The humid air clung to William’s skin as he trudged through the moonlit woods toward the old oak tree. Twenty years had passed since he’d last set foot in the sleepy Southern town, and the place felt as foreign as the city he had fled to all those years ago. But this night, nostalgia gripped him like a fever beneath the sprawling canopy of the Promise Tree.

The funeral was hours behind him. Jim, his childhood best friend, was gone—snatched away by a sudden heart attack. William hadn’t planned to linger in town, but the pull of the past was too strong. He had to see it again: the tree where he and Elena had carved their promise on a lazy summer afternoon.

The promise still haunted him.

Meet me here, no matter what, in twenty years.
E + W.

He reached the clearing, and there it was. The oak stood as massive and unyielding as ever, its twisted limbs reaching out like skeletal fingers against the night sky. A sharp ache pierced William’s chest when his flashlight beam caught the faint heart they’d carved into the bark. He traced it with trembling fingers, his breath shallow.

“William.”

The voice came from behind him—soft, lilting, familiar.

He spun, the flashlight jerking wildly until it landed on her. Elena. She looked unchanged: her auburn hair fell in wild waves, her green eyes shimmered like they had when they were teenagers. She wore a flowing dress that seemed too light for the chill creeping into the night.

“You came,” she said, stepping closer, her bare feet silent on the mossy ground. In her hands was a leather-bound journal.

“I… I didn’t think—” His words faltered as he took her in. She looked impossibly real, and yet… not. “How are you here? Why—why didn’t you ever call or write?”

Her lips curled into a faint smile, but there was something off in the curve, something almost predatory. She held the journal out to him. “I wrote to you. Every year. I waited, William.”

He reached for the journal, but when his fingers brushed hers, they recoiled. Her skin was ice cold.

“I don’t understand,” he whispered.

“You left me,” she said, her voice suddenly hollow, and the weight of her words filled the clearing like a funeral dirge. “You left us. You didn’t even come back when I needed you most.”

William stumbled back. “Elena, what are you talking about? I—I didn’t know!”

Her green eyes darkened, the whites staining red. “You knew the promise, William. You made it. And I kept it. For twenty years, I waited. For twenty years, I watched this tree grow over my bones.”

The journal dropped from her hands, falling open at his feet. The pages were filled with looping, desperate handwriting, but it wasn’t just ink—rust-colored smears bloomed across the paper like dried blood. The scent of iron and decay hit him.

Panic surged. “No,” he choked. “This isn’t real.”

But Elena’s form began to shift, her flesh peeling back like bark stripped from wood. Her limbs elongated grotesquely, her hair writhed like vines. Her smile split her face too wide, revealing jagged teeth.

“You promised,” she hissed, her voice echoing in the night. “And now you’ll stay with me. Forever.”

Roots erupted from the ground, snaring his legs. The earth seemed to pulse beneath him, and he screamed as tendrils climbed his body, constricting him. Elena—no, the thing she’d become—reached out, her clawed hand cupping his face. Her touch burned like ice.

As his vision blurred, he looked up at the oak, the carved heart glowing faintly. For a moment, he thought he saw Jim’s face in the gnarled bark, his mouth twisted in a silent scream.

The tree accepted him, just as it had accepted her.

And beneath the haunted oak, the Promise Tree stood tall in the woods, its roots drinking deeply of the blood of those who failed to keep their word.

The End