Short Story

Restless Spirits

Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

Written for OLWG #413.
The three prompts are shown below.
This is my take.

© Dreamstime

The air hung thick and silent, heavy with the scent of damp earth and something else, something metallic and unsettling. The forest trail, barely wider than a deer track, beckoned me deeper into the woods, a black, inky invitation scrawled across a canvas of ancient, gnarled trees. Mist clung to the undergrowth, swirling like restless spirits.

The scent tugged at my senses, both attracting and repelling. It was a siren song laced with poison. The normally calming presence of the moon tonight felt malevolent. A perfect, unnaturally bright corona of ethereal blue encircled it, casting the forest in an unsettling, almost lurid light. It felt less like guidance and more like a spotlight, highlighting my intrusion.

I shouldn’t have come. The locals whispered tales of this place, a place where the trees held secrets in their knotted roots and the shadows whispered back. They called it the Serpent’s Path, said it coiled around something ancient and evil. I, of course, scoffed. Now, with each step further into the suffocating darkness, my derision felt like a stone in my gut.

A week ago, I wouldn’t have even considered this place. The Serpent’s Path was a local legend, whispered about in hushed tones around crackling fires. A place where people went missing, where the compass spun wildly, and where the silence was thick enough to choke on. But desperation has a way of quieting even the most ingrained fears.

Deeper I went, the trees growing taller, their branches interlocking overhead to form a claustrophobic canopy. The whispers started then. Faint at first, like the rustling of leaves, but gradually growing in intensity. They weren’t the whispering of the wind. They were voices, low and guttural, speaking in a language I didn’t recognize, yet somehow understood. They spoke of trespass, of punishment, of unwelcome guests.

But I could not turn back. My sister, Bella, a free-spirit with a penchant for the forbidden, disappeared three nights before. This place was her last known location.

NAR©2025
#OLWG

Here are the prompts: 1) the air smells like snakes; 2) noise can be hostile; 3) a ring around the moon. We can use one, two, all three or none at all. It doesn’t matter; we just need to be creative.

This is “Rattlesnake Shake” by Fleetwood Mac

OLWG#413- 3x Dodoitsu (都々逸)

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