The Woman Who Wove the Night

“Whatever we call beautiful, we should tremble before it.”

— Donna Tartt, The Secret History

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A body turns up in the quiet mountain town of Deadwood, Oregon, wrapped so tightly in something like silk that local autopsy tools can’t cut through it. Two days later, another victim is found, this time a hiker, strung between two pines like a grotesque ornament, drained of fluid, with a look of absolute serenity frozen on his face.

The Park Service blames wolves.

The sheriff blames a serial killer.

You handler Sorsha, slides a folder across the table without sitting down.

Inside: grainy night-vision trail-cam photos, threads gleaming like wire, and a blurry figure that looks like it’s smiling.

“Something is hunting up there,” she says. “Something that shouldn’t be real. People are disappearing in clusters, and the survivors talk about a woman whose shadow bends the wrong way. You’re going to Kinsley Ridge to find her, contain her. or kill her.”

Rumor has it the forest is quiet now…too quiet.

As if it knows you’re coming.

As if it’s waiting.

Whatever wove the night around those victims…it isn’t done weaving.