Before It Comes

Three children went into the woods and three children came out. It should have all been fine for the cousins, even if they had witnessed something... unnatural. They had escaped, they moved on, they grew up, and they even thought they could forget. Only, how do you forget a monster when it's followed you home?

Years later, Connie has tried to pretend that the creature never existed. She has carefully woven the narrative that it was nothing but the figment of imaginative minds. But when tragedy strikes, everything she built starts to crumble down.

The thing from the woods waits, biding its time as it haunts her every step and there is nothing she can do to stop it. Everyone else writes off the monster's actions as horrible accidents. No one believes the girl broken by tragedy. The monster she saw as a child creeps ever closer and Connie has no one but herself - and maybe the boy with the bright orange hair - to rely on. But the monster is winning.

It's two dead and one to go.

Content and/or Trigger Warning: The story contains some dark themes.