Freebie Mondays: Just an Ordinary Forest (Prompt Novel Chapter 18)

For 2024, I decided to devote my prompt writing time to a novel. The twist is that the novel plot will be generated entirely by the writing prompts I chose to use for the project – which were rolled randomly using my trusty dice and a few online prompt lists. You can find the Table of Contents here.

For Chapter 18, the prompt was: “character discovers their best friend’s dad is responsible for the growing number of missing people in their hometown.”

This prompt came from my second round of random rolls. I did not skim through the list and pick this one, it just so happened it fit perfectly with what I had already established in the novel at the time that I rolled it. This would have been an extremely challenging prompt to include halfway through the project if I hadn’t already set up a mystery that involved a missing character. But it actually solved a huge problem for me by giving me a twist for that particular plot.

It’s funny how the universe sometimes grants us synergy.

At this point, the prompt novel has sort of granted me a vague aspect of a plan for the rest of its story. I’m not trying to plan ahead, but it just sort of happens whenever I think of it. (It’s funny how brains work.) So it’s been fairly easy to set the prompts up so that they flow one into another.

If you’d like to see this chapter come together, you can watch the VoD on Youtube!
. . .

During the day, the little section of forest tucked beside the old windmill was innocuous. It was only by night when it was isolated from the glow of the highway and absent the illumination of the moon that it assumed its horrific aspect. In the darkness, the roots and branches of the various trees became like seeking tendrils and bone-dry fingers, raking and clawing at any who tried to pass through their territory.

Ira stood outside the tree line in the bright light of the noon day sun fully aware that there was nothing within this little chunk of forest that could hurt her. At least, nothing paranormal. Branches might catch in her hair and thorns might rake her flesh. But any threat to her person could only come from another living creature. And there were no wild animals in this portion of forest – at least not of the dangerous variety. It was too frequented by humans for any but the most desperate creatures to venture long within its borders.

Across the river, on the far side of this patch of forest, there was true wild land. There deer roamed throughout the year, and the occasional bear or wild cat moved in to establish their territory. But here, in this little isolated patch of urban greenery, there was just the legend of a misshapen creature to captivate the hearts and minds of the young.

She knew now that her sister’s story was just that: a story. Who, exactly, made it up, she wasn’t sure. But she had spent enough afternoons delving through the history of this strange place to know that the description of the Mowar came later. The disappearances started first. So the stories had likely arisen as an attempt to make sense of the occasional strange occurrence.

No one wanted to believe that people could hurt other people – especially not in a small town where everyone knew everyone else. To point a finger was to start a feud. But worse than that, to harm one’s neighbor, whom one also usually considered to be a friend, was the worst harm a citizen of a small town could commit upon another.

So the danger had to come from something unknown and unknowable, something impossible to catch or contemplate. That way the deaths could be written off as accidents, flukes or out of towners.

That lost thought made Ira shiver. She’d like to believe she technically qualified as one. She never intended to come back here after she left. But Wendell’s disappearance, and the striking similarities between their experiences drew her like a moth to a flame back to the last place she ever wanted to be.

It took a great deal of strength to cross the threshold and step beyond the first set of trees even though all she had to do was lift her foot and lean forward. The soft crunch of fallen leaves and the snap of a dead twig beneath her shoe almost caused her to turn and flee in the opposite direction, as if the darkness of night might descend at any moment.

But even when a stray cloud drifted in front of the sun for the briefest of moments, she could still see every tiny detail of the forest illuminated around her. And through the gaps in the foliage, she should be able to tell if anyone approached her.

So Ira drew a deep breath, willed her rapidly pounding heart to settle and ventured into the place that had scared her so deeply in her youth she abandoned her hometown with the resolve to never look back.

It was just an ordinary forest – and that shocked her. Even armed with knowledge and certainty, she kept expecting to turn a corner, peer through a bush and see something she wouldn’t be able to explain later, something that would make both her and Wendell’s experiences so shockingly visceral, she’d never be able to speak of them again.

She assumed that realizing she was caught in a whirlwind of real magic, a trajectory that was evidently impossible to escape, would mean that everything involving her came from that world. But while it was increasingly evident that magic sat alongside reality, enhancing it and twisting it according to whatever strange chaotic whim guided its flow, not everything could be attributed to magic, not even for an unwilling witch.

What happened in this forest, she knew now, was mundane. The mind played tricks all its own; all it needed was a little push. Enhanced by darkness and the whisper of rumors, the teenagers who trekked through this space created a hell for themselves. A hell most survived to talk about with giddy pleasure.

