15 Apr Tall Thomas

Part I

It had rained the day before they arrived, though the air that lingered along the hedgerows and cottages smelled more of earth than of water. Andrew noticed it first as they stepped out of the narrow rental car in front of the stone-framed gate of the Hawthorne Grange Inn—a musty dampness that carried not just the memory of yesterday’s storm, but something older. It seemed buried in the roots of the rolling green hills stretching out behind the inn like the folds of a thick woolen blanket.

Leah stood behind him, one hand gripping the strap of her carry-on, the other shielding her eyes against the diffused brightness that filtered through the overcast sky. She scanned the courtyard with cautious interest, her gaze moving with the measured scrutiny reserved for unfamiliar places that felt too quiet for their own good.

“This is charming,” she said, though there was a trace of hesitation in her voice. “Like something from an old novel.”

Andrew nodded but remained silent. He wasn’t used to this kind of quiet anymore. Since the fire upstate—the one they had barely escaped before it turned on them—his world had been defined by noise. Sirens, static, and the relentless roar of flames racing through brittle forest. Even when the fire was gone, the silence that followed felt false, like a pause in a recording waiting to be broken. But this was something else. This quiet felt untouched by time.

Inside, the innkeeper greeted them with a smile so thin it seemed drawn on. She was old in the way stone is old—anchored into the frame of the building itself, as though she had come into the world with the walls and would leave with them, too. Her name, according to the plaque on the desk, was Mrs. Withersby.

“You’ve just missed the worst of it,” she said as she handed over a heavy brass key. “Rain moved on last night. Fog’s lingerin’, though. He always walks in the fog.”

Leah blinked, halfway through offering her thanks, and paused. “Who walks?”

Mrs. Withersby glanced toward the wide bay window that overlooked the rear fields. The glass was fogged from condensation, and beyond it the landscape was an indistinct smear of gray and green.

“Tall Thomas,” she said. “Out before the rain comes. Never speaks, but he’s always smiling. Always swaying like he hears something the rest of us can’t.”

Andrew raised an eyebrow, mildly amused. “One of your local legends?”

The look she gave him was sharper than expected, her posture still frail but her expression utterly serious.

“Not a legend,” she said. “A warning.”

Silence settled between them for a moment before she straightened, brushing invisible dust from the front of her skirt.

“Most just keep their eyes down when the sky turns. It’s safer.”

Leah gave a polite smile and thanked her again. Andrew waited until they were halfway up the stairs before leaning close and whispering, “I think we found the village cryptkeeper.”

Leah laughed under her breath. “If she starts chanting in Latin, I’m out.”

Their room was modest, with a high ceiling, warped floorboards, and a cast-iron bed that creaked under even the slightest shift in weight. The window overlooked the rear fields, which were fenced by stone walls and dotted with gnarled oaks that looked as though wind had shaped them rather than time.

By morning, the sun had vanished again behind a thick gray fog that pressed against the windows like wool soaked in cold water. It was denser than it had been the day before, obscuring the treetops beyond a hundred yards. Leah was still asleep when Andrew slipped out, pulling a jacket over his shoulders and stepping into boots still crusted with trail dust from their last hike.

He followed the slope behind the inn toward the low stone wall. Beyond it stretched a broad field, the grass matted in whorls where the rain had beaten it down. The only sound was the soft dripping of water from the branches overhead.

At the far end of the field, partially obscured by the fog, something stood.

It wasn’t moving. Not yet. It simply stood there.

At first glance, Andrew assumed it was a scarecrow or perhaps a forgotten post left in a hedgerow. But the longer he stared, the more uncertain he became. It had the shape of a person—tall and narrow. Too tall, if his sense of distance was accurate. Nearly seven feet, perhaps more. It didn’t wear a hat. Its arms weren’t outstretched. It stood upright, unmoving. And though he hadn’t imagined it, the suggestion of a smile began to linger in his thoughts.

He stepped back, blinked, and looked again.

The figure was gone. Only the fog remained.

He rubbed his face and returned to the inn. The image had already begun to unravel in his memory like a dream he had forgotten before waking. Leah was in the shower when he came in, and when he told her what he had seen—or thought he had seen—she shrugged.

