The Sollow

The forest has always been there. It was not planted, nor did it grow. It simply is.

The trees stand too still, their bark smooth as bone, their branches reaching in ways that do not match the wind. The air is thick and still, as if it has been held in a dead thing’s lungs for too long. The ground does not sink when stepped on, though it should. The leaves fall, but they do not age.

No one enters the forest. No one leaves it, either.

But people disappear.

The ones who remember whisper of the Sollow.

“It doesn’t need to kill,” murmurs the figure who smells of dust and regret.
“But it wants to,” sighs the thing with too many teeth and no shadow.
“And when it finds another like itself,” hums the voice from the farthest room, “it must smother them, or be smothered in turn.”



Two figures move through the dusk.

They were something before.

Now, they are only walking.

They do not know when the road changed. When the houses disappeared. When the streetlights dimmed to nothing.

But the trees are watching now.

Snap.

A twig. Close. Too close.

The sky is the wrong shade of grey. It is not cloudy. It is not clear. It simply does not hold the sun.

Another snap. Not a footstep. A correction.

They are being seen.

The forest exhales, slow and deliberate. Something shifts. A figure steps forward. Or perhaps it has always been there, waiting to be noticed.

It is tall. It is thin. It is wrong.

Its limbs bend, but not the way a person’s should. Its skin is pulled too tight, the colour of something that has been buried and dug up again. Its eyes are not empty. They are full of something deep and endless.

Its mouth does not move, but it is smiling.

And beneath it, something twitches.

A shape that should not be. A thing without bone, without muscle, without limit.

It uncoils, slow and pulsing, learning how to move.

The Sollow has found them.

It does not rush. It does not lunge.

It does not need to.

It only takes one slow, careful step.

Then another.

And another.

Its breath is wet. And dry. And near.

The figures freeze. One reaches for the other. Their hands do not quite meet.

They should not be alone. But they are.

“Run,” one says. Or perhaps both do.

They move. Their feet do not touch the ground, yet they run.

The Sollow follows.

It does not need to hurry. It has already won.

The sky pulses. The trees tighten. The path stretches, then shrinks. The spaces between the trunks bend, closing in like ribs around a heartbeat.

And then—light.

A sudden, searing glow. Not the sun. Not the moon. Just—light.

The forest recoils. The Sollow stops. Its mouth moves, but it makes no sound.

And then, like a dream dissolving at dawn, it is gone.

The figures stumble forward. They are somewhere else. Not home. Not safe. Just—elsewhere.



No one believes them.

The place where they speak is bright, filled with voices and warmth and walls that do not move. The forest is only trees, the others say. The dark is only dark.

But they do not return to the edge of the woods.

Because the Sollow is still there.

Still waiting.

Still watching.

Still stepping closer, one slow movement at a time.

And next time, there may be no light at all.