She came—she came—and the quivering flame
Sunk and died in the fire.

— Marry Elizabeth Coleridge, The Witch

The citizens of Burkittsville still called it "the Blair Witch," even though the town had not been called Blair since the original settlement's abandonment in 1786. It stood in the shadow of the Black Hills, which themselves stretched across the backcountry of Maryland, and held no more than one hundred and thirty residents (give or take a few) at any given time. The town had once commanded the attention of the nation in the late nineties — an incident involving three college students who disappeared in the woods — but had since returned to obscurity, which had been a great relief.

The people of Burkittsville — both on camera and when whispering amongst one another — agreed that what happened to those three college students was "unfortunate," and many even joined the search parties that combed the woods in the hopes of finding them alive (or even some trace of what had happened to them). But the elders, those who had lived in Burkittsville longest, were no strangers to unfortunate events happening in the woods. Many of them could still remember the last time such a thing had happened.

Beginning in the early 1940s — a half century prior — a tragedy struck the town that was still whispered about in the nineties and, indeed, was still whispered about in the present. The story had been covered in newspapers from Fredrick to Washington D.C., and more than a few documentaries — including the one the ill-fated college students were making before their mysterious vanishings — had incorporated it into their backstory on the Blair Witch legend. Indeed, by now, those very events had become apart of urban legend themselves; each person who told the story added their own embellishments to it, until no one was quite certain what really happened during the period between November 1940 and May 1941. But the one thing every version agreed upon was this:

That in November 1940, Rustin Parr became a serial killer.

Over the course of the next year, seven children vanished from Burkittsville; they were taken into the woods by Parr, who lured them with offers of candy, and seemingly offered him no resistance. Once he had them, he took them up to his cabin in the woods and murdered them one-by-one — mysteriously sparing only one, Kyle Brody, as the only surviving witness of his gruesome work.

When he was done, he returned to the town and entered the market, where he startled those who were near enough to hear him when he said:

"I'm finally finished."

Parr was pressed, of course, by what he meant with such a cryptic statement; and Parr offered his confession without giving consideration of the consequences. The police were immediately summoned, and one-by-one the bodies were brought out of the woods, along with a very traumatized Kyle Brody. The children were soon known as the Burkittsville Seven. They were Emily Hollands, Terra Shelly, Stephen Thompson, Micheal Guidry, Eric Norris, Julie Forsyth, and Margaret Lowell. Their brutal deaths were mourned by the town and Rustin Parr was arrested.

But while Rustin Parr was sitting in a jail cell, awaiting his trial, the town of Burkittsville was busy whispering secrets. Those who had been there in the market that day could remember Parr's horrible words — worse, they remembered the reason he gave for why he committed the terrible crimes.

"I heard voices in my head — a woman's," he had said. A line which he would later repeat in his confession to the police. And when asked why those seven children had been his victims, he replied coldly, "That's what the voices told me."

That night, they burned his home to the ground.

"I'd always thought he was odd," recalled Shiela Dippet, a resident of Burkittsville at the time, who has since moved on to Fredrick. "He was always livin' up there in them woods. A hermit, he said. Everybody knew the woods were no good, and anybody livin' in them were bound to be no different."

The case took a darker turn when the manner of the children's deaths was revealed to the public. They had — all of them — been disemboweled and had strange occult markings carved into their faces. From his prison cell in Fredrick, Rustin Parr gave a taped interview which elaborated on his crime. He brought the children into the basement of his home in pairs of two. One child stood in the corner while he killed the other, then he would kill the child standing in the corner. The only exception was Kyle Brody, who was made to stand in another corner and listen to all of the grisly murders. He did this, he said, and awoke soon after to the figure of a woman who told him to go into town and reveal what he had done; only then would she finally stop tormenting him.

On July 17, 1941, Rustin Parr finally went to trial for his crimes. There, the testimony of Kyle Brody sealed his fate, and he was sentenced to execution. On November 22 of that same year, the sentence was carried out. Rustin Parr was hanged by the neck until dead. Burkittsville celebrated the his death.

"Can you believe the nerve of that man?" a woman — a resident of Burkittsville — was overheard in the market the next day. "Passing off blame on that old superstition, as if anyone in this day-and-age would believe such a ridiculous thing!"

But they did believe. Mary Brown, who was considered to be the town crazy, had believed the stories for much of her life, and had even claimed to have seen the witch in the woods. To Mary, and those like her, Rustin Parr's claims were the most disturbing part of the ordeal. They remained quiet for fear of accusation that they were sympathetic to a child-killer; but, in the privacy of their own homes, they lamented that the old legend persevered. The woods were still cursed; the Blair Witch yet lived.

