Jonas traced the jagged tree carvings with trembling fingers. A crude spiral, its lines uneven, deeper in some places as if whoever made it had carved in a frenzy. The woods were heavy with the scent of damp earth, the air thick and unmoving. <\/p>\n
He had heard the stories\u2014the ones about the disappearances\u2014but Jonas didn’t believe in curses. He only believed in the promise of hidden things, rare finds, the kind that collectors paid fortunes for. And deep in the hollow of the old oak, something gleamed. <\/p>\n
A voice in the wind rasped through the trees, almost forming words. His stomach coiled, but he reached in anyway. Metal, cool and pulsing against his palm, slid free. Silence followed. <\/p>\n
Then, a sound\u2014deep, wet breaths behind him. He whirled, the carvings now twisting, pulsing like wounds. Something loomed, its body wrong, its mouth too wide. Jonas gasped. The object in his hand was gone, as if it had never been. <\/p>\n
Darkness swallowed him. The woods remained silent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some things should stay buried.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-horror"],"_wp_attached_file":null,"_wp_attachment_metadata":null,"_thumbnail_id":"860","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}