Chapter 21
Noelle
By late afternoon, it had started to feel almost normal.
The tents were up, the camera traps were placed along the ridge and near the creek, Shane had finished at least two dramatic on-site narrations, and even Holden had stopped muttering about environmental variables and started looking interested in something Whit pointed out near a cluster of mossy stones.
We hiked the creek trail in a lazy loop, Milo leading the charge with his bandana flapping like he was the head of a National Geographic expedition. There were laughs, minor complaints, sarcastic commentary—it felt like any other trip. For a little while, I even forgot I didn’t like the woods.
By the time we circled back to camp, the light was beginning to change—softening at the edges, gold bleeding into gray.
Dinner was a collective mess of campfire chili, burnt hot dogs, and leftover snacks from everyone’s glove compartments.
When the food was gone and our bottle of whiskey had made a few rounds, we all settled into that loose sprawl that comes with firelight and just enough alcohol—knees touching, voices soft, shadows dancing in the trees.
“Okay,” Delilah said, tilting her head back against a log. Her curls caught the flicker of the flames like a halo. “Time for a story.”
Whit’s eyes slid over to her. “Ah…so when I tell stories, it’s all Whit was high! Don’t listen to him! But it’s a big fuckin’ deal when you want to share?”
Delilah scoffed. “I am an excellent storyteller.”
“Questionable,” Holden muttered into a tin cup.
“At least not all of mine start with, ‘When I was in Guatemala,’” Delilah said.
Shane barked out a laugh.
“Anyway,” Delilah said. “This was about ten years ago—back when I was working for this antiquities dealer in New Orleans. We specialized in…weird stuff—oddities. Cursed cameos, preserved saints’ tongues, a very disturbing number of dolls with human teeth. You name it, we sold it.”
Holden made a noise like he didn’t want to ask, but couldn’t help himself. “People actually buy that kind of thing?”
“Oh, honey,” Delilah said sweetly, “you’d be shocked what kind of people have money. Especially when they think it’ll give them power.”
The fire cracked, sending sparks into the air.
“Anyway. One day, this guy shows up—rich, pale, eyes like they hadn’t closed in a decade. He says he’s looking for a mirror. Not just any mirror. A specific one. Late 1800s, mercury-backed, once owned by a Creole medium who’d gone missing under mysterious circumstances.”
“So, a cursed mirror,” Whit said.
“No,” Delilah said. “A hungry one.”
She let the silence hang for a second.
“He said he needed it to see someone he’d lost. Wouldn’t say who. Only that he’d tried everything else. Séances, necromancy, blood rituals. None of it worked. But he was sure this mirror could get her back.”
No one laughed. Even Shane had gone quiet.
“Problem was, I’d just sold the damn thing.
A week earlier. To a woman who’d moved to Baton Rouge.
” She leaned in, her voice lower now. “Three days later, the woman was dead. Found in her apartment with the mirror smashed to pieces beside her. Police said it was an accident. A fall. But I saw the scene.”
Delilah dragged a finger across her throat.
“No glass in the cuts.”
I stiffened.
“She hadn’t fallen. And she hadn’t broken that mirror. Something came out of it. Something took her, and when it was done, it crawled back in.”
“Jesus, Delilah,” Beau said, breaking the silence. Everyone let out an uncomfortable laugh; I curled in closer to him, just wanting to hide in his warmth, his safety.
Delilah nodded. “The man came back after that. Wanted to know where it had gone—where the mirror was now. When I told him the woman died…he just smiled. Said, ‘It always finds a way back to me.’”
The fire popped hard, like it agreed.
No one spoke for a beat. Milo growled low in his throat and shifted closer to Shane’s boots.
“Okay,” Whit said, voice a touch higher than usual. “So. Never buying a mirror again. Cool.”
Delilah just smiled and took a slow sip from the bottle. “You asked. Now who’s next?”
Shane swirled the whiskey in his cup.
“Noelle’s got a good one,” he said. “Tell ‘em the Shadow Painter story.”
I blinked at him. “Shane—”
“Oh come on,” he said, nudging my foot with his. “You know it’s the perfect vibe right now.”
“But everyone knows that one,” I said. “I mean…God, it’s like the first episode of Whispers. All the ghost cat stuff…”
“I’m pretty sure I’m the only listener here,” Delilah said. “Go on—I mean, if you want to.”
I exhaled, staring into the fire. “Alright. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
A few half-sarcastic oohs echoed around the circle. I rolled my eyes and leaned forward, letting my voice drop a little—just like my grandma used to when she’d try to scare the hell out of us.
“Okay. So…I know you think I’m some city girl.
Shane never shuts up about Austin, or podcasts, or my hatred of nature.
But I actually grew up in a place called Coffin Trace, Arkansas.
It’s out in the middle of the Ouachita Mountains, and it’s got more ghost stories than paved roads.
I would say…honestly, probably even more than Willow Grove.
Most folks out there trace their roots back a long way—Appalachian transplants, Scotch-Irish settlers, a couple pockets of old French Catholic families.
And with them came their stories. Everything from holler witches to headless hounds.
But the one that stuck with me…the one everybody agreed was real… ”
I let my voice dip as I glanced around the fire.
“…was the Shadow Painter.”
Holden visibly straightened. Whit leaned in like he was expecting a jump scare at any second.
“It’s a kind of ghost cat,” I said, “though calling it a cat doesn’t really do it justice.
Some people say it’s a demon. Some say it’s an omen.
But everyone agrees it looks wrong—too tall, too thin, all long limbs and sinew.
Like a panther that got stretched in a funhouse mirror.
Black fur so dark it eats light. Massive wings like an oversized bat. And its eyes…”
I gave Shane a look and he mouthed it along with me, just under his breath.
