Oakhaven

The silence in Oakhaven seemed to be louder than the actual chaos of the city. It was an empty shell that had been created when five thousand people vanished in a single afternoon thirty years ago, leaving behind half-eaten meals and cars parked at odd angles. No one knew what had happened, but the "exclusion zone" had become a mecca for legends. Most people swore it was haunted. No one had been brave enough to venture inside and find out.

Kyle hopped out of the rusted SUV, her boots crunching on glass that had long ago lost its sharp edges. She looked at Alex, who was checking the signal on her phone with a grimace.

"Nothing," Alex said. "We’re four hours from the nearest tower. If we break an axle out here, we’re walking until our legs give out."

"Standard procedure for The Paranormal Hour," Kyle said, adjusting her camera strap. "The subscribers love the isolation. Remember the hike into Calico Ghost Town? We got some solid footage there that people still debate in the comments. And the Groveland Hotel? That place had vibe, but this..." she looked at the sagging roofs on the houses around them. "This feels like it’s actually watching us."

Jenna stepped out next, stretching. She stared at the rusted remains of a Ferris wheel rising above the edge of the woods The trees were not tidy and kept trimmed like the ones back home, they were wild and out of control. They looked as if they were reclaiming what should have always been theirs in the first place. "Imagine the drone footage from the top of that. Haunted hotels are a dime a dozen, but this town is gonna get us monetized for sure. We need something new. Something no one has even seen."

Oliver lugged out a heavy equipment bag, looking at the row of houses with doors hanging open like open jaws. "No one knows the specific coordinates, right? I didn't tell my roommate. If we get stuck, we're off the grid."

"That’s the point, Oliver," Kyle replied. "The footage only works if there's no safety net." She pulled her hair back into a messy ponytail. "The audience wants to see real terror... not rehearsed bullshit that we can easily escape."

They began to walk down the main thoroughfare. The town hadn't been only reclaimed by nature, the soil here was poisoned. Only dry, brittle weeds grew between the sidewalk cracks. The air was stagnant, smelling of dry rot and old metal.

As they reached the town square, a sharp, metallic clack echoed. It sounded like a shutter, but there was no wind.

"Did you hear that?" Jenna whispered.

"The buildings are just settling," Alex replied, though her hand moved instinctively to the strap of her pack. "Thirty years of wood rot does that. It's just physics, guys. Keep the cameras rolling."

They entered a local grocery store. Cans of food, swollen and rusted, laid scattered on the shelves. Kyle focused her lens on a child’s shoe sitting perfectly upright in the center of the aisle. Through the viewfinder, she saw a flicker of movement in the reflection of a cracked freezer door. She spun around.

"Who’s there?"

The aisle was empty except for the dust motes that danced slowly in the rays of light.

"Kyle, you’re unusually jumpy today," Oliver said, smiling, but he was looking at the floor. In the thick layer of dust, there were foot prints that couldn't possibly belong to any one of them. They were all wearing hiking boots and these were bare foot prints. They were narrow, long, and fresh and seemed to be leading from the back of the store toward the basement stairs.

"We should go to the Ferris wheel, get the shots, and leave," Alex stated. The casual bravado of a YouTube host had evaporated as the isolation started to feel less like a brand and more like a trap.

They trekked toward the amusement park. The atmosphere felt eerie and all of them seemed to feel the same prickle on the back of their necks... the certainty of being watched from the dark upper windows of the empty homes they passed. Alex shuddered.

Jenna let out a muffled yelp as she stumbled over something. "Something grabbed my ankle."

She looked down and saw a thin wire that was nearly invisible against the dirt. It was stretched across the path and positioned right at the edge of a deep, open manhole that had been covered with rotted plywood and a fresh dusting of dirt.

"Someone set that," Jenna said, her breath coming in short huffs. "That's not settling buildings. That's a freakin snare."

"Maybe another explorer?" Oliver suggested, but the lack of any other vehicles at the entrance made the lie obvious. Even he didn't believe the words as they tumbled from his own lips. "Come on."

They reached the base of the Ferris wheel which was barely more than a lattice of rust. Alex climbed onto the operator's platform to get a panoramic view.

"I see something," Alex called down, pointing toward the SUV. "The tires. They look... they look flat. All of them!"

A wet, sliding sound came from beneath the platform. Before Alex could turn, a hand with long fingers as filthy as the dirt reached through the gaps in the floorboards. It seized Alex’s boot and pulled with a sudden, violent jerk.

Alex screamed, her body hitting the metal deck with a sickening thud. She was dragged backward into the cramped, dark machinery space beneath the controls.

