Dane stood at his living room window, wine glass in hand, watching his neighbors pack their cars and drive off with coolers bulging and trunks stuffed with pie platters and board games. Down below, frost lingered along the curb—rare for Pacifica. He breathed in, catching a faint whiff of ocean salt and pine—faint reminders of something familiar, but not the crisp wintry air of his youth.

He had lived here on Talbot Avenue for nearly a decade now. Long enough to recognize every cracked sidewalk and feel the salt spray of the Pacific in his bones. Though he’d been born in the Midwest, the wild western edge of the country had always felt like home to him—the Pacific coast with its fog and cliffs and fierce waves. Still, being older now, the holiday brought a wistful ache. He found himself thinking of the past: of his parents, now gone; of friends and relatives who had once filled long tables with laughter and now existed only in photographs and memory. This year, he wasn’t flying home—and it left a hollow space where tradition once lived.

He turned from the window, set his empty glass on the counter, and opened the freezer. A solitary chicken pot pie stared back at him. He sighed, turned on the oven, and flipped the TV to some forgettable series for background noise.

At six o’clock sharp, a knock sounded at his door.

He debated ignoring it, but the rhythm—two taps, a pause, two taps again—was unmistakable. Martín’s knock.

Martín—building maintenance manager, unofficial mayor of Talbot Avenue, originally from Oaxaca. Warm smile, booming laugh, fierce devotion to the building’s ancient furnace system and its equally ancient tenants.

When Dane opened the door, Martín grinned and held out a covered dish.

“Dane, amigo,” he said, “you’re alone tonight, sí?”

Dane nodded. “Looks that way.”

“Not anymore.” Martín tilted his head toward the stairwell. “Come down. We’re having dinner in the rec room. I made pozole. It’s good for people who forget to eat with others.”

Dane blinked—touched and embarrassed and suddenly hungry. He hesitated, glancing at the pot pie on the counter.

“Leave it,” Martín said, as if reading his thoughts. “It’ll keep.”

* * * * * * * * * *
​When Dane walked into the rec room—the same room where they once held potlucks, baby showers, and a short-lived tango night—it was no longer drab and silent. Someone had hung string lights. A small folding table stood in the center, draped in mismatched tablecloths and already stacked with dishes.

Brigitte was there, resplendent in a silk scarf and ankle boots that shimmered in the lamplight. She flashed him a Julie Andrews-worthy smile and said, “Ah, Dane! You made the right choice, yes?” Her German accent turned her greeting into a warm embrace.

Her much-younger boyfriend, Sven, shyly raised a beer in greeting.

Across the way stood Edwin—also German, silver-haired, retired from Lufthansa, ever the gentleman—pouring California wine into delicate glasses.

Next to him, the Abernathys—an investor couple from the UK—were arranging figs, olives, and a British cheese no one could name but everyone would eat politely.

Then, in a swirl of color came Lucía and her husband, Mateo—the retired couple from Spain. Lucía’s bangles clinked as she waved hello, her lipstick bold as carnation petals. Mateo offered shortbread he had baked, adding in Spanish, “I tried to make the American pumpkin thing, but no.”

Music drifted in—soft guitar chords played by Owen from upstairs, accompanied by his girlfriend Cara, whose roasted vegetables were already warming in the oven.

There was no assigned seating. No head of the table. Just plates passed around, hands brushing, a chorus of accents, and laughter growing like a shared flame.

Dane filled his bowl with Martín’s rich, fragrant pozole, savoring the warmth that spread through him. It tasted of garlic, cumin, and something else—something that felt like home without needing to be his own. And as he ate, voices rose and fell in rhythms that crossed continents.

He listened to Lucía tell a story of growing up in Cádiz, to Brigitte recount her first Thanksgiving in America (“I thought I would die of cranberry sauce”), to Mateo explaining how he learned to fry plantains in Ohio.

And somewhere between the laughter and the clinking of forks and the tender strum of guitar, Dane realized...

He was not alone.
Not really.
Not at all.

This was a family—maybe not by blood, but by hallway hellos, borrowed spices, noise complaints forgiven, and waves exchanged through open doors on summer days.

When the dessert came out—store-bought pies, homemade flan, and something deeply suspect but delicious from the Abernathys—Edwin raised his wine glass.

“To all of us,” he said, his voice warm. “For proving that home isn’t always where you’re from, but where you’re invited in.”

Everyone echoed the cheer. And Dane felt it—in every room of his heart.
It was Thanksgiving on Talbot Avenue.
And for the first time in years, he was exactly where he needed to be.

* * * * * * * * * *
Later that night, long after the dishes were rinsed and the last of the laughter had followed Lucía’s tinkling bracelets out the door, Dane returned to his apartment. The pot pie still sat in the freezer, its box lightly frosted over. Instead, he poured himself a generous glass of wine—something bold and quietly celebratory—and settled into the corner of his familiar sofa.

Outside, the Pacific fog rolled in, turning the streetlights into soft halos drifting along Talbot Avenue. He tuned the radio to KDFC, his favorite classical station. Almost immediately, the haunting notes of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata filled the room—familiar, yet tonight, the melody carried a deeper tenderness.

He raised his glass, a quiet toast to those who were gone—and to the living souls who had shown him that home wasn’t just where he had been, but where he was welcomed.
​
Outside, the fog deepened.
Inside, Dane felt full.
And with Beethoven echoing softly in the room, he knew he was no longer alone.

