“I’d be careful if I were you,” a voice behind her said.

Wendy whirled around. There stood the guy who had talked to her when she was getting her bag out of her truck. She had almost forgotten about him.

“Who are you?” she asked. Her voice sounded far off and distant.

She still couldn’t make out his face. The light continued to fade and she couldn’t see his features clearly.

They seemed to shift and change the more she tried to focus on them. Black eyes. White teeth. An unnaturally wide grin. His features twisted and morphed.

“You never know what you might find in dark places,” he continued, ignoring her question as he moved closer to her.

The shadows of the trees behind him started to sway and converge. Wendy took a step back, but he pursued. The black shapes behind him became towering figures, bowing down in the darkness.

“If you insist on poking around, Wendy…” His hand lashed out and snatched her wrist. His sharp fingers dug into her skin.

Wendy cried out in pain and tried to twist her arm free of him. He pulled her roughly toward him, and his face came into focus.

Peter’s face. But wrong, very wrong, with pale skin and inky pits for eyes.

“You won’t like what you find,” he breathed. It smelled like rotten leaves and wet dirt.

The shadows behind him gathered, piling up high then forming long, sharp fingers. He laughed and it shook Wendy’s bones. She tried to struggle but he held tight. The shadows lashed out and crashed down over her.

Wendy thrashed and jerked herself upright. She was home, in her own bed and drenched in sweat. Her clothes stuck to her skin and her hair was matted to her forehead. Shuddering gasps wracked Wendy’s body as she gripped her sheets. It was just a dream, she told herself, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to steady herself. But it felt so real.

Wendy gulped a deep breath, but when she looked down, a strangled shout caught in her throat.

She scrambled back so quickly, she slammed the back of her head against the headboard.

Everything was covered in red.

At first, Wendy thought the ink was blood, but after the initial terror cut through her, she realized that she still held the red marker she had fallen asleep with.

They were drawings of the tree, over and over again, in haphazard lines that crossed and dragged over everything—her nightshirt, her legs, and all over her sheets. Pages of her bullet journal were also covered in red, ruined and ripped from the notebook. Gnarled branches and tangled roots buried her carefully written notes.

Clutched in her other hand was the acorn.

Wendy threw the marker and clutched the acorn tight to her chest as she tried to steady her rapid breathing. Had she done all of this in her sleep?