"Alex!" Oliver lunged, but a heavy iron bolt, launched with impossible force from the darkness of a nearby ticket booth, struck him square in the temple. He collapsed instantly, his camera bag spilling lenses across the dirt like oversized marbles.

Kyle and Jenna bolted. Logic was screaming for them to help, but the primal urge to outrun the unseen propelled them toward the nearest house. They burst through the front door of a sagging bungalow and slammed it shut, sliding the deadbolt.

"He’s right there!" Jenna gasped, pointing out the window.

A figure stood in the middle of the street. He was not the ghost they'd been hoping to find. He was just a really dirty man with a face that resembled a map of neglect with skin as dry and aged as an old book. He wore a tattered mechanic’s jumpsuit that had faded to the color of old chalk. He stood perfectly still, holding a long, sharpened piece of metal. He began to walk toward the house with a jerky pace.

"The back door!" Kyle hissed.

They ran through the kitchen, but the back door was nailed shut from the outside with fresh, sturdy planks of wood. There was no escape. The girls were boxed in. Kyle grabbed a serrated kitchen knife from a rusted block on the counter.

The knob on the front door trembled quietly and the sound of a faint, metallic scrape seemed to echo through the abandoned house. The man had a key. Inside the lock’s housing, the pins begin their mechanical dance. The girls could hear the tumblers lifting one by one in a series of light clicks that vibrated through the hollow core of the door. There was a momentary resistance, just a single pause where the metal teeth of the key bit into the cylinder, and then the last quiet thunk as the deadbolt slid back into its sheath with a heavy, oiled smoothness.

The latch clicked open, and for a heartbeat, the only thing holding the door shut was the weight of the air between the inside and the outside. It opened slowly and there was his big smiling face. He was missing several teeth and the ones that were left were rotting over with years of dental neglect. This man had lived here long after the world forgot Oakhaven even existed. He knew every floorboard that creaked and every door that stuck.

Jenna scrambled up the stairs with Kyle following closely behind. The girls stumbled along in this alien place, trying to save their own lives. they leapt over discarded items and cracks in the floorboards but with only one miniscule slip, Kyle's foot went through a weak spot in the rotted wood and she was stuck.

"Jenna, help!"

Jenna turned, but the man was already in the hallway, moving quickly along with a terrifying grace. He ignored Kyle for a moment, his gaze fixed on the girl who was still mobile. He threw the metal pole at her. It whistled through the air and pierced Jenna’s shoulder, pinning her to the drywall of the upper landing.

She screamed, a high, thin sound that cut through the stagnant air. The man climbed the stairs, stepping over Kyle as if she were a piece of discarded furniture. He reached Jenna and gripped the pole, twisting it slowly and watching her face with a vacant, curious intensity, as if studying a specimen.

Kyle finally wrenched her leg free, skinning her shin to the bone. She stumbled toward the window, shattered the glass with her elbow, and tumbled onto the porch roof, then fell to the ground.

She ran toward the woods, her lungs burning. She didn't look back until she reached the woods. The man was standing on the porch, watching her. He knew the SUV was disabled and that the woods were filled with his snares.

Hours passed and the sun was going down, turning the old town into a graveyard of black silhouettes. Disoriented and circling back in the dark, Kyle stumbled into a shed behind the abandoned grocery store.

The smell hit her like a punch to the face. It smelled like a butcher shop left out in the summer sun. A single, naked bulb flickered on.

Alex and Oliver were there, suspended from meat hooks by their hamstrings. The man sat on a wooden stool in the corner, cleaning a set of surgical tools.

He looked up at Kyle and smiled his rotten grin. He stood up slowly and walked to a chalkboard on the wall. The man picked up a piece of chalk and made four fresh marks. Then, he crossed out three of them. He dropped the chalk to the floor and began filling the space between himself and Kyle, his bare, dirty feet slapping heavily against the old floor.

Kyle tried to raise the kitchen knife, but her muscles were locked in exhaustion. He easily disarmed her as he pushed her into a heavy dental chair bolted to the floor and began to wrap her arms in thick, industrial wire.

As he worked, his story was visible in the room. Framed photos showed a young man in a mechanic’s uniform with his family. Evacuation orders were pinned next to them, dated thirty years ago. He hadn't been left behind by accident, he had hidden in the cellar, refusing to leave. When the town died, he stayed. He became the apex predator of an old town full of supposed ghosts, though he was the only thing truly alive.

He picked up a scalpel and leaned in close to Kyle’s ear. She waited for a taunt, any reason for him being the way that he was. He exhaled a long, whistling breath that smelled of rot, placed the blade against her temple and began to peel with a steady hand, his expression as peaceful as a man tending to a garden.

Oakhaven remained silent. The four marks on the chalkboard were now all crossed through. The town was empty again, just the way he liked it.