About two hours ago Alicja’s radio stopped picking up any signals, only getting a few staticky hisses when she felt like fiddling with the dials. One hour ago the road went from concrete to dirt, and to a few barely defined tracks in the dirt. On all sides she's surrounded by dense trees and underbrush. Were she a touch more sensible, she'd be concerned putting herself so far from where anyone could reach her.

Rocks and sticks grind under her tires, sending her on a very bumpy ride. She may already be at her destination if she didn't fear exceeding ten miles per hour. She’s always been cautious about reckless driving ever since she lost her brother. If just to have something to fill the silence, she flips on her recorder to get some of her thoughts down.

“I am Alicja Kondraki, and this is week fourteen, I believe, of my road trip across the country.” She pauses to readjust the map she has laid out in the passenger’s seat. “Hopefully I'll be reaching my destination soon. I've heard tell that this place is haunted by some sort of creature. That's cool! I love hearing about local creatures.”

Finally, she spots her first sign of people. She passes a few rickety houses, with people lounging on their porches or inside. And just like that, the forest folds open to reveal a whole town tucked inside. A small podunk community she finds herself eager to explore.

Her car comes to a halt off the side of the road, it'll be easier to make her way around on foot anyway. In her bag she double checks she has all of her important items. A water bottle, a notepad, her recorder, and of course a pocket knife and bottle of mace. Not that she expects anything from what she's sure are lovely folks, but she's been doing this job long enough to plan ahead.

Slinging her bag around her shoulders and making sure to hang her camera around her neck, Alicja steps out. Her track boots dig into the dirt. It's hot out, around mid noon, the smell of wood smoke wafts through the air. She runs her fingers through her short hair and puts on her green flatback.

She feels eyes follow her. Another thing she expected. There's not a chance she'd pass as a local in these parts. Taking a moment to look herself over in her side view mirror. She wants to give herself a messier look, someone unprofessional, someone you'd feel comfortable walking up to and sharing your thoughts with.

There's a man sitting on a lawn chair outside of a grocery store. He's wearing sunglasses, but she can tell his eyes are on her. She approaches, from an angle so it doesn't look like she's walking straight towards him. 

“Hello!” She says. The lights buzz, a long low drone, and little bugs tap, tap, tap against the glass. He regards her with a neutral expression. “My name is Alicja Kondraki. I'm a reporter from out of town. You may have heard of me from the news or from my radio show.”

“We don't get the radio out here,” he says, voice thick. Alicja squints, sunlight reflecting right off the window into her eyes. 

“Well I heard rumors that you've had some local cryptid sightings! Made enough of a splash I heard about it from three towns over.” She laughs, hoping to come off as playful. His expression remains the same.

“This’d be the place, ‘ay,” he says with a curt nod.

“Would you care to give a statement for my report?” She pulls out a pen and pad.

All at once, he stiffens, sitting up straight with his teeth clenched. Instinctively, Alicja stiffens up too, ready to defend herself should it come to that. 

“Now don't go believin’ that I'm out here believin’ in that hoodoo monster bullshit,” The chair creaks as he leans in to snap at her. “And I ain't about to let you paint me a crackpot fool!” 

The store’s front door opens with a soft bell chime. Out steps an older woman with gray streaks in her hair holding a broom. She prods at the man with the bristles.

“Marion if you don’t shut yer damn trap imma hit you!” Her gaze lands on Alicja and softens. “Oh my! Now I don't think I know you!” 

“I’m from out of town,” Alicja says, mouth suddenly dry. 

“Well why don’t you come on in! I’ll get you some ice tea!” She holds the door open.

The mechanical buzzing is even louder inside of the store. Alicja would prefer to get out there and get a few different statements before she loses daylight, but she’s not one to deny an ice cold drink on a day like today. Marion huffs as the door closes behind her.

“Have a seat, sweetheart! I’ll be right with you!” the older woman, Henritte according to her name tag, disappears into a room labeled Employees Only. She returns moments later with a pitcher and two glasses of ice. 

“Thank you so much!” Nothing like southern hospitality to make a road trip worth it. 

“Now did I hear correctly that you were a reporter?”

“I am a reporter! I was hoping to do a report on your Blackwoods Beast as I’ve heard it called?”

