Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I was twenty one when my
cousin Wren called me about this random old cabin we
apparently owned. Wren was always that cousin, laid back but
somehow always dragging people into things. He talked like whatever
he was doing was already a done deal and you
were just catching up. We go out there, he said,
check the place out, clean it up. Maybe it's a
total dump. Maybe it's fixable, could be a rental, could
be a hunting cabin. Worst case, we turned it into
a hiking biss camp. I mean it's free real estate.
I said, yes, because I needed to get out of town.
I've been drowning in noise. It's gold stress room. It drama,
that weird feeling of being stuck and spun out at
the same time. So a couple of days off forwards
sounded perfect. Trees, air, silence, no reception. I expected quiet.
What I got was the exact opposite. We left on
a Tuesday. The drive started like any road trips. Next maps,
a playlist that kept skipping high always became county roads,
which became gravel, which turned into a track that looked
like it hadn't seen a maintenance crew since before I
was born. At one point I looked down at my
phone and realized we hadn't had a signal for almost
an hour. When grinned see already better. Eventually we pocked
where the path disappeared completely and hiked the last half
mile on foot, hacks, tight crunch of dry leaves underfoot.
The trail, if you could call at that, was barely
a suggestion. No markers, no signs, just dips in the
underbrush where people may be used to walk decades ago.
We hit the clearing around sunset. The cabin looked like
it had been swallowed and then partially spat back out
by a hill behind it. They sat sunken, as if
it had tried to dig itself into the mountain and
changed its mind. Halfway through, Kudzy called up the sides
and looped over the roof in thick ropes. The front
door leaned inward like it was tired of trying. The
whole structure was gray and sagging and oddly small, like
it a trunk a little with time. There was no porch,
just a broken slab of concrete and a shadow that
seemed heavier than it should be. Inside, everything was pine
and dust. The walls were paneled in seven as knotty wood,
the kind that felt like it could splinter if he
stared too hard. The air was dense and damp, as
if whatever had once been alive there had left, but
not entirely. No furniture, no dishes, no anything, just a
stone fireplace and aloft above the main room with a
stain matters half visible through the railings. When stepped inside
and said, man, smells like the scow and failure, we laughed,
then stayed that first night, racoot beans on a little
fire pit up back head lumps flaked on beers cracked up,
and folding chairs creaked. It should have felt peaceful, but
there was no sound. No crickets, no rustling, no owls,
just the fire popping and the occasional creak of wren shifting.
I mentioned it, he shrugged, Maybe it's just not the season.
Then we heard footsteps, slow and heavy, like some one
walking carefully through leaves just outside the ring of light.
Not deer, not raccoon, two legs pausing between steps. Crunch, buzz, crunch.
We froze wren stared into the woods like he expected
something to shew itself. I whispered, do you see it?
He didn't answer. He stood and turned slowly, like trying
to catch a scent. Then the steps stopped. We didn't
finish our beers. We went inside and jawned a hunting
knife into the latch as a makeshift bolt. The next morning,
the woods weren't the same. The path we come an
aunt gone, not overgrown, not covered up, just not there.
We walked in every direction, north south, trying to retrace
our steps. Each time we looked back to the same
fallen tree. Massive roots twisted up like veins. The chunks
split like a mouth. Initials were coughed deep into the
exposed roots, mine Ren's, Wren's, and a third set al.
Neither of us had a clue who that was. We
sure as hell hadn't carved anything. Later, Wren worked in
the back wall, trying to patch a soft spot in
the penelane. He found a hidden compartment behind one of
the studs. Inside was a leather collar with a chunk
of RUSTA chain looped through the ring. No name tack,
just around metal with a spiral scratched into it rough
enough center alike done with a nail. Wren stared, then
tossed it into the woods like it was hot. That night,
we heard humming from the loft, soft and even a
slow tunis melody, like a kid half remembering a lullaby.
