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chapter 1 - Into the mouth of madness
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2025-04-27 04:08:35Epilogue -
It all started back in 2002, when three fearless teenagers were dared to sneak into Camp WildWood at Terrell State Hospital. They were boys, of course — eager, cocky, and desperate to impress a group of girls from school. The oldest, Ben, had just turned seventeen. Dylan and Mark, sixteen-year-old twins, were right behind him. All three were star football players at Terrell High, convinced that spending a night at the abandoned camp would be a piece of cake. They were wrong. Chapter 1 - The night was thick with cackling laughter and blood-curdling screams that would have sent anyone sane running for their lives. It was ten o’clock when the boys, their bags packed, said goodbye to their friends. The girls they were trying to impress cried, begging them not to go, calling them crazy. Ben just chuckled as he climbed into his new Chevy truck, Dylan and Mark piling in beside him. They drove off without a care in the world. An hour later, they reached the hospital grounds. Ben slowed down, driving past the entrance, sizing up whether they should really go through with it. “This place gives me the creeps, guys,” Dylan said, peering out the window. “I don’t want to do this. It doesn’t feel right.” Ben smirked. “You want a chance with Cassidy, don’t you? Then man up. Stay one night in a creepy old camp, and you’ll prove you’re brave enough to take her out too.” That was all it took. Ben parked the truck off the road — far enough not to be spotted, close enough to make a quick getaway if needed. They grabbed their gear and headed down the cracked, weed-choked road toward the old gates. Rust clung to the iron bars. Beyond them, the dark shapes of trees stretched into the night sky. They slipped through the gates, glancing around nervously for guards or stray workers. The campgrounds were about a mile in. But they soon discovered it wasn’t just a camp. It was a cemetery too. “This is sick, man,” Mark muttered, reading the broken sign by the cemetery gates. “Can’t we just ditch this place? We’ve got our playoff game against Forney on Friday. I don’t wanna fucking die tonight.” Ben laughed, kicking at a rock. “Some of these graves date back to the 1800s,” he said, his voice low and amused. “That’s insane.” Mark and Dylan shared a look. Doubt flickered across their faces. Just then, Dylan spotted something. “Look, there’s a lake — and an old swing set,” he said, pointing through the trees. “Wonder how many people tried to drown themselves out there…” His voice was a little too excited. “Come on,” Mark said, shouldering his bag. “Let’s pitch the tent, get some sleep. We’ll explore tomorrow.” “Or just get the hell out of here,” Dylan muttered under his breath. The three stood there, motionless, too scared to move without one of the others going first. “Forget sleeping,” Dylan finally said, his voice rising. “I’m not letting my guard down. I don’t even wanna be here.” “Keep it down,” Ben chuckled. “You’re gonna wake the neighbors.” He pointed at the rows of crumbling headstones just yards away. Dylan cursed under his breath, earning a glare from both Ben and Mark. “Just shut up,” Mark said. “We’ll make it through the night. Then we’re out first thing in the morning.” Finally, they found a small clearing by the edge of the woods and started setting up camp. Not that they would get much sleep.
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A Night at Wildwood Shadows at the edge of the woods
It was a little past midnight by the time the boys finished pitching the tent.They picked a hidden spot near the woods — close enough for cover, just in case someone drove by.Dylan and Mark stayed close together, letting Ben take the lead as they explored the area.“Guys, wait a minute,” Dylan whispered, his voice shaky. “I swear I just heard something… in the woods.”Ben turned, unimpressed.“Dude, it’s the woods. What do you expect? Kids laughing? Car alarms? It’s just animals,” Mark said sarcastically.Still, they moved carefully, every snap of a twig putting them more on edge.Suddenly, headlights flashed up the road.The boys froze, panic setting in.Without thinking, they bolted — sprinting toward the lake, away from the road.“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Mark hissed, stumbling over a root. “This is insane. We should’ve skipped this dare! I could be with Cassidy right now — not stuck here with dead people!”The headlights slowed at the gates to the cemetery…And then, in an instant, th
Last Updated : 2025-04-27A Night at Wildwood The hunt begins
Ben burst out of the woods, lungs burning, legs pumping harder than they ever had on the football field.He could see the gate ahead — and just beyond it, Dylan and Mark waiting, waving frantically.Almost there. Don’t stop.But then, from somewhere behind him, a horrible wild laugh echoed through the night.Ben glanced back.Out of the trees, two figures barreled toward him — Willy leading the charge, his mouth twisted into a manic grin, with Sue trailing behind, a look of pure desperation on her face.Ben threw himself at the fence. He scrambled up the rusted iron bars, his fingers slipping on the cold metal.Halfway up, a hand grabbed his ankle — Willy.“Gotcha, boy,” Willy hissed, yanking him downward.Ben kicked wildly, fighting to stay on the fence, but the madman’s grip was like iron.“Let go, you psycho!” Ben shouted.Willy only laughed harder — a bone-chilling, broken sound — and bit down on Ben’s leg.The pain made Ben lose his grip. He fell with a hard thud to the ground.B