* * * * * * * * * *
“Family isn’t always about blood. It’s the people in your life who want you in theirs—the ones who accept you for who you are, who would do anything to see you smile, and who love you no matter what.”  ~Anon

~Wylddane

The late autumn air in Havenwood had a way of settling the soul. The town moved at the quiet pace of fallen leaves, where neighbors nodded thoughtfully and trees stood tall against the shifting gray of November skies. Sixty-eight-year-old Samuel Grant was woven into the town’s rhythm: the man with the silver beard at the community garden, whispering encouragement to everything still clinging to green.

He lived in a crooked house on Oak Street, its purple shutters painted long ago by his wife, Clara-May, who had gone on ahead five years earlier. The house held warmth—and silence. He still talked to Clara, though, especially on mornings when the frost glittered on the windowsill, or when the violin on the radio played one of her favorite waltzes.

One windy afternoon, Samuel noticed a young man sitting on a park bench beneath the bare limbs of a giant oak tree. The man—late twenties, olive skin and tousled dark hair—wore a thin green coat and held a worn leather notebook in his hands.

Samuel walked slowly toward him, boots crunching on frost.

“Cold day for sitting still,” he said gently.

The young man startled, then glanced up. His eyes were deep brown and full of unsettled thought.

“Just… needed some quiet,” he replied. “I’m Stephen.”

“Samuel,” he said, nodding. “Quiet’s good company. Especially in November.”

Stephen gave a soft, weary laugh. “Yeah. It can be.”

They spoke for a long time—first cautiously, then with growing trust. Stephen explained that he had just arrived in Havenwood, unsure what he was doing or what to expect. His grandmother, Eleanor Vance, had died in August. He’d grown up hearing mixed things about her: that she was difficult, set in her ways, opinionated. He didn’t remember much—just that when he was twelve, the visits stopped.

“I’m here to clear out her house,” he said, looking down at the journal. “I found this while packing things. It’s full of stories. Memories. And someone named Clara. I think they were close.”

At the sound of Clara’s name, Samuel felt a subtle pang. Clara-May Vance—his Clara—had been Eleanor’s sister.

“Clara was... loved,” he said quietly. “Strong. Kind. Honest. Eleanor and she were like two stars—never far in the sky from one another.”

Stephen raised his head, curiosity flickering in his eyes.

Samuel softened. “How about you join me for Thanksgiving? We’ve got a potluck. Lots of food, lots of stories. Pie that could solve most of life’s troubles.”

Stephen almost declined—out of habit, out of uncertainty—but instead nodded. “Yeah. I think I’d like that.”

* * * * * * * * * *
Thanksgiving morning arrived under a light blanket of snow. Havenwood felt held in the hush of an early winter, and the community center glowed like an ember of warmth.

Inside, the tables groaned beneath the weight of beautifully mismatched dishes: golden roast turkey with herbs crisped into the skin, stuffing fragrant with sage, sweet corn casserole with its breadcrumb crown, cranberry relish sparkling like gems, and rolls soft as memory.

The dessert table was a thing of local legend: pumpkin pie sprinkled with nutmeg, pecan pie glossy with caramel, apple crumble with sugared crust, chocolate silk pie with dollops of whipped cream, and three kinds of spice cake.

Stephen entered hesitantly, eyes wide. He was greeted by noise and warmth and scents that stirred something inside him he couldn’t yet name.

Samuel waved him over from the dessert table. “You’re just in time. The pie ladies have begun their annual debate. Don’t get between them and the custard pie, or you might wind up in a snowbank.”

Stephen laughed, and it wasn’t the tired laugh of someone just passing through life. It was a sound that unlocked other sounds—childhood laughter, dinnertable clatter, stories not yet told.

They filled their plates and found a seat at a long table covered in red cloth and green pine sprigs. Between forks of buttery mashed potatoes and sweet potato casserole, Stephen found himself laughing along with childhood stories told by strangers who didn’t feel like strangers.

It wasn’t just the food filling him—it was something old and good. The kind of fullness that comes from being included in the stories being told around you.

* * * * * * * * * *
Later in the evening, Stephen and Samuel sat near the window watching snow fall in soft spirals. The crowd had thinned, laughter and chairs scraping now faint echoes.

Stephen opened Eleanor’s journal again and pulled out a faded photograph. Two young women, arms looped together, standing in a sunlit garden. One bold-smiled and bright-eyed—Samuel knew her instantly as Clara. The other, with her calm gaze and cinnamon-brown hair, was Eleanor.

“She wrote about Clara,” Stephen said, voice soft. “Right up until the end. Page after page. Their childhood. Their secrets. Memories I didn’t know existed.”

He swallowed. “I never realized how much she wanted to return to this. All of… this,” he gestured around at the glowing room.

Samuel nodded slowly, voice touched with old ache and new wonder. “Clara always hoped Eleanor would visit someday. They had a falling out—years ago. Pride, maybe. Misunderstanding. But she never stopped loving her. Never stopped hoping.”

Stephen turned a page and read aloud:

Clara is the anchor I lost. And still I feel tethered, somewhere inside these unfinished days.

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full—with memory, love, regret, healing.
Samuel nodded toward the journal. “You brought her back. She didn’t leave the world forgotten.”

* * * * * * * * * *
Two days later, Stephen stood again outside the house on Maple Street. Snow softened the front steps and lined the roof. It was quiet, expectant. Like something sacred waited inside to be noticed.

Samuel arrived with a thermos and two tin cups.

“I figured we’d need something warm,” he said, grinning. “Coffee. Strong and honest.”

Together they stepped inside. The house smelled faintly of lavender and old pages. Sunlight filtered through lace curtains, lighting the living room in a soft beam.

Stephen walked to the dusty bookshelf and studied the volumes there—gardening manuals, old cookbooks, a Bible with a dried rose between the pages. Samuel crossed to the mantle, where a photo of the sisters stood in a silver frame.