“Probably a tree. You sure you’re sleeping okay?”

Andrew didn’t answer right away. His dreams had been strange lately, but not in a way that made for easy explanation. He remembered smoke without fire, rain without thunder, and things moving just beyond reach.

They spent the afternoon exploring the village, walking narrow lanes and browsing quaint shops with names like The Moth & Tiller and Church Hollow Preserves. The fog lifted slightly as the day wore on, though it never fully cleared. By evening, dark clouds gathered low on the horizon, and a light drizzle began just as they returned to the inn. Andrew paused near the car, his gaze drawn back toward the field.

The figure was there again, its form unmistakable, still standing motionless at the far end. He turned to point it out to Leah, but she had already stepped inside. When he looked back, the field was empty once more. The fog had thickened again.

That night, the wind picked up. Tree branches scraped against the siding, and rain tapped steadily on the roof. The view from their window was again reduced to a blur of gray. There were no lights. No stars. Only the faint scent of rain mixed with something unfamiliar that Andrew couldn’t identify.

He pressed his forehead against the cold glass and squinted into the haze, hoping to glimpse that distant shape once more. Something about its stillness had embedded itself in his mind. It wasn’t frightening, exactly—just present. Watchful. A constant just subtle enough to make him wonder whether it had always been there and he had only now begun to notice.

Behind him, Leah spoke softly, her voice blurred by sleep. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, stepping back from the window. “Probably just a tree.”

The words left a bitter taste in his mouth. They didn’t feel true, but he wasn’t sure why.

Part II

The second morning arrived more gently than the first. A soft mist rose from the hills as though the land itself were exhaling, its breath curling across the grass and clinging to the hedgerows. Leah wanted to visit the old church ruins they’d passed on the drive in, so after a modest breakfast in the parlor—a spread of buttered toast, boiled eggs, and tea served without ceremony—they set off on foot, bundled in scarves and lightweight rain jackets.

The countryside unfolded before them like a damp, weathered storybook. The pages—hedgerows, fields, mossy trails—had softened and smudged around the edges. They followed a narrow lane that twisted between low stone walls and wild brambles, the occasional moss-covered milestone sunk so deep into the earth it seemed the ground had tried to swallow it. Sheep stood behind sagging fences, their gazes blank and unbothered by the drizzle.

Andrew felt more at ease out in the open than he had inside the inn. Something about the enclosed quiet of the place had begun to wear on him, a kind of pressure he couldn’t quite place. Here, with the sky stretched wide and the wind threading through the trees, he could breathe again—at least for a while. That ease vanished the moment they rounded a bend in the path and emerged into a clearing near a fallow pasture.

He saw it again.

Tall Thomas stood just beyond the second fence line, positioned at the threshold where the open grass met the forest. The same unnatural height. The same stretched proportions, arms and legs that didn’t seem quite aligned with the rules of anatomy. His back was slightly hunched, head tilted to one side as though caught mid-listen. He was swaying—slowly, rhythmically—as if responding to music carried by the fog.

Andrew stopped in his tracks.

“What is it?” Leah asked. She took a step past him, then paused when he raised his hand. She followed his gaze across the pasture but saw only fog drifting lazily between the trees. “There’s nothing there,” she said gently.

Andrew didn’t speak until they had passed the clearing and begun climbing the low hill that led toward the chapel ruins. “He was there,” he said finally, his voice low, uncertain.

“Who?”

“Thomas. Or whatever it is I’ve been seeing.”

Leah brushed a strand of damp hair from her face, glancing at him sidelong. “Are you sure this isn’t just part of you… unwinding? After everything?”

He nodded. The question didn’t offend him. He had asked himself the same thing more than once. But the figure hadn’t felt imagined. It hadn’t shimmered at the edges or shifted like a mirage. It had been present—rooted to the ground like the stones beneath their feet.

Later that afternoon, they stopped in the village for coffee and a meat pie from a corner bakery. As Leah stepped inside to browse the shelves, Andrew lingered outside. Two men stood near the steps of the post office, speaking in hushed tones. He couldn’t make out the words, but the cadence and posture were unmistakably those of men sharing an unpleasant memory.

He crossed the street, approaching slowly.