Those that felt the actual scrape of claws or the bite of a blow against the back of the head were harried by man. And someone had to come out here to perpetuate those acts. How else would Wendell have ended up dragged both out of and into the underbrush?

That was what she was looking for today. Not the signs of ritual her sister spoke of in their attic playroom as a child, nor the tracks of a twisted creature lurking in the shadows. But the acts of man that might conceal a horror so great, an entire town had turned its back against the knowledge for decades.

Ira was no tracker. She had done the girl scout thing as a child. They learned how to build a fire and forage for food. She knew which of the berries that grew in the thick bushes huddled beneath the trees could be eaten and which needed to be avoided. She also knew which mushrooms could be consumed and which shouldn’t be touched.

Though at the moment, she wouldn’t trust sustenance from this place even if she was starving to death.

She knew how to navigate based on moss and sun position – though she also had the convenience of her phone’s GPS in her pocket if worse came to worst. But none of that helped her identify the age of footprints pressed into wet ground and later dried caked beneath the heat of the sun.

If she was honest with herself, she wasn’t even entirely sure what she was looking for.

A nest, hung in her mind, the concept of one. For a man that might look like the lean-tos they built in girl scouts, a series of thick, heavy branches cut to roughly even sizes and tucked between a pair of close growing trees. The structure might even be hidden by bits of fallen branches or tucked along tick growing bushes. She tried to look for roughly circular or oval shapes, something that would conjure the idea of a man-bird rising from the center of a haven.

But there were so many clearings in this place that would appear roughly circular in dim light, that Ira was utterly at a loss as to where to begin. She could wander through here for hours, winding in endless circles, and never see the signs she sought. After all, if a man hunted this place, he would have been lurking for longer than she had been alive. He would have known how to conceal his activities and leave no trace.

Police had been through here, as well as federal agents. They knew how to look for murders and other types of predators, and she most certainly did not. Yet search she did, for her own peace of mind, so that she could at last drive away the specters that had so long haunted her memory.

Another twig snap froze her in her tracks. She tensed and half-crouched, ready to leap into a sprint at a moment’s notice. Her heart lodged in her throat and beat like a wild creature seeking escape. Her eyes darted through the underbrush, and she held her breath as her ears strained for any other sign of approach.

For she was certain that twig had not snapped beneath her own foot. Which meant someone else was here.

She held her position for so long her arms and legs began to ache. She heard nothing else, no footsteps or breathing, so she eased into a more relaxed posture.

It must have been children, she told herself. They played here all the time during the day. Some parents happily dropped their children off near this place so they could run out their energy, others found their way here whether or not their parents wanted them to.

Though Ira assumed parents wouldn’t want their children running so soon through what had recently been considered a crime scene. The appearance of bones within the ground had likely changed a lot of attitudes.

She was still contemplating the strange discrepancy when another twig snap echoed through her skull combined with a soft, “Ira?”

She screamed. She might have bolted but, when she turned, she ran headlong into the shoulder of a tall man. She attempted to push him away so that she could spin and run in another direction – any would do – but strong hands grasped her elbows and held her in place.

“Ira!” the man said again and shook her ever so slightly. “Calm down. It’s just me!”

The voice was familiar. It penetrated the haze of fear that clogged her mind, but it wasn’t strong enough to reverse the fight and flight response that dominated her. She thrashed to loosen the grip on her arms while her heart rate built to a fever pace, and the man let her go.

The Mawor wouldn’t do that, surely. It would dig its feral claws into her with all the force it could muster so that she couldn’t possibly hope to get away. Or else it was waiting to pin her ankles with one of its talons as soon as she turned.

But no – when she stepped back, she saw that the man was just a man. And a familiar one at that. The sun glinting off the bald head revealed soft amber eyes and a brow folded with concern. It was an expression she had seen many times before on a face that could never trouble her for long.

At last, Ira took a deep breath and managed to return her heart to her chest. Her hands shook as she raised them, but she leaned against a tree to regain her bearings, and some of the light-headed dizziness summoned by her fear began to fade.

“I’m sorry,” she managed to gasp. “It’s just, after what happened to Wendell…”

“Yes, of course,” the man murmured and reached out to lightly touch her shoulder.

The familiar gesture further anchored her. She was able to push up into a standing position, and she even allowed herself to lean slightly against the solid, stable form of the man who had been like a second father to her growing up.

