Stranded Lovers in the Cursed Forest: A Ruthless Gang of Boys Turns a Famous Lovers’ Spot Into a Folklore Tale of Terror, Betrayal, and Lost Lives
There’s a lake deep inside an old forest, marked on tourist maps with bright colors and smiling icons.
Once, people came from far away to picnic on its banks, rent boats, and take photos of the water so clear it caught the sky like glass. There was a small town nearby, with a gas station, a diner, a handful of guesthouses, and people who were friendly enough—if you didn’t ask too many questions.
Over time, the lake got a reputation.
Not the kind you see in travel brochures.
A few hikers went missing. Some tourists never checked out from their rooms. The locals said they must have gotten lost, taken a wrong trail, moved on without saying goodbye.
But when you drove into that town, parked at the diner, and asked what happened to those people, the conversation dried up. The cook turned away. The waitress wiped the same spot on the counter. The air changed.
“Stay on the marked paths,” they would say at last.
“And don’t go in the off‑season.”
People came anyway.
This story is about two of them.
I. Jenny and Steve
Jenny was the sort of girl who lived more in her head than in the world.
She had a quiet life, small routines, familiar walls. Her heart bruised easily and healed slowly. One season—no one remembers which, only that the leaves hadn’t fully turned yet—sadness settled on her like damp fog.
An old friend named Steve saw it.
Steve had known her long enough to remember the version of Jenny who laughed in the sun and didn’t flinch at every shadow. He thought that maybe a trip would help. Somewhere pretty. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere they could talk without the city pressing in on them.
He picked the lake.
He didn’t tell her that he carried a ring in his pocket.
They drove out of town in his car, headlights cutting through distance, Jenny staring at trees blurring past, Steve glancing at her every few minutes, wondering how and when to ask a question that might change both of their lives.
By the time they reached the last town before the forest, night had fallen.
They found a room. Jenny slept in fits. Steve lay awake, fingers brushing the small circle of metal in his jacket.
In the morning, they bought coffee, ignored the uneasy stares from the diner staff, and drove into the trees.
At the edge of the forest, they saw a boat with the lake’s name painted on it. The letters were chipped. The paint peeled. Still, it pointed them onward as surely as any signpost.
They followed the path until the water unfolded before them.
The lake was even more beautiful than the photos: wide, still, and unnaturally clear. It looked like a place where bad things could not happen.
They were not the only ones there that day.
II. The Boy and the Dog
On the shore sat a small boy.
He was crying quietly, shoulders shaking, face turned away.
Jenny, who could never ignore someone in pain—even a stranger—went to him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked gently. “Are you lost?”
The boy stared past her. His eyes were strange, too old and too hollow for his age.
He didn’t answer.
Jenny lingered for a moment, then stepped back when he refused to speak. She and Steve set their things down a little ways off, spreading a blanket, taking in the view.
From another path came a group of boys, older than the crying child but still young enough that their voices squeaked when they shouted. They had bikes thrown carelessly on the grass, a dog on a rope, and the mean sort of laughter that’s loudest when it’s about someone weaker.
They circled the crying boy. Their leader—a boy named Ben—said something sharp. The others chimed in with little stabs of cruelty. The boy, Adam, shrank into himself while they barked words and then walked away, bored for the moment.
Jenny watched, unease prickling her spine, but the scene passed.
Steve went down to the water to swim. Jenny lay back on the blanket and watched the sky shift.
The dog came first.
It broke from the group, ran at her, barking and baring its teeth.
Jenny flinched.
She was not used to aggression, especially not sudden and loud. The boys dragged the dog back, laughing at her fear.
Then they let it go again.
The dog lunged. Jenny recoiled. Her heart beat too fast.
From the shallows, Steve saw what they were doing.
He marched out of the water, dripping, and confronted them.
“What’s your problem?” he snapped.
The boys were unimpressed.
They mocked him—his tone, his age, his anger. Ben smirked, eyes glinting with a cruelty that had nothing to do with childhood and everything to do with the shape of a soul.
Words were thrown like stones—stupid, old man, crybaby. Steve knew enough not to hit a child. The boys knew it too.
Eventually, he walked away, jaw tight, fists clenched.
Jenny said nothing, but she could feel their eyes on her like cold fingers. Specifically Ben’s.
The boys finally left, tossing insults over their shoulders as they went.
