The birds stopped singing.

At first, no one noticed.

Too much noise inside the house.

Too much yelling. The usual.

But Mr. Han noticed. He was always up before dawn, heading out toward his cornfield.

He paused.

No birds.

No bugs.

No breeze.

Just a silence that felt like pressure on the ears. The kind that squeezes your chest without touching you. Like the ground itself was holding its breath.

He looked toward the trees.

The line where the forest began felt… warped. Like the tree line had shifted slightly overnight. The angles were wrong. And the shadows didn’t match the light.

Later that week, Carl came home angry.

“There’s something in the woods,” he said, slamming the door behind him.

His shirt was ripped. Dirt on his hands. He looked shaken, but covering it with rage.

“I threw rocks at it, but it didn’t run.”

The father didn’t even look up from the book.

“Probably a fox,” he muttered.

Carl’s voice dropped.

“No,” he said. “It looked like a man. But not really. Too tall. Skin was… off. And it watched me.”

The father waved him off. “You saw shadows.”

Carl didn’t speak after that. He just went to his room and locked the door.

The next day, the chickens were gone.

The ones they kept behind the shed.

Every single one—gone.

No blood.

No feathers.

No broken bodies.

Just a bent piece of fence and that same choking silence.

The father cursed, blamed a fox again. Didn’t check the woods. Didn’t want to.

But Abby was watching. She always did. Through the bedroom window when no one was looking.

That evening, she saw something.

Low to the ground. Fast.

Moved like a shadow with legs.

She blinked and it was gone.

That night, something barked.

A deep, raspy bark that echoed through the woods.

But they didn’t own a dog.

No one in the area did anymore. Not since last year, when something kept dragging them off into the dark.

The barking continued.

Long.

Loud.

Like it was mimicking how a dog should sound.

Then—

A scream.

Not human.

Not animal.

Just wrong.

It sounded broken like something trying to copy pain without understanding what pain really feels like.

Abby shot up in bed.

Melvin grabbed her arm. His eyes wide.

“Abby… did you hear that?”

She nodded. She didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

The sound wasn’t fading.

It echoed. Replayed. Like it wanted to be remembered.

Melvin whispered, “That wasn’t a dog…”

Abby got up and walked to the window.

She froze.

The bushes at the edge of the woods were moving.

But there was no wind.

They weren’t rustling.

They were being pushed.

One by one.

Like something was moving through them. Slowly. On purpose.

Coming closer