The Mound in the Pines

The house sat at the edge of a forest that had been there longer than anyone could remember. Built five years ago, it was a modern structure of glass and steel, but the woods behind it were ancient, full of gnarled pines and undergrowth that seemed to swallow sound. Within those woods, there were mounds—low, grassy bumps that looked natural but weren’t. I’d done my research, digging through old county records and local histories, and found they were burial grounds of the indigenous people who had lived there centuries before. Most were unremarkable, but one always caught my eye. It was slightly larger, more symmetrical, and felt… watched. I told my sister, Elena, about it, and she laughed, saying I was letting my imagination run wild. She and her friend, Marcus, decided to prove me wrong. One afternoon, they took shovels and scraped at the mound, but the ground was hard, and they barely made a dent before giving up. I was furious. ‘You don’t disturb the dead,’ I said, my voice shaking. ‘That mound is sacred. You might have angered her.’ Elena rolled her eyes, but I saw a flicker of unease.

A year passed. The incident faded, though I still felt a pull toward the woods, a strange curiosity that made my skin prickle. One evening, my friend David was over, and we were watching a horror movie, the kind with jump scares and cheap thrills. The lights were dim, and the only glow came from the TV. Suddenly, an icy feeling crawled up my spine, and every hair on my body stood on end. I turned my head, not by choice but as if compelled. There, emerging from my closet, was a figure—a young Native American girl, maybe sixteen, with dark braids and a deerskin dress. She was translucent, yet every detail was sharp: the fringe on her sleeves, the beadwork, the sorrow in her dark eyes. She drifted toward my nightstand, her feet not touching the floor, and then vanished as if she’d never been. My breath caught. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature.

I grabbed David’s arm. ‘Did you see that?’ I whispered, my voice trembling. David stared at me, his face pale. ‘See what?’ I told him everything—the mounds, the burial ground, my sister’s desecration, and the apparition. As the last word left my lips, the TV snapped off with a sharp click. The screen went black, plunging the room into silence. David’s eyes went wide. ‘It’s her,’ I said, my throat dry. ‘She’s angry.’ We sat in the darkness, not daring to move, until my mom called from the kitchen that it was time to take David home. We both scrambled to our feet, eager to leave.

We climbed into my mom’s car, the engine humming to life. The drive to David’s house was quiet, the only sound the tires on the gravel. My mom chatted about nothing, but I could feel a presence, a weight pressing down on the car. When we pulled into David’s driveway, my mom parked and turned off the ignition. She got out to say goodnight to David’s dad, who was standing by the front door. David and I stayed in the back seat, still shaken. Suddenly, the radio, which was off, crackled to life. A low, guttural voice, not quite human, whispered from the speakers: ‘You have disturbed the rest.’ My blood turned to ice. David’s face went white. The voice continued, growing clearer, more feminine, but still wrong: ‘I will take what you love.’ Then the radio cut out. The doors locked automatically, and we heard a soft, childlike laugh from the back seat—behind us. We didn’t dare to look.

A moment later, my mom returned, and the locks clicked open. She looked at us, our faces ashen, and asked, ‘You two okay?’ We nodded, too scared to speak. As we drove away, I saw in the rearview mirror a figure standing at the edge of the woods, a silhouetted shape with long braids. It watched us leave. I knew then that my sister’s careless act had awakened something, and it would not rest until it had its due. The mound in the pines held a princess, and she had come to claim what was hers.