“They were quite the pair,” Samuel murmured. “Two hearts, different rhythms, but the same song.”

Stephen nodded, a tenderness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “I want to restore this place,” he said suddenly. “Not just empty it. Not just leave it. I want to make it... home again. To bring life back here. Stories. Laughter. Something that feels... whole.”

Samuel blinked, moved beyond words.

Stephen walked to the small round table beside the armchair and placed the journal there—next to Eleanor’s knitting basket, with her needles still tucked into a half-finished scarf.

The house seemed to sigh. Not with sadness—but recognition.

Samuel looked at Stephen, surprise and gratitude settling into a quiet joy.

“Well,” he said softly, “seems Havenwood still has room for new beginnings. Even in November.”

They poured coffee and sat together, the two of them framed in the golden quiet that comes from something unbroken finding its way back.

Outside, the snow fell like gentle applause, and inside, generations of memories seemed to fold into the light of a single room.

No longer strangers. No longer separate stories.
New roots had begun to grow, right there in the house on Maple Street.

* * * * * * * * * *
Sometimes all it takes is a return to where the story began, for the story to finally begin again.
​
~Wylddane

A Woodland Parable of November

Each year, on the last Thursday of November, a feast appears in the clearing by the old cedar fence deep in the pines. No one sees it arrive. No footprints mark the snow. Yet there it rests: a long table of cedar boughs and birch peel, laid with roasted vegetables, golden cornbread, late-season berries, and a steaming centerpiece of wild grains and herbs. Candles flicker though no breeze stirs the air, and even the birds grow quiet as if holding a breath.

The villagers nearby say the feast is not meant for them alone—but for all beings, great and small. Deer nibble at the edges. Owls blink thoughtfully from their hidden perches. Even the earth itself seems to pause in reverence. And then, just before moonrise, a figure emerges from the dark of the old-growth pines.

Tall and slender, cloaked in a garment of woven moss and evergreen fronds, he moves like wind through still water. His hair is silver like first frost, and his eyes—deep amber—glow with a warmth both ancient and tender. Some say they are like embers, long-smoldering, almost ready to speak.  He is called by many names, whispered among hushed voices: the Pine Watcher. The Rememberer. The Quiet One. Yet the oldest name—rarely spoken but always known—is Father Gratitude.

Once, long ago, he was a boy named Elias, the youngest son of a family who lived in a cabin near this very clearing. They were known for their kindness, for lighting lanterns for travelers and setting an extra place at their holiday table each November—for wanderers, for neighbors, for lonely souls, and for the wild creatures of the wood.

But one winter, the boy was lost in a sudden storm. The family called his name into the night, left lanterns burning in every window, and set the feast untouched… waiting. Weeks passed. Snow covered footprints. The family moved. The land returned to silence.
​
But the feast continued.

For beyond their knowing, the boy had been welcomed into the deeper forest—where time thins, where trees remember, and where sorrow becomes wisdom. He did not become lost. He became eternal.

And so, each year, as snow settles and candles glow, Father Gratitude returns. He kneels—not to eat, but to listen. To the rustle of feathers. To the quiet breath of deer. To the hum of the earth beneath snow. And to the fading echoes of all who once sat here in love.

By dawn, the meal is gone—shared. The candles have burned low. The snow bears not footprints, but softened impressions of knees and hands: a gesture of blessing for all.

Some say, if you enter that clearing with a pinecone, a poem, or a small note of thanks, you might feel a gentle warmth brush your shoulder—light as breath. Not unsettling, but deeply comforting.
​
A reminder.
That gratitude is a feast.
That blessings multiply when shared.
And that the earth remembers what we honor.

“Let us give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.”  ~Native American Proverb

~Wylddane


© 2025 Wylddane Productions, LLC

“Silence is never empty. Sometimes it listens back.”

The house on Crimson Lane had a reputation. Not for ghosts, but for its unnerving silence. It stood like a forgotten sentinel at the edge of town, a Victorian relic left to sag into memory. Its brickwork was blackened with age, its turrets bent and weary as though bowed beneath invisible weight. The iron gate resisted every push, groaning as though reluctant to grant entry. Ivy strangled the porch railings, and the windows—filmed with dust—looked less like glass than clouded eyes that had not blinked in decades.

Inside, the silence hit like a wall. The air smelled of mildew and paper gone brittle. Heavy drapes smothered the tall windows, choking daylight until each room seemed trapped in twilight. The parquet floors were scuffed but gleamed faintly, like bones showing through thin skin. Every sound Damian Vey made—his footfalls, the rustle of his coat, the wheeze of his breath—rebounded on him with startling violence, as if the silence itself mocked his intrusion.

Damian had come prepared: a week’s worth of food, his laptop, a crowbar (a prop, he told himself, though he gripped it tighter than he liked), and his father’s old fountain pen. He wasn’t sure why he’d brought the pen. Perhaps because his father had never believed in his writing, had called it “noise for the gullible.” Damian wanted to prove him wrong, even now.

Once, Damian’s articles on folklore and urban legends had been celebrated. But his career had withered in the clamor of the internet. This assignment—spending seven days inside the “silent house”—was not just a stunt. It was a last chance. Beneath that desperation lay something more personal: he had grown up in silence, in a household where words were scarce and laughter scarcer. Silence was familiar, yet unbearable. Now he would face it head-on.

The first night passed easily. Sleep came fast, heavy, and dreamless, the silence smothering every distraction.

On the second day, he researched the house’s history. Its tenants—families, boarders, even a painter once—had all fled within weeks or months. They described not hauntings but headaches, pressure, unease. They complained of the silence. Damian scoffed aloud, and the sound of his own voice startled him.