Owen Bradley still lived down the street from her parents. Houses in their part of town were somewhat more spread out than near the town’s center. They had a wide spread of back yard to roam when they were children. So it was a bit of a hike to the Bradley household, but not so far for a youngster that Ira hadn’t been best friends with Owen’s daughter, Amber, who had been only a year older.

Amber and Ira were the kind of friends that did everything together. In the summer, they pitched a tent out in the yard and camped beneath the stars. Whichever house they were near, their parents had brought them snacks in the form of popcorn and s’mores pre-heated in the microwave since it was usually too dangerous to light an open fire.

In the fall and winter, they slept over at each other’s houses, moving their camp out to a pile of blankets and pillows on whoever’s living room floor. In middle and high school, they attended every dance together, eventually making it a point to say they were each other’s dates simply so the boys would leave both of them alone. After every major school event, they went out to dinner together – and it became a point of pride when they had the money to pay for those late night snack sessions themselves.

It was their eternal grief that they hadn’t been able to graduate together. Amber’s ceremony took place one year earlier, yet all the celebrations had been identical to all their previous accomplishments. And true to her promise, Amber had returned from college the next summer so that they could repeat the ritual for Ira’s graduation.

They still talked. Forever friends didn’t fade out of existence simply because they moved away or stopped talking every day. But there was a time when Ira would have considered that girl her sister, and now she wasn’t even sure what city she occupied or what occupation currently dominated her time.

Even so, Amber’s father smiled at Ira as though she was a teenager who had just knocked on his door to ask if his daughter was around. The gentle touch of his arm around her shoulder, guiding her toward safety, was familiar and, therefore, to be trusted. It drove away the fear and chill that had dominated her since she entered this space, and she accepted without question the security of it.

“What in all blazes are you doing out here?” Owen asked when it was clear Ira had regained her composure. “You mentioned Wendell, so I assume you know all about what the FBI found when they came out here.”

“That’s why I’m here, actually,” Ira admitted, her voice both soft and tenuous – a combination that made her want to cringe when the tentative words struck her ears.

Where had all her courage gone?

“You think you’ll find something the FBI missed?” Owen asked. His tone suggested surprise but lacked the patronizing quality Ira expected. Perhaps it was because this man knew her; he knew she wasn’t the sort to engage in frivolous behavior. If she was out here poking through the dirt, she had a reason, even if he couldn’t guess what it was.

“I don’t know,” she admitted and shook her head. Because, really, she didn’t think that was the case.

It was more that she thought there was something they didn’t know to look for – and that was what she was hoping would leap out at her.

“Wendell is just having a difficult time,” she explained, relieved to have some of the burden lifted from her shoulders. “I thought if I could come out here and find something more solid that explained his disappearance and subsequent return, it might help him put the whole thing behind him.” Because she had certainly never been able to do that after her brush with the thing that lurked in these woods.

The man, she reminded herself firmly so that she couldn’t slip back into an old pattern of behavior. The sicko who apparently gets off on chasing teenagers through these woods.

Owen patted her arm. He had drawn her in a direction that would take them across the river, beyond what was considered the safe portion of these woods. There was a small walking bridge near the back of the designated play area that led to leaf-shrouded pathways often used by hikers. It was generally agreed among the younger occupants of these woods that parental supervision was needed on the far side of the river.

But Ira remembered now that Owen had a cabin not far from the bridge. She and Amber used to beg him to take them during the spring and summer months so they could have real camp outs, but Owen didn’t often indulge their fancies. Sometimes he claimed that there were wild animals in the vicinity, which made it dangerous to pitch a camp outside. Other times he cited the risk of forest fire to keep them in his back yard instead of taking them to his cabin.

Ira suspected now that Owen merely liked to keep this as his private space. Even his wife didn’t frequent it very often. But she had been inside a handful of times before, so she didn’t hesitate to pass through the door when Owen slid it open and motioned her inside. Despite what she was looking for, she had no reason to be suspicious of this kindness.

Owen shrugged his jacket off as soon as he passed through the door then hung it on a hook on the wall just beyond the entrance. He moved straight to the small kitchenette tucked in one corner of the cabin’s main room and put a kettle of water on the stove so he could offer her a hot drink.

Ira shuffled instantly to the small, sturdy wooden table that sat between the kitchen area and what passed as the living room. Most of the cabin was represented by this large, open space. A fireplace sat in the center of one wall, and the living room furniture was arranged around it. Ira remembered curling up in blankets with amber, the two of them clinging tightly together, as Owen read them ghost stories from a book they insisted on purchasing with a shared pool of allowance.

