The Last Log

It had been nearly a decade since I’d last typed a word on this forum, and I’d long since abandoned my old handle, ‘MossyBoots’. I never thought I’d return, but something happened that I need to get off my chest, even if no one reads this.

It was late October, the kind of autumn where the air bites and the trees are stripped to their bones. My friend, Cora, had invited me to her family’s cabin, nestled deep in the woods near the foothills. I’d met a few of her other friends before, but this time there were two new girls, I think their names were Elsie and Mara. We spent the afternoon drinking warm cider and laughing, but as the sun began to dip, Cora suggested we take a walk along the old logging trail that wound behind the cabin.

The trail was carpeted with decaying leaves, and the bare branches of the ash and birch trees creaked overhead. We walked for a while, our breath fogging in the cold, until we reached a clearing where a massive, fallen oak lay across the path. Its trunk was gnarled and rotten, but it formed a natural bridge over a shallow ravine. Cora and the others immediately began to cross it, their boots thudding against the wood. I hesitated, but they called to me, so I stepped up.

As I placed my foot on the mossy bark, a strange sensation washed over me, like the ground had tilted and the air had thickened. I took a few more steps, but then I stopped. Before me, superimposed over the clearing, I saw a girl. She was about my age, with dark hair plastered to her face, and she was running, her bare feet slipping on the wet leaves. She kept glancing back over her shoulder, her eyes wide with terror. I tried to call out, but no sound came. I watched as she stumbled and fell, her hands scraping against the bark. She was crying, mumbling something I couldn’t hear, but I could read her lips: ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ Then she looked directly at me, and her face twisted into a mask of anguish. She mouthed, ‘Help me.’ Then she was gone.

I snapped back to reality, my heart pounding. I was standing in the middle of the log, my friends staring at me from the other side. ‘Are you okay?’ Cora asked. I tried to explain what I’d seen, but the words came out jumbled. They laughed it off as a trick of the light, a chill from the wind. But I knew what I saw. I noticed a small carving on the log, half-hidden under a curl of bark. It was a name: ‘Lena.’

I couldn’t shake the vision. That night, as we sat by the fire in the cabin, I asked Cora about the girl, about the name Lena. Cora’s face went pale. She told me that years ago, a girl named Lena had gone missing in these woods. She was from a nearby town, and her family had been camping near the cabin. They searched for weeks but never found her. The log where I’d seen the vision was in the exact spot where her scent had gone cold.

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. I went back to the log the next morning, alone. The air was still and grey. I sat on the log and closed my eyes, half-hoping to see her again, half-terrified. And I did. The vision returned, but this time, I could hear her whispers, fragments of a prayer: ‘Please, not in the water.’ I saw her fleeing from something, a shadowy figure that seemed to breathe the darkness. She stumbled to the edge of a narrow stream, a tributary that ran through the woods, and she fell, hitting her head on a rock. She lay there, limp, and the shadow approached.

I snapped out of it, gasping. The log felt cold and dead beneath me. I knew what I had to do. I walked to the stream, following its winding path. It led to a small, stagnant pool, choked with reeds. At the bottom, tangled in the muck, I saw a glint of metal. I waded in, the mud sucking at my boots, and pulled out a small locket, its chain broken. Inside was a faded picture of a girl and a boy, and on the back, the name ‘Lena’.

I didn’t tell my friends about the locket. I kept it in my pocket, turning it over and over. That night, as I lay in my bunk, I felt a cold breath on my neck. I turned, and there she was, standing at the foot of my bed. Her form was translucent, her eyes black pits, but I could see the pleading in them. She pointed at the window, then at the locket. I understood. She wanted to be found.

The next morning, I took the locket to the local sheriff. I told them everything, about the vision, about the log. They sent a search team to the pool. They found Lena’s remains, tangled in the roots at the bottom. The sheriff later told me that she had died from a head injury, but there were strange scratches on her legs, as if she had been dragged.

I never went back to the cabin. I still have the locket, though. I keep it in a drawer, but sometimes, when the wind is right, I can hear her voice, not in my head, but on the air. She says, ‘Thank you.’ And I wonder if that’s enough to quiet the horror of what I saw, or if it’s just the beginning of what she has to show me.

I’m writing this now, not because I want to scare anyone, but because I need to remember. The log is still there, rotting in the woods. If you ever walk it, and you feel a chill, step off. Because Lena isn’t the only one who fell.

And she’s not the only one who’s watching.