Jenny and Steve breathed easier.
They shouldn’t have.
III. The First Night
They had planned to camp by the lake.
Steve set up a tent as the sun dipped lower, painting the water in gold and red. Jenny helped where she could, still thinking of the quiet boy, Adam, and the ugly laughter that had driven him away.
She thought she saw movement in the bushes at the edge of the trees.
“Did you see that?” she whispered.
“Probably a deer,” Steve said, not looking up.
They lit a fire. They talked. They huddled together in the chill. For a while, the world shrank to just them, a bubble of warmth surrounded by dark.
Still, Jenny couldn’t shake the feeling that something circled them. She heard a twig snap. Leaves shift. She told herself it was the forest, alive in its own way.
Eventually, they slept.
In the morning, their food was ruined.
Containers opened, bags slashed, everything spoiled or scattered. It looked like animals had gotten into it. But the cuts were too precise. The mess too pointed.
They decided to go back into town for breakfast.
At the car, one tire lay flat.
Behind the wheel, someone had placed a broken bottle, glass shards pointed just so, waiting for rubber to roll over them.
Steve didn’t have to say who he thought had done it. His silence was thick with the boys’ names.
He changed the tire. They drove back toward town, stomachs empty, nerves frayed.
As they passed through the streets, they saw the boys.
Bikes spinning. Hands gesturing rudely. Laughter chasing their car.
At the diner, Steve complained to the waitress.
“There are some kids causing trouble,” he said. “They’re dangerous. You should—”
Her eyes went cold.
“We don’t want trouble here,” she said.
He tried again. She turned away.
They ate in tight silence.
IV. The House with the Bicycles
On their way back to the lake, Steve noticed bicycles outside a house.
He knew them now—the stickers, the colors, the bent wheel on one that had brushed against his car earlier.
He pulled over.
“I’m going to talk to their parents,” he told Jenny.
“You don’t know what they’re like,” she murmured. “Let’s just go.”
But he was tired of being pushed.
The front door was ajar. The house was quiet.
“Hello?” he called. “Anyone home?”
No answer.
He stepped inside.
The air smelled like dust and something else—metallic, faint.
He climbed the stairs.
In one room he saw posters, clothes strewn on the floor, a familiar dog toy. Ben’s room.
Outside, in the garden, he heard boys’ voices. He moved to the window and saw them busy with something he couldn’t quite see.
Then the shadow of a man rose in the hallway.
Ben’s father.
Steve’s heart lurched. He wasn’t supposed to be there. Trespassing would only make things worse.
He hid for a second, then slipped out through a window, scraping his hands on the sill, dropping into the bushes and running back to the car.
He drove away, pulse pounding.
He didn’t see the eyes watching from another window as he fled.
V. The Stolen Car
Back at the lake, they tried to reset the day.
They made new plans. They walked the shore. They tried to breathe.
Jenny reached for her bag.
It was gone.
Inside had been their phones. Their money.
Steve spun toward the car.
It was gone too.
For a heartbeat, the lakeshore was too quiet.
Then, from the trees, the sound of an engine.
Their own car sped toward them, headlights glaring, wheels rattling on the uneven ground. Jenny froze. Steve yanked her out of the way as their vehicle roared past, barely missing her.
Behind the windshield, faces.
Laughing.
The boys.
They’d taken the keys at some unseen moment. Now they swerved and careened through the forest, treating the stolen car like a toy.
Steve shouted. They hooted back and drove away, leaving tire marks and dread.
No phones. No money. No car.
Just the forest.
They began to walk, planning to reach town on foot as night crept in.
If they made it, they would file a report. Tell the police everything. Have the boys punished.
That was what they told themselves.
But no one in that town wanted to hear about those boys.
VI. The Dog and the Knife
Hours passed.
The forest grew thicker. Paths looped back on themselves. Landmarks blurred.
Jenny’s feet ached. Steve’s anger simmered.
They heard voices again.
Laughter. The familiar cadence of Ben and his gang.
They found them in a small clearing, as if the forest itself had arranged this meeting.
“Give us back our car,” Steve demanded. “Our phones. Our money. Enough.”
Ben tilted his head, feigning confusion.
“What car?” he asked.
Steve saw his own phone in Ben’s pocket. He stepped forward to take it.
The boys swarmed him.