Last Updated : 2025-04-27A Night at Wildwood No safe place
The truck roared down the country highway, its headlights cutting a frantic path through the darkness.Inside, the boys sat in stunned silence.Ben’s knuckles were white against the steering wheel.Mark stared blankly ahead, his chest heaving.Dylan kept glancing over his shoulder, half expecting to see Willy sprinting after them out of the darkness.No one spoke until they reached the safety of town.Ben jerked the truck into the driveway of their friend’s house, killed the engine, and turned to the others.“We can’t tell anyone,” he said hoarsely.Mark shook his head violently.“Are you crazy? We have to tell the cops — tell someone! That guy… those people… they’re still out there!”Ben leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, trying to breathe.“And say what, Mark? That we snuck onto state property because of a dare? That we saw ghosts? That some psycho tried to eat us?”Dylan finally spoke, his voice small:“What if they don’t believe us?”The truck sat silent for a long mo
Last Updated : 2025-04-27A Night at Wildwood Return to wildwood
The gates of Terrell State Hospital loomed in the headlights like the jaws of some massive, ancient beast.The boys sat in the truck for a moment, none of them moving.Ben flexed his fingers around the steering wheel.“Once we’re inside,” he said, “we stick together. No running off. No being a hero.”Mark and Dylan nodded.Ben popped the glove compartment and pulled out a flashlight and a rusted baseball bat.It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.Dylan found an old tire iron under his seat and clutched it like a lifeline.“Should’ve brought holy water and a priest too,” Dylan muttered.They climbed out of the truck and made their way toward the gate.It groaned open slowly under Ben’s push, like it had been waiting for them.The air inside the hospital grounds felt thicker — heavier — like stepping underwater.Their footsteps echoed unnaturally loud on the cracked pavement as they crossed onto the grounds.The camp itself lay hidden beyond the trees, dark and silent.But som
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Years passed, and life went on. Ben, Dylan, and Mark graduated, moved away, started families of their own. They buried the memories of WildWood deep inside themselves, convincing each other it had all just been fear and hallucination — tricks of the dark. But late at night, when the world was quiet and sleep wouldn’t come, Ben sometimes caught a glimpse in the mirror — not of his own reflection, but of twisted trees and rusted gates. And when he drove alone, sometimes the truck’s radio would flicker, a familiar wild laugh slipping through the static. The worst part wasn’t the memories. It wasn’t even the shadows he sometimes saw at the edge of his vision. It was the feeling that maybe — just maybe — he had never really left WildWood. That a part of him was still wandering the woods, still running through the endless night… Still trapped with Nadia, and Willy, and the others. Because some places, once they get inside you, don’t ever let you go. And some doors — no matter ho
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The moment Ben stepped past the rusted gates, everything felt wrong. The air was thick with a sense of foreboding, like the earth itself was holding its breath. The familiar trees stood like silent sentinels, their twisted limbs reaching out in unnatural shapes. He hadn’t realized how much the woods had changed, or perhaps it was him that had changed, but the once-eerie landscape now seemed even darker, more alive. The breeze whispered secrets he couldn’t quite catch, but it didn’t matter — something was different, something had awakened.He couldn’t shake the feeling that the woods were watching him, waiting for him to make his next move.Ben hesitated, standing just beyond the threshold of the gate. The path ahead was overgrown, the dirt road buried beneath a tangle of roots and weeds. The forest seemed to close in around him, muffling the sounds of the outside world, leaving only the distant rustling of leaves and the faintest whisper of laughter — or was it a memory?He could feel
Last Updated : 2025-04-27A Night at Wildwood The endless night
Ben’s heart pounded in his chest as he took another step back, his feet stumbling over the uneven ground. The laughter came again, louder this time, mixing with the whispers of the others—Willy, Nadia, the nameless faces of the past. They circled him like vultures, their eyes unblinking, their smiles twisted into something grotesque. “You’re one of us now, Ben,” Nadia’s voice echoed, her words distant and close all at once, like the forest itself was speaking. “No,” Ben gasped, shaking his head. His hands trembled, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps. “This isn’t real. This isn’t—” But the forest seemed to swallow his words. The trees groaned, their branches moving in slow, deliberate sways, as if alive, as if they were listening, responding. The air felt thick, oppressive, like something was closing in from all sides. “You were one of us,” Willy’s voice sliced through the air, sharp and mocking. Ben’s gaze snapped to the boy standing at the edge of the clearing—Willy, but