“Excuse me,” he said, his voice careful. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’ve heard people mention someone… tall. Wanders the fog before a storm. Thomas, I think?”

The older man, gray-bearded and pale-eyed, stiffened and turned away without a word. The younger one, perhaps in his forties, hesitated before nodding slowly.

“You’re not from here.”

“No,” Andrew said. “Just visiting for a few days.”

The older man muttered something inaudible and disappeared inside the post office. The younger man leaned against the stone wall, folding his arms across his chest.

“Most of us don’t talk about him,” he said. “Doesn’t do much good.”

“But he’s real?”

The man didn’t answer right away.

“He’s seen,” he said at last. “Sometimes, just before it rains. When the air’s still and the sky’s close to changing. Not by everyone, but by enough.”

A chill passed down Andrew’s back. He glanced behind him, unsure of why.

“Have people gone missing?” he asked.

The man didn’t look at him. “Some. Over the years. Hikers. Strays. Even a kid once. Constables called it a runaway.”

“Anyone ever come back?”

“If they did, they weren’t right,” he said. “If they came back at all.”

The man finally looked up. His eyes were sharp—not hostile, but heavy with something unspoken.

“If you see him, don’t stare. Don’t let him know you’ve seen him.”

* * * * * *

That evening, the sky turned a dull, pewter gray. Leah curled up on the settee near the fireplace with a book, while Andrew stood at the window in their room, staring out across the hills. The fog had crept back in, sliding through the valleys like water moving downhill. The trees outside swayed, not with wind, but in a slow, deliberate rhythm that seemed too consistent to be natural.

Thomas was there again.

He stood at the edge of the lower garden, no more than forty yards from the window. Partially obscured by the ivy-covered trellis, his outline was unmistakable—tall and narrow, arms limp at his sides, knees slightly bent inward like a marionette dangling in pause. He swayed left, then right. His mouth was open in a grin that did not change.

Andrew leaned forward, his forehead pressing against the windowpane.

Then, the figure tilted its head—just a few degrees, but it was enough.

Andrew couldn’t look away. The longer he stared, the more the fog seemed to dissolve around the figure. Details sharpened. The movement of its chest became visible, slow and shallow. Its mouth looked stretched, the lips drawn too tightly across too many teeth.

“Andrew?” Leah’s voice came from behind him.

He didn’t answer.

“Andrew.” This time she was closer, and her hand clamped gently onto his shoulder.

He blinked and pulled back from the glass. The garden was empty again.

Outside, thunder rumbled across the hills, low and distant. Rain followed within the hour—sharp and sudden, drumming on the windows as though the sky had grown impatient.

They barely spoke for the rest of the night. Andrew tossed in bed, and Leah pretended not to notice. When morning came, the fog had lightened, but the air still clung damp and heavy around their skin.

As they packed, Mrs. Withersby appeared in the foyer, folding linens near the hearth. She didn’t greet them. She only looked up, her smile thin, her eyes distant.

“You looked too long,” she said.

Andrew didn’t reply.

She nodded, as if his silence had confirmed what she already knew.

Part III

Returning home should have felt like a return to rhythm—an easing back into the familiar tempo of their lives in Oregon, where the trees stood tall and broad, and the air smelled of cedar and loam instead of peat and stone. Their house sat near the end of a sloping cul-de-sac just south of the McKenzie River, framed by thick woods and winding roads that glowed amber under the autumn sun. But when Andrew crossed the threshold after their transatlantic flight, wheeling his suitcase into the entryway, something within him resisted.

He hadn’t slept on the plane. In truth, he hadn’t slept well in days—not in any way that restored him. At night, his mind drifted in and out of uneasy half-dreams. Fog pressed against imagined windows. Something just beyond the edge of vision swayed in rhythm with distant rainfall.

Leah had been patient at first. She chalked it up to jet lag, to the difficulty of transition after weeks away, to the weight of what they’d both endured. She offered soft reassurances and thoughtful distractions—home-cooked dinners, quiet movie nights, gentle touches on his arm or back. But even she could see what lingered behind his eyes. He startled too easily. He lingered at windows as if something waited just outside their reach.