Henritte clasps her hands together. “Oh this is so exciting! We call it that because it only shows up when the woods are pitch black,” she says in a low tone. “You know I had a run in with the beast once!”

“Is that so? Would you like to tell your story for my report?” Alicja asks, brandishing her recorder. 

“Would I?!” Henritte exclaims, perhaps a little too eagerly. Alicja clicks the record button. “It was the middle of the night, when I heard this rustling in the backyard. And there I see it! Hunched over my garbage! It looked at me with the biggest glowing eyes I’ve ever seen!”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a bear?”

“No! It stood up right and walked like a man! Ran off when it saw me watching too!”

A vagrant then, Alicja thinks, but decides not to say. People tend to tell better stories when you don’t try to pick too many holes in them.

“Everyone in this town has seen the beast stalking our streets or in the woods! Yet no one’s had the guts yet to confront it directly, lest it eat them!”

Alicja nods. “Do you have any reports of people getting attacked or hurt by the beast?”

“Penny next door claims she got into a fight with it! Barely escaped with her life!”

This is how Alicja finds herself practically led by the arm to every person in town with even a vague recollection of the beast. A lot of excitable folks looking to find their name in the next issue of the paper, and a lot of stories that are most certainly made up on the spot. It’s about par for the course when it comes to projects like this. 

“I really appreciate how much you’ve shown me around today,” Alcija says, “but I’m looking for somewhere I can stay the night?”

“My dearest Ava will let you rent out a room for the night!” Replies Henritte, pointing towards an older looking two story house. “Let me introduce you!”

Henritte marches Alicja boldly into the old house. Past the threshold Alicja is immediately hit in the face by how cold it is in here, and by the sweet smell of tea and baked goods. In the back of her mind she recalls a horror story of a man who checks into a suspiciously cheap yet very nice hotel and is poisoned and taxidermied by the kind looking owner.

“Can I help you?” Alicja jumps, noticing now the older woman sitting in a rocking chair beside her. She opens her mouth, ready to rattle off her name, profession, why she’s here-

“This is my friend Kondraki! She’d like to rent a room for a few nights,” Henritte says, squeezing Alicja’s arm. 

“Just two nights actually, I can pay upfront.” 

“Go ahead and sign your name in the guestbook.” The old woman, Ava Alicja presumes, points to a gilded notebook sitting on a coffee table. Alicja, curious as she is, flips through the other pages for recognizable names before writing her own. “Twenty dollars for the two nights.”

“That’s really cheap for a place like this,” she says, pulling out a wrinkled twenty.

“Your room is on the third floor, bathroom is across the hall, try not to make too much noise,” Ava drones on, long and slow. 

“Alright, well thank you very much! I’ll try to be considerate.” Alicja makes her way upstairs, leaving the two women behind. She shrugs off her bag, makes of pile of her stuff in the corner of the bedroom, and lays down on the little bed pushed up in the corner. 

After gathering info from the locals, Alicja’s next step was, of course, finding this beast herself. She likes to consider herself a very prepared woman, she keeps a shotgun in the back of her truck as the ultimate just in case. Still, after getting some rest, she finds herself popping into the local hardware store for extra flashlight batteries and a box of shotgun shells, should it really come to that. 

“Don’t I know yer face from somewhere?” Asks the man behind the counter as Alicja sets down her items. Freddie, the smudge on his nametag reads. 

“I’m a reporter,” Alicja says. 

Freddie snaps his fingers. “I seen you in the papers! Y’know it’s the darndest thing, I grab my paper every morning but it dog gone disappears before I can read it!” 

Do you think the beast is stealing your papers? She wants to joke, but she has some restraint. “I hope you find where they are,” she says instead, taking and pocketing her stuff. “Have a nice night!”

“Now you stay safe out there!”

…

It’s exactly a quarter past midnight when Alicja steps out of her room and into the night. She waits until she’s outside to slip on her boots, so as to not make too much noise. She pulls her jacket tightly around herself to keep the chill away from her. 

When she first explained her plans to her boss, the biggest question she got was why. She, through her own wit and determination, made a name for herself in a line of work that didn’t favor women like her. Why does she care about these stories? Why waste the time on a risky venture? Why even bother when she was doing just fine where she was? Now, she wishes she could’ve explained that this is why she had to do this, had to put herself in places no one else would.

With a thunk, her trunk pops open and she draws out her shotgun. Last resort, she reminds herself as she gets the feel for it in her hands. 