No words, just and we didn't check it out. I
three a m. The lantern was out, not flickered, it
was gone dead. The matches were missing from our pack.
I had packed two boxes. Rehn clicked in the flashlight
and aimed it toward the loft. The door, which we
had tied shut with fishing line was open, wide open.
Whn whispered, did you hear it come down? I shook
my head. I didn't sleep after that. On the third day,
we tried mapping the area. We use string, tied it
to trees, tried to make a grid, walk straight lines.
No matter what we did, we ended up back at
the same tree, same initials, seem deadful. The forest didn't
make sense, like it was curling in on itself. We
stopped taking our boose off at night. Around midnight, Wren
got up to pea and didn't come back. I found
him barefoot in the clearing, murmuring to the trees. I said,
I bring it back. I said I would. His voice
was wrong, off, like someone mimicking him and getting the
kit and slightly wrong. I gro out his arm. He
flinched hard, like waking from a nightmare, and screamed in
my face. His feet were shredded. We wrapped them in
shirts and duct tape and didn't talk about it. That
fourth night I saw it. I woke to a dragging sound,
like fabricon wood. I turned toward the window. Something pressed
against the slats, A face too pale, too long, only
one eye visible. It blinked once, slowly. I didn't move,
didn't breathe. When I blinked, it was gone. Next morning
when found long, deep claw marks scored across the side
of the cabin, perfectly spaced, too clean, Not an animal.
That afternoon we sat around the fire pit and found
a message burned into the stone under the ashes, three
sets of initials and a date, September nineteenth. It was
the twelfth. Ren stared and said, I didn't do that.
I didn't answer that nice thing knocked maw on the door,
on the walls behind the fireplace, then by the kitchen,
then beneath the floorboards. Three knocks each one lure. It
felt like something was crawling under us. We dragged our
stuff into the center of the room, turned off the light,
sat in the dark and didn't move. I counted breast
to keats stead. He tried not to think about the
eye of the humming wren whispered what do you think
it wants? Before it could answer, the loft door slammed open,
not creaked, not drifted, slammed. Then the stairs groaned. We
didn't wait. We ran. We ran barefoot, no gear, Branches
whipping faces, rocks, stabbing feet. We didn't care. Somehow we
found the car. Both front tiers were flat. Though. We
didn't talk until we saw the first sell tower blinking
through the trees. We didn't talk after that either. My
cousin Kalan had this way of this purring into the
woods when every things got too loud in his life.
He called it Westing said. The deep forest helped him
think again, like it scrubbed all the static out of
his head. Blue Hollow was his usual escape. When he
invited me to go with him the August, I said
yes before really thinking about it. I wasn't the camping type.
I liked knowing where I was when I opened my
eyes in the morning. But Callan had the kind of
quiet confidence that made you want to prove something. He
said we'd be off grid for a few days, no fohns,
no maps, just the old routes he remembered from his
solo trips. I didn't want to be the one who
backed out, so I packed out and told myself it
would be a detocks, something to bragg about later, something
to shake off the usual. We popped his truck at
this washed out looking road a round noon and hiked
him from there. The trail, if you could call at that,
was really just a dip in the earth where tires
had once cut through. Now it was grown over with
ferns and soft moss. We followed it until it disappeared
into the trees. Then we kept going, tracing a creek
that wind its way down the ridge like it knew
where it was headed. We followed that water deeper into
the woods, stepping over death full and ducking under low branches.
By dusk we found it clearing near a bend in
the creek. It was the kind of spot people imagine
when they think of camping. Flat ground, dry leaves, the
whole air reframed by tosspruce and hemlock. We dropped our
packs and got a small fire going with kindling. Kllen
always carried that night felt about how I expected it
to peaceful, in a way that didn't quite settle in
my chest. I kept telling myself, I just needed time
to ajust. Later, I left to gather morewood before the
light completely vanished. At when I noticed it, No matter
how far I went, the sound of the creaked invate.
