Imposter Syndrome is my fourth novel. It’s a spooky young adult mystery set in the weird town of Shady Springs, where nothing’s ever quite what it seems. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing serialised instalments of the story exclusively on Substack. If you like it, consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support my fiction writing. Annual subscribers will get a free physical copy of the novel when it’s published in full.
Previously…
The narrow trail took them deeper and deeper into the woods, snaking between skinny trees and thorny bushes that snagged on their clothes as they brushed past. Theo imagined skeletal fingers in the darkness, tugging on the sleeves of his t-shirt, scratching his bare arms and legs with ragged nails. He kept his flashlight trained on Alex, refusing to let his gaze drift to either side for fear of what he might see looking back.
He was scared, wasn’t he? Of course you are, Theodore! his hammering heartbeat replied. You’re quaking in your boots. Survival video games and zombie horror movies were one thing, but this was something else altogether. This was actually happening.
He would’ve turned and gone back by now if Alex hadn’t admitted she was scared too. That emboldened him to keep going, tramping after her beneath the whispering summer leaves. It wasn’t that she was younger than him, or that she was a girl - neither of those things mattered in real life. It was the knowledge that he wasn’t alone in his fear. His fear had company.
And after a while that fear began to fade, and a familiar old sensation took its place.
“Did you bring any food?” he said.
“Food?” Alex replied, pausing briefly. “Just the Twizzlers. Why? You cannot be hungry already.”
“I’m always hungry,” Theo said. His stomach growled to confirm.
“Starting to realize that,” sighed Alex. “Ok, turn around and I’ll get them.”
He did, purposefully keeping his flashlight beam on the ground. The path here was all dried mud; he could see their footprints, disappearing into the darkness behind them.
Alex fumbled with the backpack. “Stop moving,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“You are. This is hard to do when I’m holding…”
She stopped. Theo waited, still staring at the ground.
“Alex?” he said, puzzled.
“Theo.”
It came out in a breathless whisper; he instantly forgot his hunger. Swinging round, he saw where she was looking, and followed her gaze.
His heart catapulted into his throat.
It was right there.
“Alex,” he whispered. She didn’t reply.
The light hovered directly over where they stood, high above the treetops. It was a glowing orb of scarlet in the evening sky, pulsing through the leaves. The intricate network of veins crisscrossing the foliage was thrown into sharp relief, as though each branch was lit from within. For a moment, Theo was struck dumb, hypnotized by the sight of it.
When Alex grabbed his arm, he almost leapt out of his skin.
“Do you see it too?” she said, also whispering. Her voice was filled with wonder.
“Uh-huh. What… what is it?”
“I don’t know. But it’s definitely the same one I’ve been seeing for a while. It’s… hey!”
The light was moving.
“Quick!” Alex exclaimed.
Without a second’s hesitation, she left the trail and plowed into the woods.
“Wait!” Theo cried, rushing after her.
<>
The glowing red ball moved quickly. It was all they could do to keep up.
“Ow!” Theo yelled, as another stray branch slapped him in the face.
“Come on,” Alex panted, “it’s getting away!”
“No it isn’t,” he replied, trying to shield his face from more branches that seemed determined to take his eye out.
But she was right. The light was getting away.
And most of the time, so was Alex. She seemed to have transformed into some sort of woodland gazelle, darting nimbly between the trees, her white-blonde hair whipping in the murky darkness while Theo plunged after her. His flashlight beam flailed wildly as he ran; for every protruding root or stone Alex skipped over, Theo tripped on three, barely keeping his footing. Another bony branch snagged his t-shirt and he heard the rip sound over his heaving gasps.
“Alex!” he cried. “Slow down!”
He blundered into a tree, banging his shoulder hard against the trunk. The abrupt jolt of pain forced him to stop. He pressed his hand against the injured area, wincing.
When he looked up again, Alex was gone.
“Oh come on,” he hissed through gritted teeth.
There was no sign of her flashlight beam. He tilted his head back, trying to spot the red light, but the trees were obscuring the sky.