Then, as if in reply, came the scratching. Faint at first, like a nail dragged along plaster. He froze, listening, but when he stopped moving, it stopped too.

The next day it returned, louder, longer. At first it mimicked a rodent’s scurry. By evening it had taken on a rhythm—three short scrapes, one long—like a code he could not decipher.

By the third night, the sound shadowed him. When he typed, it kept time with the keystrokes. When he whispered notes to himself, the scraping echoed his cadence. Once, in the small hours, he lay awake listening to the pounding of his own heart. The scratching answered, perfectly in step.

It was not random. It was mimicry. It was learning him.

By the fourth night, frayed and sleepless, Damian seized the crowbar and smashed through plaster. Dust billowed. Inside the wall lay not rats or wires but a small, cloth-bound journal.

The handwriting inside began neat, then unraveled into frenzy. It belonged to Ethan Dorne, a sound engineer. He described building an anechoic chamber deep within the house, convinced that silence was not absence but a frequency waiting to be captured. He had wired the walls with microphones to record it.

His final entry was scrawled so violently the pen tore the page:

The quiet is not absence. It is presence. It listens. It learns.

Damian’s skin prickled. He lifted his flashlight and probed deeper into the cavity. The beam caught on a tangle of brittle insulation and a small microphone embedded in the lath. One of Ethan’s devices, still gleaming faintly.

Of course. Ethan had tried to trap silence, but instead he had given it ears.

The scratching ceased. The house grew impossibly still, the air pressing against Damian’s chest like a held breath.

Then, a voice. Smooth. Patient. Almost kind.

“You can leave now, Damian. The silence has chosen you. Stay, and your words will matter. Leave, and you will never write another line.”

His heart hammered. He backed to the door and seized the knob. It turned but held fast. He pulled harder.

The iron lock rattled, then stilled.

Panic flared. He bolted to the kitchen, slammed at the back door. Unyielding. He struck a window with the crowbar. The glass did not break. His breath rasped ragged in his throat—then faltered, smothered, as if the silence itself swallowed it.

With a desperate heave he forced the front door open and stumbled into the night. Cold air struck his lungs. He ran down Crimson Lane, shouting for help. His lips moved, his chest heaved—yet no sound emerged. His voice was gone.

The street lay empty. The town’s distant glow flickered, unreachable. Behind him the house loomed, patient and watchful. His legs faltered, heavy as stone. Each step dragged him backward, until at last he turned against his will. The silence had sunk claws into him, pulling him home.

He crossed the threshold. The house swallowed him whole.

When morning came, Crimson Lane was quiet once more. The house stood waiting, patient as ever.
​
On the parlor table, Damian’s laptop sat open. The cursor blinked steadily on a blank page—endless, silent, and waiting.

~Wylddane

The park was nearly empty. The sky hung low and colorless, the air tinged with damp earth and the sour reek of rotting leaves. On a bench beneath the black skeleton of a maple tree sat an old woman, wrapped in a wool coat too heavy for the season. A small tin rested in her lap.

Her fingers—long, yellowed, veined like withered roots—scattered birdseed with slow, deliberate care. The pigeons clustered around her shoes in a heaving carpet of gray. Their eyes glittered like polished beads, unblinking, their wings beating the air in restless whispers.

Detective Mark Raines approached with the deliberate calm of a man who had seen everything. He was broad-shouldered, his coat hanging heavy across a frame hardened by years of long nights, bad coffee, and worse crime scenes. His jaw was rough with stubble, his eyes sharp, watchful. He was not easily unsettled.

But something about this scene—a woman alone in the skeletal park, the thick swarm of pigeons that did not scatter as he drew near—made him hesitate. Still, he sat beside her. The bench creaked under his weight.

“Mrs. Gable?” His voice sounded louder than he intended.

She did not look at him. Her gaze remained fixed on the shifting mass at her feet. “They’re always so hungry,” she murmured. “Always hungry.”

“I need to ask you about your husband,” Mark said. His tone was steady, professional. “We found no sign of forced entry. No robbery. Just…a peaceful passing.”

Her lips curved faintly. “Harold always was a peaceful man. Even at the end.”

Mark’s gut tightened. “The home security footage shows someone moving through your house that night. Leaving through the back door.”

She paused. A single seed dropped from her fingers, landing on the stone path like a tick of a clock. “The sensors,” she said softly. “They’re always going off. The cat…”

Mark leaned in, lowering his voice. “It wasn’t a cat, Mrs. Gable. It was a person. Small. Swift. And the toxicology report…” He steadied his pen, though his hand had begun to sweat. “Your husband had enough sedatives in him to never wake again.”

At last, she turned to him. Her eyes were pale, almost milky, but unnervingly clear. “Detective,” she whispered, “the only thing that ever gave Harold peace was a story. And the story of his life was a cruel one.”

He shifted uneasily. Mark had stood over corpses with their faces gone gray, had stared down suspects with dead eyes. None of it had crawled beneath his skin the way this woman’s voice did now. The faint perfume of lavender clung to her coat, but beneath it was something sharper, metallic, like old blood.

She tilted the tin. A final scattering of seed tumbled into her palm. From above, wings thundered. A massive pigeon descended, feathers dark as soot, eyes reflecting the weak daylight with a red sheen. It landed on her wrist with unnatural weight.

“That figure on the footage,” Mark said, though his voice faltered.

She stroked the bird’s breast with her free hand. Its beak clicked against her skin—pecking, tasting. A bead of blood welled, but she did not flinch. Instead, she smiled. “That was Harold. He always said he wanted to be free.”