Burkittsville was no longer a tourist attraction. The excitement of the 1940s and the 1990s was a thing of the past, and it had returned to being a sleepy little village on the edge of the Black Hills National Forest. Trevor Pond was approaching his fourteenth birthday. To him, the excitement of those days were before his time, and he neither understood them nor cared to. The only thing he cared about was proving himself.

Her name was Gabrielle Hickweather, but everyone just called her Gabby. She was the desire of every teenage boy in Burkittsville, though Trevor imagined her fan base extended into several other nearby Maryland communities. And why wouldn't it? She was a beauty, what with her curly auburn hair, her freckled face, and her chocolate-colored eyes. But Gabby wouldn't settle for just any boy. She had to have the toughest, the bravest, the most daring boyfriend; and Trevor was none of these things, or so the other boys told him.

He had done everything he knew to win her heart. When he learned that she liked boys who could fight, he had joined a karate club in Fredrick and spent the weekends there, learning the art; but that hadn't worked. When he learned that she liked boys who could be on the daring side, he had snuck into Union Cemetery during the night and brought back the flowers off of some old codger's grave. He had even beaten up Ricky Stiles when he got caught beating up little Tommy Giles to prove that he had a noble side. But so far, all of his efforts had been for nothing. She barely showed him any sign that she was aware of his existence. It was maddening; but then another opportunity presented itself.

The Blair Witch Project had developed somewhat of a cult fascination among the generations of teenagers in Burkittsville. The footage that had put Burkittsville on the map back in the nineties was now widely available on the internet, and so fads had developed among the children who grew up there: sometimes it would center around watching the footage, and other times it would consist of dares that involved the so-called "cursed woods." In May 2016, after school had let out, and the children of Burkittsville were able to return to their usual mischief, the latter fad took root again. So it was no surprise when five of these teenagers — including Trevor and Gabby — were gathered on the outside of town, just beneath the trees, on a cloudy Saturday night.

"Well?" said Kevin Ruddy, who was smacking away at piece of chewing gum. "Can you sissies make it a night out here?"

"You're not going to do it here, are you?" Gabby chimed in. She reached back and tossed some of her hair back over her shoulder, as though she was already bored with this little proposition. "Right here on the edge of town, where you can run away if anything scary happens? That doesn't sound very brave."

"Yeah!" Ryan Bentley said. "You call us sissies? Why don't we take this a bit further in, eh?"

From the look on his face, Kevin knew he was beaten. He could call it off, of course — he could call it all off — but doing so would make him look cowardly in front of Gabby and his pride wouldn't allow for it.

"Where should we go then?" Kevin practically bellowed.

"How about Tappy East Creek?" suggested Quinton Carter. There was a gasp from the collective. Even Gabby seemed surprised.

"Yeah," she said after she regained her composure. "Yeah, that would work nicely. Tappy East. You should go there."

Trevor said nothing. He didn't need to. He knew why Quinton had chosen the creek; he knew why Gabby had agreed so quickly. Everyone in Burkittsville had heard of Eileen Treacle and what had happened to her in the summer of 1825. Legend said that she had been pulled into the shallow waters by a ghostly hand. Some accounts even said that she had been pulled in by an old woman. Her body was never found.

"Well?" Gabby said as she looked at each of the four faces in front of her. "Are you guys gonna do it, or are you chicken?"

Ryan was pale. "Aren't you coming with us?"

Gabby roared with mirth. "I'm a lady. Of course I'm not going with you. You're the big strong men — right?"

"Right!" five voices replied in unison. Trevor was almost ashamed to admit his was among them.

"Well then," she said with a smirk. "It shouldn't be any trouble for you, should it? And while we're at it, let's make it interesting. The one who stays the whole night wins and I'll give him a kiss."

"What if we all stay the night?" Trevor found himself asking.

Gabby gave him a crooked smirk and twirled a bit of her hair around her finger. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." And she gave him a wink.

The four boys departed for Tappy East Creek shortly afterwards; each was already lost in their own lewd imaginations, wondering what it might be like to get a kiss from the apple of their eyes. The creek was on the far side of the town, the only natural border between Burkittsville and the woods. Kevin had brought with him a flashlight and acted as their guide. However, once they could hear the steady babbling of the creek, the taunts and jeers began to fly.

"I don't think any one of you faggots is gonna last all night out here," declared Kevin Ruddy with a fat smirk. "Pond over there probably doesn't even like girls — do you Pond? — yeah, I hear he sucks dick on the regular."

Trevor felt heat creep into his cheeks. "What did you say, Ruddy?" he said with all the venom he could muster. "Wanna say that to my face?"