“This is Alicja Kondraki,” she says into her recorder. “About to begin my field report. Should this recording be recovered and myself not, I request that this recorder and all my writings be sent back to my boss. The shipping address is-”

Something big crunches behind her. She jumps, finger slipping and ending her recording. A bit early in the night to get so jumpy…

With some tape, she fumbles from several minutes in the dark trying to tape her flashlight to her shotgun. It’s something she’s seen in her hunting TV shows and it seems useful to try tonight. Her flashlight adds too much weight to the end of her shotgun for her to hold it out comfortably, but she’s determined to stick with it. 

They weren’t kidding when they called this the Blackwoods, even with her flashlight it’s hard to see what’s in front of her with how thick the trees are. A cold wind blows through the trees, it sounds like a howl. The distinct smell of an animal den wafts through the hair, telling her to change direction. Alicja twists her ankle tripping over the thick tree roots and faceplants into the ground. She tugs her jacket tighter around herself and carries on.

There’s shoe prints in the mud, she almost didn’t notice them. She lifts up her own foot to double check that these tracks aren’t her own. Nope, the pattern is different, there’s another person here in the woods with her. She could follow where the footprints are going, but she decides instead to follow where they came from.

It’s a long walk. One of those many moments where she wishes she had her brother by her side in this. Alas, she’s been by herself for quite some time now. 

Without fanfare, a shack appears. There’s no way Alicja would have found this place by pure happenstance, she’s not even sure which direction she came from. She circles it a few times, noting how every window is boarded up and the sharp spikes buried in the ground around it. It’s completely pitch black, but in the quiet of the night Alicja can hear the buzz of a generator. 

She gets a few pictures, once again struggling with both the flashlight and the camera. She hops over the spikes and ascends the porch steps. There’s fresh dirt on the wooden steps. She presses her ear against the door, picking up a shuffling noise inside. Taking a deep breath, she knocks on the door. 

All noise stops. Alicja clears her throat. 

“Hello! Sorry to bother you at this hour! I’m a reporter from out of town!”

Nothing.

“My name is Alicja K-kondraki. I’d like to ask you a few questions?”

Nothing. Had she misheard? Was she shouting at an abandoned building? Should she-

“You should go away!” Comes a muffled voice from the other side. “Don’t come back here. Forget you ever found this place!”

“I want to ask some questions for the paper. I’m writing about strange occurrences in-”

“I don’t want to answer questions! Go away!”

Alicja takes a step back and digs through her backpack. She draws out one of her old published papers, being one of those people who keeps a record of everything she’s ever made. 

“I’m serious. Look, this is me.” She slides the paper under the doorway and waits. 

After a few moments she hears the telltale sound of several locks clicking. The door opens a crack, still held shut by a few chains, and Alicja can see a hint of reddish orange light inside and an eye. 

“Let me see your face,” says the stranger on the other end.

“Oh uh…” Alicja rips her flashlight off her gun, tossing the gun out of her reach so she won’t seem so threatening. She points the light at her face and tries to give a kind smile. 

The door slams in her face, followed by several more clicks as all the chains come undone. When the door opens a hand shoots out, gripping Alicja by her jacket collar and dragging her in. In thirty seconds, the shack’s resident redoes every lock. 

The shack itself is reminiscent of those homes Alicja sees in Hoarders. There’s barely any visible floor among all the newspapers and garbage. It’s surprisingly warm in here, the room is illuminated by a single lamp. Hanging on the wall is a pinboard absolutely covered in newspaper clippings and red string. Alicja takes a big step over some junk to get a better look at the wall, recognizing some of her own writings. 

“You’re alone right? No one followed you?” Alicja’s host asks, pressing her back flat against the door. 

She can’t be that much younger than Alicja herself. Running past her shoulders is long brown-ish hair filled with twigs and rat’s nests and tin foil is wrapped around her forehead. The coat she’s wearing is so thick Alicja sweats just from looking at it, and she wears the thickest bottlecap glasses Alicja has ever seen. There’s a single crack across the right lens. 

“I’ve heard your voice on the radio, it really is you.” Alicja spots a radio on a windowsill, disorganized wires spilling out of it. The first radio she’s seen since she’s got here. 

“I’m sure I’m alone. Can I ask you a few questions?” Alicja pulls out her recorder and it immediately disappears. 