I climbed the slope, stepped around some fallen stones, pushed
past the thick patch of rhodendron. Still I heard it,
same volume, same pitch, like it was trailing me. And
when I turned back to camp, what should have taken ten,
maybe fifteen minutes to retrace only took a couple. It
was like the forest folded in on itself when I
wasn't looking. I didn't mention it to Callen, just sat
back by the fire and told myself I was tired,
that it was my first time really roughing it, and
I was just off balance. He didn't say much either,
just stared into the flames and poked at the logs. Then,
without looking at me, he said, you see those rough
piles were aller. I thought he was kidding. I made
some joke about garden gnomes a weird forest at but
he stood up and motioned for me to follow him
to the creek. He wasn't joking. Right along the bank
were these stacks of stones, smoother river rocks, balanced free high.
They weren't just randomly placed theater. Each stack was about
the same size, evenly spaced, all lined up with this
eerie kind of care. They looked too intentional, too clean.
What really got to me was how warm they were.
I picked one up, expecting it to be wet or
cold from the creek spray, but it felt dry, like
it had been sitting in the sun all day. But
the sun hadn't touched that part of the forest since
late morning. I asked if he thought other hikers came
through and made them. Callen just stared at them for
a long time. Then he said, no one comes out
this far, not without a reason. We left them alone
and went back to camp. The next morning. Something was different.
Our fire pit, the one we'd built by hand moving stones,
clearing a patch of dirt, was gone. In its place
was a new ring, a perfect circle of smooth with
flat rocks arranged with the same kind of precision as
those piles by the water. Neither of us had touched it.
Cowns wore up and down. He hadn't gotten up during
the night. I know I didn't. We didn't stick around
to debate it. We packed up fast and moved out,
headed away from the creek, deeper into the trees. Cowan
thought he remembered a ridge trail that would lead toward
an old for a service road. But within an ire
we heard the creek again, and by noon we saw
it running just to ry same bad, same sound. It
was like the landscape had turned itself around while we
weren't paying attention. By the third day, the silence started
to feel unnatural. No birds, no insects even off its steps.
Sounded too loud, like the forest was muffing everything else.
The air felt heavier, too, like it hadn't moved in days.
That afternoon we came across something that stopped as cold.
Three figures were standing ahead on the trail, spaced out evenly,
facing away from us, just there. At first I thought
they were other hikers, but they didn't move, didn't shift
their weight, didn't speak, just stood like they were waiting
for something. Call and growled my sleeve and whispered, don't move,
but I already had. I couldn't take a step forward
if I tried. My legs just locked. And then the
nearest figure, only about thirty feet away, tilted its head
to the side slowly. The ankle bent too far, way
past what an ex shu'd allow. It was like watching
a poppet on all the string. We ran, didn't think,
didn't talk, just turn and sprinted back the way we came.
Branches tore at our arms and legs, roots snied our boots.
I slipped once and hit the dirt hat but cow
and grabbed my jacket and yanked me up before I
could think piece. The worst part, the sound of the
creek never left. I couldn't see it any more, but
I could hear it running beside us, matching our pace,
same distance, same speed, like it was tethered to as
somehow like it new. Eventually the trees thinned out into
a clearing. We burst into the open and skidded to
a stop. At the center was another fire pit, same
perfect ring of stones, same unsettling precision. It was identical.
I felt my stomach twist. Callan stepped forward like he
was going to say something, but I didn't let him.
I stumped into the circle and kicked the stones apart,
scattering them into the brush. One bounced off a tree
and cracked in half. Keep moving, I told him, and
shoved his shoulder. We didn't stop after that, just pushed
forward through the undergrowth, deeper into a pot of the
forest that didn't feel like it belonged to any one
any more. The air grew colder, the trees got closer together.
Every step felt like we were being watched. We finally
dropped beneath pine tree that night, not because we felt safe,
but because our legs couldn't take another step. I curled
into my sleepin back fully clothed deutes on harp pounding.