Aside from that, her memories of this particular cabin were slim. A small arch led to a narrow hallway and off of that could be found the bathroom and a handful of bedrooms. This place wasn’t really meant to be lived in year round. Probably, at some point in the distant past, it had been a hunting lodge. But now most of the game people were interested in hunting in this area had moved deeper into the forest, which meant it was more just a getaway for Owen and whoever he brought out here.

“I’ve been monitoring these woods for awhile,” he announced as he pulled a small tin of tea bags from a shelf and set them in the center of the table. Mugs followed. They were plain, solid-colored mugs, nothing fancy or special. But they would hold liquid and they were clean. “I’ve had a hard time thinking I spent my whole life half-living on the edge of something like what happened to Wendell, and those poor kids they pulled out of that pit.”

Owen cringed. Ira had seen photos, of course. She followed the story of this investigation with great interest, given her fear at the time that some of those bones would turn out to belong to her nephew. But it was different, she supposed, to see the body parts actually pulled from the ground in a place that was only a hop, skip and a jump away from here.

Why this killer’s cache was practically in Own’s back yard!

The thought sent a tiny shiver down Ira’s spine again, and suddenly she was more alert than she had been in days. Fear had clouded her senses when she stepped into this forest, and it hounded her ankles every time she stepped beyond the comforting safety of her parents’ front door. But suddenly the cloud was gone from her head, allowing her to see everything surrounding her with laser clarity.

The walls of this cabin were thin. Positioned as it was just a short walk from the bridge, the screams of the teenagers that passed through the Mawor’s woods on their rite of passage would be audible if muffled from any place within these walls. The cabin possessed all of the things that could be used to create a hunting blind or dig a shallow grave – and no one would think to question such supplies being stocked in a hunting lodge. There were probably dozens of others exactly like this one tucked into the woods not far from here, and any one of the could be equally guilty aside from their proximity to the sounds.

Someone lurking here on a dark summer night would have no difficulty hearing the passage of terrified teenagers – which would allow them to know exactly when to take action.

Now that she had caught the thread, the part of Ira’s mind that focused on strange patterns took off like a rocket, honing in on a host of other details most people might happily overlook.

She knew for a fact that there was a small hatch near the back of the cabin. The entrance was neatly concealed by a small utility closet, but it led to the basement. Down there it smelled like dust, mildew and earth. She had only visited it once briefly before Owen snatched her up and forced her to return to the upstairs portion of the cabin, sighting potential dangers lurking in the shadows.

But her memory of that space was a perfect match for what Wendell described when he woke in a haze after being knocked out.

Then there was the fact that Owen had been so unwilling to bring her and Amber to this cabin throughout their youth. His excuses seemed flimsy, even back then. But in the carefree world of a teenager, there wasn’t much point in focusing on what a parent flat out refused to provide.

While she sat at that slightly familiar table and listened to the soft whistle of the kettle as it brought water to a boil, she traced the timeline of events Wendell described to her. How easy it would be to hear the sharp shriek of laughter as teenagers sent another of their kin into the forest. If one ventured beyond the bridge, they could even hear the snap of twigs and the dry crunch of leaves without needing to wait for the shrieks.

It would be all too easy to drag a body back here, especially if it was small and light. The basement would conceal the crime, and the walls might well be insulated against sound down there.

But the cabin was still close enough to the old windmill that a wild flight free of a space just beyond it would allow the escapee to reach freedom without too much difficulty, especially if not pursued. It would be easy to mistake the sheltered groves scattered between the cabins on this side of the river with the clearings in the windmill’s forest. It would even be possible to mistake a crossing of the river if the water level was low or if it had recently rained.

Or if the mind was so choked with terror it could think of nothing but escape.

Owen lifted the kettle free of the heat and brought it toward the table, but that simple act seemed suddenly sinister. Even as he approached, Ira scraped her chair backward and pushed to her feet. Her eyes must have been wide and wild as she started at him, because concern returned to his face. But this time it didn’t seem comforting or even all that familiar.

This time she thought of the image she had spent so much time blocking out of her memory – the image of a tall but hunched figure with long, misshapen fingers and a rough, curved beak. A figure that could just as easily resolve into a bald man wearing a feather rough tucked into his jacket as well as one of those masquerade masks that went on sale at the dollar store every Halloween.

Her heart lodged in her throat again and, suddenly, Ira understood why a simple gesture and kind word from this man hadn’t been enough to calm her panic the first time around.

“Ira?” Owen asked sharply when he saw her backing away. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s you!” she blurted before her numb mind could even contemplate the danger she might currently be in. “It’s been you all the time! You’re the Mawor!”