Found within the folds of a brittle, yellowing newspaper:

Ichor Falls Sentinel, January 26,  1948
Ichor Falls, West Virginia
Stillwood: A brief survey of the case; dated the twenty-first of November, 1946.

Stillwood, a dark reach of nature’s grasping hand, storied by local legend, sapped the public interest in what came to be a singularly grim November month, during the waning days of the year nineteen forty-six. The primordial trees and curious thickets shone vaguely through an almost tangible mist -– crooked silhouettes of hunched copses waited patiently, conspiring against those who should enter their centred domain. The collection of gnarled trees, standing gaunt in their lofty heights, and the dwarfed coppices crowded about their grasping roots, illustrated the wretched wood; and the lurid presence of Stillwood was altogether unbearable.

At the turn of the month, the townsfolk, determined about their labours, and given to neglecting “unnecessary interest,” heeded little this daemonic manifestation; until later, approaching the advent of the following month, attention was brought about the first isolated cases of a controversial illness; caused by chemical exposure to a secondary compound, Ethylor, found in the sealants and varnishes commonly used to treat the inordinately brittle wood harvested from the outer thickets.

Given a thorough census of the town, several cottages were found abandoned throughout the Lower Alethia district. These tired-looking houses, built at the turn of the century, and suffering from rusted ironwork and loose masonry, lurched about vacant yards, crowded by pale fences and tall weeds; and looked also upon an even paler wall of stone that formed the south-western crescent of the town’s bulwark. This peculiar and outlandish environment gained the direct attention of the town, as many felt it prudent to theorise the whereabouts of its missing incumbents. The inquiry remained, conjecturing where these low folk might have gone, for their leavings had not been noted by anybody within the Alethia or Olympus districts – and it would have been foolish to suppose their egress being from either the Oneiros or Elysia districts, for the communities of such were gated, and to pass through them unnoticed would be improbable.

The only means of egress, thus, according to the authorities, could have been to the south and west; out through a singular, rusted iron-wrought gate in the shambling wall of mouldering stone during the hours of the night. Those heading the case shivered at the sight of the ghastly cold lamp, illuminating the creaky portal in the hushing, cold darkness. The exit carried out into a small clearing, covered with patchy grass and brittle saplings; ironically bending toward Stillwood, as if pleading. Beyond the clearing were the endless miles of Stillwood itself, cresting the western edge of Ichor Falls, and running southeast toward the bottom of the Alethia district.

The mist about it, appearing to congeal into a pearlescent, gossamer mass, gained particular notoriety; myths were conjured by the superstitious, believing that the people of the Lower Alethia district must have surrendered themselves to the primaeval depths of the forest to ensorcel the whispering trees and summon daemons from the abysmal cosmos. These ludicrous, mythic conjectures became more feasible when opinions were raised, voicing that the victims could be suffering from some sort of mental deprivation brought about by the treated wood they encountered on a daily basis; and were thus mad, having taken flight into the shadows of the protectorate forest.

As the case evidence went under further consideration, the idea of their growing madness –- causing a state of panic and, subsequently, a crazed exiting –- became more agreeable. When investigating the vacant cottages, the constabulary found little or no evidence –- though, it appeared that, in a manner of wild haste, the inhabitants moved about with disregard; it looked as though there had been pitched battles in the cottages, sentiments scattered about with reckless abandon.

Though the lack of evidence as to where these people fled was disheartening and equivocal, most of the town, at length, came to believe that those who took flight did indeed establish themselves among the crooked trees of the forest. The remaining constituents of the lower district, given to absurdities, claimed that their mindless neighbours lost themselves within the confines of their own diminished realities, attempting to practice sorcery and other rites of magick prior to their disappearances. But the rest of the town laughed heartily at the ridiculous theory, and ignored them, believing they as equally foolish as their lost neighbours.

The low folk continued to argue with the “snippy aristocrats,” that what passing sanity their missing neighbours once possessed had a “hell’s chance” of restoration; for their sundered minds were lost to the world too long, and thus transcended into states of unrealism, given to wild gibbering and parody of daemonic shamanism.

Despite the biting rebuttals that such conclusions were drawn by superstition and utter stupidity, the inhabitants of the Lower Alethia district, being nearby the advance of Stillwood, continued to urge the presence of their insane once-neighbours in the glowing depths of the pitchy forest. They claimed that, during the darkest hours of night, faint discordances of pulsing, dim light and whispering tones scattered menacingly throughout the dense wood; that wretched frames skittered about the edges of the forest during the wild hours of the day; that animate corpora creeped about the wicked copses, cackling insanely and mocking those who look upon their bulbous heads.

After the recent disappearance of Mr. Brian Wildwood –- who supposedly stole away into the forest one evening after having too many a hard drink, and taking a bet to stay the night at its furthest edge -– maybe Stillwood isn’t so… still, after all.

Pascale Libel, Senior Editor
Ichor Falls Sentinel