Last Updated : 2025-04-27A Night at Wildwood The heart of wildwood
Ben’s world spun as the ground beneath him shifted and cracked, swallowing him whole. His legs gave out beneath him, and he tumbled into the deepening earth, his hands scraping against the jagged edges of the fissures. The sound of his breath, ragged and desperate, was drowned out by the cacophony of laughter and whispers that echoed from all around him. It was as if the forest itself was alive, twisting and pulling at him, dragging him deeper into its depths. He tried to scream, but the air was thick with the weight of WildWood, choking him, pressing against his chest. The laughter of his old friends — twisted and mocking — rang in his ears, warping into something alien, something inhuman. “Ben…” Nadia’s voice slithered through the darkness, and he could almost feel her cold, bony fingers brush against his shoulder. “You can never escape what you are.” The world shifted again, and suddenly, Ben was standing in the center of the camp clearing once more. But it wasn’t the camp he r
Last Updated : 2025-04-27
Latest chapter
A Night at Wildwood Before the storm
The sky above WildWood was no longer a sky. It was a bruise. Dark clouds churned in unnatural spirals, greenish-black, pulsing like something diseased. Lightning arced across the horizon without sound, and the wind didn’t howl — it whispered. Lucas stood at the tree line, his hands deep in his jacket pockets, staring out over the forest that had already taken so much. His breath fogged in the sudden cold, though it was April. Behind him, the cabin groaned. Its wards still pulsed faintly — sigils burned into the wood, clay, and old bone — placed by Ashani before she left with Clara. Lucas hadn’t slept. Couldn’t. Too much of him was still down there. Buried in that rotting earth with Emily. With Clara. With everything he’d run from once. The forest whispered. Not loud. Not forceful. Just enough. She’s gone, you know. They all are. Like Devon. Like the rest. You’re the only one left. Again. He gritted his teeth and turned away. But the memory of Devon’s face—that flicker
A Night at Wildwood The memory that bleeds
The tunnel pulsed around her like a living throat. Each breath Emily took felt like inhaling ash and sorrow. But she moved now—not dragged, not bound—her feet pressing into the Root’s spongy flesh as she descended deeper. The ember inside her burned steady. She was more than herself now. A vessel, yes—but one of defiance, not submission. The whispers tried to claw back in. She left you. They all left you. You belong to the forest now. But they didn’t have the same weight anymore. Emily touched her chest, feeling the heat beneath her sternum, where the memory of her grandmother still lingered like a ghost’s touch. And then she heard footsteps. Not behind her—ahead. She slowed. Something shifted in the path before her. The walls bulged outward, and from them stepped a figure. A girl. Blonde hair. Slender frame. Dressed in the same hoodie she’d died in. Emily’s heart stopped. “Marla…?” The girl turned. Her face was wrong. It was Marla—but warped. The eyes were black pi
A Night at Wildwood What lies beneath
Beyond the Bone Gate The moment Clara stepped through, the forest changed. The air turned thick, like soup. The heat pressed against her skin with oily fingers. The path was no longer dirt or stone — it was flesh, soft and slightly pulsing, covered in moss and bone fragments. The walls around them weren’t carved or eroded — they were grown. It wasn’t a cave. It was a womb. Ashani kept her blade unsheathed, its obsidian edge humming faintly with the spiritwork bound to it. She moved slower now, more deliberate. “It’s not just a root system,” she whispered. “It’s alive. Like a brain stretched through the earth.” Clara shuddered. “And we’re inside it.” Their lanterns barely pierced the thick dark. Shapes slithered just at the edge of sight — twitching limbs, eyes that blinked and vanished, small mouths set into the walls like tumors. It watched them. Every step. Clara’s heart pounded harder, but the ember inside her gave her strength. It pulsed in time with the deeper rhythms
A Night at Wildwood Beneath the root, beyond the flesh
There was no sky. There was no air. Only the pulse. Emily floated somewhere between memory and bone, her body a marionette strung in a cradle of roots. Her skin was pale, faintly glowing, threaded through with black vines that pulsed like veins. The pain had dulled long ago. The hunger — the longing to give in — that remained. But something else had begun to stir. Something that wasn’t the Root. A distant tremor in her bones, a flicker of something lost. It had started as a whisper. Not the cruel seduction of Varethkaal, the Root’s ancient voice, but something older. Warmer. Familiar. “You remember the river?” Emily’s eyes flicked open. The whisper had come from the dark — and yet it was inside her mind. She recognized that voice. Not from the hospital, or the forest, but from her childhood. She saw it in flashes. A fire. A drum. The scent of cedar and smoke. A woman’s face, painted with ash and ochre, cradling her hands and placing a glowing stone on her forehead. Her gra