The first week passed in distractions. Andrew restocked the pantry, cleaned the gutters, and resumed a half-hearted physical therapy regimen for the tightness in his knee. Leah returned to the trauma unit under a modified schedule, easing back into the pace of hospital life. She tried to keep things warm—talkative, light—but Andrew’s attention had begun to shift inward.

The weather started to turn midway through their second week home. A Pacific front rolled in from the coast, bringing days of projected rain, and with it came a wet chill that hadn’t been there the day before. One morning, Andrew packed a thermos and headed for one of the nearby hiking trails—familiar ground, a route that traced the edge of the Willamette National Forest and overlooked a broad valley ringed with fir.

He walked for nearly two hours, ascending gradually into the rising mist. The trail wound through increasingly dense forest, its floor slick with rain and littered with soft pine needles. There were no other hikers that day—no passing voices, no barking dogs. Only the sound of jays somewhere in the distance and the creak of wind threading through the upper branches.

It wasn’t until he rounded a switchback near the third rise that he saw it.

Between the trees on the opposite slope, a figure stood.

It was tall—too tall.

He knew immediately that it wasn’t a trick of perspective. This was no misplaced tree trunk or misjudged shadow. The figure stood erect and motionless, its form distinct against the shifting fog. It didn’t move, didn’t sway. But it didn’t need to. His stomach tightened before his mind had fully processed what he was seeing.

He stood there for a long time, the cold settling beneath his coat as he gripped the thermos with unnecessary force. A slow-moving cloud passed overhead, shifting the light, and for a moment, the figure seemed to tilt—slightly, almost imperceptibly—against the backdrop of forest. Not a physical shift, but a subtle dissonance. A detail that refused to align with the world around it. Its arms hung loosely. Its shape lacked color. Its face, if it had one, was indistinct—an absence rather than a feature.

Andrew blinked.

The figure was gone.

He remained still, scanning the slope, waiting for movement, for any sign that it had simply blended back into the woods. Nothing stirred. No branch cracked. No wind followed. After several minutes, he turned and made his way back down the trail, his steps slow and careful until the car came into view.

When he returned home, Leah was already there. She sat curled on the couch with a mug of chamomile tea, the dog nestled across her feet. She looked up and smiled, but the moment she saw his face, her expression shifted.

“You okay?”

“I saw him again,” Andrew said as he unshouldered his pack and dropped it by the door.

Leah didn’t answer right away. She took a sip from her mug, then set it down carefully.

“You’re sure?”

He nodded. “It wasn’t close, but it was there. Watching.”

She shifted her weight on the couch. “Andrew, you’ve been through a lot. The fire. England. The time away from work. It’s not just your schedule that’s out of sync—it’s everything.”

“I know what I saw,” he said. His voice was calm, but the weight beneath it made the words feel heavier. “It had the same posture. The same… It felt familiar.”

Leah didn’t challenge him. She only nodded.

* * * * * *

That night, something in the house felt wrong.

Their dog, Scout, stood near the back of the living room with his ears pinned back and his eyes wide. He stared at the corner between the bookshelves and the fireplace, growling low in his throat. There was nothing there. No movement, no light, no scent. But he didn’t stop growling until Andrew picked him up and carried him into the bedroom.

Later, while brushing his teeth, Andrew noticed his phone buzz against the counter. The screen lit up with a notification, then flickered and went dark. When he picked it up, it stayed blank for several seconds before the lock screen reappeared—distorted, the date reset to the previous month.

Over the next few days, similar glitches emerged. Leah’s hospital tablet froze during routine charting. The landline rang once, then twice, but went silent when she answered. All that remained on the line was faint static, followed by a soft click.

Even their neighbor, Dale—a retired teacher who lived one lot over—mentioned something strange when they crossed paths along the fence.

“Saw someone up your drive last night,” Dale said, adjusting the brim of his weather-faded Ducks cap. “Tall fellow. Thought it might’ve been a guest or something, but he just stood there. Didn’t come up. Just… stood there. Stayed for a few seconds, then walked off toward the woods.”

Andrew felt the tension return to his chest. “What time was that?”

“Late. Close to one, I think. Just happened to see it from the upstairs window. Could’ve been the fog playing tricks, I guess.”