Mark’s gaze dropped to the bird’s foot. His stomach lurched. A band encircled it—not the thin aluminum kind researchers use, but a thick circle of gold, dulled and scuffed. A wedding band. It was too tight, fused to the flesh as if welded there. The leg around it was raw, featherless, as though the bird had grown into the ring—or been forced into it.

The pigeon gave a guttural coo, low and wrong, like a human sigh twisted into sound. Then it launched skyward, scattering the flock into a frenzied storm. Their wings whipped the air like knives. For a moment, Mark shielded his face. When he looked again, Mrs. Gable was pressing the last of the blood-speckled seeds into the dirt.

“Free,” she murmured, as the sky darkened with circling shapes.

And above them, in the restless wheel of wings, one pigeon did not move with the others. It hovered, steady, watching. Its eyes glinted with uncanny clarity, and Mark felt the weight of its gaze settle coldly on him—as if Harold himself were taking note of the detective who had dared to ask too many questions.

Mrs. Gable tilted her face upward and whispered to the hovering bird, her lips curving with quiet devotion. “Don’t worry, Harold. He’ll join you soon.”
​
Mark’s heart gave an unfamiliar, unwelcome lurch. For the first time in years, the seasoned detective felt the chill of real fear.

~Wylddane

The heater in the van had given up hours ago, coughing once before falling silent. Jonas Hale hunched behind the wheel, his breath fogging the glass. The October air gnawed at his joints, and every bone reminded him of his age. Thirty years of deliveries had carved him down to this: a weary man finishing his last route, waiting for a pension and the quiet mercy of rest.

His face was lined like old parchment, his hair gone thin and gray, his hands swollen from years of gripping the wheel. He had once been quick with a laugh, but long days and longer nights had worn laughter into silence. Even so, the work had mattered—at least, it used to. The smiles on children’s faces, the relief of widows receiving their monthly packages, the small kindnesses delivered in brown paper. But most days were not like that. Most days were just boxes and silence.

Today was supposed to be his last. He had told himself he’d park the van for good, go home, heat a bowl of soup, maybe sit by the radio until sleep claimed him. Ordinary comforts at the end of an ordinary road.
But there was nothing ordinary about the last box.

It sat alone in the back, large and heavy, wrapped in thick brown paper. Damp mist had seeped into its edges, as though the world itself disliked the thing. No number, no street, no town. Only five words, written in a jagged black hand that seemed to pulse on the page:

“The Keeper, End of the Road.”

Jonas frowned each time he read it. In thirty years, he’d seen drunks scribble the wrong addresses, kids write their names backward, families send packages to houses burned down years before. But this was different. This felt deliberate.

Still, duty was a habit too hard to break. He drove.

The paved road dwindled to gravel, then to dirt. The trees closed in, skeletal branches clawing the roof, scraping long nails along the paint. The October wind sighed through them like voices speaking in secret. Leaves scattered before the van’s wheels in frantic, fleeing swirls.

Jonas’s knuckles whitened on the wheel. He thought of his father, long dead, telling him as a boy to never follow a road you didn’t know. He thought of the warm kitchen he would never see again. He thought of how quiet the world seemed when you were too far gone to turn back.

And then the archway appeared.

Stone, black and damp, strangled in ivy. Across its top, carved letters still legible despite centuries of rot:

THE END OF THE ROAD

The engine stuttered as he passed beneath.

Beyond it crouched a cottage, leaning in the wind. Its windows glowed faintly, not warm but watchful, like the eyes of something patient. A garden surrounded it, thick with roses black as coal. Their petals glistened with dew the color of ink, and when the October wind shook them, the thorns flashed like wet teeth.

Jonas’s breath caught in his throat. He wanted to turn back, but his body moved on its own. He lifted the box, heavier than it should have been, and climbed the sagging steps.

The door opened before he touched it.

She stood there.

A woman, if the word could still be used. Her hair was white as bone, her skin pale as frost, her lips colorless. Her eyes were blue—too blue, the color of deep ice under frozen rivers. Looking into them made him feel as though something inside him had already been measured and weighed.

“You’ve brought it,” she said, her voice brittle as breaking glass.

Jonas swallowed. “The package. For the Keeper.”

“I am she.” Her smile was small, wrong. “Come.”

He stepped into the cottage. The air reeked of stone and candle smoke, with something metallic beneath, sharp as blood. The walls pressed close, lined with shelves. Relics crowded them—coins that pulsed faintly with light, clocks ticking backward, dolls with cracked faces and eyes too wet, portraits whose painted gazes followed him. When the air stirred, he heard them whisper: names, prayers, fragments of pleas.

“These are the lost,” she said, gliding ahead. “What was never delivered. What was abandoned. What was forgotten.”

Jonas flinched as a letter on the shelf shivered, sighing as though it hurt. His heart pounded in his chest. He thought of every package he had ever lost—how small some seemed, how forgotten. And he wondered now if anything had ever truly been lost… or if it had simply been claimed.

The Keeper’s pale hand beckoned him deeper. His legs obeyed though his mind screamed.

The chamber at the heart of the house was worse. Frost slicked the stones though no window stood open. In the center waited a pedestal, black as obsidian, its surface gleaming like a blade.

“Place it,” she commanded.

He obeyed.

The box hissed the moment it touched stone. The paper split and curled, blackening into ash that lifted in thin, writhing ribbons. A low moan rose—not from the Keeper, not from Jonas, but from the shelves themselves. The relics groaned. The portraits grimaced. The dolls’ lips cracked into awful smiles. The sound swelled until it was no longer whisper but chorus, a thousand lost voices screaming at once.

Jonas staggered back. Pain ripped through him. His veins lit with blue fire, crawling beneath his skin like lightning trapped in glass. His chest burned, his throat closed.

“What’s happening to me?” he rasped.

