Chapter 1 Monsters
MONSTERS
TWO WEEKS AGO
Magic is real.
And, okay, I know how that sounds. Trust me. I spent most of my early life rolling my eyes at anyone who insisted it was. Wishes were for people who still believed someone out there was listening to them.
I knew better.
When you grow up the way I did, bouncing from one foster hour to another, never staying long enough to matter to anyone, you get disillusioned pretty quickly.
However, there’s always been a hint of wonder…
of what-if… that I never quite lost. So while I scoffed at the idea that magic might exist, young Charlotte Linden went all-in when it came to fairy tales.
Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood… they were the stories I read to myself when no one else would, and they imprinted on me in a way that I refused to let any of my trauma.
Losing both of my parents by the time I was five, with no bio family willing to take responsibility for me.
Hopping in and out of foster homes, never staying at a school for more than a year, and never making any true friends except for a fellow foster kid I bonded with once and did everything I could to follow her around New Jersey because she was the only one who cared.
What happened in some of those foster homes—not all, but enough that it scarred me—before I aged out and realized that I had nothing going for me…
nothing except a computer, shitty library Wi-Fi, and an account on a message board full of those who desperately needed to believe in fairy tales because the real world was just too fucking cruel.
That’s how I found out about Blackmoor. About a small town in Germany that you have to be lucky enough to stumble upon, and if you do, then maybe the small village council might weigh your request and allow you to brave the dark, foreboding forest attached to it.
Anyone who knows fairy tales knows about the forest. It appears in Hansel and Gretel’s story, Little Red’s, Snow White’s Rapunzel’s, Sleeping Beauty…
so many of the morality tales decorated as children’s stories feature a magic forest as another character, and according to the posters on the forum, that forest is known as Blackmoor.
Only you can’t just walk into Blackmoor. Oh, no. You have to be invited, to be chosen, and if you are, if you’re willing to spend three full days inside of its gaping maw, then it rewards you with something straight out of a fairy tale.
It rewards you with a wish.
That’s right. If you believe it, the forest will give you one thing you ask for, that you wish for, if you survive it.
It can be anything. Money. Good health. Fame.
I’ve heard rumors of some petitioners who entered the forest in the hope that they can even bring someone back from the dead, though if Blackmoor plays by Genie’s rules, that one’s a no-no.
That doesn’t matter to me. I’ve made it twenty-three years without my parents, and I haven’t lost anyone else that I’d risk rising as a zombie.
But, going with the theme of fairy tales, there is something I want so desperately that I obsessively researched everything about the fabled forest that I could, saved up for three years to afford to journey to Germany and search it out, set out with a backpack and a determined goal not to let anyone stop me from finding it—including my childhood best friend, Goldie, who would shit herself if she found out that my ‘backpacking’ trip through Europe really was my attempt to play with magic at my big age of twenty-eight—so that I could get that wish.
Me? I want love. True love. I want someone—man, woman, or something else entirely… I’m not picky—to love me with their whole heart, body, and soul, so much that they would always choose me, always be there for me, and never, ever hurt me.
I want a happy-ever-after for Charlotte Linden, and after months of searching, I walked into the small village of Blackmoor this morning and told the first person that I saw that I would do whatever it took to get it.
I’m prepared. At least, I think I am. Three years of digging through buried threads, archived posts, half-broken links, and anonymous accounts that all said the same thing in different ways: Blackmoor is just as real as magic.
A forest on the edge of a small German village that doesn’t show up on most maps unless you know what you’re looking for. All you have to do is survive three days inside, and when you walk out, you get your wish.
One problem: no one agrees on what the forest takes in return. However, everyone who’s ever posted on that message board agrees on one thing.
It takes something, and I’m willing to sacrifice everything.
“Do you believe in monsters?”
For a second, I blink, not so sure that I heard the woman right.
Blackmoor, I’ve discovered during my stay here, is the name of both the forest and the village.
That makes sense, and it explains a lot of the discrepancies I noted during all of my deep dives through the message board online.
Only, I wouldn’t say Blackmoor itself is a village, though that’s how it was described to me when I first stumbled upon it two weeks ago.
