ONE
THE WOODS CAME FOREmeline the way they always did: creeping in with the shadows, seeping up through the cracks.
Emeline, they whispered.Sing us a true song.
Emeline gritted her teeth, ignoring it. From her perch on the wooden stool beneath the lights, she sang into the mic, picking the strings of her ukulele, telling herself she didn’t care if the ale in the bar taps turned to creek water tonight. Didn’t care if those spongy green clumps sprouting between the floorboards were, in fact, forest moss.
She needed to stay focused.
She needed to not screw this up.
Emeline couldn’t give the audience any inkling that freaky things happened when she sang. Nope. She was Emeline Lark, folk singer with a pop vibe. Rising star with foot-stomping melodies and a breathy, warbling voice.
Nothing freaky to see here at all.
The lights of La Rêverie were turned down and a fire crackled and spit from a hearth in the pub’s stone wall. Oil lamps glowed on wooden tables throughout the room. It all felt veryhyggely. Cozy, warm, and dark—minus the white lights aboveEmeline. These blinded her, hiding the patrons from view as she hurtled towards the end of her final set.
Emeline …
The scent of damp, mulchy earth festered in the air. Emeline scrunched her nose, trying to focus on the faceless audience beyond the lights.
I can handle this, she told herself.
Usually, that was true. But her delusions of the woods were more persistent lately.
What if things worsened while she was on tour?
What if, one of these days, shecouldn’thandle it?
Emeline’s leg bounced as she plastered on a smile and kept strumming.
While she sang through the last song of her last set, the pungent smell of fresh earth made her glance down. Beneath her Blundstones grew a patch of emerald-green moss.
She blinked, hoping she was imagining not just the moss, but the shiny black insects emerging out of it. Scuttling over her Blundstones. Swarming up her jeans.
Beetles.
She stared in horror at their little black bodies, shimmering iridescent blue and green as they crawled up her legs.
Just one true song, rasped the woods.
Emeline glanced to the audience beyond the lights. But no one seemed to notice the horde of beetles.
They never did.
Because you’re seeing things that aren’t there.
Just like everyone who’d lived in Edgewood too long.
Emeline skipped the last verse of the song and moved straight into the final chorus, ending her set short.
The forest paused, waiting.
But no way was Emeline going to play another song. Becausethe moment her music stopped, so did the forest’s reach. It was something she’d learned after moving away from Edgewood two years ago: the woods—real or imagined—only came for her when she sang.
The problem was: Emeline was always singing.
Music was her life.