“You’re recording!” She shouts, holding up Alicja’s recorder. The look in this stranger’s eyes reminds Alicja of a frightened predator and she reconsiders the situation she’s put herself in. 

“No! No see, it's off! Look!” She points to the little LED that lights up when it’s on. “I was going to ask if I could record. For my paper?” Alicja holds her hand out, afraid that her precious recorder is about to get destroyed. 

“No recording! No one can know I’m here! No pictures either!” She says, pointing a shaky finger at Alicja’s camera. Alicja brings her arms up to cover it.

“I can remove the batteries if you want. I won’t do anything against your will.”

“I’ll remove the batteries.” She pushes past Alicja and grabs a screwdriver from her desk, crudely disassembling Alicja’s recorder. Hesitantly, she returns it to Alicja who pockets it.

“Alright. Alright,” Alicja says, feeling oddly winded. She takes out her notepad and pen. “Can I get your name?”

“No! Don’t write my name down!” 

“That’s alright, hey! I can do this anonymously if you want, I don’t have to put your name on anything, okay?” Alicja raises her hands in defense. “Can I at least have your name so I can call you something?”

Alicja’s host awkwardly shifts on her heels. “Jessie.” 

“Alright Jessie. Why don’t we sit down? Do you mind if I touch this?” Alicja nudges a pile of papers on a stool, on top of the stack is a plastic keychain of a UFO. Jessie shakes her head and Alicja sets it all down onto the floor. 

“I’ll stand,” Jessie says, eyeing her wearily. While certainly concerned that Jessie looks like she might just fall over, Alicja doesn’t say anything. 

“Alright. I’m going to ask my questions now, okay?” 

“Okay.”

“Are you familiar with the Blackwoods Beast that’s said to reside around here?”

Jessie’s expression twists into what Alicja can only describe as bashful. “Yes.”

“... any elaboration on that?” 

She lets out a shaky breath. “It’s not what the people of this town should be afraid of. I thought it would be enough to keep people away.”

“What is it that you think people should be afraid of?”

The floorboards creak. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Alright. How long have you been living out here alone?” 

“I’ve been here for five years, but I’ve been alone for much longer.” 

“How come?”

Jessie bites her lip and Alicja wonders how much useful information she’s actually going to get out of a paranoid hermit. 

“I’ll tell you my story but you have to promise that none of this will be tracked back to me. I can’t risk that.”

“Oh? If you’re involved in something illegal I can promi-”

“No, no!” Jessie waves her hands in the hair, making a crossing motion. “There’s people who I know would recognize m-” her head suddenly jerks towards the window. Alicja tries to follow Jessie’s gaze, listening in for any sort of noise. 

“Have you ever heard of Zach Callahan?” Jessie whispers conspiratorially, looking everywhere but Alicja. 

“No? Who’s that?”

Jessie lets out the heaviest sigh of relief, resting her hand on her heart. “Alright. Thank God. I used to live with my brother, back in… we were both artists but he did most of the work keeping us… housed I guess. And while I was living with him there’s the name I kept hearing. Everyone I knew grew up with or went to school with someone named Zach Callahan!”

Jessie gestures to her pinboard, as if any of these contextless newspaper clippings mean anything to Alicja. She recognizes what looks like a few large schools, and some abandoned buildings, and the several companies that seem to have no connection. What could Spicy Crust Pizza, Sasha’s Cleaning Products, Sunny’s Cream-filled Pastries, and S&C Plastics possibly have in common? 

“I was onto something! I know I was onto something because of this!” She pulls out a newspaper and pushes it into Alicja’s face. EXPLOSION IN ART GALLERY! “I was in there when this happened! Only the room I was in collapsed! Someone, he, knew I was onto him and tried to take me out!” 

It feels like she should be writing something down right now, but what? She’s met her fair share and conspiracy lunatics, and she’s yet to find the perfect format to work with them.

“And then what happened?”

Jessie swallows thickly. “Well, I knew they were after me, and I knew they’d keep coming after me. I didn’t want to put my brother or my friends in danger, so I disappeared. Until I ended up here.” She makes a vague sort of gesture with her hands. “I don’t know where my brother is now, I hope he’s safe though. I’m telling you all this because I’ve read your work, I know you understand that things aren’t what they seem out here.” 