I got lucky. I’ll admit that. After months of searching, it was a tip from the local cab driver, Jacques, that had me switching my destination last minute and asking him to bring me here.
There are no restaurants here. Only a handful of houses built far enough away from the mouth of the forest that it has to be intentional. Luckily for me, there’s a hostel that hosts up to six visitors at a time, though there’s currently only one other traveller staying there.
Emily Monroe. I met her a week after I checked in, doing a double-take when I saw that, like me, she’s a redhead.
My hair’s more of a deeper, ruby-red color while hers is much shorter and with an auburn tint, but it was unusual enough that it caught my attention.
It isn’t often that I run into another natural redhead in the wild, and Blackmoor… it’s as wild and remote as you can get.
Meals come standard with our stay at the Blackmoor hostel. I’ve seen her every breakfast, lunch, and dinner since she appeared, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that she didn’t just happen upon the small village. Also, like me, she’s here because she wants a wish.
Too bad. It took me two days before the village council—comprising of a dark-skinned brooding man, a fair-skinned one who could pass for my grandfather if I had one, and a middle-aged woman with the stereotypical blonde Karen haircut—agreed to let me petition them.
By the time Emily arrived, I’d already gone through four rounds of interviews.
I had one with each of them, then another with the complete trio.
Klaus, Noah, and Sandra, who I decide to call Sandy because she purses her lips every time I do.
And maybe I shouldn’t be pushing her buttons like that, but I was the only petitioner at first, and they did tell me to be very honest and open and share my hopes, dreams, intentions, and personality with them so they can decide whether or not I’m a good fit for Blackmoor.
Because, surprise: only one petitioner gets to enter Blackmoor, and then it’s at least another season’s wait before they’re willing to allow anyone else to try.
I guess I was super lucky to arrive when I did because they had an opening for hard-headed outsiders who think they can brave the forest and earn their wish.
Because I got here first, I was already a good way into the interview process when Emily showed up.
I like to think that gave me an edge, but it’s been two weeks now, and I was still told to come meet Sandy for another interview after dinner.
So here I am, and I’m still pretty sure I heard her wrong because… “Monsters?”
She nods. “After talking it over with Klaus and Noah, we realized that you might have some grand idea that this is some sort of a fairy tale. That is what you’re after, isn’t it, Charlotte, dear? Happy-ever-after?”
I was very clear about that. “Yes, but—”
“What do you know about the beasts of Blackmoor?”
“Just what I read online. That since Blackmoor is the forest in every fairy tale, it makes sense that every monster in those stories hides out in there.”
I wait for Sandy to tell me that that’s impossible. That magic is real, but Blackmoor draws the line at housing monsters.
Nope.
“That’s right. And it’s not just fairy tales, either. Myths… legends… every creature you conceive of can be found in its shadows.”
I lift my eyebrows. “Even Santa Claus?”
She jerks her head. A nod.
Holy shit. When I read someone’s story about how they met Krampus and Santa Claus in the forest—and that Krampus was the good guy while Santa was a fucking cuck—I thought that JOSIE521 was screwing with us.
I actually sent her a DM to get more details…
I mean, she made it sound like she fell in love with Krampus during her three-day stay in Blackmoor which, you know, insane…
but she made a goodbye post in December of that year and never posted another message again, let alone answered my nosy ass.
“Depending on your path,” Sandy continues, “you can avoid most of them. The forest likes to guide its visitors the right way for them if it can. It expects a lot of you, but I’m sure you understand.
When you expect your greatest wish at the end of your trial, you have to be worthy of it.
And in this case, it’s the monsters who will be your biggest test.”
Monsters? Sure. Besides, I’ve dealt with plenty of human monsters. If all I have to do is avoid Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, I’ve got this. As long as they—
Hang on.
“Wait. Are you telling me that I’m in? That I get to go into the forest so I can get my wish?”
“That’s right.”
I swallow a whoop of delight. I don’t want to look too eager in case Sandy thinks I’m not taking it as seriously as she obviously is.
