The boardwalk is honest wood. The marsh on either side is not.

Your shoes say tick, tick, tick on the boards and then, when you slow down, the wet world underneath says slick. The drifting light is closer. It is not a person’s shape. It has no feet. It sits on the water like a coin, then slides, then sits again.

You remember the note. If the lights walk, don’t you walk after them.

The light does not walk. It wanders. There is a difference, and you are not sure it helps.

A second glow answers the first, then a third, as if the marsh were putting out candles for a party nobody should attend. The air smells like rain and something faintly rotten, like a forgotten swampy match.

“Hey!”

A flashlight bobs from the next dock over. Jonah Pike, who is your age and knows every Hollow Marsh legend by heart, jogs the last boards and stops beside you, breathing fog.

“Those are wisps,” he whispers, delighted. “They lead you off and you’re never seen again. That’s the deal.”

“That’s a story,” you say, because Aunt Mara says stories are maps, not orders.

The nearest light slides toward a dark patch that does not look like boardwalk at all. The wood under you is still wood. The dark patch is a rumor of ground.