Unsure how to respond, Alicja nods. Her hand trembles ever so slightly as she makes a note. “You haven’t tried to contact him?”

“Don’t know where he is. Can’t risk it either, don’t want to lead anyone to him, or to me. Especially now that I can’t move around so much.” Sadness seeps into her voice. “Besides, it’s been so long, I’d just be reopening old wounds.”

Alicja offers a gentle kind of smile. As a journalist, she tries very hard not to let too much of her personal feelings bleed into the facts, but she feels comfortable being open with Jessie. 

“You know I used to have a brother. This whole thing I’ve been doing, finding stories like yours, was really his idea. He loved travel and photography, and together we had this dream of running a paper together.” Jessie gives her an odd yet intrigued look. “Then of course, during college he dropped out and I lost contact with him. Next I hear, he’s dead in a car wreck. I don’t even get a body to bury. Sometimes I think I might find him out there, somewhere in these stories I’ve been writing.”

She coughs into her fist, swallowing down her emotion. 

“My point is, that your brother probably wants to hear from you, even if it’s been so long.”

Jessie shakes her head. “It’s not the same, there’s too much risk.”

“You don’t think he can help you?”

“He never did believe in what I told him. There’s nothing he can do for me, and I won’t do that to him. I’m probably putting you in danger too by telling you all of this.”

“It’s alright, none of this has to make it into my report if you don’t want.” Alicja stands up, gently placing her hand on Jessie’s shoulder. 

“I wish that I knew if he’s doing alright.”

“I wish so too. Hey! You say he’s an artist, if you give me a name maybe I can look him up and report back to you!” 

Confusion and hope fill Jessie’s eyes. “How would you contact me?” 

“I’ll write a column on notable artists, get it published. You’ll find it in the papers.” 

“You’d do that for me?”

“Of course!” A pause. “Can I ask you one more thing? Before I leave you here.”

“What is it?”

“You’ve mentioned something else in these woods. Something you believe the people should be afraid of and prevents you from leaving. Would you mind explaining what you think that is?” 

Jessie’s expression drops. She pulls off her cartoonish glasses to wipe them on her shirt. “It would be easier if I showed you.” She bends down, reaches under her cot, and pulls out what Alicja distinctly recognizes as a flamethrower. “You might want your flashlight, and your shotgun.”

A step behind her, Alicja follows Jessie around the shack. Sticks and brush crunch underfoot. Alicja keeps the light as steady as she can. 

About thirty, maybe forty feet away from the shack, Jessie holds out her arm to stop Alicja. She points, and there, bright red against the blacks and browns and greens, crawling across the ground and plant life like veins, are thorny roots. 

“I found this infection when I first came here, it wasn’t a fraction of this size then. It’s been growling towards the town.” Jessie pulls the trigger and flames burst out. Alicja has to cover her ears as a scream echoes through the woods. “I keep trying to push it back, but it’s faster than me. Sometimes I see groups of animals traveling in packs, all of them moving unnaturally and in unison, their eyes red.”

Alicja uncovers her face. “Why don’t you tell people about this? Warn them if you’re so worried about this.”

Jessie regards Alicja with a cold look. “Tell me, do you truly believe every word I’ve told you tonight?”

“I believe that some of what you’ve told me is true.” Alicja wants to make some sort of defense for herself, about how she’s a journalist so obviously has to take every statement with a grain of salt, like she has to explain herself like that to someone who’s still a total stranger. 

“It wouldn’t do the people of this town any good. They won’t care until it’s impossible to ignore. All I can hope to do is keep it back before it has to come to that.” Her feet stay planted on the ground and Jessie starts up the fire again. She lifts up her camera, getting the perfect shot of Jessie illuminated only by the flames. 

“Thank you for your statement, I think I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

“Here,” Jessie says, placing Alicja’s batteries into her hands, “My brother’s name is Joseph Tamlin, if you do actually want to look him up for me.” 

“I will!”

The barest hint of sunlight is peeking over the horizon by the time Alicja makes it back to her car. She drops all her stuff in the passenger’s seat and reassembles her recorder.

She flips through her limited notes, unsure what to do with them. What is she supposed to write for her report? That the Blackwoods Beast is just a lonely woman? Is she supposed to lie and say that she found nothing in her investigation? Should she tell someone about the infection in the woods?