Bilax ENG

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I just wanted to get a little dusk. I’d done this before. I liked the quiet. I trusted the woods. But this place. it doesn’t just surround. It watches.

The name was poetic in my head always—Whispering Pines. I’d always thought it was because the trees danced in the wind. There is no wind, though. No longer. Only… breathing. Cold, unnatural breathing.

I’d been walking the trail for about twenty minutes when I first heard it: a soft creaking sound. I halted, thinking a branch had snapped, but it went on,, steady. It sounded like something rubbing itself bark.

Then the whispers.

Low at first—hardly a sound. I talked myself into thinking it was wind in the trees or a brook in the distance. But no… they were voices. Muffled and fast, talking just beyond hearing. I couldn’t tell where they were. They sounded like they were everywhere.

My skin crawled. I spun around in a circle, swinging my flashlight back and forth between the trees. The beam danced, weak and shaky. Nothing. Not even a squirrel. Just an awful, watchful silence among the trees.

I took a step back.

That’s when I saw it.

At first, I thought it was of the forest. Then again, it moved. It stepped from behind the trees, tall and stooped, arms much too long. Its skin—by which I mean its skin, even if it didn’t exactly feel like skin—was bark and muscle mixed together. And its eyes. God, its eyes. Dull yellow orbs that kind of seemed to pulse like dying coals. It leaned towards me like a bird trying to understand I was.

That’s I ran.

I didn’t even think—my body responded. The thing let out this terrible cracking noise as it chased, like trees being torn apart and. I heard it behind, but not running, but somehow, like the was helping it move.

The trail disappeared. The trees in. In all directions, it was all the same. My flashlight barely kept up with my pace. I tripped twice—once hard enough to scrape my knee, but I don’t care. I got up and walked on.

Then I heard it again—closer. That creaking and, and the sound of breathing wasn’t mine.

And the whispers.

Oh, they were louder. My name. They whispered my [[NAME]]

I stumbled into a clearing, an old logging site from years ago by the appearance of the rusty equipment scattered about in the moss. The flashlight slipped my fingers, falling to the ground with thud and dying.

I jerked it around, terrified.

Then I sensed it.

Behind me.

I whirled with the flashlight, and the beam struck its face.

The creature—the Bilax, I realized, the native name I used to scoff at—stood ten feet away from me, watching. Its mouth was open, not screaming, not even teeth—just darkness with things crawling inside. The odor of rot hit me like a blow. It edged closer. Its arms jerked like dead sticks the wind, and the earth beneath it parched as it shifted.

I yelled and scrambled, crawled my hand bumped into the edge of my pack. I remembered the flare. My capped fingers, shaking.

The Bilax one arm. Filaments slithered out of its like smoke, like dark with claws. They extended toward me—

FOOM.

I lit the flare. Red light burst everywhere. The Bilax screamed.

Not in one voice.

In many.

All cracked and layered, like wood in water.

It sprang back. Its skin blistered the light, and trees it bent away in terror too. I saw it for the first time. Its wasn’t whole—there were pieces missing, as if the forest had been chewing on it, trying to undo whatever curse it together.

I ran.

The flare lit the path ahead in hellish. Shadows jumped and stretched, and yet, I. Once in a while I’d hear a shriek behind me—a promise that it didn’t end. That it was only waiting.

The forest endless. My. My eyes grew blurry. I no longer sensed my feet. My burnt.

And then, suddenly, gravel.

A road.

My vehicle.

I almost inside, shutting the door, locking it before I’d even taken a breath. The flare expired in hand.

And the moment I the key, I looked up.

There, at edge of forest, stood the Bilax.

It didn’t stir. Didn’t hiss, charge. It just… watched. Its eyes burned into mine as though to say: “This time, you escaped.”

But I knew.

It wasn’t done.

I drove away as fast as possible, but the whispers continued on the wind.

The Bilax is not lost.

It never leaves the woods.

But it remembers who ran.

And it waits.