They punched and shoved. One pulled out a knife, its blade small but sharp enough. The dog, snarling, lunged.
In the chaos, Steve grabbed the knife. He tried to push it away, to keep it from his chest.
The dog leapt.
The blade, redirected by trembling hands and clumsy panic, plunged into the animal instead.
The dog yelped once, then lay still.
Silence fell.
The boys fell to their knees around the body, wailing and touching its fur as if their grief could pull life back into it. Tears streamed down their faces. Their pain was real.
Their rage was worse.
Steve, sick with what had happened, grabbed his phone and keys from slack pockets. He and Jenny ran.
They reached the car—half hidden at the edge of the forest, paint scratched, mirrors cracked. They climbed in, hands shaking, and started the engine.
Behind them, Ben screamed.
They drove.
Rocks hammered the windshield and side panels as the boys climbed onto higher ground and hurled anything they could lift. Glass shattered. The rearview mirror exploded. Steve ducked and kept going.
Then the forest itself turned on them.
A fallen tree, its trunk thick and heavy, lay across the path. They didn’t see it until it was too late.
The car hit.
Branches smashed through metal and glass. A jagged limb punched through the windshield and into Steve’s stomach.
The car shuddered to a stop.
Jenny crawled from the wreck, dazed but alive.
Steve was pinned, blood soaking his shirt.
“Run,” he gasped. “Jenny, go. Find help. Don’t let them find you here.”
She didn’t want to leave him. Everything in her screamed to stay, to pull the branch out, to hold his hand.
But footsteps were coming.
She slipped into the bushes, heart in her throat, and lay still.
The boys arrived seconds later.
They circled the wreck. They peered inside. They cursed and spat. Some wanted to drag Steve out and hurt him more. Others flinched back, shaken by the sight of his blood.
Jenny stayed hidden until they finally left, dragging something with them into the trees.
When she crept back to the car, Steve was gone.
Only streaks of blood remained, leading deeper into the forest.
She followed.
VII. The Torture Tree
The trail of red led to a clearing.
There, tied to a tree with barbed wire, was Steve.
The wire wrapped his chest, arms, legs, biting into his skin. Every breath tore him further open. Cuts and punctures covered his body.
Around him stood the boys.
Each held a small knife.
They took turns.
One slashed his arm. Another carved into his side. They laughed and flinched, as if the act scared and thrilled them all at once.
“We should stop,” one boy whispered. “This is too much. This is… it’s murder.”
Ben whipped around and struck him.
“He killed our dog,” Ben snarled. “He deserves it.”
The others, cowed, continued.
Jenny watched from the trees, hands over her mouth, tears streaming silently. If she screamed, they’d find her. If she ran at them, they’d turn their blades on her.
She needed help.
She rummaged in her pockets. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost her own phone. But she had a small device—a gadget that could connect to nearby signals in strange ways, the details blurred now in retelling.
She managed to send a call.
Some witnesses say she contacted the police. Others say she reached no one, that static answered her desperation.
What everyone agrees on is this: the phone in Ben’s pocket buzzed.
He looked down. Saw the incoming connection.
“She’s nearby,” he snarled. “She called someone. Find her.”
He grabbed a few of his friends and charged into the woods.
Behind them, Steve strained against the wire.
He wriggled and twisted, biting back screams as the barbs dug deeper. With a burst of agony, he found a weak point in the wire, pressed his skin against it until it cut through, and slipped one arm free.
He ran, half stumbling, half falling, blood marking every tree he touched.
VIII. Running and Hiding
Jenny ran too.
Branches whipped her face. Roots grabbed her feet. Ben’s curses trailed behind, getting closer.
She found a cabin. An old woodcutter’s hut, empty and abandoned.
Inside, a walkie‑talkie lay on a shelf.
She reached for it. It fell.
The casing cracked. Useless.
The boys broke the door down moments later. Jenny slipped out the back, barely avoiding their searching eyes. She pressed herself against the wall, heart slamming against her ribs, as they ransacked the inside.
Ben’s phone rang.
“Steve got away,” another boy’s voice said. “He’s heading toward the road. We have to catch him.”
Ben cursed and ran off. The others followed.
Steve, bleeding and half out of his mind, reached his car—the wrecked one, still sitting crooked under the fallen tree. He forced the trunk open.
The alarm blared.
The sound cut through the forest like a flare.
