I thought about Lily as I made my way down to the work area, where most of my men were already waiting. There had been some issues I’d had to deal with before I left the retreat, and the men had called me several times while they’d been waiting. The service was spotty up here, and when I’d tried to call them back, I hadn’t got ahold of them. It wasn’t like them to call me multiple times while I was working, and I wondered if something was up at the site. I hurried down on foot, finding it easier than taking one of the carts down the bumpy incline.

As I approached the worksite, I saw all the men crowded at the bottom of the hill, where the logs had rolled down and crashed into the trees. I’d warned them about it beforehand, though I hadn’t told them that somebody had cut the chain. My workers were easily spooked around here, something that still annoyed me even though I’d learned to deal with it.

“What are you guys doing down there?” I shouted to them.

Harold looked up at me. “You’d better come down here,” he said, his voice sounding grave.

A shiver ran down my spine for some reason as I carefully made my way down the hill. Six men were standing in the snow near the logs, staring at them as if they had never seen anything like them before.

“What is it?” I asked. They stepped aside so that I could see the logs and my eyes widened when I stared at them. There were carvings in the wood, deep gouges, a jumble of English letters that didn’t make sense. There were smiley faces, too, and when I looked closer I realized that there was one coherent word written in the bark: die.

I raised my eyebrows. “Looks like we got some pranksters. Must be the lawyers. They get bored easily.”

“The campsite is all blocked off,” Harold said. I looked at him to see that he looked genuinely afraid. They all did.

“Guys, it’s nothing,” I said. “Someone at the retreat snuck out here and decided to fuck with us.”

“It’s the curse,” another man said, an older man named Eddie I’d hired in the very beginning. He was small, smaller than most of my guys, yet somehow he seemed to be able to carry loads that were twice his weight with little effort.

I rolled my eyes and sighed. The last thing I ever wanted to hear about was the curse, especially when there were strange things going on. It only detracted from whatever the truth was, something that I didn’t have time to deal with.

“I have told all of you several times, there is no curse,” I said impatiently. It was something that the employees brought up every once in a while when something went wrong at the retreat. It had always annoyed me, but even more so now that the men seemed to be genuinely afraid.

“What’s the curse?” a man asked, a new kid named Jerry that I’d hired just this year. Jerry was kind of dopy, but he was a good kid. He worked hard and got along with everybody else as far as I knew, but I hadn’t gotten to know much about him. From what I could tell, he was exactly what he seemed—young and naïve. He was a hard-worker, but not someone who was particularly bright.

“It’s nothing,” I said to him. But everybody had turned to look at Eddie expectantly, knowing that he told the tale better than anybody else. I sighed again, knowing there was nothing I could do but indulge them for at least a few minutes.

“Let’s go back up to the truck, at least. We’re going to have to haul these up.”

They nodded and seemed relieved to be able to get away from the logs and back up to the worksite. I stood, leaning against the truck while the men sat around on the crates we’d brought to take breaks. I shook my head as Eddie cleared his throat, beginning to speak as if he was telling a ghost story to a bunch of terrified children around a campfire.

“The curse started right when this place was built,” Eddie said.

“When was that?” piped in Jerry.

Eddie shot him an annoyed look. “The retreat was built over a hundred years ago,” he said. “On tainted soil. There was something evil in the trees. It was released when they knocked them down.”

I snorted. “This is ridiculous—”

“Let me finish,” Eddie snapped. “The woods here were cursed before they even built the place. The guy who owned it didn’t care until the curse started acting up and killed his wife. It killed him, too, and every owner of this place since.”

“Not every owner,” I said.

“How did he know the place was cursed?” the kid asked.

“Legends have surrounded this place for hundreds of years. Witches used to come out here and do rituals, make human sacrifices up in the mountains. People used to come up here and hang themselves—”

“That’s enough,” I said. I was getting annoyed at the whole conversation. I’d tried to convince Eddie and the other men over and over again that there was no such thing as curses, but none of them ever seemed to listen to me, and their beliefs were only reinforced by every seemingly strange thing that happened at the retreat.

“He should hear the whole thing, boss,” Harold said, looking up at me seriously. “He has a right to know.”

“There’s no such thing as curses,” I said, but Eddie decided to barrel on with his story despite my protestations. I rolled my eyes and let him continue, though I knew that my patience wasn’t going to last for much longer.