But Andrew didn’t think so. The fog had returned two days earlier, settling low around the base of the trees. It was unseasonably thick, curling through the underbrush like smoke. It didn’t move like fog usually did. And it didn’t smell like it should. Instead of wet earth or clean rain, it carried a faint metallic scent—subtle, bitter, and vaguely familiar. It reminded him of the hills outside the inn. Not quite the same—but close enough that something in him reacted instinctively.

On the third night, he woke to find the bedroom window fogged from the inside. A single, curved smear ran across the glass, as though someone had dragged a finger along its surface.

Leah hadn’t noticed. She remained asleep beside him, breathing softly.

Andrew wiped the condensation away and stared out at the treeline, half-expecting the figure to be there, waiting—but nothing moved.

But the smell, that faint trace of rot and iron, had already found its way inside.

Part IV

Andrew had never been one to keep journals or chase folklore. His background was grounded in fire science, climate data, and logistics—disciplines that favored the measurable over the mystical. But in the days and weeks following the trail encounter, the boundary between experience and explanation began to erode. What he had seen wouldn’t let go of him, and the instincts honed through years of wildfire response began urging him toward action, even if he couldn’t name what needed doing.

He started searching. What began as idle browsing turned into methodical inquiry. First, it was local news archives, forestry bulletins, emergency reports. Then came broader searches: missing persons cases, unexplained fatalities, strange sightings near shifts in weather patterns. His browser history soon filled with phrases that repeated the same question in different forms—“tall figure in fog,” “seen before rain,” “swaying man storm folklore.”

Most results led nowhere useful—urban legends, campfire tales, obscure forums filled with speculative nonsense. But buried deep in a digitized maritime folklore anthology, he found a passage that froze him.

“Among the fog, we saw a man, too tall for any man, and he did sway without breeze. He smiled, though there was no joy in it, and the storm came not two hours later. We did not see him again, but the steward fell ill and died in the night.”
— Journal of First Mate Tobias Lemmick, HMS Rowan, 1684

That entry opened a floodgate. He found similar accounts—some firsthand, others second- or third-hand—scattered across time and geography. None used the same name, but all described the same presence: a figure too tall, too still, appearing before severe weather events. Entries surfaced from Appalachian mining towns, Nova Scotia logging camps, and coastal settlements in Wales. In each case, witnesses described a man-shaped thing standing just before the weather broke. In each case, someone had vanished, fallen ill, or died under sudden and strange circumstances.

The details varied, but the pattern remained.

Always smiling.

Always swaying.

Always closer the next time.

By the end of the third week, Andrew had filled two notebooks with transcribed entries, maps, and sketches. His drawings of the figure were crude but precise: long limbs, slouched shoulders, and an unnerving symmetry broken only by the exaggerated curve of a mouth stretched too far. He hadn’t shown them to Leah. Not yet.

She had stopped teasing him about the sightings after she saw the figure herself.

It happened near the end of a long shift, just after a sudden thunderstorm rolled in over the hospital. The sky had turned black so fast the streetlights hadn’t caught up. Leah stepped outside the ER bay to get a breath of air before her final patient. Ambulances idled under flickering fluorescents, and the breeze had picked up just enough to carry the sharp, ionized scent that preceded heavy rain.

Across the parking lot, near the maintenance shed and a row of hedges, she saw him.

He stood alone where no one had been moments earlier—too tall for the surrounding buildings. Too still. He didn’t approach or look directly at her, but something in the way he stood, angled just slightly, unmoving despite the wind, told her that he was aware of her presence.

When she blinked, he was gone.

She told Andrew that night, her voice tight, her fingers wrapped around a steaming mug that had long since gone cold.

“He wasn’t looking at me. Not exactly. But I knew he’d seen me. And then he just… wasn’t there.”

Andrew didn’t tell her Thomas was closer now. He didn’t need to.

* * * * * *

The next changes came quietly.

Leah started varying her route home. Sometimes she left earlier, sometimes later. She left lights on in unused rooms. She paused in doorways longer than she used to. They didn’t speak about it openly, but the signs were there.

Then came the accident.

