Blogtober 2025, Day 15: Love

Lucy's Path: Chapter Fifteen


Morning came gray and brittle. The woods looked harmless again—thin trunks, wet leaves, a few tire ruts from hunters. Nothing monstrous about them at all. Yet every sound felt wrong: the breeze too soft, the birdsong too careful, as though the town itself was pretending.

Sarah sat on the hood of Mark’s car outside the diner, stirring sugar into a coffee she didn’t want. The paper cup trembled in her hand. “We should tell someone,” she said. “The sheriff, maybe.”

Mark shook his head. “And say what? That a ghost kidnapped Emily and the trees applauded?”

Tyler, pale and hollow-eyed, stared out the window toward the tree line. “People disappear all the time. Maybe this place eats them.”

The waitress, a woman in her sixties, overheard as she poured refills. “You kids talking about Lucy’s Path?” she asked. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “My brother used to walk out there. Said he heard singing. Said it made him feel loved.”

Sarah froze. “Loved?”

The woman nodded, tapping her spoon against the counter. “That’s how it gets you. You think it loves you back.”

Mark glanced at Tyler. “The hum,” he murmured. “It felt warm. Like it wanted us close.”

The waitress’s gaze drifted toward the window. “That’s how it starts,” she said quietly. “And once it knows your name, it never stops calling.”

 

 


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