So instead, I clear my throat. “I accept.”
“There are other details to go over before tomorrow.” Sandy pulls open one of the drawers of the desk she’s sitting behind. She grabs a thick—and I mean thick—roll-up piece of paper. “You’ll need to go through this. It’s a standard contract. You read it, then sign at the bottom.”
I accept the scroll. “Got a pen?”
She finds one, passing it over to me. As she watches me peel the bottom edge away from the roll, finding a line marked by a small ‘x’, she says, “Aren’t you going to read it first?”
What’s the point? Nothing is stopping me from going into the woods, and I’m pretty sure this is a standard contract to cover their asses. They probably don’t want any of my family members coming after them if I get myself eaten up by monsters in a magical forest.
Good news for them. I don’t have any family members. If anything, it might be Goldie looking for me, but I told her I’d be back in the States by the time summer was over—and I plan on sticking to it.
Three days? I got this.
“Nah. I get it. I screw up, the monsters might eat me.”
“Among other things,” Sandy murmurs.
What? “Huh?”
She shakes her head, taking the scroll and her pen back once I’m done scrawling my name on the line. “You’ll see.” Then, before I can ask for further clarification, she gets up and moves to the other side of the small room where I’ve met each and everyone of the council members to ‘chat’.
There are two doors in here. One is the entrance/exit that leads to the outdoors. I don’t think I ever wondered what was behind the other one, but I guess it must be a closet because, after Sandy disappears inside of it for a moment, she returns holding a floor-length cloak.
It’s a deep red color with a snap that must go under the wearer’s chin, plus a hood that would go up and over their head.
It’s not a light cloak, either. There’s weight to it, and I’m just thinking it would be awesome to wear something like that through a Northeast winter when Sandy says, “This is what you will wear when you enter Blackmoor tomorrow.”
I blink. “A winter cloak? In August?”
“Yes. The forest insists.”
Okay. Maybe this is getting a little weird… “I mean, if it insists—”
“It does. And you must not be the one to remove it. Trust me, Charlotte. Blackmoor will know.”
Yeah. I don’t doubt that. “Okay. I won’t take it off. So, what? I just put it on over my clothes and—”
Before I can finish my thought, she shakes out her other hand. I didn’t even know she was holding on to a ball of silky black fabric until she reveals a flimsy, teeny-tiny black nightgown that looks way more like a piece of lingerie than a LBD.
“You will wear this beneath it and nothing else.”
So that forest has a kinky side. Got it. Either that or public humiliation is part of the rite of passage to get through Blackmoor—or maybe the village council gets their kicks making the petitioners do whatever they want to earn their wish.
Sucks for them. That won’t work on me. I had any shame I might’ve had knocked out of me when I was a kid, and more than a decade-and-a-half of therapy to deal with that.
“Got it.”
“Do you?” she asks. “Do you really? Because I’ll give you one last warning, Charlotte: the forest is forever hungry. But if you give the beasts of Blackmoor what they need, you’ll get everything you desire.”
There’s something in the way she says that—coupled with the slip of a dress she’s still showing off to me—that makes me rethink that dangers that the monsters in the forest might represent.
So what is it? I whore myself out to something out of a myth or a legend or a fairy tale and I get my wish?
Again, after all those invasive interviews, the council should’ve figured out that there isn’t anything I won’t do to get that wish.
If it comes down to sex, I can deal with that.
I’ve slept with plenty of men just to feel something, hoping that they might be the one who will stick around.
What’s a little hide the sausage with the big, bad wolf or Krampus?
And, okay, maybe I’m being facetious, but really: what can the forest hold that I can’t handle? Besides, why would one of the monsters in the woods want me when I haven’t found a human man who was interested enough to offer me forever.
But if I get my wish… three days for forever. So long as I think of Blackmoor as Las Vegas, I’m willing to do anything to get through this.
Hey. What happens in Blackmoor, stays in Blackmoor…
“Gotcha. And, just checking, I start tomorrow?”
When Sandy nods, I know that that was the last chance to change my mind that she’s going to give me.
Good.
I’m ready.