Jenny, miles away in terror, heard it and knew exactly what it meant.
So did Ben.
He turned, eyes blazing, and led his gang toward the noise.
Steve grabbed the first aid kit from the trunk and fled before they arrived.
Somewhere between trees, he and Jenny finally found each other again.
They collapsed in a small hollow, whispering apologies and plans and half‑finished prayers. Jenny tried to clean his wounds with trembling hands, using bandages meant for scrapes and blisters on gashes meant for surgeons.
She reached into his pocket for more gauze.
Her fingers brushed cold metal.
The ring.
For a moment, the future they’d almost had flickered in front of her: a proposal by the lake, photos of a smiling couple, stories told years later about that day by the water.
Reality crashed back in like a wave of blood.
“We have to move,” she said. “We can’t stay here.”
She helped him as best she could, half carrying, half dragging him.
Somewhere above, the boys regrouped.
Somewhere ahead, the forest grew thicker.
When you walk into dark woods with a ring and a plan, you never imagine leaving without either.
IX. Fire and Ash
Stories differ on how long they managed to evade the boys.
Hours, some say. Minutes, others.
What is agreed on is this:
Eventually, Ben found them.
Weary, desperate, Jenny had tucked Steve under low branches, covering him with leaves and sticks to hide him, then stumbled toward what she prayed was the direction of town.
Alone, injured, he slipped in and out of consciousness.
Ben and his gang followed the blood.
No one knows exactly how they dragged Steve from his hiding place. No one knows how long they beat him before he stopped making sounds.
What they do know is that the next time Jenny saw him, he was lying beside her, still and pale, surrounded by stacked logs and kindling.
She woke with her hands bound, her body tied near his.
The boys laughed and whooped, filming with their phones, boasting about what they were about to do.
“We’ll burn them,” Ben said. “Like they burned us.”
They doused the wood in fuel. They forced Adam—the quiet boy from the lakeshore, whose tears had so unsettled Jenny—to hold a lit stick.
“Throw it,” Ben ordered. “Do it, or we’ll burn you instead.”
Adam shook. He threw the burning wood toward the pile.
Fire caught.
Flames licked up the logs, reached for Steve’s clothes, his hair, his skin.
Jenny screamed and begged. The kids danced, faces flickering orange.
As the flames grew, the ropes holding Jenny began to burn.
Fibers charred. Knots loosened.
She twisted and pulled, ignoring the searing heat.
The cords snapped.
She rolled away, coughing, eyes streaming, hands clawing at the dirt.
Steve did not move.
His body was already lost to fire.
Ben saw her escape and shrieked.
“If you run, we’ll burn him!” he had threatened earlier.
Now he turned his rage on someone else.
He grabbed Adam.
“You like fire so much?” he snarled. “Here.”
He shoved Adam forward, pressed flame to his face.
The boy’s screams were short and terrible.
Even some of Ben’s friends flinched and turned away.
Jenny ran.
X. Blood, Garbage, and Glass
She found a map.
In one version, it was posted on a board near a trailhead. In another, it lay under broken glass in a deserted ranger hut. Either way, she smashed the glass, grabbed the map, and clutched it like a lifeline.
She saw paths. Elevations. A mark for the town.
She heard voices and dove into a nearby trash bin, pulling the lid over her.
The stench was overwhelming—rot, old food, and something sweeter and worse—but she forced herself to stay still.
Ben’s gang passed by, their footsteps and curses fading.
When she climbed out, she was covered in filth.
She found a shard of glass from the map board and lashed it to her hand with strips of cloth. The improvised weapon glinted dully in the gray light.
When one of Ben’s friends wandered away from the group, perhaps to search alone, perhaps to relieve himself in the bushes, Jenny struck.
She drove the glass into his throat.
He died with a soft sigh, eyes wide.
It was the first time she’d killed anyone.
Later, when Ben found the body, he went even more unhinged.
One boy wanted to leave. Run home. Pretend none of it had happened.
Ben killed him too.
By then, his gang was almost gone—taken by the forest, by Jenny’s new ferocity, or by Ben’s own spiraling madness.
The girl who had hung around with them, silent and pale, ran away into the trees. No one knows what happened to her.
Jenny followed the map.
She stumbled through the dark until she saw headlights.
XI. The House on the Edge
A car sat parked near a farmhouse.
