreal until she was out of it.
Marwan was already moving, heading not back toward the main street but sideways, between two of the storefronts, toward the tree line.
“Hey,” she called.
He stopped. He turned. He looked at her with that same careful, exhausted expression.
“I was here three days ago,” he said. “I thought I left. I was on the highway. I was at a gas station. I was —” He stopped. Pressed his lips together. “I woke up on that road this morning.” He pointed back up the logging road. “Back at the start of it.”
Fen stared at him.
“Go back the way you came,” he said. “Don’t stop. Don’t take anything from this place.”
He looked at the mug she was still, somehow, holding in her left hand.
She put it down on the ground.
He nodded. Then he walked into the trees and was gone.
Callum came out behind her. “What did he say?”
“Get in the truck.”
“Fen —”
“Now, Callum.”
They got in. She drove. She did not turn around — there was no room to turn around — she just reversed the whole two miles back up the logging road with her eyes fixed on the side mirror and her foot steady on the gas.
It took longer than it should have.
The trees seemed closer. The branches dragged against the truck longer, slower, like something reluctant to let them pass.
Callum said nothing. He had seen the woman at the line. She had still been reaching, both arms up, when they walked to the truck. He had not mentioned it.
Some things you don’t say out loud because saying them out loud makes them more real.
The logging road met the main road. Fen felt the pavement under the tires and made a sound she hadn’t meant to make — a short, involuntary exhale, like the first breath after being underwater.
She drove for twenty minutes without speaking.
Callum pulled out his phone. Signal had come back. He opened a map and searched.
Olden.
Nothing.
He tried the county. He tried variations of the name. He searched the coordinates he’d managed to note, roughly, when they’d first parked.
Nothing. Forest. A blank space between contour lines.
He put the phone face-down on his thigh.
“We should probably find a main road,” he said.
“Yeah,” Fen said.
She was watching the mirror. The road behind them was clear and ordinary. Sunlight. Asphalt. The shapes of normal trees.
But forty minutes later, when they stopped for gas at a small station off the interstate, Callum reached into his jacket pocket for his wallet and found something else.
WhatsApp
Telegram
Email
Categories
- AI & Technology
- Contemporary
- Corporate Control
- Creepypasta
- Crime Thriller
- Cyberpunk
- Dark Fantasy
- Enemies to Lovers
- Fairy Tale Retelling
- Fantasy
- First Contact
- Forbidden
- Genetic/Body Horror
- High Fantasy
- Monster Hunter
- Mythic/Folklore
- Paranormal
- Portal/Otherworld
- Post-Apo
- Post-Collapse Society
- Psychological Thriller
- Romances
- SCI-FI
- Second Chance
- Slow Burn
- Space Combat
- Spacepunk
- Surveillance State
- Survival Thriller
- Thrillers
- Time Travel
- Treasure Hunter
- Urban Fantasy
- Witchcraft/Curses
Tags
10min stories atmospheric atmospheric fantasy atmospheric fiction contemporary romance Creepy creepypasta crime thriller dark fantasy debt dystopia emotional fiction enemies to lovers ensemble cast epistolary fantasy female protagonist first person forbidden romance framed narrative high fantasy love story magic Memory mystery Paranormal psychological horror psychological thriller romance sci-fi second chance second chance romance short fiction short story slow burn space station speculative fiction supernatural Survival survival thriller suspense thriller travel romance witchcraft workplace romance
Leave a Reply