The Keeper stepped closer. Hunger glowed in her eyes.

“The last delivery,” she whispered. “Every courier brings it in time. Their own life. Their own soul.”

Jonas tried to run, but his legs froze. The blue fire surged into his chest, into his throat, until he could not breathe. He thought of his years on the road, of faces at doorways, of quiet evenings at home. He thought of soup waiting for him, of rest, of the mercy of forgetting.

But there was no mercy.

The Keeper’s face blurred and became his own—his own, but wrong. Younger, yes, but grinning too wide, eyes hollow and blazing with cold light.

“Your shift is over,” it hissed in his voice.

“No—no, I’m not ready—” Jonas clawed at his chest, at the glow tearing him apart. His scream scraped the air but was devoured before it left the room. The relics shrieked back at him, voices rising in frenzy.

Outside, the van collapsed into dust. His name peeled from the side like dead skin, scattered into the October wind.

The Keeper’s hand pressed to his chest. He felt something tear loose—not flesh, but the part of him that remembered his own name, his own life. It was ripped away, dragged into the shelves where the whispers swelled and closed around him.

Jonas flickered once, then was gone.

The figure that remained smoothed its younger hands, adjusted its shoulders, and smiled. The eyes were his eyes, but colder. The Keeper’s eyes.

Outside, the roses leaned closer, dripping black dew. The October wind carried a new whisper down the empty road.

Another Keeper had been made.
​
And the road was already waiting for the next.

“Beware the last road you travel, for it may not lead you home.”

~Wylddane

In the Northwoods, when the air grew crisp and the leaves glowed gold and russet, Nutty and Whiskers liked nothing better than to sit beneath their oak tree with their friends. That evening the fire crackled, and sparks danced upward into the twilight.

The cardinal twins, Red and Red, perched side by side, their feathers shining in the firelight. Hopsy and Nosey, the rabbit pair, sat close together, their long ears turning at every rustle of leaf and twig.

Nutty leaned close to the flames. “There is a tree,” he whispered, “older than any tree in the forest. A haunted oak, they say, so ancient it no longer grows leaves. Its bark is gray as stone. Its trunk is hollow, with halls and rooms that twist on forever.”

Whiskers’ tail bristled. “I’ve heard of it,” he said. “They say no light enters its chambers… and that things move in the dark.”

Red fluffed his feathers. “Bah! Cardinals are braver than squirrels. I’d go there tonight.”

“Braver, are you?” Nosey squeaked. “Then let’s all go—together. On the new moon.”

And so it was decided. The fire crackled, the night deepened, and in the silence that followed, even the owls seemed to hold their breath.

When the night of the new moon came, the forest lay in silence, darker than ink. Clouds smothered the stars. Their paws, claws, and wings made the only sound as they crept deeper into the heart of the woods. At last it rose before them—the haunted oak. Its trunk split wide, gaping like a doorway to another world. It looked less like a tree than a pillar of stone carved by time itself.

“Just a peek,” Nutty whispered.

Inside, the air was cold as ice. Their breath smoked in the dark. Corridors stretched into nothingness. Whispers seemed to float past, though no one spoke. Shadows flickered on the walls, though no lantern burned. And then they heard it.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

Something followed them. Slow. Certain.

Hopsy froze, ears stiff. Nosey whimpered. Red and Red drew their wings tight.

“It’s behind us,” Whiskers squeaked.

They hurried forward. The sound hurried too.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

Sometimes it stopped when they stopped—so close they swore they felt its breath.

Then, out of the darkness, it came. A rush of icy wind. A blur of shadow. Eyes that gleamed like embers in the night. With a roar of panic, the friends shrieked, squawked, and squealed all at once. Nutty’s tail fluffed to twice its size, Whiskers darted like lightning, Red and Red beat their wings furiously, and Hopsy and Nosey bounded so fast their ears trailed behind.

Together they fled the tree, stumbling, tumbling, rushing headlong until the haunted oak lay far behind them.

Safe at last, in their own oak home, the fire roared bright and warm. They clutched steaming mugs—hot chocolate for Nutty and Whiskers, tea for the rabbits, and berry cider for the cardinals. Bowls of dried fruits and nuts sat untouched, for none of them had much appetite. Instead they shivered and laughed nervously, retelling what had happened. With each telling, the claws grew sharper, the breath colder, the eyes brighter. Until the story itself became more frightening than the thing they had seen.

No one slept that night. They kept watch by the fire, listening for sounds in the dark. Only when the first light of dawn spilled across the windows did they breathe easier. And all together they vowed:

Never again would they visit the Haunted Oak of the New Moon.

“The forest holds many secrets, and not all of them wish to be found.”

~Wylddane

“The greatest treasure is the companionship we never expect.”

Zachary lived in a weathered house on the edge of the village, a place that smelled of cedarwood, dust, and time. His parlor was crowded, yet strangely ordered: shelves of glass bottles with handwritten labels, clocks frozen mid-tick, photographs of strangers with sepia smiles, and trinkets from forgotten eras. He never called it clutter. A collector preserves stories, he would say. A hoarder only fears emptiness.

Zachary himself looked every bit the custodian of such a life. Tall, though a little stooped now, his frame was wiry, his movements deliberate — each gesture as careful as if he were handling porcelain instead of pouring tea. His hair, a crown of silver-gray, swept back in unruly tufts, and a short beard traced his lined face, framing eyes of pale blue that still held a spark of curiosity. More often than not, he fiddled with the chain around his neck when deep in thought, the tiny golden heart dangling there a talisman of memory.

At the heart of his collection sat a velvet cushion bearing a small, ornate music box. Its filigree gleamed faintly even in the dim light. He had found it decades earlier, and legend whispered that it would grant one true wish to whoever unlocked it with pure love. He had never dared test it. The promise of possibility was, in its way, more precious than fulfillment.

