Blogtober 2025, Day 1: Levitating

Lucy's Path: Chapter One

Lucy Hargrove was seven when she vanished. She wasn’t a mischievous child, but she was drawn to the woods behind the school in a way the adults found unsettling. She said there was “a lady in the trees” who sang to her when recess grew quiet. Her classmates teased her, but Lucy never stopped listening.

On the October afternoon she disappeared, children recalled her wandering toward the tree line, her small hand stretched out as if someone were leading her. When her brother turned to look for her, she was gone.

Searchers scoured the path for days. They found her shoes sitting neatly at the base of an old oak, and scraps of ribbon tied to low branches, as though marking a trail deeper inside. On the trunk of that same oak, someone had carved a symbol no one recognized—something like an eye levitating inside a circle of teeth.

Some whispered the woods had been cursed long before the school was built, a place where offerings were left to keep something satisfied. The elders shook their heads and told the children not to speak Lucy’s name after dark. But still, they do. And sometimes, the woods answer.