"Aw, look," Quinton said with an arrogant chuckle. "You made the little fag mad!"

"Did I?" Kevin shone his flashlight square in Trevor's face. "Well I'll be damned. He's turning red. What's wrong Pond? Touch a nerve, did I?"

"Why don't you shut your fucking mouth, Ruddy!" Trevor roared. It was not a question; it was absolutely a demand. "And you too Carter!"

"The fuck you say to me?" Quinton snarled and took a step forward. "How about I rearrange your fa —"

Their quarrel was cut short by a loud ploop from the nearby creek. It was as if someone had thrown a stone into the water from the other shore. Four heads snapped around to see the source; Kevin even pointed the beam of his flashlight where they had heard the noise, but there was nothing there. There was just muddy water and an empty shore. For Trevor, the fear faded quickly and he saw an opportunity.

"What's wrong, Carter?" he said with renewed confidence. "Hear something that scared you?"

"Shut the fuck up, Pond," Carter was quick to recover. "You stopped too. You were just as scared!"

But Trevor wasn't fooled by such bravado. Quinton's resolve had faltered and Trevor — like a shark circling its prey just before the kill — refused to let him go. "Oh yeah? 'Cause that's not what it looks like. It looks like you're the one whose scared! Is that it, Carter? Do you need to have a good cry?"

"Hey —" Ryan Bentley said, trying to intervene, but there was no stopping them.

"You wanna go, Pond? Huh? You think you're such a big man — a hot shot? Well, come prove it then!"

"Guys —" This voice belonged to Kevin.

"Sure you can go through with that, Carter?" Trevor pressed, ignoring Kevin's voice as well. "You looked pretty scared there. If you were afraid of a little-bitty sound, what makes you think you can take me?"

"I'll show you what makes me think I can take you!"

"Guys —"

"I'd bet you'd like to, wouldn't you?" Trevor taunted. "Maybe I'm not the 'fag' you claim I am, Carter. Maybe you're the faggot!"

Quinton stopped and a look of furry came over him. "What did you say to me?"

"You heard me. I say you're the dick-sucker! Why did you come out here with us anyways? You don't even like Gabby! You probably came out here to get one of our dicks in your mouth!"

Quinton lunged and pushed Trevor back a few steps. "You take that back. Right now, Pond, take it back!"

"Yeah? Why — why should I?"

"Pond," Quinton took a step forward. "Take. It. Back."

"GUYS!"

Trevor and Quinton whirled around and shouted at the same time, "What?!"

Kevin looked as though he had seen the Devil himself. In the glow of his flashlight, his face had gone unusually pale. The moment he saw he'd garnered their attention, he spun back towards the creek and pointed the beam of his flashlight across the water towards the dark trees on the opposite shore. The darkness on the other side seemed to swallow up the flashlight's penetrating beam, preventing the boys from seeing passed the first couple of trees. Kevin gulped, then said:

"I thought I saw something over there."

"What?" It was Ryan's turn to speak up.

"Stop being a fucking wimp, Ruddy," Quinton snarled. "You probably saw a deer or something."

Trevor would regret the words he chose to speak next. In the moment, he was still furious with Quinton. Hell, he was still furious with Kevin. They had started tormenting him first, and now he had the upper hand. They were scared — both of them — though neither one had the balls to admit it. For once, it wasn't him that was venerable. For once, they knew what it was like to be him — to be Trevor Pond and to feel the things they made him feel all the time. He wasn't about to give up his newfound authority.

"Sure about that, Carter?" he said haughtily. "Sure you're not the one scared?"

Quinton balked. This was a whole new side of Trevor Pond. This side of him was confident and arrogant; he was so unlike his usual self, which was calm and silent and not at all gloating.

"Come on, dude," said Ryan who was trying to be the voice of reason. "Let's not do this."

Then he spoke the words that damned them all.

"Turn it off."

Kevin blinked. "What?"

"I said, turn it off!" Trevor barked. "The flashlight — turn it off right now! Then we'll see who the real man in this group is."

"Come on, Pond," said Ryan who was again trying to restore order. "We don't have to do that. Everything just got out of h —"

"No." Quinton snapped, shutting him up. He met Trevor's gaze with one of his own. "Do it. Do as he says. Then we'll see — we'll all see."

Kevin looked as though he was going to faint. Whatever he had seen on the other shore terrified him to the point where he was now trembling. Perhaps he saw himself as the only one who knew what would happen if the complied and turned that light out; perhaps he was just scared. He frantically looked from face-to-face as though he hoped to see one of them call it off.

