Chapter Seven – The Weight of Secrets

The ride back to Black Hollow was silent.

Jonah drove with both hands white-knuckled on the wheel, eyes fixed on the winding road as if the forest itself might lunge across his path. The rifle lay across his lap, barrel pointed at the floorboard, but his finger twitched near the trigger whenever shadows shifted along the roadside.

Evelyn sat stiffly in the passenger seat, her satchel heavy against her hip. Inside it, the pendant seemed to radiate an unnatural chill, as though the metal carried the night’s terror with it. She hadn’t spoken since they left the clearing. Her mind was still trapped in the memory of glowing eyes, bone-shaking roars, and the way the entire forest had answered in chorus.

She hadn’t told Jonah she’d taken the pendant. He had been too focused on survival, too shaken by the sounds of unseen wolves echoing through the trees. And she knew—instinctively—that he would have tried to stop her.

By the time they reached town, the horizon was paling with the gray light of dawn. Black Hollow’s streets were deserted, shutters drawn, lamps extinguished. The air carried the sharp, metallic tang of a place that wanted to bury its fear beneath silence.

Jonah pulled up outside Evelyn’s lodge. He didn’t look at her as he spoke.

“Stay inside today. Don’t go wandering.”

Evelyn studied him. His face was lined with exhaustion, his beard dark with dew. Yet it wasn’t fatigue that unsettled her—it was the way his eyes seemed older than his years, hollowed out by things he would never put into words.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I’ll be around,” he muttered. “Don’t ask where.”

She almost pressed him, but his hands tightened on the wheel, and she knew she would get no answer.

Evelyn slipped out of the truck. Her boots crunched on frost. The town felt abandoned, suffocating in its stillness. She lingered for a moment, but Jonah didn’t look up. He put the truck in gear and drove away without another word.

Only then did she let out the breath she had been holding since the forest.

That night, sleep refused to come.

Evelyn lay in the narrow bed of the lodge, the curtains drawn against the moonlight. Yet even with her eyes closed, she felt it—the pendant’s weight on the nightstand, its cold presence filling the room.

When sleep finally dragged her under, it was not rest that claimed her.

She dreamed of the forest.

The trees loomed tall and skeletal, branches clawing at a sky veined with silver clouds. The earth was soft beneath her feet, wet with blood. She stumbled forward, searching for something—or someone—though she didn’t know who.

A growl split the silence.

Her flashlight flicked on in the dream, its weak beam slicing through the dark. And there it was.

The creature.

Golden eyes gleamed, fixed on her. Its breath steamed in the cold air, thick and ragged. Blood dripped from its teeth, staining its muzzle, yet when it stepped forward, its gait was disturbingly human.

It didn’t lunge. It stalked her, circling just beyond the beam, as though it enjoyed the slow unraveling of her fear.

She tried to run, but the forest twisted, paths closing, trees hemming her in. No matter which way she turned, the beast was there, eyes burning in the dark.

When she woke, she was gasping, sweat-soaked, her throat raw from a scream she hadn’t realized she’d let out.

The pendant lay where she’d left it, moonlight spilling over its silver surface. For a heartbeat, Evelyn could have sworn it pulsed faintly, as if in rhythm with her racing heart.

The following morning, Evelyn forced herself back into the forest.

She had to see it again—the clearing, the blood trail, anything to prove that what happened wasn’t just some fevered nightmare. She needed evidence, something tangible to ground herself.

But when she arrived, there was nothing.

The carcass of the cow was gone, bones and all. The claw marks on the trees had faded, bark healed as though days—weeks—had passed instead of hours. Even the ground where Jonah’s bullet had struck was unmarked, no blood staining the earth.

It was as if the night had been wiped clean, erased from existence.

Evelyn’s stomach tightened. She knelt, sifting through the soil with gloved fingers. Nothing. No trace of struggle, no hint of the beast’s passage.

She straightened slowly, the forest pressing in around her, silent and watchful.

Had it been real?

The pendant in her satchel answered before her rational mind could. She touched the outline of it through the fabric, the cold seeping through. The creature had been real. She had seen its eyes. She had heard its roar. The town might pretend otherwise, the forest might erase its scars, but Evelyn knew.

She turned back, unsettled, the weight of the forest following her all the way to the edge of town.

That afternoon, she sat in the lodge’s common room with her laptop and a stack of borrowed books from the meager town library. The pendant lay before her on the table, wrapped in cloth, though she couldn’t resist unwrapping it every few minutes, running her fingers over the lunar sigil.

She searched for meanings—old religions, pagan rituals, lunar cults. Every keyword brought her closer to strange folklore but further from science. Most references blurred together: moon-worship, transformation myths, curses tied to blood and silver.

Nothing explained this.

When Jonah finally came, she thought maybe he would.

He appeared just after dusk, mud on his boots, shadows in his eyes. Evelyn gestured toward the empty chair across from her.

“Sit,” she said softly. “Please.”

He did, reluctantly, his hands clasped tightly as if holding something fragile inside himself.

“I need to ask you about it,” Evelyn said.

“About what?”

“You know.” She lowered her voice, glancing at the cloth-wrapped pendant. “The thing in the woods. The way it—” She faltered, swallowing hard. “The way it dropped this.”

Jonah’s jaw tensed. He looked away, toward the window where the last light of day bled into night.

“You shouldn’t have taken it.”

“That’s not an answer,” Evelyn snapped, more harshly than she meant to. Her nerves were raw, strung tight by nights of terror. “What is it, Jonah? Do you know what it means? Do you know what we’re up against?”

His silence stretched until it became unbearable.

Evelyn slammed her palm on the table, the sound echoing through the quiet room. “You saw it too! You can’t just pretend it didn’t happen!”

Finally, Jonah met her eyes. His were haunted, full of something deeper than fear—something closer to resignation.

“I know what I saw,” he said quietly. “But talking about it won’t change what’s coming.”

“What’s coming?” she pressed.

Jonah stood abruptly. The chair scraped against the floor, startling her. He pulled his jacket tighter around his shoulders.

“Leave it alone, Evelyn. Whatever that thing is, it’s older than either of us. The more you dig, the more it notices. Trust me—you don’t want its attention.”

And then he was gone, the door slamming shut behind him.

Evelyn stared after him, anger and fear tangling in her chest. She looked down at the pendant, its silver catching the firelight from the hearth. The sigil seemed to glow faintly, as though mocking Jonah’s warning.

That night, the dreams returned.

The forest again, endless and shifting. The growl, low and rumbling. The golden eyes locking onto hers.

But this time, the creature spoke.

Its voice was not human, nor animal, but something in between—layered and guttural, echoing inside her skull.

Mine.

Evelyn woke screaming, clutching her satchel as if to shield herself from the voice. Her heart hammered against her ribs.

The pendant was warm now, as if it had been waiting.