“Come on,” he repeated.
Suddenly, the fear returned, creeping up the back of his throat. It tasted sharp and metallic, like he’d bitten down on a battery. His Dad explained to him once what that was; he remembered his words now, loud and clear in his mind: It’s adrenaline, son. Your body’s preparing you for fight or flight.
So which is it? he thought, staring wide-eyed into the sooty dimness, his heart racing like a freight train. What now?
He drew in a breath and was about to yell for his cousin when her voice reached him first.
“Theo!”
“Alex?” he cried, not entirely sure which way her call had come from. “Where are you?”
“Over here!”
“Where’s here?”
Then he saw it, briefly between the trees over to his left. The flicker of her flashlight.
“This way,” she called, waving the beam. “You’ve got to see this!”
Still grimacing from the pain in his shoulder, Theo pushed his way through the trees towards Alex’s flashlight beam. It grew brighter and brighter, and suddenly, she was right there. Her eyes were saucers in the intermittent light.
“Look,” she whispered.
“At what?” he said.
“Look.”
She turned as she said it, motioning with her free hand. Theo followed the movement, squinting into the gloom, his eyes struggling to adjust. Then they did, and he saw.
“What the - ”
They were standing on the edge of an enormous circle, a huge empty space in the middle of the woods, with nothing but clear sky above them. The ground beneath their feet was completely flat, as if some giant thing had pounded it that way over time. Theo thought the air tasted differently here - cooler, fresher - after being in the cloistered maze of trees for so long before then. And there was something else…
“No trees,” he said, trailing his flashlight beam around the clearing. “Not even any stumps. How’s that possible?”
“Beats me,” Alex said, aiming her flashlight at the perimeter. “Look at those trees. It’s like some of them were just cut in half or something.”
She was right. Theo followed her beam and saw several trees around the edges of the circle that looked as though they’d been sliced vertically down one side, their branches gone, the pale inside of their trunks exposed. The cuts were clean; there was no debris below them.
“This is… really weird,” Alex said softly. “What did this?”
“I don’t know,” Theo replied, his eyes slowly drifting upwards again, “but maybe that thing does.”
Alex uttered a little gasp. The red light had appeared above the clearing, much lower than it’d been before. It bathed the vast, empty circle in its scarlet glow, pulsing brighter and brighter, like it was breathing. The air was thick with static, no longer fresh and cool like before.
It’s like it’s alive, Theo thought, tightening his sweaty grip on the flashlight.
“Theo,” Alex whispered beside him. Her gooseflesh-covered arm brushing his. “What is it?”
He tried to reply but the words seemed to stick in his throat. The red light - about the size of a basketball now - had settled about thirty feet above the center of the clearing. It shifted and change as they watched, one moment appearing solid, the next like a liquid. Theo’s eyes burned as he stared at it, but he couldn’t look away. It was like gazing at the setting sun.
We shouldn’t be here, he thought suddenly. This was a bad idea.
Then Alex stiffened next to him and he heard her breath catch. With some effort, he managed to tear his watering eyes from the light and, blinking, look towards her. At first, she was nothing but a reddish blur; he kept blinking until his eyes adjusted and her side profile swam into focus.
“What?” he said. “What is it?”
When she finally replied, the tremor in her voice made his blood run cold.
“Theo,” she said, her voice high and thin, about to break. “I… I can’t move.”
Suddenly, Theo realized he couldn’t either. His feet wouldn’t move. His sneakers were planted in the mossy blanket of pine needles and decaying leaves, like they’d been glued down. Like they’d sprouted their own roots and he was now pinned to the forest floor.
“Theo,” Alex said, her voice barely above an exhalation, crackling in the electric air around them. He felt her fingers grasping for his free hand, which had gone limp by his side. “Theo, I can’t move my feet.”
“Neither can I,” he said.
Now the red light was descending slowly towards the center of the clearing. Theo watched, his eyes still burning, as it dropped lower: twenty feet, fifteen feet, ten feet. Then it was level with them, pulsing harsh waves of scarlet light, making the clearing look like it was on fire.
