THE KEEPER

Her legs moved before her mind could process it, sprinting through the trees blindly. The world blurred around her, trees twisted and branches clawed at her jacket. Behind her, the whispering returned, overlapping voices. Her lungs burned and her ribs were screaming in pain. She had to find the edge of the forest and finally escape this nightmare.

She ran and got dangerously close to a small ravine, the terrain sloped downward. For a moment, Ella felt like she was in a cartoon, as her legs floated above nothingness before she fell into the ravine. Loose dirt and leaves covered her face as she rolled down , hitting the ground hard.

Then there was darkness and the whispers stopped.

There was absolute, suffocating silence for the first time since she entered the forest. Ella wasn’t awake but she wasn’t exactly unconscious either. Her mind drifted into a foggy, suspended state as a shadowed figure stood over her crumpled body. It reached for her but could not touch her, its form was indistinct, shifting like smoke in the wind.

Then it vanished.

Ella’s body jerked violently as if reality had snapped back into place. Her ears were noisy, like she was hearing hundreds of alarms simultaneously all around her. After the sound simmered down, she experienced a sharp pain in her ribs.

“Ooooow!” she screamed clutching at her ribs.

She groaned forcing herself up with her shaky arms. She picked up her bag and removed her phone then closed it back.

“4 P.M.? Bu—u-but, I was in the forest for only a few hours. There’s no way…”

She was interrupted by the ravine changing before her. Its walls became steep, and the roots rose from the earth. It was too steep for her to climb, and even if it wasn’t, there was no way she could do it with the pain in her ribs. She looked at her surroundings and at the bottom stood a small hill of mossy stones.

Zzzzzzzip

She returned her phone and removed the one thing that might explain all this weirdness, the journal. Flipping to the last page, she saw a new entry, written in fresh ink spreading across the page in slow curling strokes.

“It’s watching you now. You can’t leave.”

Ella was tired of all of this, the cryptic messages, the whispers. She was going to leave this forest no matter what.

She took out her charcoal pencil, pressed the tip to the paper and wrote:

“Hello?”

Nothing.

She let out a humorless laugh. “I must be going crazy.”

But just as she was about to close the book, the ink shifted, the words she wrote dissolved into the book and new ones began to form. She could not believe what she was seeing.  It was the same handwriting as the journal’s previous entries.

“You are not crazy.”

Ella gasped before writing back.

“Who are you.”

“The Keeper of the journal.”

“Tom?”

The journal didn’t answer. Then the ink started moving again, letters appearing one by one.

“Follow the path. Find Whispering Grove.”

Ella was still shocked, she was literally talking to a book. While she was relieved that everything she saw wasn’t in her head, she was also terrified that they were real.

“Wait! I don’t know where that is.” She wrote.

“The Journal will be your guide. Run. They’ll find you now that you are awake.”

Ella didn’t need to be told twice but now her ribs were in so much pain. She tried to run and could not but giving up was not an option. walking was still an option though it was a slow one. Still, she didn't have a choice. As she started her trek, faint footsteps echoed through matching her steps.

Her fingers tightened around the journal as she moved. Ella didn’t know where she was going but she didn’t care. Anywhere was better than here. The journal said it would guide her, so she flipped it open as she limped, watching the ink shift and rearrange itself on the page.

“Left.”

She turned sharply, nearly tripping over an exposed root.

“Downhill.”

Ella stumbled forward, her boots kicking up dirt as she moved through the uneven terrain.

The whispers had returned. Soft at first, but growing, layering over one another.

“You’re close.”

She passed by a small river. Using the stones placed on the water as a bridge she crossed over to the other side of the forest.  As soon as she stepped on the grass, she got an overwhelming sensation. The air was different here, the scent was sweeter even but it was more than that. it felt like she walked into a hidden pocket in reality, different from the other side.

In the center, stood a lone tree, huge and intertwined by two other trees in the middle of it. Vines coiled around its trunk and hanging from its branches were dozens of small, wooden charms that looked old and discoloured. Another weird thing about the tree was its colour, it was purple. Everything from the leaves to the bark was darkly-grey purple.

"Weird."

The Whispering Grove.

Ella staggered forward, panting. “I made it.”

A sudden burst of wind picked up and the charms rattled against each other making a sound like chattering teeth. She looked up instantly. If she had learned anything from this whole ordeal, is that the wind is not her friend.

Before she could catch her breath, the journal trembled in her hands and the ink started moving again.

"Do not speak. Do not move."