Melissa, a nurse Leah had mentored during residency, was crossing the rear parking lot after a late shift. It hadn’t started storming yet, but the air had taken on that electric stillness—the kind that made skin tighten and animals nervous. She was halfway to her car when a tree from the bordering greenbelt snapped at the trunk and crashed through her windshield. The impact killed her instantly.

There had been no wind or lightning. Groundskeepers found no sign of disease or damage in the fallen tree.

Leah hadn’t witnessed it directly. She arrived minutes later and saw the scene: Melissa’s legs pinned beneath the collapsed cab, her torso obscured by shattered glass and twisted steel, blood streaked across the asphalt.

The days after unraveled her slowly. She didn’t fall apart in one sharp break. It happened in the margins—eyes ringed with shadow, sleeves tugged down over wrists, tissues in every pocket. Her nosebleeds started in the ER, then surfaced during her commute, and finally began without warning. She no longer tried to explain them away.

They stopped talking about the figure altogether, though its presence became the shape around which every conversation curved. It lived in the stillness between questions. It hung behind their silences.

One night, Andrew woke to find himself standing barefoot in the backyard, the porch light humming faintly behind him. His feet were damp with dew. He had no memory of getting out of bed, and no idea why he had left the house. He was just there, facing the woods, waiting for something.

Leah found him a few minutes later. She didn’t yell or panic. Instead, she took his hand and led him inside.

After that, Andrew began setting alarms on his phone. He moved his boots to the front door instead of leaving them beside the bed. Small choices. Defensive measures. Acts of preparation.

The fog returned the next evening. It hung lower than before, heavier at the ground, and it didn’t drift the way fog typically does. It gathered instead—settled in corners, clung to fence posts, laced its way through the brush without rising. Leah stood at the back door watching it thicken. Andrew joined her, standing just behind, his breath steady but shallow.

Neither of them spoke.

Past the yard, just beyond the tree line, something shifted.

They were no longer alone.

Part V

Andrew had stopped thinking of Tall Thomas as a stranger. In the beginning, the figure had been something observed—a distant presence, ambiguous and strange, tethered to fog and folklore. But by the fifth week, as the sightings gave way to disturbances, a new understanding took root. Thomas wasn’t merely watching them. He was attached.

“He’s a parasite,” Andrew said aloud one morning at the kitchen table, staring past a plate of untouched eggs. “Not a ghost. Not a spirit. A parasite.”

Leah sat across from him in her hospital scrubs, still rumpled from the overnight shift. She didn’t dismiss the idea. The time for disbelief had long since passed. Instead, she opened her laptop and created a folder labeled “Activity Log.”

She documented each event meticulously—timestamped notes on temperature drops, static interference, flickering lights, missing time, and changes in animal behavior. The file grew longer every day.

Soon, their weather app began malfunctioning. It predicted heavy rainfall on clear afternoons and showed clear skies during downpours. Once, it forecasted snow in mid-April—a physical impossibility for their elevation. Leah tapped at the screen with growing irritation until it finally crashed to a blank page and refused to reload.

That same afternoon, Scout began pacing in circles near the back door. His tail was down, his eyes wide and bloodshot, and he ignored both food and water. He didn’t bark or whimper—he just moved in tight, anxious loops, his nails clicking rhythmically on the floor.

Near dusk, a low roll of thunder passed overhead. Scout froze, then bolted through the dog door and vanished into the trees.

Andrew searched well past midnight, sweeping the woods with a flashlight until his voice gave out. Leah waited on the porch with a bowl of kibble and the dog’s favorite toy in her lap, rocking slowly in a chair that didn’t creak.

Scout never returned.

They didn’t speak about what that meant.

Instead, Leah drove into town the next morning and bought two motion-triggered security cameras. She installed one beneath the garage overhang, pointed toward the narrow side yard that bordered the forest. The other went above the back patio, mounted to the eave under the gable.

They didn’t call it a solution. It wasn’t. It was an attempt at documentation—a way to prove, even to themselves, that they weren’t losing their grip on reality. It was about clarity, visibility, and evidence.

Three nights later, the storm came early.

The temperature dropped by ten degrees in less than an hour. The wind had a hollow sound, like air being pulled through a rusted pipe, and the power flickered three times before cutting out. The battery backup kept the router online long enough for the cameras to record.