Ryan threw up his arms and strolled away from them. "Whatever, just do it Kevin. Do it and shut them up, I'm done with this."

Kevin had half a mind to tell them all to fuck off. To disobey and keep the light on anyways. They hadn't seen what he'd seen. They didn't know. But without Ryan on his side, and with two angry faces glaring at him, he figured it simpler to just comply. Yeah. He would flip the switch for a moment — a fraction of a second —a millisecond — and then it would be on again and he would give them a piece of his mind!

He hit the switch and threw them into darkness.

Trevor hadn't counted on it being this dark. The clouds covered the moon and so the darkness had swallowed them up instantly. He couldn't even see his hand in front of his own face, much less the shapes of the other boys. He could, however, still hear the steady babbling of the creek. As long as he knew where the creek was, he knew where he was, and that was all that mattered. It was all that mattered — that is — until another bloop, this louder than the last, hit the water and he heard Ryan scream.

Kevin turned on his flashlight in a panic and shone the beam where Ryan was standing. The other boy had wandered too close the creek and — in the darkness — put one foot in the cold water. He jerked backwards and fell, landed flat on his ass, and scrambled backwards away from the water.

"Something grabbed me!" he shrieked. "Something fucking grabbed me!"

This time, when Quinton spoke, Trevor could hear the fear in his voice. "C-come on, man! Don't f-fuck around like t-that!"

"I'm NOT fucking around, Quinton!" Ryan yelled. He was in full blown-panic mode now. "Something fucking grabbed me!"

A thousand things were whirling through Trevor's mind — Eileen Treacle, ghostly hands, old woman, something in the woods (Kevin had seen it!), Rustin Parr and the Burkittsville Seven, Gabrielle Hickweather, Something fucking grabbed me! — and all of them were silenced at once when Kevin's flashlight flickered and died, allowing the blackness to swallow them again. Four screams peeled towards the sky and then one stopped abruptly with an even louder bloop from the creek. There was another flicker of light; Kevin's flashlight reignited and blasted away the darkness.

But Ryan Bentley was gone.

"Ryan?" Kevin breathed. His voice was shaky and fearful. "Ryan?!"

"Ryan, come on, man!" Quinton yelled out. "Come on, man! This isn't fucking funny! You hear me? This isn't goddamn funny!"

Trevor found that his newfound confidence had fled from him now. There was none of that former bravado there to help him be brave. Ryan was gone. Vanished. Just like Eileen Treacle. One moment he had been there and the next he wasn't. The water next to where he had once stood was still disturbed, as though he had fallen in and been sucked away by some unseen underwater current. Only Trevor knew there was no currents. Tappy East Creek was shallow. Had he wanted to, he could have simply walked across it. It was impossible for someone to just vanish beneath its murky waters — but vanish Ryan had, and there was no way of getting him back.

"This is your fault, Pond!" Quinton roared, snapping Trevor from his thoughts. "If you hadn't said to turn the fucking light off, this wouldn't have happened!"

"My fault?!" Trevor felt his fear temporarily abate, succumbing to the overwhelming rage that broiled from deep within him. "You agreed with me, Carter! If his blood is on my hands, then it's on your hands too! Got it?! Your hands too —"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

For the second time, Trevor and Quinton's heads whirled to face Kevin, and for the second time he wasn't facing them. The beam of his flashlight was pointed at the spot where Ryan once stood — No, it was pointed at the water next to where Ryan had once stood. It took Trevor only a moment to see why. From the edge of the flashlight's beam, a small effigy floated into the light, and the sight of it was enough to cause all the hairs on Trevor's neck to stand at attention. He has seen the shape before. He had seen it when he had watched The Blair Witch Project. In the murky water floated a cluster of sticks, held together by twine, in the shape of a stickman. The calling card of the —

Kevin let out a scream.

Trevor turned just in time to watch as Kevin Ruddy was lifted up into the air, as if he were a puppet attached to invisible strings, and dragged up into the darkness. His flashlight fell and slammed into the bank, where its light went out — for what Trevor knew would be the last time — and his screams suddenly, sickeningly, stopped.

He turned again to where Quinton would have been. Only he couldn't see Quinton. Without Kevin's life-giving flashlight, the darkness was too thick to see in. But he couldn't hear Quinton either, and he was certain the boy would make a sound. His fear peaked; his heart was beating so hard that he was certain the sound of it would soon echo off the very trees themselves. He stepped backwards, but then remembered that's where the creek was, and moved sideways — he thought — but he wasn't really sure, because he couldn't see where he was actually going. The clouds chose that precise moment to part.

