The Encounter

More about The Encounter

No one in Wexford Hollow could agree on the exact hour the hush descended. Some said it came with the mist before dawn; others insisted it arrived later, slipping between the pines like a polite intruder unwilling to disturb the forest floor. But all agreed on the boy—the solitary figure wandering beneath the tall, grey trunks—who first saw the thing.

He had gone out as he always did, seeking the quiet his home refused him. The woods were a place where nothing unexpected ever happened. Until, of course, something did.

At first, it resembled a distortion of the air, a mild irritation to the vision. Then it gathered itself: a widening disc of shimmering ash-white, its edges trembling with patterns too intricate to belong to weather. It pulsed once, like a great eye adjusting to the dimness beneath the trees.

The boy stood perfectly still. He would later say that he felt no fear, only a curious heaviness spreading through his limbs, as though the forest itself held its breath and pressed gently upon him to do the same.

Inside the circle—if “inside” was even the right word—layers of fine concentric lines rotated in opposite directions. They seemed carved impossibly into light, turning without motion, spiraling without movement. The forest’s shadows bent toward it; the frost on the dead leaves glittered with faint response, as though the very matter of the world recognized something older than itself.

A sound began. Not a note, but a condition—an atmosphere that crept into the mind like a forgotten obligation. The pines grew straighter. The boy’s heartbeat settled into an unfamiliar rhythm. The hush, impossibly, deepened.

It spoke without speaking.

Not in words, but in an insistence that filled his chest: Come closer. Yet he did not move. Instead, he felt himself being known—examined, measured, tucked into some vast geometry whose scale lay entirely beyond Wexford Hollow, beyond even the sky.

Then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the disc contracted. Its brilliant center tightened to a pin-thread of light, and with a soft inversion—no louder than a sigh—it vanished.

The boy returned home just after sunrise. He told no one. Not because he feared disbelief, but because the hush had not lifted. Something in the air still waited, listening.

In the days that followed, the people of Wexford Hollow noticed small changes: the unnatural calm of the animals, the subtle metallic taste in the morning fog, the way the trees now seemed to lean toward the center of the woods.

And though no one could explain it, each villager found themselves glancing, more often than before, into the silent ranks of pines—expecting, without knowing why, that something might return.