Andrew was in the garage when Leah called his name. Her voice didn’t sound frightened—just taut, clipped, urgent enough to cut through the hum of the dead light fixture he had been replacing.

He followed her voice into the living room and found her kneeling on the rug, the laptop open on the coffee table. She had paused the backyard camera footage at the one-hour, twenty-three-minute mark. Outside, the rain was just beginning to fall.

The screen showed fog drifting across the lawn in ragged, uneven patches. In the distance, at the edge of the tree line, a figure stood. At first glance, it blended with the timber—too narrow for a person, too vertical for anything natural. But then Leah advanced the feed five seconds.

The figure swayed.

It didn’t move with the wind. It moved independently, with the slow, deliberate rhythm of something conscious.

Frame by frame, they watched it tilt gently from side to side. There were no facial details—only the dark silhouette of a human shape, slightly distorted, its proportions subtly wrong. The arms hung too low. The legs were too straight. The joints didn’t bend where they should.

At the one-hour, twenty-four-minute mark, Andrew appeared in the frame. He stepped out onto the patio barefoot, a coffee mug in hand, glancing up toward the clouds. His movements were casual, relaxed, and unaware. He walked ten or twelve feet into the yard and stopped directly in front of the figure.

He didn’t react or look toward it. Oblivious, he turned and went back inside without a change in expression.

Leah sat still, one hand over her mouth.

“You didn’t see it,” she whispered, her voice just above the laptop’s hum.

Andrew stared at the screen. “I was right there.”

They didn’t finish the feed or check the side-yard footage. Leah closed the laptop, and neither of them said another word.

* * * * * *

By the end of the week, Leah insisted they leave. Not forever—just long enough to break whatever cycle had taken hold. A few days at the coast, maybe farther inland if necessary. She didn’t care where, as long as it was away. Andrew agreed. They packed light, just enough to be ready. They gathered important documents, backed up their phones, and prepped the house to be locked down.

They left before dawn, hoping to beat the fog that had begun creeping low across the road. The plan was simple: drive south, cut west, and find somewhere quiet.

They never made it past the hill at the end of the road.

As they crested the rise, the car’s engine stuttered, and then cut out. The dashboard went black, and the headlights dimmed. The clock reset to zeros, and the radio hissed before going silent.

Andrew turned the key to no avail. Not even the click of a starter. The vehicle was dead.

Leah pulled out her phone, but it refused to connect. The screen blinked, glitched, and froze on the lock screen.

Then the fog thickened.

Ahead, where the road bent toward the logging trail, a figure emerged.

It stood alone, backlit by the last vestiges of twilight, its posture unmistakable—too tall, arms long and limp, head tilted slightly to one side.

The figure lifted one arm.

Its hand opened, fingers splayed, and it waved—slowly, side to side, with the mechanical serenity of someone greeting a familiar guest.

He was welcoming them.

Part VI

The cabin was meant to be temporary, a borrowed space offered by a friend of Leah’s who owed her a favor. It sat near the edge of the Ochoco foothills, nestled into a clearing flanked by dense trees on three sides. Quiet and solitude surrounded them like insulation. A narrow gravel road wound up through the brush, and the nearest neighbors were several miles off. It was the kind of place people chose to disappear into—peaceful, remote, and unremarkable.

They arrived the evening after the car had stalled. A tow truck had hauled them into the nearby town, and the mechanic, perhaps recognizing the look in Andrew’s eyes, had asked no questions when Andrew turned down the offer of a loaner. The rest of the trip was made in a borrowed sedan with fog in the rearview the entire way.

By the second night, the power failed.

There had been no wind, no thunder, and no surge from the grid. The lights simply dimmed and went out, one bulb at a time. The generator kicked on, but it stuttered after half an hour and fell silent with a mechanical cough.

Andrew lit the fireplace while Leah moved through the cabin, lighting candles from the emergency box near the pantry. Neither of them mentioned the breath-like fog pressing against the windows, every pane traced with faint condensation.

Later that night, Andrew woke to find the bed empty.

At first, he thought Leah was in the bathroom, but the hallway was dark and silent. Her boots were gone from the rug, and her coat no longer hung by the door. He stepped into the main room, the floor cold beneath his feet, and opened the front door.

