Return to Ashbrook - Chapter Three: The Road Back

By morning, I’d convinced myself I was losing my mind. Sleep deprivation, stress, maybe some kind of breakdown. That’s what I told myself as I packed a bag, tossed it into the trunk, and got behind the wheel.

But the truth is, I didn’t even argue with the thought of going back. Something inside me had already decided.

The highway stretched out like a scar, cracked and overgrown, the trees pressing closer the farther I went. With every mile, the air grew heavier, thick with the smell of damp earth and sulphur. My chest tightened, like I was driving into a storm that wasn’t on the weather map.

At mile marker seventy-two, my phone lit up again.

“Closer.”

I dropped it onto the passenger seat and kept driving.

The Ashbrook sign came into view around dusk, looming out of the mist: WELCOME TO ASHBROOK. Population— The number had been scraped off, the metal scarred. For the briefest moment, I thought about turning around. But when I looked in the rearview mirror, the road behind me was gone. Not covered in fog—not just dark. Gone.

The hum began again. Not distant this time. It came from the dashboard, the frame of the car, from inside my skull. I gripped the wheel so tight my knuckles cracked, but I didn’t slow down.

When I rolled onto Main Street, the fog was already settling, coiling through the air like smoke. The buildings were just as I’d left them days before—rotting, silent, wrong.

And then, I saw movement.

A figure was standing at the end of the street, just beyond the circle of my headlights. Tall, thin, head cocked unnaturally to one side. I slammed the brakes, but the figure didn’t flinch.

My headlights flickered. For half a second, the thing was gone—replaced by something closer, inside the beam. When the lights steadied, I realised it wasn’t one figure. It was many. A line of them, stretching down the street, waiting for me.

And I recognised them.

Faces from the square. Neighbours. Classmates. My parents.

All smiling. All watching.

My phone buzzed on the seat beside me. The screen glowed with one final message:

“Now you never leave.”

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model