I didn't close my eyes. I couldn't. Every time I blinked,
I imagined one of those figures standing over me, head
bent wadin. The ground was freezing dump. I remember feeling
every rock underneath me like it was trying to crawl
into muskin. Then morning came, and with it finally a sound,
A sound not the creek tires. Somewhere ahead, a car
rolled cross pavement I could barely hear it, but it
was real. It was human. We dragged ourselves through the
brush up a shallow slope and saw it a narrow
road cutting through the ridge like a life line. The
asphalt looked thick and black in the sunlight. We stumbled
on to it like people crawling out of a flood.
A truck came around the bend a few minutes later.
I didn't even look at the driver, just lifted my
arm and waved like my life depended on it. He
slowed down, looked us over, muddy, scratched up, probably wild eyed,
and let us climb into the back without a word.
We didn't speak on the ride down the mountain. Cown
stared straight ahead. I kept my eyes on the trees
until he disappeared. I haven't been back to Blue Hollow.
Some places don't want to be found. I had picked
up a summer job clearing survey lines for a small
land company based out of Renselair, a little mountain town
without a real vast station. The man who hired me, Scott,
I think, barely lifted my idy. He asked if I
could hig long ires, carry gear and stay out of trouble,
and I said yes. The job did not pay great,
but it covered my rent and left enough for gas
and groceries. They did not care if I kempt on sight,
so I could avoid a daily hike back to the truck,
which honestly was the worst part of the job. So
I stayed in the woods. The section they gave me
to map round along a ridge between two narrow hollows.
There was no cell service, no radio reception, and not
even a decent spot to hang a food back. The
ground was steep and uneven, cut through with all dry
creek beds and overgrown lugging trails that led nowhere. The
forester was thick enough to lose the sun by midafternoon.
At first it felt peaceful, just trees, bogs and occasional
square I found a small clearing about fifty yards from
a washed out trail, fart enough from my little tent
and just far enough from the slope that runoff would
not worry me. I set up a fire ring with
stones and used a fallen log as a seat. It
was not cozy, but it worked. The first day was uneventful.
I flagged a few trees with bright orange tips, started
taking distance notes and got the lay of the land.
My GPS was un libel. The signal kept dropping, but
I knew how to read a compass, a use and
note book. I cooked tickin of Chilly over the fire,
read a few pages of a paperback, and fell asleep
to the sound of crickets, and went in the trees.
On the second day, things started to feel off. I
was marking a line from the old road out to
a ridge point roughly a quarter mile away the straightforward
eastward walk. I tied off tape every twenty or thirty feet,
took notes, and counted steps, the usual routine. When I
turned back to return to camp, the walk took twice
as long. I kept stopping to check my bearings. Everything
looked right, but it did not feel right. The ground
did not match my notes. The slope was steeper, the
spacing between trees was different. The differences were subtle, but
enough to make me second guess myself. By the time
I returned, I was sweating and disoriented. I figured I
had drifted off course without realizing it. The woods can
play tricks on your sense of direction if you are
not careful. Still, I double check my notes. The line
was accurate. My markings were exactly where they should have been,
but the distance had somehow stretched. That night, I left
my pack by the fire like usual, sipped and latched.
When I woke, the pack was gone. At first I
thought an animal had dragged it off. Then I saw
it hanging from a low branch about fifteen feet away.
It dangled there like some one had lifted it and
hooked it over the branch. Nothing was missing. There were
no claw marks and no chewed straps. It was not
torn or dirty. It had simply been moved deliberately. I
stood staring at it for ten minutes before I grabbed
her down. My gut felt tight, like something was sitting
on my chest. I told myself raccoon had done it,
or the strap had caught as it dragged. Whatever would
let me sleep. By day three were smaller things. I
was cooking raymond and used my knife to stir the needles.