One autumn afternoon, with rain tapping insistently against the windowpanes, a knock came at his door. Standing there was a young man with rain-slick hair curling at the edges, a worn satchel at his side, and eyes the color of green glass catching the light. He introduced himself with a half-smile that seemed both open and reserved at once.

“My name is Julian,” he said. “I appraise antiques. Word reaches me that you own a music box of unusual make.”

Zachary’s shoulders stiffened. His gravelly voice betrayed no warmth. “It is not for sale.” The door closed.

But Julian did not vanish. Each day he returned, never pressing the subject again. Instead, he brought offerings — a loaf of bread still warm, a flower from his garden, a worn book from his collection. When he spoke, his hands carved shapes in the air, as though words alone could not capture his thoughts. He lingered on the porch, talking of storms and constellations, of history and memory. Slowly, cautiously, Zachary invited him in.

Evenings stretched into hours of talk. Julian leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, listening with a rare intensity. His hazel-green eyes softened when Zachary spoke of the meaning behind his artifacts: a cracked hourglass salvaged from a battlefield, a porcelain doll once clutched by a child lost too soon, the torn photograph of two lovers stitched back together. Julian treated each story as if it were treasure, his laugh quick and genuine, his silences equally eloquent.

Zachary found himself humming under his breath when Julian was near, something he had not done in years. He noticed, too, the warmth that crept back into the old house — not from the fire, but from conversation, from presence. His loneliness, which had hung like heavy curtains, began to lift.

Months passed. One night, as a storm shook the windows and thunder rolled through the rafters, Zachary felt a stirring he could no longer ignore. He looked at Julian, at the man who had come into his solitude with bread, with laughter, with patience, and thought: Perhaps the wish is not about the past at all. Perhaps it is about this moment — and what might still be to come.

He unclasped the chain at his neck and held out the golden heart. His hands trembled. “I’ve carried this key for most of my life,” he said softly. “And tonight, I think I am ready.”

Julian’s eyes widened as Zachary placed the key into the lock. With a quiet click, the lid sprang open. The familiar, lilting tune filled the room. But instead of paper or curse, light shimmered from the mechanism, spilling across the parlor like dawn breaking. The scent of lavender and rain filled the air. Zachary felt his heart lighten, as though some unseen weight had finally lifted.

The box whispered its promise not in words but in feeling. It had already granted his wish: not the return of what was lost, but the gift of connection renewed, of life shared once more.

Zachary looked at Julian and saw not a predator, but a companion who had given without demanding. Julian, humbled by the glow, reached out and covered Zachary’s trembling hand with his own.

“The box was never about possession,” Zachary murmured. “It was about choosing to open one’s heart again.”

The storm outside broke into gentle rain. For the first time in years, the old house felt alive — less a mausoleum of memories, more a home with laughter waiting to be born.
​
And in the parlor, the music box played on, its tune no longer a reminder of what was gone, but a hymn to what was yet possible.

~Wylddane

Arthur Pendleton was a man of quiet, meticulous habits. His mornings began not with coffee, but with the crisp scent of dew settling on his rose bushes. His life was his garden—a living tapestry of color and fragrance set against the roar of the highway. That endless rush of engines was the only intrusion on his solitude, a sound he had long ago learned to tune out.

Over the years the garden grew. Where once there were simple petunias, now rose trellises heavy with scarlet runner beans and moonflowers. The hum of traffic became the backdrop for a project both strange and wondrous. With the patience of a gardener and the devotion of a monk, Arthur cultivated Russian Mammoth sunflowers—giants known for their height and their instinct to follow the sun. He planted them in disciplined rows from fence to roadside, and day by day he tended them, his hands caked with soil, his face weathered by light and wind.

The sunflowers grew into a local marvel. Some reached twelve feet, their golden crowns forming a wall that tracked the sky from dawn to dusk. For drivers, accustomed to the blur of gray pavement, Pendleton’s Wall became a sudden burst of beauty. They slowed, sometimes stopped, to marvel at this radiant barrier. Arthur himself was rarely seen, just a solitary figure in a straw hat bent among the blooms.

Then came one blistering August afternoon. Tires shrieked, metal screamed, and a car skidded into the gully just beyond the wall. Arthur heard it—the crash, the cries—but his hands did not falter. He continued pruning a stubborn branch, jaw set in concentration.

A woman from a passing car ran up his drive, frantic. “Sir, please—you have to help! There’s been a terrible accident!”

Arthur turned to her, his expression unreadable. “I hear it,” he said simply.

“But aren’t you going to do something?” she demanded. “The driver—he could be dying!”

“I’m not concerned with the road,” Arthur replied, turning back to his roses. “My work is here.”

Disgusted, the woman fled to call for help.

The years passed. Accidents came and went—a blur of flashing lights, twisted metal, and sirens echoing down the highway. Arthur ignored them all. His sunflowers, however, never failed. Each summer the wall grew taller, denser, brighter—a shield of gold between his world and the road. To some, Arthur was eccentric; to others, a heartless recluse. Yet the legend of Pendleton’s Wall endured.

It was only at the end, when age had withered him as time had withered many gardens, that he offered explanation. On his deathbed, with the hush of the room around him, his great-niece Sarah held his hand. She had always wondered about him, about his indifference.

“Uncle Arthur,” she whispered, “why didn’t you ever help? All those accidents—so close to your home.”

A fragile smile touched his lips. “Help?” he rasped. “I did help.”

Her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Do you know why I planted the giant sunflowers, Sarah?” His voice was barely audible, each word a fading ember. “To hide it. From the road. I didn’t want them to see.”

