Silas Mothridge's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Three expedition members never came back from last week's walk, and now the others wouldn't follow Silas Mothridge into the dark. He stood on the cabin porch and watched them refuse. Six people, headlamps off, backpacks still zipped. One of them, a woman holding a black pack with a little moth keychain, set it on the steps and would not pick it up again. "We're not going out there at night," she said. "Not after Pete. Not after the others." Silas had built this whole life around the search. The black cabin behind him wore its painted moths and red doorframe like a promise. His maps covered the walls inside, marked with every sighting that always went cold. He wanted one clear photo. He had wanted it for years. But a camera needs hands beside you in the woods. "The sightings peak at night," he said. "That's when it moves. We go now or we lose the pattern." "Then go alone," she said. The others nodded. They turned and walked toward their trucks. Headlights swung across the trees and left. Silas stayed on the steps a long time. Wind moved the leaves. He listened to the forest the way he always did, learning its rhythm. Tonight the rhythm was wrong. No crickets. No owl. Just a slow dripping sound from somewhere past the treeline. He went inside, grabbed his camera, and picked up the moth-keychain pack she'd left. He could keep hosting weekly expeditions and watch them shrink to nothing. Or he could learn what scared his people off. He chose to walk. The trail was soft and dark red under his boots. He reached the old sign where someone had sprayed a black moth across a rusted stop sign. The dripping grew louder. He followed it. It led him to a tree he had never mapped. Its leaves hung heavy and red, and from every branch the red ran down in long threads and pooled at the roots. He touched a drop. Warm. Sticky. Not sap. Blood. Silas stepped back. His boots sank into wet ground. The whole clearing bled up from under the soil. This was what his people had felt and he had not. Not Mothman. Something in the earth itself. Then the dripping stopped. Every sound stopped. Behind the weeping tree, two red points opened in the dark and held on him, low to the ground, steady, watching. He raised the camera. His hands shook. He got one frame before the eyes slid back and vanished. Silas ran. He did not stop until the cabin porch was under his feet. Inside, he laid the camera on his maps. The photo showed the bleeding tree, and beside it, two red eyes. Not the face he wanted. But proof of something. He pinned the photo to the wall. His expeditions were finished. Whatever he did next, he would do it alone.