The road to Blackwood Hollow wound like a serpent through the mist-shrouded hills, its asphalt cracked and overgrown with weeds that clawed at the undercarriage of Elena’s old sedan. She hadn’t been back in fifteen years, not since the summer her mother dragged her away, insisting the cabin was ‘no place for the living anymore.’ But now, with the inheritance papers clutched in her gloved hands, Elena felt an inexorable pull. The air grew heavier as she descended, the pines closing in like silent sentinels, their needles whispering secrets to the wind.

The cabin squatted at the end of a gravel drive, its weathered logs dark with moss and age. Smoke curled lazily from the chimney—had Aunt Clara left the fire going before she passed? Elena shook off the unease, chalking it up to the chill. Inside, the air was stale, thick with the scent of damp wood and something metallic, like old blood. She lit a fire, unpacked her single bag, and poured a glass of whiskey from the dusty bottle on the mantel.

That first night, sleep came fitfully. The walls creaked as if breathing, and in the spaces between the groans of settling timber, she heard murmurs. Soft, indistinct voices overlapping like radio static, too faint to decipher. Elena bolted upright, heart pounding, but the room was empty, the fire reduced to embers. ‘Just the wind,’ she muttered, pulling the quilt tighter.

Morning brought clarity, or so she thought. Sunlight filtered through grimy windows, illuminating motes of dust that danced like tiny spirits. Elena explored the property, finding the overgrown trail that led to the creek. The water ran black and sluggish, reflecting the overcast sky. As she knelt to touch it, a ripple formed unbidden, and for a split second, she saw not her face, but another’s—a pale woman with hollow eyes staring back. Gasping, Elena jerked away, splashing cold water on her jeans.

Back at the cabin, she sorted through Aunt Clara’s things. Letters yellowed with time spoke of ‘the fold,’ a place in the woods where ‘the veil wears thin.’ Clara wrote of seeing shadows that moved against the wind, of hearing the dead call names from the mist. Elena dismissed it as senility, but the words lingered like a bad taste.

By evening, the murmurs returned, louder now, forming words. ‘Elena… come… see…’ She pressed her ear to the wall, tracing the grain of the wood with trembling fingers. The voice seemed to come from within the logs themselves. Outside, the fog rolled in thick, swallowing the trees. Elena stepped onto the porch, lantern in hand. The mist swirled unnaturally, coalescing into vague shapes—humanoid, drifting just beyond the light’s reach.

She retreated inside, bolting the door, but the whispers followed, seeping through cracks. That night, dreams plagued her: endless forests where paths looped back on themselves, faces half-seen pressing against invisible barriers, pleading silently. She woke sweating, convinced something had stood at the foot of her bed.

Days blurred. Elena tried to leave once, but the road vanished into impenetrable fog, the GPS looping endlessly. Trapped, she delved deeper into Clara’s journals. The cabin had been built on an old ritual site, where shamans once danced to keep worlds apart. ‘The fold is widening,’ Clara wrote. ‘I feel it pulling at my edges.’ Elena noticed her own skin prickling, as if static charged the air around her.

One afternoon, following the creek upstream, she found it: a clearing ringed by ancient oaks, their branches twisted into impossible knots. In the center, the air shimmered like heat haze over asphalt. Stepping closer, Elena felt a tug, as if gravity shifted. Colors inverted briefly—sky purple, grass bone-white. Voices crescendoed, a chorus now: ‘Join us… it’s thin here… so thin…’

She crossed the threshold. Reality folded. On the other side, the forest was alive, trees pulsing with bioluminescent veins, ground soft as flesh underfoot. Figures moved among the trunks—translucent, familiar yet wrong. Her mother, younger, reaching out. Aunt Clara, smiling serenely. ‘You’ve come home,’ they said in unison.

Panic surged. Elena stumbled back, but the fold resisted, clinging like cobwebs. Hours passed—or minutes? Time dilated. Back in the cabin, nights brought visitations. Hands pressed against windows from outside, leaving no prints. Furniture shifted positions while she slept. Her reflection in the mirror lagged, mouthing words she couldn’t hear.

Desperation mounted. Elena burned Clara’s journals, hoping to sever the tie, but flames twisted into shapes, reforming the pages unscathed. The whispers evolved into conversations, revealing fragments of her life: regrets over a lost love, the abortion she’d hidden, the career sacrificed for ‘normalcy.’ How did they know?

The fold called relentlessly. Elena resisted until the seventh night, when the cabin walls softened, bulging inward like lungs. Shadows poured through cracks, coalescing into her father’s form—he’d vanished here decades ago. ‘It’s time,’ he rasped.

Against better judgment, she returned to the clearing. The shimmer was a gaping rent now, edges fraying. Stepping through fully, the other side enveloped her. The figures surrounded her, not hostile, but hungry. They touched her arms, her face, and memories flooded—not hers alone, but echoes from countless others who’d crossed.

In the heart of the fold, a nexus pulsed, a tear in existence. Elena reached for it, compelled. Visions assailed: worlds overlapping, lives bleeding into one another. Then, clarity shattered like glass.

She wasn’t Elena. Or rather, Elena had crossed long ago, as a child, during that summer fifteen years past. The ‘inheritance’ was a lure, her adult self a construct pieced from denial. The cabin, the road, the isolation—all projections to keep her anchored to the thin place. The voices weren’t the dead; they were the living, calling from the real world, where her body lay comatose in a hospital bed, sustained by machines after a hiking accident.

The figures were her family, visiting in dreams, begging her spirit to return. But the fold had claimed her soul, weaving it into its fabric. Every ‘glimpse,’ every whisper, every anomaly—manifestations of her subconscious clinging to life while the rift pulled her deeper.

In that final moment, as the nexus beckoned, Elena—no, the fragment called Elena—chose. She let go. The fold sealed with a sigh, reality thickening once more. Back in the waking world, monitors flatlined, and a family wept.

But in the cabin, silence reigned, waiting for the next.