In the darkness of Shiloh Ridge, the forest doesn’t forget — it hungers.
Copyright © Priya Florence Shah
A chilling tale of a cult’s grisly secrets buried beneath the roots of a forest that refuses to forget, where the land itself thirsts for more.
The woods didn’t care for secrets. Not anymore.
Spring rains softened the dirt around Shiloh Ridge, and the trees, patient as old gods, had begun their quiet work — roots thickening, pushing, shoving the earth aside until what had been buried long ago began to surface.
The first sign came with the blue corner of a tarp, grimy and sun-bleached, poking from a tangle of mud and nettles.
Harper was the first to spot it. She stood frozen on the trail, boots half-sinking into the wet ground. “Hey,” she called over her shoulder, voice tight. “You guys see that?”
Nate and Jess caught up, breathing hard from the hike. Nate squinted. “Probably trash,” he said, shrugging. “Come on, we’re almost to the overlook.”
Harper didn’t move. The breeze shifted, and something foul wrapped itself around them — a stink thick as copper pennies and rot. Jess gagged. “That’s not trash, dude.”
Harper crouched, reaching without thinking, pulling at the tarp’s edge. The fabric peeled back with a sickly wet sound.
What stared up at her was half-masked by mud: a wrist, grey and shriveled, the hand clawed like it had tried to scratch its way free.
Nate stumbled back, retching into the undergrowth.
Jess grabbed Harper’s arm, pulling her away. “Don’t touch it. Jesus, Harp. Don’t.”
Harper could only nod, her mouth too dry for words.
Something inside her — the old, animal part — whispered: You shouldn’t be here.
The sheriff’s department closed off the area within an hour. Yellow tape fluttered uselessly in the damp wind.
Detective Claire Rowe arrived, boots muddy, coffee cooling in her hand, shoulders slumped like a woman who’d already seen too much of the world to be surprised.
The forensic team worked in grim silence. The ground was softer than it should’ve been, and as they dug, more tarps emerged — some ripped by roots, others still cocooned tight.
When they opened the first two, Claire turned away, jaw clenched so hard it popped audibly.
“Multiple bodies,” one of the techs muttered. “Jesus. Women. Young.”
Sheriff Milo Briggs, a big man with jowls that sweat even in the cool air, wiped his forehead with a shaking hand. “This… this ain’t random. This is a dumping ground.”
Claire said nothing. She was looking at the trees.
Their gnarled roots seemed almost deliberate, tangled around the bodies like a warning.
Three nights later, the anonymous tip came in.
The call was short, the voice breathy:
“It’s Rick Daly. He takes ’em hiking. The others made him do it. Check the bar.”
Rick was a fixture at Casey’s Tavern. The kind of drunk who bought strangers shots he couldn’t afford, laughing too loud, clapping too hard.
He’d been harmless – so everyone thought.
When they hauled him out of the bar, he didn’t fight. Didn’t even look surprised.
“Roots remember,” he muttered as they cuffed him. “You think you bury guilt deep enough, it’ll die? Trees got long memories. Longer than us.”
Rick sweated rivers in the interrogation room under the flat white light.
Claire watched him for a long moment before speaking.
“You lure women into the woods.”
Rick laughed, a sound like a dying engine. “Wasn’t my idea. Never my idea.”
“Who, then?”
He licked his cracked lips, eyes flickering. “They ain’t just regular men. They wear faces like yours, like mine. Sit in church pews. Shake hands. Smile at babies.”
He leaned forward, breath sour.
“They got a hole where their soul should be.”
Claire said nothing. Let the silence stretch, a noose tightening.
Finally, Rick whispered, “It’s a brotherhood. You don’t say no. You just bring the girl to the trailhead. They do the rest.”
The arrests started at dawn.
Business owners. A deputy. A pastor.
Men who had never once raised suspicion, who had buried their guilt — literally — under the roots of an ancient forest.
But the trees had other ideas.
As the forensics teams dug deeper, they found more than bodies: personal effects, blood-soaked journals, crude carvings in the bone of roots and trunks.
The cult had left offerings to the woods, hoping to be forgotten.
But the woods, Claire thought as she zipped her jacket against the rising wind, were not kind.
They didn’t forget.
They just waited.
Weeks after the arrests, Harper couldn’t sleep.
The news had blasted the story on every station:
“Cult Activity Exposed Near Shiloh Ridge”
“Victims Identified — Families Seek Closure”
“Community Leaders Among Arrested Suspects”
But closure wasn’t what Harper felt.
Not when she dreamed every night of the woods breathing. Of roots snaking through her veins.
One evening, just before dusk, she returned to the trailhead, drawn by something she couldn’t name.
The forest smelled sweeter now, almost sickly. Like ripe fruit left too long in the sun.
The trees swayed gently in a wind she couldn’t feel.
The site was a cratered ruin. Soil ripped open. Old bones pulled up into the light.
But even now, new growth had started to creep in — thin, pale vines curling eagerly into the dead spaces.
Harper stood there, breathless, as a memory surfaced.
Something Rick Daly had muttered while they dragged him away:
“The forest’s not mad… It’s hungry.”
A crackling laugh — dry and papery — echoed through the trees. It was low at first, blending with the rustle of leaves, but it grew louder, sharper, weaving under her skin.
She stumbled back, heart pounding.
The trees leaned closer.
From the churned mud, faces began to rise.
Not real ones — no.
Faces molded into the trunks, the roots, the stones — twisted in agony, some grinning with blackened teeth, others frozen in endless screams.
The cult hadn’t simply buried the bodies.
They’d planted them.
Fertilized something older than men, something that had been waiting.
And now, with its caretakers gone, it needed new hands.
New offerings.
Roots burst through the ground, snaking around Harper’s boots. She tried to scream, but the sound lodged in her throat.
A voice—not her own—whispered in her ear:
“You found us. You belong to us now.”
The last thing Harper saw was the trees closing in, bark splitting wide to reveal pulsing, red things underneath. Like lungs. Like mouths.
When the search party found her pack days later, it was half-buried under a freshly grown sapling.
Her body was never recovered.
But some nights, if you walk the Shiloh Ridge trail and listen carefully, you can hear her voice — laughing and weeping, tangled in the roots.
The forest had fed.
And it had learned hunger all over again.
