Buried in Willows End

The sky over Willow’s End was the color of an old bruise — sickly purple bleeding into rotten yellow.

Ali pressed her forehead against the window as the bus rumbled down the cracked two-lane road, the glass cool and slick with condensation. Outside, skeletal pines clawed at the sky, their blackened trunks sagging under the weight of endless gray mist. The mountains loomed in the distance, hunched and brooding like old gods that had long since stopped listening.

Home.

If you could even call it that anymore.

She hadn’t been back in ten years. Not since that night.

Her therapist’s voice echoed in her head: You have to face it to heal, Allison.

As if healing was even possible. As if digging up the bones of her past wouldn’t bury her alive.

The bus hissed to a stop at the cracked curb of Main Street. The town looked smaller than she remembered — like it had been hollowed out from the inside. Shops shuttered and sagging. Windows boarded up with planks that warped and buckled from years of rain. Rust crept up the once-proud church steeple like a sickness, and the asphalt was split and buckled like the earth itself was trying to swallow the town whole.

Ali slung her duffel bag over her shoulder and stepped off the bus. The cold hit her like a slap — sharp, metallic, reeking faintly of mold, wet stone, and something sweeter underneath. Something rotten.

No one greeted her. No one even looked her way.

Good.

She started walking toward the motel at the far edge of town, boots crunching on salt-stained pavement. Every step closer made her chest tighter, her skin itchier — like invisible fingers brushing her neck, trailing down her spine.

A memory slithered up, uninvited:

— blood pooling in the dirt —

— mouths chanting words in a language that tasted like ash —

— the snapping sound of bone breaking, sharp and wet —

Ali blinked hard. No. Not yet.

The “Sunny Days Motel” leaned precariously near the highway, its neon sign sputtering and half-dead. The O buzzed in and out, painting the cracked parking lot in sickly pink light.

She pushed through the door and a little bell jangled overhead, shrill and jarring in the silence.

The man at the desk didn’t smile. Didn’t speak. Just slid her a key with the number “3” etched into dull brass. His fingers were stained — not with ink or oil, but something darker. Something that looked like old blood.

Ali clutched the key, her knuckles going white, and fled down the narrow hallway.

Her room was even worse inside: mildew clinging to the heavy curtains, a bedspread patterned with cigarette burns and something darker. The faint whine of something dying inside the radiator.

She locked the door behind her, bolted it twice for good measure.

Then she sank onto the bed, breathing shallow, tasting rust at the back of her throat.

Outside, the town breathed — slow and heavy, like something waking up beneath the surface.

You have to face it, her therapist had said.

But the thing about digging too deep is that sometimes, you don’t just find the past.

Sometimes the past finds you first.

The woods hadn’t changed.

Still thick.

Still rotting.

Still breathing.

Ali stood at the edge of the tree line, her boots sinking into the damp, spongy earth. Dead pine needles and sodden leaves clung to her laces like grasping fingers. The air was wet and sharp, tasting of moss, decay, and something else — something sour, like meat left too long in the sun.

A crow screamed overhead.

It made her jump, heart hammering against her ribs like a caged animal.

She almost turned back. Almost.

But something waited for her out there.

Maybe closure.

Maybe something worse.

She stepped into the woods.

The trees closed around her, skeletal arms knitting into a tight canopy overhead. Every step she took squelched wetly. Mud sucked at her boots, reluctant to let her move forward. Branches snapped underfoot, brittle as bones.

The deeper she went, the colder it got.

Ali didn’t realize where her feet were taking her until she saw it:

The clearing.

Her breath caught in her throat.

Even after all these years, the clearing was still there — the place where the ground had been stripped bare, ringed with stones blackened by old fires. In the center, a shallow pit gaped open, filled with stagnant, black water.

The memories slammed into her like a freight train.

Blood. So much blood.

Her hands slick with it, fingers sticky and trembling.

The heavy thud of a body hitting the earth.

A face — wide-eyed, lips trembling, whispering her name.

“Ali… please…”

The memory twisted, blurred.

Ali saw herself — younger, crying, screaming — tied up, struggling.

They were going to kill me, she thought desperately.

They were going to—

But another flash:

Her fingers gripping the handle of a knife.

The metallic tang of blood in her mouth.

The sick, beautiful give of flesh splitting under the blade.

No.

No.

She staggered back, boots skidding on the slick mud.

The pit at the center festered like a wound.

Something shimmered just below the filthy water — a dull glint, half-buried under dead leaves and slime.

Ali dropped to her knees, the earth sucking at her jeans, and plunged her hand into the icy blackness.

Her fingers closed around something solid. Heavy. Rough.

She yanked it free with a wet sucking sound.

It was a knife.

The blade was long, blackened with time, the handle wrapped in what might have once been leather, now rotted and frayed into slime.

Dark stains marred the blade, thick at the hilt — old blood, dried and crusted.

And caught around the handle, tangled in the decay, was a strip of cloth — deep, dark red, the same color as the blood coating Ali’s hands in her flashbacks.

Ellie’s jacket had been that color.

The memories ripped through her — not flashes this time, but a flood.

The clearing.

The firelight.

The cult surrounding them.

Ellie kneeling at Ali’s feet, hands bound behind her back, her voice hoarse and raw, whispering Ali’s name like a prayer.

The knife already in Ali’s hand.

A hand on her shoulder. A voice in her ear: “Do it. Show us you are worthy.”

Ali stepping forward.

The first stab — the horrible, shocking ease of it.

Ellie’s gasp — not a scream, just a soft, wet sound.

The warmth of blood exploding over Ali’s hands.

The awful crunch as the blade met bone.

The cult roaring with approval as she twisted the knife deeper.

Ellie sagging, her blood pooling in the dirt, soaking Ali’s shoes.

And worst of all —

Ali laughing.

Laughing as Ellie died.

Ali dropped the knife with a strangled cry, stumbling back, wiping her bloodless hands against her jeans even though she could still feel it, slick and sticky.

She doubled over and vomited, retching into the black earth.

The trees leaned closer, their bare branches whispering, their shadows coiling around her.

It wasn’t the town.

It wasn’t the woods.

It wasn’t even the cult.

It was her.

Ali sank onto her knees, the earth swallowing her like quicksand, and pressed her forehead into the mud.

She had been the rot all along.

She wasn’t something hidden beneath the surface of Willow’s End.

She was the surface.

She sat back, dazed, numb, and her eyes dropped to the knife.

The blade that had stolen Ellie’s life.

The blade that had made her into something the town could worship.

Her fingers closed around it again.

The handle was cold, slick with rot, but it fit her hand perfectly — like it had been waiting for her to come back.

Ali raised the blade to her chest.

The point kissed her jacket, pressing against the frantic beat of her heart.

Tears blurred her vision — but her hand didn’t shake.

She drove the knife inward.

Pain exploded through her, blinding and raw, but she forced it deeper, twisting until her body folded onto the ground, blood spilling from her lips, steaming in the frigid air.

She lay still, face pressed into the earth, her breath shallow and broken.

The woods shifted around her.

Figures emerged from the tree line — dozens of them, hooded and silent, their feet bare and blackened from years in the wet soil.

The cult.

They had been waiting.

Watching.

They circled her body, reverent and slow.

Rough hands gripped her ankles, her wrists. They lifted her like a relic, a prize.

And wordlessly, they carried her deeper into the forest.

Somewhere, beneath the surface of Willow’s End, a grave yawned open — not a resting place, but a continuation.

And it welcomed her home.