Moonlight flooded the dark creek, illuminated the trees as dark silhouettes, and revealed how very much alone he was. Ryan was still missing. Kevin was still gone. And Quinton was nowhere to be seen. He was alone — or maybe he wasn't. His first hint that he wasn't as alone as he thought was movement out of the corner of his eye.

He spun.

Moonlight was creeping over the surface of the murky creek and what he saw there made him freeze. As the mass of shadows covering the water were pushed back by the resurgent moonlight, one shadow refused to give up its post. At first it appeared to be a massive blob — a darkness without shape or features — but then the light struck it and revealed its horrifying form. Trevor howled with terror — a scream which he was sure could be heard all the way back in Burkittsville — and he ran. He ran towards home: the only place he knew to go. Most importantly, he didn't look back. He didn't want to know if the shadow had followed him. That was too terrible a truth.

The next few moments were a blur. He had never run so hard, so far, so long in all of his young life and soon fatigue caught up with him. But something wasn't right. Tappy East Creek sat on the edge of Burkittsville. For as hard and as far as he had already run, he should have been able to see the buildings by now, and yet he couldn't. There were no signs of civilization anywhere. Trees that hadn't been there before now crowded in around him. After a moment, he realized that he was in the Black Hills Woods.

But that's impossible! he thought frantically. I didn't cross the creek! I ran straight for town — I —

He looked up and felt all of the color drain from his face.

Stick figures — the same kind he had seen in The Blair Witch Project — the same kind he had seen in the water near where Ryan had gone missing — were hanging from the trees. There were three of them: one for each of his missing companions, hanging there like omens of death. Because she hasn't caught me yet, he thought morbidly. Then there will be four.

He continued to run, adrenaline providing what stamina could not, but Burkittsville did not come into view. The woods seemed to grow thicker around him and yet he knew he was getting further; he could no longer hear the babbling creek water. So he ran and ran, and soon tears streamed from his eyes. It was beginning to dawn on him that he wouldn't get back to Burkittsville. He had lost that chance. Somehow, he had managed to cross over into the woods and now he was lost. But he could still run — perhaps until daylight, if he had to — and escape that wicked thing which had floated over the water. That very thing who had hung the stick figures in the trees.

His flight suddenly stopped, however, when at last a building came into sight. His heart leaped in his chest. Surely this was Burkittsville. Surely, now, he was saved! But it wasn't Burkittsville, he realized a second later. It was a building — a house — and when he slowed down enough to really look at it, he realized that it wasn't just any house. It was a house he had seen before, in film and in his nightmares.

The house of Rustin Parr was remarkably intact for a house that should have burned down and been reclaimed by the woods some seventy-five years ago. The house was in a clear state of disrepair. The windows had been smashed in long ago and there was a great pile of rubble partially blocking the door that lead into the House-That-Should-Not-Be. At once he knew he should flee; he should turn back and run away and face the shadow on his own terms; but he was not in control of himself anymore. Perhaps he had never been from the start.

His legs moved of their own accord — try as he might to halt them — and carried him at a painfully slow pace towards the dark maw of an entrance. He tried to shut his eyes as he took the steps around the rubble and entered the house. His footfalls echoed off of the walls and he found himself unable to close his eyes, so he let out a whimper instead. The inside of Rustin Parr's house smelled like moldy earth — like the grave itself — and the walls were painted with arcane symbols and the bloody handprints of children. Below him, he heard a familiar scream. Ryan's scream. He felt himself pulled towards it: around the corner and down crumbling steps into Hell itself.

The basement of the house was as it had been in the film: dark, though his eyes had adjusted at this point, and lined in stone. The smell of earth was so thick that he could barely breathe and yet his legs kept on moving. His heart nearly stopped when he got to the center of the room. Ryan was there as a cold body on the floor. His insides had been carved out and there was a symbol, not unlike the ones on the wall upstairs carved into his forehead. In the corner of the room nearest him, Kevin stood with his nose to the corner — unmoving and not making a sound. In the corner opposite him was Quinton, who was whimpering, but made no other movements.

Suddenly the room went cold. Were he in command of his own facilities, he might have wrapped his thin frame in his own arms for warmth. Every hair on the backs of his arms and neck stood up and he felt a cold puff of air on his shoulder. He knew something was there — perhaps the thing from the creek — perhaps the ghost of Rustin Parr himself — but he could feel it there, watching him, waiting for the moment it had brought him here for. That moment came a second later. For the second time that night, Trevor Pond's fear peaked and he loosed a bloodcurdling scream that echoed throughout the empty house. He screamed so loudly that he never heard the thing behind him move.

The world exploded from behind him and he knew no more.