Because it worked. I set the knife down on a
flat rock next to me, turned to drain the pot,
and when I turned back, the knife was gone, completely gone.
I checked the ground, my bag, under the tent, inside
the pot, and even my boots. Nothing. Hours later, I
unrolled my sleeping bag and felt something rigid near my feet.
There it was my knife, blade, clothes, and tuckedl on
the inner lining, like it had been packed or all along.
I did not put it there. That night, the force
went silent, not quite truly silent. No birds, no crickets,
no rustling. The stillness pressed in around me, even with
the fire burning. I turned off my head lump and
sat in the dark, hoping it was just my ears.
The quiet stayed. On the fifth day, I started a
new line to the north, taking a fresh path, mocking
new trees and tracking my bearings carefully. About forty minutes
in I saw orange tape ahead. At first I thought
it was some one else's line, a remnant of a
previous survey. When I got closer, I saw my own
initials carved into a tree, the same tape, the same knots,
the same box scrape from when I slipped with the knife.
I had somehow ended up in the same place I
had been three days earlier, even though I had walked
the opposite direction. I stood staring at that tree, my
stomach turned, and now wiped my hands on my pens
to steady myself. My notes were right, and my direction
was right, but the woods had brought me back anyway.
That night I could not sleep. I kept the fire
going and saw it with my back to a tree
because I did not want to be caught off guard.
Some time before dawn, I heard soft rattling. It came
from my coffee tin, the one where I kept matches.
I grabbed it, thinking maybe a mouse was inside, but
the tin felt warm, not hot, just warm. I opened it.
Every single match was gone. In their place were seven
small stones, white, smooth and perfectly round, like river rocks.
I was at least ten miles from the nurse stream.
I sat holding that tin and steer. In the morning,
I found footprints around my camp, bare feet, small and human,
forming a perfect ring around the fire pit. There was
no trail leading, and no trail leading at just a circle.
I did not follow them. I did not want to know.
That night I did not sleep. I heard little rustles
and soft taps, like fingers brushing tree bark. I could
not see anything, and I did not dare to turn
on my light. I sat with my knife in one
hand and the coffee tin shaking so hard I could
barely hold them. On the seventh morning, I worked to
find my survey notebook lying open on my chest. It
had been zipped inside my bag when I fell asleep.
The page it open to was not one I had
written on. The handwriting was neat and unfamiliar. The words
were simple. They read not here, not yours. My pencil
lay snapped and two beside it. That was the last straw.
I pack everything, tent gear through without bothering to fold
anything properly. I crowned it all into my back and
started walking. The trail back to the logging road was
supposed to take twenty minutes. I had walked it half
a dozen times that day. The forest would not let
me out. I hiked up a ridge, reached the top
and saw the same slope ahead, the same fallen tree,
the same split in the path, over and over again.
At one point had dropped my pack to test it
to mark the ground with a bagex using a stick.
I haiked for another ire, sweating and swearing. The hallway
where I finally reached a clearing, My peck was sitting
next to the same mex. I thought I was losing it.
When I finally stumbled out onto the logging road. I
almost cried. My watch, said I had been walking only
an ire, but the sun was higher than it should
have been, and my legs felt like they had carried
me for a full day. I did not stop walking
or look back. I followed the road and till I
heard a truck engine behind me. An older man in
a feed cap pulled over and asked if I needed help.
I must have looked rough, pale, shaking, the clothes, dirty
and damp, be sweat. I told him I was fine.
He did not press, and he drove on all the
way down the mountain. I kept checking the rear view mirror.