A Night at Wildwood The root beneath the green
Deep WildWood — The Edge of the Threshold The ground had changed. The further Clara and Ashani moved into the WildWood’s heart, the more the forest stopped resembling anything earthly. Trees leaned at impossible angles. Bark had gone from deep brown to a pale gray, like the skin of something long dead. The leaves overhead no longer rustled — they hung still, as if holding their breath. The old ranger paths had vanished. Now, only roots marked the way — wide, veinlike things coiling through the dirt like exposed arteries. “We’re close,” Ashani murmured. “I can feel it pulling.” Clara nodded. The ember inside her had begun to burn hotter. Her chest felt tight — not from fear, but pressure, like something wanted out. “Clara…” Ashani paused, then lowered her voice. “What if what we find… isn’t Emily anymore?” Clara didn’t answer right away. Her eyes scanned the warped horizon, the way the trees bent away from some central point ahead, as though recoiling from something too ancient
A Night at Wildwood Below the surface
Beneath WildWood – The Depths of the Forgotten Emily’s chest heaved in the damp air. Her arms, twisted and scraped, were held by the roots — no, by hands that were far older than the trees above. She had stopped screaming hours ago. There was no use in that anymore. Every time she had, the roots only tightened. There’s no escape, she thought. But she would not give in. The earth, once so alive beneath her feet, now felt like a grave. The roots had grown into her, had claimed her, but they didn’t just want her blood — they wanted her. They wanted to rewrite her. She gasped for air. It felt thinner the deeper she went, and the pain in her ribs was unbearable. There was nothing but the hum of the roots, the soft whispers of voices long lost. And beneath it, a darker presence. Her vision blurred. For a moment, Emily could hear Clara’s voice again, faint as if carried through time and space. Don’t stop fighting. But what could she fight when the forest had already made her part o
A Night at Wildwood Blood remembers
Old Creek Crossing – Near Dusk Clara hiked back from Hollow Hill with the fire still burning inside her. It hadn’t faded. If anything, it had rooted itself deeper, spreading through her veins like wildfire stitched into bone. Every step she took left a tingling print of heat in the soles of her feet. The forest no longer whispered to her — it watched. Aware. Wary. She stopped at Old Creek Crossing to refill her canteen. The stream there had dried up years ago, but a narrow vein still trickled under the broken bridge. As she leaned down, she caught a reflection beside her own: A face. Painted. Eyes like flint. Clara spun, reaching for the blade on her hip — but the woman had already stepped back, hands raised in peace. “You’ve awakened it,” the woman said. Her voice was low, sharp. “I felt the ember flare from half a valley away.” Clara didn’t lower the blade. “Who are you?” The woman stepped closer. Late thirties, maybe. Hair braided tight, feathers laced through in the ol
A Night at Wildwood The fire buried in stone
Hollow Hill – Midday Clara hadn’t told anyone where she was going. Not Devon. Not the few rangers left who still patrolled the outer trails. Some places asked for silence. Hollow Hill was one of them. She hiked through overgrown trails lost to modern maps, past a dry riverbed and two fallen markers carved in spiral patterns. They were warnings, according to the Yanuwah texts — spirals meant a descent, a place where time curled inward and memory became a trap. As she reached the summit of the hill, the air changed. Still. Electric. The wind stopped, though the trees swayed slightly, as if breathing. And at the very top of the hill, buried in moss and half-swallowed by roots, lay a flat black stone. She brushed the leaves away. Beneath it, etched in a language she didn’t know — and yet somehow understood — was a single word: “Ishtaya.” Clara whispered it. The ground responded. ⸻ The Descent The stone shifted. Not away — but down. It sank, groaning, revealing a narrow spi
A Night at Wildwood Names that should not be spoken
Ranger Station – Just Before Dawn Clara hadn’t slept. She sat at her desk surrounded by books — some borrowed from the Terrell Historical Society, others from the dusty back shelves of the town’s near-forgotten library, and one, far older, bound in worn deer hide. It was a gift. Left anonymously at her door six months ago. No note. No return address. Only a title burned into the cover in no language she could read. But tonight, when she flipped to its center, the same split tree symbol was there. Beneath it, in delicate, angular script: “Kaarayael. The Forgotten Root.” Clara exhaled, slow. The name vibrated in her skull. Just like the whisper from the forest. A call from below. She kept reading. ⸻ The Fragmented Record – Translated Excerpts “Before the settlers came, the Yanuwah spoke of two spirits: the Guardian and the Dreaming Root. One kept the balance. The other longed to become something else.” “The Root was not evil… but incomplete. Hungry. It did not understand dea
