Her Soul for Revenge
Chapter 1
Lilith Ashford
Grandpa used to tell me never to answer if I heard my name called from the woods. It didn’t matter if it sounded like my mother calling, or my brother, or even my best friend. He drilled it into my head from the time I was a little girl, barely old enough to toddle around the yard, let alone the woods.
Lilith Ashford
“If the woods call your name, don’t answer. Run.” He never explained why. He didn’t need to. The rule stuck with me into my teenage years. Every time I rode my bike down the winding road, the trees whizzing by on either side, I’listen to the boughs creaking, and the pine needles rustling. Sometimes, I’d imagine my name was called and I’d peddle faster, my heart racing until I reached school and was safely behind the iron fence surrounding the campus.
Lilith Ashford
Dad claimed it was all bullshit. “Ain’t a thing in these woods you can’t kill,” he said. “Don’t you forget that, You just keep your wits about you. Don’t go wandering around after dark.”
Lilith Ashford
No matter who you were, if you lived in Belgaum, you held a strong belief about the woods. About when you should go out, when you should hike, when you should lock your doors. Everyone would tell it a little differently, but the general belief was the same: the woods weren’t safe.
Lilith Ashford
General sense of unease about the pines; the kind of thing that made people avoid certain trails and certain roads. Older folks made little charms out of twigs, twine, and fish bones, and would hang them up outside their house or around the edges of their yard. Grandpa kept them on his fence posts, around the field where his horses grazed, right at the edge of the trees
Lilith Ashford
There still came a year when one of the mares went missing. He kept them in the stable at night after that. By the time I was fifteen years old, I realized the superstitious stories were only good for scaring little kids. From the trailer park where we lived, it was a four-mile bike ride to school if I took the road. But it was only a mile and a half if I cut through the woods. I started taking the shortcut when I was fourteen, peddling as fast as I could through the forest
Lilith Ashford
Even with the shortcut to school, I was usually late, especially when Mom was fighting with her boyfriend all night, and I couldn’t drown out the yelling enough to sleep.
Lilith Ashford
Wasn’t afraid of the woods. But something felt wrong about lingering under the trees too long, as if the longer I stayed in their presence, the more irritated they’d get to have me there. I rode through quickly and didn’t linger. No point in pushing my luck.
Eilene
😑😑😑😑 hah ha ha very funny why you're always thinking about that damned forest Lilith. Girl just chill don't overthink and give me a break. If you keep thinking about it one day a ghost will show up and take you away 👻👻👻👻
Eilene
🤦🤦🤦 let's go to cafeteria I'm starving I'm craving something sweet let's go
Chapter 2
Lilith Ashford
After grabbing a bite at cafeteria we went back to our class. The bell rang,, and I tucked myself into the alcove near the water fountains as the crowds of students flooded the walkways. Finally, I spotted Victoria’s high brown ponytail bobbing away and I sprinted through the crowd to catch up with her.
Victoria (fl friend)
“Girl, you’re late again?”. Mr. Thorne is going to end up calling your mom again.”
Lilith Ashford
“As if she ever picks up the phone. I think her line got disconnected.
Lilith Ashford
Poked her arm eagerly. “Soooo? Did you get it?”
Victoria (fl friend)
“Shhh.” Girl be quite for a minute will ya. Let's go it's almost time for a little trip with Lucy. I can't wait to see her reaction.
The benches spread over the lawn were almost entirely filled. The sun was out, a few puffy white clouds drifting lazily across the crisp blue sky, unusually pleasant weather for October. We wound our way between the tables as Victoria argued with herself about whether we should walk off campus to get iced coffee. But another conversation had my attention instead of her caffeine dilemma. “There’s an entire network of mine tunnels out here, man. For all we know, they’re right beneath our feet. Nobody knows how deep they go.” Nervous laughter followed, and I spotted Victoria’s twin brother, Jeremiah, holding the rapt attention of the two new transfer students. “But that was where everything went wrong — they drilled the old silver mine too deep. They hit an underground river system, and the whole mine flooded. Cave-ins trapped most of the workers inside.”
random girl
“Holy shit,”“So they’re all still down there?” the other girl said. “Like, they didn’t get them out?”