“…glow white. Like twin moons in a black sky.”
Delilah made a small impressed noise, passing me the bottle.
“They say it doesn’t leave tracks,” I continued, taking a sip and passing it along. “Doesn’t make noise. But if you see it—really see it—something bad’s coming. Real bad. Death, usually.”
“Any particular lore origin?” Holden asked, ever the academic.
I nodded. “There’s versions of the story as far back as the 1800s—journal entries, coroner’s reports, old Pentecostal sermons warning against ‘the devil’s eyes in the trees.
’ Some people think it’s tied to the old coal trails; others think it was summoned accidentally during a backwoods revival.
But the common thread is always the same: it shows up before someone dies. ”
Beau was quiet, his arm around me tightening just slightly.
I let the silence stretch, warming to the rhythm of it now—the way firelight made everything feel heavier, older, closer.
“The first time I saw it,” I said slowly, “was in the woods behind our trailer. I was maybe twelve. There’d been a bad storm—lightning cracking right over the hills, thunder shaking the windows. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and looked outside…”
The fire popped, and Whit jumped just a little.
“It was perched in a tree about ten feet off the ground. Perfectly still. Its eyes were the only thing I could see at first—those pale silver moons cutting through the dark. And I swear…it blinked. Like it knew I was watching.”
Holden shifted uncomfortably beside the log. “You sure it wasn’t just an animal?”
“That’s what I told myself,” I said. “Over and over. For years. But then I started seeing it other places. Not often. Not always clearly. But just enough.”
“Define ‘other places,’” Shane said.
“My dorm window in college. The rooftop across from my first apartment in Austin. Once in the reflection of a parked car’s windshield. Always still. Always watching.”
“You never mentioned that,” Shane said.
“Didn’t want you thinking I was nuts.” I offered a shrug, careful and vague. “And maybe I am. Maybe I was just dealing with grief or trauma or—hell, an undiagnosed sleep disorder. But every time I saw it…something happened. A bad car accident. A house fire two streets over.”
“You think it’s following you?” Delilah asked.
I looked at her, met her eyes dead on. “I think it doesn’t have to follow me. I think it already lives somewhere behind my eyes.”
Nobody spoke.
Even Milo had gone still, ears up.
I leaned back, my voice dry now, matter-of-fact. “That’s what they don’t tell you in the old stories. Sometimes monsters don’t just haunt a place. They haunt a person. And once they’ve picked you? There’s no going back.”
Shane let out a low breath and gave a small shake of his head, like he was trying to physically dispel the shiver crawling up his spine.
“Well,” Whit said eventually, “guess I’ll be sleeping in the truck.”
Laughter followed Whit’s comment, but it was nervous, scattered. The fire crackled again. Someone tossed another log on, and for a second, the flames surged high enough to throw the trees into sharper relief—tall and twisted, limbs like crooked fingers, reaching.
Holden dove into a story of his own, then—one that, blessedly, did not start with When I was in Guatemala—but I was too rattled from my own ghost. Now that I’d talked about the Painter, I felt like it had to be in the woods…
like talking about it had let it know I was thinking about it, like I’d summoned it.
Beau’s hand slid down my arm, anchoring me like he always did—just one touch and I could breathe again.
But this time, I didn’t just want to breathe.
I wanted to forget.
I leaned into him, my head against his shoulder. He turned, pressing a kiss to my hair.
“You good?” he murmured.
“Getting there.”
“You wanna get there faster?”
I tilted my chin up to meet his eyes. The firelight painted him in gold and shadow, his stubble catching little flecks of amber, his mouth soft and infuriatingly perfect.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I said, my voice quiet enough that only he could hear it.
“I’m thinkin’,” he said, “that I’ve got a warm sleepin’ bag and a girl who just told a room full of people she’s being stalked by a death cat. And if I don’t take care of you properly tonight, I’m gonna wake up with that thing gnawin’ on my ankles out of spite.”
I snorted—then bit my lip when his hand skimmed beneath the hem of my hoodie, palm hot against my lower back.
“And how exactly were you planning on taking care of me?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow.
He leaned in until his mouth brushed my ear. “Startin’ with my tongue. Ending with you falling asleep so sore and satisfied you can’t remember any ghost stories.”
My pulse kicked hard enough I could hear it.
I swallowed hard. “You really think that’ll work?”
He grinned slow and dangerous. “I think if I eat your pussy the way I’m plannin’ to, you’re gonna forget your own damn name, let alone the Shadow Painter.”
A full-body shiver worked through me.
“I mean…” I said, teasing, breath catching, “that does sound therapeutic.”
“Baby,” he murmured, voice all gravel and promise, “I’m gonna make you forget how to be scared. Gonna keep you so full of me you won’t even have room for fear.”
I let out a soft sound and stood, brushing my hands against my thighs to cover how much I was shaking.
“Already?” Delilah asked, cocking an eyebrow.
Beau stood behind me, slow and unbothered, slinging an arm over my shoulders like a man who’d just claimed a prize at the fair.
“Yup,” Beau said. “Bedtime.”
“Bedtime,” Shane repeated, scandalized. “It’s not even midnight!”
“Exactly,” Beau said. “Plenty of time.”
Delilah cackled. “Don’t forget to say goodnight to the ghost cat!”
“I plan to make so much noise the Shadow Painter’ll run scared,” Beau drawled. “Ain’t nothin’ darker than what I’m about to do to her.”
A chorus of whoops and whistles broke out around the fire. I flipped them all off good-naturedly as Beau unzipped the tent and guided me inside—but I barely heard the teasing behind us anymore.
Because the second the flap closed, Beau’s hands were on my hips.
And the ghost stories didn’t matter anymore.