The fog swallowed the porch light completely. He couldn’t see beyond the railing. He called her name twice, and though his voice left his throat with strength, it didn’t echo. The sound vanished, absorbed by the air before it could travel.

Then he heard it.

A voice called his name—not hers, not quite. It stretched the syllables too far, warping them as though spoken through a damaged speaker. It didn’t come from a single direction, but from everywhere.

He stepped off the porch.

The fog offered no resistance, but it did not part. It hung in layered curtains that shifted only when he moved. He walked slowly, following the pull of the voice as it wove through the trees like smoke, leading him forward—not because he trusted it, but because he had no other choice.

The ground sloped, then leveled out into what might have once been a deer trail, overgrown with slick leaves and moss. The trees grew closer together here, their trunks thin and angled inward in ways he couldn’t explain. Every branch leaned. Every shape seemed slightly off, like a replica made from memory rather than observation.

Ahead, through a thinning in the fog, he saw her.

Leah sat at the base of a tree, her body crumpled awkwardly, legs folded beneath her, hair matted and hanging in front of her face. One arm was extended upward, fingers curled like a claw. With her nails, now bloody and raw, she had scratched a single word into the bark above her head.

LOOKING.

Andrew crossed the final few steps, knelt beside her, and brushed her hair aside gently. She blinked, her eyes unfocused at first, narrowing them as she recognized him. She looked exhausted, disoriented, and afraid.

“He’s here,” she whispered, her voice nearly inaudible beneath the wind threading through the trees.

The storm arrived all at once. There was no gradual build, shifting wind, or distant rumble. It struck in an instant, vertical sheets of rain hammering the canopy and ground. The trees didn’t sway in the wind. They jerked—pulled, as if by strings. Lightning flashed without thunder. The sky spiraled above them in unnatural layers, and the earth vibrated beneath their feet.

Andrew turned.

Tall Thomas stood ten yards away.

His body towered above the trees, his head just beneath the lower limbs, his arms impossibly long and limp. The rain did not touch him. It veered away at the last second, forming a silent curtain around his outline. The fog thickened near his feet, rolling outward as if pushed from within.

His face—or the place where his face should have been—grinned. There were no eyes or nose, just the suggestion of features pressed into skin that shimmered like wet paper. Its smile widened beyond what the human face could hold. It didn’t spread so much as unfold, its lips curling upward until they nearly reached the sides of his head.

Then he began to sway—left, right, left. The rhythm was slow and ceremonial, and Andrew stared.

He tried to look away but couldn’t. His neck wouldn’t move. His eyes stayed open, fixed to the shifting form, as though anchored by something beneath his skin.

The figure leaned forward, and its smile widened again—impossibly far. The corners of its mouth split upward toward its temples, revealing too many teeth, jagged and uniform, like the tines of a broken comb. Andrew couldn’t move. He was seeing too much, looking too long.

Leah reached up and pressed her palm hard against his eyes, forcing them shut with more strength than he thought she had left.

The darkness broke the trance.

Andrew fell backward, the scream caught in his throat never quite forming. Pressure ebbed from his skull like water receding from a dam. The presence remained, but it no longer held him.

Thomas did not advance. He stayed where he was, swaying gently, as though satisfied.

Andrew helped Leah to her feet, and together they stumbled through the trees. Neither spoke. The forest passed in streaks of gray and green, broken only by lightning that forked without thunder. Their footing faltered often, but they never fell.

Eventually, the cabin came back into view, its windows dark, and its front door swung open, creaking against the frame.

Neither of them remembered leaving it that way.

* * * * * *

Three days later, Leah sat alone in a hospital room.

Her hands were wrapped in gauze. Her pupils remained dilated longer than they should have, and the attending neurologist had ordered two scans despite normal vitals. She didn’t speak unless prompted. Her voice, when it came, was quiet and void of emotion.

When the psychiatrist asked about the word carved into the tree, she answered flatly.

“I had to get him to stop looking.”

Outside the window, a curtain of storm clouds hung low over the hills.

And beyond the far edge of the hospital lawn, just past the perimeter lights, a figure stood at the edge of the trees.

Tall.

Thin.

And smiling.