Inside was a man—a worker from the area, maybe a ranger, maybe a local with some official badge on his jacket.
Jenny slammed on the window, sobbing, begging for help.
He let her in. He drove.
For a brief, shining moment, she thought she was saved.
Then she realized they were heading back toward the forest.
“I have to check on something,” he said. “Someone else might be out there.”
Fear coiled in her stomach.
The car slowed as they neared a familiar clearing. The man got out, leaving the engine running.
Jenny slid behind the wheel.
Her hands shook as she shifted into gear.
She drove.
On the road, Ben’s female companion appeared, waving her arms.
Jenny could have swerved. Could have stopped.
She didn’t.
The girl went under the wheels with a dull thud.
Jenny didn’t look back.
She kept driving until the trees thinned and lights glowed ahead.
A house. Music. Voices.
People laughing, unaware of the nightmare in the woods not so far away.
Jenny crashed into their world like a ghost.
She stepped out of the car, covered in blood and garbage, eyes wild.
The party fell silent.
Someone led her inside, wrapped her in a blanket, brought a glass of water. A woman called someone on her phone.
“We found a girl,” she said. “She’s hurt. She says—”
The phone rang again.
This time, it was for her.
She answered, listened, went pale.
It was Ben.
On the line, his voice was smooth, broken just enough to sound like grief.
He told his parents that some crazy girl had killed his friends in the woods. That she’d stolen a car, attacked them. That he barely escaped.
He described her—filthy, wild, eyes haunted.
Everyone in the room turned toward Jenny.
The woman lowered the phone slowly.
“This is our house,” she said. “Ben is our son.”
Jenny’s brief safety evaporated.
She saw in their eyes the same hardness she’d seen in Ben’s.
Whatever kindness they’d shown her moments before burned away under the heat of blood loyalty.
She fled to the bathroom, locked the door.
Outside, voices rose.
They pounded on the door. The lock rattled. Ben’s mother shouted. His father cursed.
Through it all, Jenny heard Ben on the speakerphone, telling them to hold her, to stop her, to not let her leave.
The door splintered.
They burst in.
Ben himself stepped through behind them.
He looked tired, dirty, a bandage around his arm. But his eyes still glittered with the same cruel light.
He took his phone from his mother, opened the gallery, and began deleting.
One by one, he erased the videos of the dog’s death, Steve’s torture, Adam’s burning face, the pyre in the clearing.
Evidence disappearing with each swipe of his thumb.
Jenny lunged, but hands grabbed her. She was pushed to the floor, held there.
In that town, the police would see a hysterical outsider with no proof.
In that house, the parents saw a son who could do no wrong.
Ben sat back on a chair.
He smiled.
The mountains and forests of some places hide old curses and older ghosts.
In this town, evil didn’t need supernatural help.
It had parents and phone plans and a community that looked the other way.
XII. The Lesson of the Lake
People say Jenny was never seen in that town again.
Some whisper that she escaped through a back window and vanished into the world, living under a new name, jumping at the sound of boys’ laughter.
Others say she didn’t make it out of that house.
No official records mention her. No reports filed. No missing person notices with a picture matching her face.
Ben, on the other hand, grew up.
He left town for a fancy school. He came back for holidays. His parents still held parties in that house on the edge of the forest.
The lake remains.
People still visit it.
They spread blankets on the shore. They take photos. They watch their children splash in the shallows.
Sometimes, there’s a boy crying on the bank, eyes too old for his face.
Sometimes, a group of local kids rides their bikes nearby, a dog trotting at their heels, their parents watching from a distance like guards.
If you’re new in town and you complain about them, the waitress at the diner will look right through you.
If you stay by the lake after the season ends, when the paths are empty and the air grows still, you might hear echoes:
A car crashing. A dog yelping. A boy screaming. A girl running.
The old folk in neighboring towns will tell you, if you buy them a drink and ask nicely:
“Don’t go to that lake in the off‑season.
“And if you do, don’t argue with the kids.”
Because some places have ghosts that float above the water.
And some places have monsters that ride bicycles and go home to smiling parents.
It’s hard to tell which is worse.
Either way, you’d be wise to remember the story of Jenny and Steve.
And to know that sometimes, the scariest legends don’t come from ancient curses at all.
They’re born the moment someone like Ben realizes he can hurt people and never pay for it.
