My hands were shaking so violently I could barely keep the paper still. The letter felt old—edges dry, slightly yellowed—as if time itself had tried to swallow it whole.
Her handwriting was exactly as I remembered: neat, soft loops—gentle, familiar. The same way she wrote grocery lists… and birthday cards.
I swallowed hard and began to read.
"If you're reading this… it means the wedding happened."
I frowned.
What kind of opening was that?
"Please don't look for me. I'm not missing. I'm not kidnapped. I left because I finally remembered something—something I buried a long time ago."
My stomach tightened.
"When I was seventeen, I used to dream of someone… or something… calling my name from the woods behind Grandma's house. At first, I thought it was imagination. But the voice kept coming."
A cold shiver crept down my spine.
We all remembered those woods.
We were never allowed to play there.
"Three nights before the wedding… the voice came back."
My breath caught in my throat.
"It wasn't a dream this time."
The ink on the next line was smeared—blurred by a tear.
Or blood.
I couldn't tell.
"It stood at my window. And it remembered me."
My heart thudded painfully—too loud, too fast.
"I have to go back to it. I made a promise when I was a child… and it finally came to collect."
My grip tightened around the letter.
The attic suddenly felt colder, as if the words themselves had opened a door to something ancient.
"Please forgive me. But whatever happens…"
The final line wasn't written.
It was gouged into the page—deep enough to almost tear through:
"DON'T FOLLOW ME."
For a long moment, I sat frozen in silence, staring at those words.
Don't follow me.
But how could I obey that?
After ten years?
After endless questions, sleepless nights, and a decade of tormenting "what ifs"?
No.
I couldn't.
Before I realized what I was doing, I was already climbing down the attic ladder, practically stumbling toward the front door, keys trembling in my hand.
The engine roared to life.
I drove.
Not to her old apartment.
Not to the police.
Not anywhere remotely logical.
My hands—almost acting on their own—turned the wheel toward the woods behind Grandma's abandoned property.
The very place we swore never to enter.
As I turned onto the narrow dirt road, the sky darkened unnaturally fast… as if evening had been dragged forward by unseen hands.
The trees looked taller than I remembered.
Twisted.
Wrong.
Like they were leaning closer—listening.
My headlights flickered.
Something moved between the trunks—too tall, too thin, too fast to be human.
I slowed the car, breath shallow, heart threatening to claw out of my chest.
Then I saw it.
A figure in a wedding veil stood at the edge of the woods.
Unmoving.
Silent.
As if waiting.
For me.
My radio suddenly clicked on by itself.
Static filled the car—then cleared into a whisper, faint but unmistakable:
"You shouldn't have come."