Whispers of Spearfinger

[Applause]

[Music]

Spearfinger,

a campfire tale.

There was a thin line between fear and

wind, and on that line stood the old

pine grove, where my friends and I kept

our annual camp. It wasn't a place you

visited to notice the stars. It was a

place you visited to forget them. The

trees closed in, trunks lacquered with

night, and the air carried the taste of

copper and pine sap. We were 16, brave

in the way only teens can be, certain

that every old legend was just a story

to scare younger siblings. Then one

legend found us. They called it

Spearfinger.

We learned the name from Grandpa

Neestor, who had been the guardian of

this land long before the state parks

framed it with benches and signage. He

visited once a year with teeth like

dried leaves and eyes that glowed

faintly under the brim of a weathered

hat. He spoke in a whisper that seemed

to sink into the ground and rot there

deeper than the roots of the trees.

"Spear finger," he said, staring at the

flicker of our campfire, isn't a

creature to be seen with the eyes first.

It is a hunger wearing the skin of a

woman, a hungry edge reaching out from

the trees to draw a living thing into

its shadow. We laughed. We should have

listened. It started with the whistle of

wind through the pines. A sound that

wasn't wind at all, but the thin rasp of

a blade sliding along bone. We blamed it

on the trees, on old branches falling

and scraping against each other. the

kind of sound that becomes a prankish

echo in a child's ear. But as the fire

burned down to a bed of orange embers,

the forest began to tilt, as if the

ground itself whispered to the night in

a language made of moving shadows. The

first strange thing happened late that

night after we had dared each other to

finish the bottle of cocoa and toast the

spooky in the darkness. We had built a

ring of stones around the fire, a small

circle of heat and protection. A circle

that would not admit fear or fears kin.

It's funny how quickly a circle made of

stones can feel porous when the unknown

stands just beyond it. Lena, who

believed every creek in the wood was

simply the wind pretending to be a

monster, swore she heard someone

breathing behind the trees. Not the

rustle of leaves or a stray animal, but

a heavy measured breath, like someone

who had learned to count breaths as a

way to survive.

She pressed her hands to the stones and

whispered, "If you're real, show

yourselves."

The breath stopped, and then almost too

quickly to catch, a branch snapped

somewhere off to the left in a way that

sounded purposeful, as if someone

something was testing our defenses.

"Probably a bear," said Milo, though his

voice wobbled as if the word itself

might betray him. or spearfinger," I

whispered, though I hadn't believed in

legend since the first day of

kindergarten, when a cartoon dragon

seemed more possible than a hungry

spirit with a sharpened spear for a

finger. The fire spit sparks, and the

embers rose, and in that rising of

orange sparks, I saw something else. A

shadow that didn't cast itself away from

the fire light. A shadow that seemed to

be wearing a dress of branches and

leaves stitched together with a thread

of darkness. It stood at the edge of the

light beyond the circle, watching us

with a patient, almost curious silence.

Its form did not quite touch the ground.

It hovered a silhouette that refused to

resolve into any single shape. We held

our breath. The night listened. Grandpa

Nester had warned us about listening to

fear as if it were a story with a neat

ending. Fear, he'd say, grows long and

sharp if you feed it with doubt. We fed

it. We whispered about the shadow, about

the silhouette that wore the forest like

a cloak, about the whisper that hinted a

purpose behind every rustle. When we

finally dared to blink, the shape moved

closer, not with haste, but with

determination, as though it had chosen

us, and would not be distracted from its

chosen task. Then came the first touch,

soft, cold, almost a memory of a touch.

It brushed against the back of Lena's

neck as though a cool, invisible finger.