I woke to the smell of damp wood and the faint sound of Bobby pacing. The sun had barely risen, casting streaks of gold through the curtains. Ambrose sat silently on the windowsill, staring into the trees. He hadn't said a word since returning from his nighttime excursion.
"What exactly did you see?" I asked him, breaking the silence.
He turned slowly, eyes hollow. "You. Jacob. Bobby. All three of you. Standing there in the fog, by that same twisted tree. Not moving. Just watching me."
Bobby looked up from his notebook. "And you're sure it wasn't a hallucination? Fog plays tricks on the mind."
Ambrose gave a dry chuckle. "Then I hallucinated your faces down to the last mole."
Jacob was unusually quiet, biting his lip. His skepticism was starting to erode. He wouldn't admit it yet, but I could see it in his eyes.
I didn't need more convincing. The pieces were beginning to come together. The forest wasn't just strange—it was intelligent. Watching. Responding. Testing us.
We spent most of the morning replaying every detail. The siren. The hallucinations. The hut. The man who said he was stuck. The marking on the tree. We couldn't ignore any of it now.
That afternoon, Jacob and Bobby decided to head into town to talk to more locals. Maybe someone else had experienced something similar.
I stayed back with Ambrose. He wasn't himself.
"I don't know what's real anymore," he murmured. "I've joked through everything in life, man. Exams, heartbreaks, funerals… But this? This place has me shook."
I sat beside him, letting the silence say what words couldn't. Ambrose wasn't just the comic relief in our group. He was the glue, the guy who kept us sane through chaos. Seeing him like this felt wrong.
Late afternoon, Bobby and Jacob returned with nothing but whispers. One old woman at the tea stall had mentioned "forest spirits," claiming they were guardians of time itself. She wouldn't say more, just smiled sadly and offered them free chai.
That night, something changed.
At exactly 3:00 AM, the siren returned—but it felt different. Deeper. Urgent.
This time, it wasn't me or Ambrose who woke first.
It was Jacob.
He stood, annoyed by the noise, and left the room while the rest of us were dead asleep. He told us the next morning how he walked down the corridor and into the reception. No one. Not a soul.
So he stepped outside.
And at the gate… he saw something.
A figure.
Human. Still. Silent.
He called out, but there was no reply. As he walked closer, the figure vanished like mist in the wind.
On his way back, he felt a cold rush down his spine.
That detail struck me—because that's exactly what I felt the first night when I picked up the phone.
Something wasn't just playing with us. It was observing us. Studying us. Maybe even… mimicking us.
The next day, we finally admitted the truth to each other: we couldn't write this off anymore. Not as dreams. Not as tricks. Something was happening.
Jacob was the last to admit it, but even he looked uneasy.
"We need to figure out what the hell this place is," he muttered, staring at the forest through the lounge window. "Because I'm starting to think we were never supposed to find it."
That's when Bobby made the suggestion: "Let's mark our time. Literally. Tonight, one of us wears a watch. Set an alarm for every ten minutes. If time skips, we'll know."
We all agreed.
As night crept in, we stayed in the same room again, eyes wide open, waiting for the siren.
When it came… it was louder than ever. Like it was inside the walls.
Bobby's alarm didn't go off.
His watch had frozen at 3:13 AM.
And outside our window… the forest shimmered.
Like it was breathing.