Chapter 3 The Scar

The truck didn't speak. It roared down the empty gravel roads as if the noise alone could keep the woods at bay. Lex kept both hands clenched on the wheel, knuckles bone-white, eyes wide and too dry. Ava stared out the window, one hand still clutching the cloth-wrapped tooth in her coat pocket like a holy relic or a live grenade.

Neither of them said anything for a long time.

The silence stretched like a ligament pulled too far. When Lex finally spoke, it was in a whisper so small it felt wrong in her throat.

"You believe me now?"

Ava didn't answer immediately. She was too focused on her own reflection in the side mirror. Her pupils looked too wide. Her face too pale.

"Yeah," she said. "I believe you."

Lex pulled off the main road and into a narrow driveway behind her trailer, the tires crunching slow over gravel. The headlights swept across rusting

windchimes and a collection of half-dead succulents on the porch. The truck groaned to a stop.

Ava didn't move.

Lex shut the engine off. The silence that followed was even heavier than before.

"You okay?"

"I think it marked us," Ava said softly. "Or me. Or both."

Lex didn't respond. She reached into the glovebox, pulled out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and an old washcloth. "Inside. Come on."

Ava followed her inside, the door creaking closed behind them. The air was dry and smelled faintly of cedar, cigarettes, and old coffee. Lex didn't turn on the overhead lights, just a desk lamp in the corner. It cast long shadows across the room.

Ava pulled off her jacket and stared at the scar on her collarbone.

It had changed.

The jagged crescent that used to be pale pink had darkened overnight to a sickly gray-purple. The skin around it was inflamed, pulsing faintly like there was something alive just beneath the surface.

Lex stepped forward, reaching to examine it. Ava flinched. She didn't mean to. It was just instinct.

Lex hesitated. "It wasn't like that before."

"No."

"You said it was a dog."

"I lied."

Lex nodded. She sat on the edge of the table and lit a cigarette with trembling hands. "You think this is like rabies? Or some infection?"

"Does rabies make the trees move?"

Lex exhaled slowly. "Point taken."

They sat in silence again.

Then Ava said, "We need help. Someone who knows what this is."

Lex's expression shifted. She tapped ash into an empty mug. "There is someone."

Ava looked up. "Who?"

"Elijah Greene. Old ranger. Lives up past the ridge, near Lost Hollow."

"The conspiracy guy? The one who used to nail crosses to trees and shout about blood lines at town meetings?"

"That's the one."

Ava sighed. "We're really going to talk to Bigfoot Bob."

Lex crushed the cigarette in the mug. "If anyone knows what that thing was, it's him."

---

They drove the next morning, following logging roads that twisted higher into the hills until the cell signal vanished completely. Elijah Greene's cabin looked like it had grown out of the earth, built from mismatched stone, wood, and paranoia. Wind chimes made from bones clacked in the wind. A rusting No Trespassing sign hung crooked on the gate, bullet holes punched through the lettering.

Ava got out of the truck first.

She walked up to the porch, eyeing the charms and sigils carved into the doorframe. They weren't decoration. They were warnings.

She knocked.

No answer.

Knocked again. Harder.

A scraping noise answered from inside. A bolt thrown. A creak.

The door cracked open. An eye appeared in the gap.

"I thought you were dead," said a voice. Gravelly. Male.

Ava blinked. "I could say the same."

The door opened wider.

Elijah Greene looked like a tree in human form tall, broad, gnarled with time. His beard was shot through with gray and pine needles. His flannel was stained and patched. But his eyes were sharp. Too sharp.

"You saw it," he said.

Not a question.

Ava nodded.

He looked past her at Lex. "You too?"

Lex hesitated, then nodded.

Elijah stepped aside. "Then come in. Before it follows."

---

Inside the cabin, it was warm and packed with books, jars, bones, and maps pinned to the walls. There were photos too grainy black-and-white prints of shapes in trees, deep footprints, and what looked like autopsy reports.

Ava noticed a sketch pinned above the fireplace. A drawing of the creature. It looked exactly like what they'd seen.

"You called it an Alpha," Ava said.

Elijah poured them tea without asking. "Because that's what it is. The first. The oldest. The one all the others come from."

Lex frowned. "Others?"

Elijah sat. His knees cracked like dry wood. "It doesn't just kill. It chooses. It marks. You don't get away from it unless it wants you to. And if it does... it's for a reason."

Ava stared at him. "Why me?"

Elijah looked at her scar. "Because it knows what you are. What you could be. It sees potential like a shark smells blood."

"But I'm not a-"

"Not yet," he interrupted. "But it started with you long before that bite. Probably before you were born."

Lex shivered. "Her dad just vanished. In the woods."

Elijah nodded slowly. "And they never found a body. Of course they didn't."

Ava felt a chill crawl up her spine.

Elijah leaned in. "If it marked your father, and now it's marked you then the cycle has begun again."

"What cycle?"

"Inheritance."

The word hit the air like a dropped knife.

"You mean I'm supposed to become that thing?"

"It doesn't pass the curse to just anyone. It waits for one who survives. One who adapts."

Ava stood. "No. No, I'm not playing that game. I'm not some chosen bloodline. This isn't a fantasy novel."

Elijah didn't argue. He just looked sad.

"It already started. Look at your reflection tonight. If your eyes shine back at you-you'll know."

Lex rose too. "We should go."

Elijah handed Ava a small bundle wrapped in hide. Inside: a charm of woven bone and red thread.

"Sleep with it under your pillow. It won't stop it. But it might slow the dreams."

Ava took it without thanks.

"If you start waking up in places you didn't fall asleep," Elijah added, "call me. And don't go near the river. It drinks memory."

They left.

The woods watched them all the way home.

That night, Ava didn't sleep. And when she looked in the mirror at 2:47 a.m., her eyes caught the light.

And glowed.