“People have seen ghosts up at the retreat. The owners always die in the building. Always. And they haunt the place, never let anybody rest in peace, one night I—”

“Ghosts?” asked Jerry, shivering visibly.

Eddie nodded, his face grave.

“How did the people die?” Jerry asked, sitting on the edge of his seat. He was completely caught up in the story, captivated, and I could tell he’d fallen under the spell. He was convinced of the curse already, and there was nothing I was going to be able to say or do that would change his mind, just like it had been with the other men.

“Different ways. Some of them hanged, another one got shot—”

“This really is enough, guys,” I said, gesturing for them all to stand. “You can talk about this bullshit on your own time. We need to get to work.”

The men grumbled. I didn’t usually talk to them that way—I was mostly relaxed on what I expected from my work crew, and the environment was mostly casual and joking. The more I heard about the curse, though, the more annoyed I got. It was something that had hounded me since I’d started the job.

We got up and got started on the agonizing process of hauling the logs back up the hill. It was hard work, and though it was cold outside, we were all sweating by the time we were done. It had taken us a full day and put us behind on our work schedule, something we couldn’t afford if we wanted to get the construction done by our deadline.

I was irritated as I made my way back up to the retreat, only to see that all of the lights in the building were off. Several people were standing outside, including a couple of employees, a pair of twins named Stephanie and Lola.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Power went out again,” Lola said in a bored voice. It was something that happened frequently at the retreat and nobody yet had been able to figure out why. The wiring in the place had just been updated the year before and there had been no problems with it after multiple inspections.

“The curse,” said Eddie, standing behind me.

I gritted my teeth and headed inside, up the stairs and to my office to report the outage. I stuck my key in the lock to open the door but I found that I couldn’t slip it all the way in. I tried again but it was stuck, and I yanked it out, crouched to look into the keyhole. There was something sticky on the handle, and when I got closer I realized that it was gum. Somebody had jammed the lock. I cursed, closing my eyes, irritated with the whole day. It could have easily been a prank, yet somehow I didn’t think so. Somebody was trying to send me a message, one that it was getting harder to ignore.

I managed to call someone about the power outage and find somebody to come fix the lock. I felt on edge and tense, and since I couldn’t get in my office, my mind wandered to Lily. I hadn’t seen her all day, and when I’d been doing all the manual work outside, she’d been the thing that was running through my mind. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the night before, how long I’d gotten to lick her pussy. It was something I’d always enjoyed doing for a woman but for her, it was different, even better, especially given the look on her face when she was desperate to come. I decided to go and see her. Even if she didn’t let me touch her, I knew that it would relax me to see her.

I knocked on her door and when she answered it, I was surprised to see a blank look on her face.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Hi,” I said to her. “How are you?”

“I’m not supposed to be up on my leg,” she grumbled. “Do you need something?”

I stared at her in surprise. “No, I just—I wanted to find out how you were doing after yesterday.”

She snorted. “I’m fine.”

“What’s wrong, Lily?”

“My name is Lilian,” she said sharply.

“Okay,” I said. “Lilian. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” she said, biting her lip. “Look, last night was a mistake. I never—I don’t do that sort of thing. Ever.”

I met her eye, wondering what she was thinking. She didn’t look like she regretted what happened—in fact, she looked like it was still on her mind. Just standing there in front of her made me want her desperately, but I kept my hands to myself.

“Okay, Lilian,” I said to her. There was nothing I could do to argue with her. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she said, her features softening. “I just don’t want to do it again, okay? And it’d probably be better if we didn’t see each other while I’m here.”

“Oh,” I said, my mouth dry. I hadn’t been expecting that. It was one thing not to touch Lily, it was another thing not to get to see her altogether. “Okay, Lilian.”

“Okay,” she said. “Goodnight.”

She shut the door behind her before I could say anything. I stood there staring at it, having no idea what I’d done wrong, what had happened. She hadn’t looked upset when I’d left the night before, but sleepy and content. I shook my head and went back to my room, my mind going back to that stupid curse the men had been talking about. The carvings had been strange for sure but I didn’t think there was any reason to put much stock in them. I was much more worried about what had happened with the logs, how they’d fallen and nearly killed me.

I took a deep breath and tried to relax. Though there were more pressing matters in my life, I found myself thinking about Lily, a girl I’d just met but couldn’t get off my mind. I knew that signaled trouble, especially if I’d never get to talk to her again.