Jeremiah (Victoria's twin brother)
“Only three came out alive,”
Jeremiah (Victoria's twin brother)
“Legend says that as the mine was being dug, something very old and powerful woke up. Some say it’s a monster. But the miners said it was a God, a God that granted them mercy, in exchange for —”
Lilith Ashford
“Would you stop with the scary campfire stories already?”nearly making him spill his tea and getting some unhappy looks from his audience. Victoria sat down on the opposite bench.
No one fucked with Victoria — or with Jeremiah, for that matter. Their father, Kent Hayleigh, was a major donor who’d had an entire wing of the high school dedicated to him for his generosity, so Victoria and Jeremiah could do whatever they damn well pleased.
Jeremiah (Victoria's twin brother)
Lilith Ashford
[didn’t know why they wanted to be friends with me, especially since making friends wasn’t my strong suit. Most people considered me a bitch, either because they’d pissed me off at some point, or they’d talked to someone who’d pissed me off. Being known as a bitch and having a reputation as a partier were really the only two things me and Victoria had in common.]
Jeremiah (Victoria's twin brother)
“Goddamn it, did you really have to be such a douchebag?
Chapter 3
Victoria (fl friend)
"Lilith' we should go for a walk". Let's walk come on.I want to show you some interesting.
I wanted to lie there on the grass until it grew over me, until I became like the fallen pine covered in lichens and little patches of moss. But Victoria was pulling me up, so I took her hand and trudged with her, deeper into the woods. The sun had set. The light was gray, and clouds were filling the sky. I looked at my watch, for the first time in forever, but the numbers didn’t make sense. They were just digital marks on a screen, hazy and oddly three-dimensional, as if I could stroke my fingers along the edges of them. I put my wrist down hurriedly, and the moment I did, I saw where Victoria was leading me.
Lilith Ashford
“We’re not supposed to be here,”
Lilith Ashford
The old spires of St. Thaddeus cathedral loomed ahead, towering amongst the trees. Sober, I never would have been afraid of this place. The legends surrounding it were just that: old stories, made up. The paint had faded from its exterior long ago, leaving the wood dark and stained with the damp.
Lilith Ashford
This place had a story, like everything else in Belgaum. It was close to White Pine, the deep mine shaft where rescuers were once able to pull the only survivors of the mine’s cave-in back up into the light of day. It was said the three rescued miners stopped here, and dedicated the cathedral to the God they claimed spared their lives in the deep, dark, flooded depths. The Deep One, they’d called it. Sometimes, you’d still hear the old folks mutter about it. But to our generation, it was just a creepy story. Like Big Foot, or the Jersey Devil. History and myth intertwined in this town, utterly inseparable from each other.
Lilith Ashford
[The old church should have been dead, like bleached bones, but the air around it rippled like heat off the roof of a car in summer. I stopped abruptly, tugging back against Victoria’s hand, and she stared at me with wide eyes.]
Victoria (fl friend)
“Why not?” she said. “You’ve been in there before, Lili, we both have.” She shrugged. “It’s the same old church.”
Lilith Ashford
“Not...not now,”“Not when we’re tripping. Let’s go back. I want to go back to the trees.”
Victoria (fl friend)
“Just a little while. Please? I just want to walk through it.”
Lilith Ashford
[Something felt so unexplainably wrong. I could smell smoke, like a campfire. As the darkness around us deepened, and we got closer to the cathedral.]
Lilith Ashford
[The cathedral’s front doors weren’t chained shut like they usually were. When Victoria and I had been there before, to have fun or do whatever our little rebel hearts desired, we’d had to break in through a back entrance. But the chain was gone, and right before Victoria pushed the doors open, I knew we weren’t alone.]
Lilith Ashford
[Someone was inside. Someone was waiting. For the first time in my life, from behind me, from the woods, I heard a whisper. I heard the woods call my name.]
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