Sarah leaned closer. “See what?”

With his final breath, Arthur’s gaze drifted toward the highway. “The graveyard.”

Sarah turned to the window. Beyond the towering sunflowers, swaying gently in the late-summer breeze, lay a small cemetery cloaked in shade and moss. There, beneath weathered stones, rested his wife and daughter—lost decades before to a drunk driver on that very stretch of road.

Arthur had not ignored the tragedies. He had shielded the dead from them. Pendleton’s Wall was more than a curiosity. It was a gift of silence, a wall of flowers grown to guard love and loss.
​
“The living plant, the withered stone—both remember what the world forgets.”

~Wylddane

“Silence is never peace, only the breath before the scream.”

Dawn broke gray over White Harbor, though no one greeted it. The storm had passed, yet the rain lingered, falling in a steady mist that beaded on rooftops and dripped from the sagging eaves. Water pooled in the cobbled streets, reflecting the black hulks of the pines that leaned above the village like watchmen with secrets they would not tell.

The lake lay still, too still, its surface unbroken save for the shadow that stretched across it — the great ship, anchored in the harbor. Its sails hung in tatters. Its lanterns burned with a dull, unnatural fire, the light reaching farther than it should, staining the mist. No gull wheeled overhead. No fish stirred beneath. The lake had gone silent, holding its breath.

Villagers crept from their shuttered houses, moving like wraiths themselves, hushed and hollow-eyed. They stood in doorways or huddled in the square, staring at the ship with the terror of prey that sees the hunter but cannot flee. Mothers clutched their children, though the children did not cry; they only watched the mist as though waiting for something they half-remembered from dreams.

At the tavern, Anders lit a fire though the morning was not cold, the flames snapping at logs that smoked more than they burned. Henrik, Oskar, and Martin lined the bar again, glasses untouched, their voices little more than rasping breaths. “It waits,” Henrik muttered. “It always waits before it strikes.”

From the ridges above, Ephraim’s house watched the harbor with its many windows, the candlelight inside faint but unyielding. Some said he had returned there in the night, climbing the rain-slick pines as though he had never left the tavern. Others swore they saw him at the shoreline, his cloak trailing in the surf, speaking words to the ship that vanished as soon as they were spoken.

The bell in the church tower hung still, though now and again it gave a soft, trembling note — not rung, but stirred, as if something unseen brushed against it in passing. Each sound made the villagers flinch, for each note felt like a heartbeat of the ship, pulsing into the marrow of the town.

And then Anna, peering too long, too wide-eyed toward the square, whispered a single word: “Look.”
They followed her gaze.

At the church door stood a figure — drowned, bloated, its skin pale as fish-belly, water trailing from its ragged clothes. Its head was bowed, but its hand rested on the door as though it might enter. And when the bell gave its next trembling note, the figure raised its face, empty sockets glistening, and mouthed the word that none could mistake:

Come.

The calm was worse than the storm.

When the Lake WhispersPart XIX: The Claiming...

“What the water takes, it keeps. What it keeps, it whispers.”

It began with the water.

First a trickle, then a rush, the lake rose and surged into White Harbor’s streets, flooding low places, prying at foundations. Doors burst inward. Windows shattered. The tavern shook on its stones, fire guttering, shadows spilling free from the broken mirror. Villagers screamed as water swept them from their feet.

The drowned walked with the flood, drifting through walls as easily as waves, their mouths unceasing in the word that throbbed like a drumbeat: Come. Children were snatched from their mothers’ arms; men were dragged under; women vanished in the spray. The church bell tolled wildly, cracking on its final swing before tumbling into the black water that swallowed its tower whole.

The tavern was last. Its walls bowed, then splintered, releasing the old men with their empty glasses, Anders with his pale face and broken voice, the gathered villagers who clung to one another. One by one, they disappeared beneath the surge.

And above it all, the ship loomed. Its lanterns blazed. Its captain, faceless and vast, lifted an arm as though conducting the ruin. The anchor chain groaned, and the vessel drank in the village like a feast.

By dawn, White Harbor was gone. Where its streets once stood, a bay spread wide and black. The lake lay calm again, as though nothing had disturbed it.


When the Lake WhispersPart XX: Ephraim the Chronicler“

A village may vanish, but its echoes do not.”

From the ridges above, Ephraim’s house remained. Its windows, warped and many, looked down on the emptiness where White Harbor had been. Candles burned inside, their flames unshaken by storm or flood.

At a desk of ancient oak, Ephraim sat with his ledger open, his long, bony hand moving across the page. He wrote of the storm, of the ship, of the toll, his script neat and deliberate, as though he had done it a hundred times before. Around him, shelves sagged with tomes — some centuries old, some of his own making. The air smelled of ink and wax, and of rain seeping through old wood.

He paused once, staring through the glass at the drowned bay, his gaunt face catching the candlelight. For a moment, his eyes seemed not tired but endless, filled with the weight of centuries, the burden of one who had always known.

And then he bent again to his work, recording what no one else could.

While he worked, the sun broke through, gilding the ridges and the still water below. Where White Harbor once stood, there was only a sandy shore curving into a new bay, waves lapping gently as though they had always been there. No streets, no tavern, no church bell — only beach and silence, as if the village had never existed at all.

It is said that on certain nights — when the moon is full, or fog drifts ashore, or storms lash the ridges — echoes rise from the bay. Bells tolling. Ship timbers groaning. Laughter and screams carried on the wind. Figures walking where no streets remain.
​
And always, beneath it all, the whisper of the lake.

When it storms, when the winds of winter howl, you will hear it...a quiet whisper… COME.

~Wylddane