Theo could hear it now, too. A dull, rhythmic beat, thrumming in the night air. It was like loud music coming from several floors below, muffled and indistinct, but still there.
He couldn’t take his eyes off it now, no matter how much he wanted to. The red glow bore straight through his eyeballs, filling his skull with wave after wave of electricity that thrummed and thrummed and thrummm…
“What… what is it?” he heard Alex say. She sounded far-off and tinny. “Theo… can you hear it?”
“Yes,” he heard himself reply. Thrum, thrum, thrum. “I can hear it.”
The light was right in front of them now, just a few feet away. The clearing was gone, the trees were gone. There were no stars in the night sky above them. There was only the red light and that pulsing electric thrum.
It’s alive, Theo thought suddenly. It’s not a light at all. It’s a living thing.
“What?” Alex still sounded far away. “It’s alive?”
“I… I didn’t say that,” replied Theo. “Not out loud.”
Did I?
And then everything became still.
The red light - or whatever it was - hovered directly in front of them, easily within arm’s reach. The rhythmic pulsing sound had stopped. All Theo saw was red: the deep, shimmering red of the thing floating in front of them, and the lesser red painting the woods and ground and sky. He knew without looking that Alex was bathed in that red glow, too.
And his feet were still stuck to the forest floor.
What a mistake this was, he thought, the words tumbling around his mind like laughter. What a bad idea. We’re going to get in so much trouble when Uncle Kurt and Aunt Noelle find out. If they ever find us, that is.
Alex reached for the light.
“No,” Theo said, or imagined he said. “Don’t.”
Alex’s fingers stretched towards the glow. It went right through them, illuminating her flesh, turning it scarlet. Theo could see every bone in her hand.
“Don’t… don’t touch it,” he managed.
He could see Alex in his peripheral vision now, even though his eyes were still locked on the glowing red thing. Her mouth was ajar, gaping, and her eyes bugged wide. But she didn’t look scared, exactly. The expression on her face wasn’t one of fear. It was… it was…
Theo grasped for the word. When it arrived, he finally became aware his heart was absolutely jackhammering in his chest and wondered if he was still too young to have a stroke or something: Awe.
Alex’s fingers touched the light. Two things happened at once.
First, the big empty circle in the woods vanished and they were completely engulfed in red. There were no more trees, or sky, or pine needles beneath their feet. Everything in their universe turned red.
Secondly, Theo sensed his feet were no longer on the ground. He was floating, drifting, just like the red light. He wasn’t even sure the ground was still there at all. For all he knew, they were now gliding around in outer space, far above Shady Springs and the rest of the country. Maybe someone would spot them through a telescope. Should he wave, or something?
Every thought entered and exited his mind as laughter now.
I’m going crazy, he thought-laughed. I’m up in space and Alex is gone and I’m going bananas.
But Alex wasn’t gone, was she? He could feel her next to him, could still partially see her at the boundary of his vision. Her arm was still outstretched and her fingers mingled with the light, and as Theo watched (weren’t his eyes burning now?), the light seemed to take physical form and wrap itself gently around her hand, and then her wrist, coiling up her forearm towards her elbow.
It’s going to take her.
I have to do something.
DO SOMETHING.
“Alex,” he said in a voice that was surely too weak to be his own. “Alex, stop.”
The light continued snaking up her arm, ignoring his pleas. If it could hear him - and someone he knew it could - it didn’t care. It was going to take her away.
It was going to take his little cousin.
“ALEX!”
With every ounce of strength he could muster, Theo forced life back into his dangling arms and wrenched them towards Alex. He saw rather than felt his fingers close around her wrist, passing through the translucent tendril of the red light-thing that almost, almost had her.
A third and final thing happened then.
The voice inside Theo’s head that’d been laughing just seconds ago suddenly became a furious, angry snarl. He heard words but didn’t understand them. All the blood in his body seemed to rush into his skull at once and the world swam away.
Then there was nothing but red.