I kept waiting to see a flash of orange tape
fluttering from the truck bed, as if something had followed
me out that evening, I turned him my gear at
the depot and told Scott I was done. The body
of mine. Darant had this uncle who owned a lawn
narrow stretch of line out in the Appalachian woods. He
called it a quiet place to clear your head. But
it wasn't a camp site, not really. There were four
of us, me, Darnt, Kyle, and Jen. We were all
about the same age, freshly out of high school and
floating through that strange in between space where nothing really
felt permanent. So when Darren suggested we kend off grid,
no phones, no distractions, it sounded perfect, like a little
reset before life caught up. That first day had a
certain kind of reckless joy to it. We were loud,
laughing too much, getting in each other's way while we
set up the tents. Dian Summer and how managed to
pitchers upside down at first, which she insisted was a
creative decision. We gathered a bunch of dry brunches from
the edge of the clearing, built a fire that smoked
more than it burned, and roasted hot dogs on sticks.
We barely cleaned. The smoke stuck to our clothes. Everything
tasted like ashen muster, and we didn't care. The woods
felt big, but not threatening, more like a massive green
back dropped our We can't get away. The second day,
everything felt a little off. It's sort of with something small.
I gone down to the creek that sliced across the
Propie to fill our water jug, maybe five minutes away.
Tops had already made the trip earlier that morning, so
I didn't even think about it, just took the trail
we'd warn in and came right back. Only when I
stepped into the clearing again. Something was missing. My tent gone,
just gone. I stopped at my tracks, blinking like maybe
I was looking at the wrong part of the clearing.
I paced around, checked behind trees, even retrace my steps
to the exact spot where I knew I'd set it up.
But there was nothing. No collapse fabric, no broken poles,
like it had never been there to begin with. At
first I thought someone was messing with me. I even yelled,
half laughing, half serious, calling out to the others. Darren
came out of his tent, rubbing his eyes. Jen looked confused.
Cale looked like he was trying not to grin. But
they all swore they hadn't touched it. They hadn't even
left the clearing. We split up, found out just a
little into the trees, calling and checking. Maybe it got
blown away, maybe a bear dragged it off, maybe who knows.
And then Kyle shouted one of those shop clipped yells
that cut through everything. We found it. My tent was
standing upright, perfectly, zipped about fifty yards deep into the woods,
not damaged, not dragged, just there, sitting like someone had
picked it up in one piece and walked it over.
Everything inside was exactly where I left it, even my
pillow still a little crumple from my eyed napped earlier.
We stared at it for a long time. Then someone
I think Jen, laughed, just a short, dry chuckle, a
kind of laugh that says, okay, that's word. But if
we pretend it's funny, maybe it wort freak us out.
We all sort of joined in, but nobody looked at
each other while we did. Nobody said what we were thinking,
because what were we supposed to say? That someone had
seen thing, moved a whole tent and set it up
like nothing happened. We dragged it back to the clearing,
set it down in the exact same spot. That night,
we stayed closer to the fire than we had before.
The conversation died up fast. We weren't tired, just not talkative.
Fire cracked and popped, sending smoke up into the trees.
The darkness fell closer than it had the night before,
not thick exactly, but heavy, like it was leaning in
to hear better. Then the log split. It made the
shop snapping noise like a gunshot, and I jumped up
to nudge back into the fire pit. I was still
crouching when I saw it, another chair right there in
the circle with us. It was a folding chair, thin metal,
framed with his faded burkeundy cushion that looked like it
belonged in a church basement or a school genasium. I froze,
looked at the others. Nobody said a word. They were
still dirring too. We hadn't brought it, No one had.
We didn't even own a chair like that. It was
just their position, like some one had been sitting in
it and gotten up for a second. Handle toward the flames, comfortable, intentional.
No one moved. I looked around, scanning the trees, listening nothing. Nothing,
not even when in the leaves the woods were dead, silent,
no bugs, no birds, just the low hiss of the
fire and the sound of my own breath getting faster.
I said we should leave right then, pack what we
could and make for the car, dark trail or not.
But they hesitated. Darren didn't want to risk getting lost.
Jen said we should wait for sunrise. Cow Kat glancing
at the chair like he was waiting for it to
do something. We argued in whispers, voices tied careful, like
raising them might wake something up. In the end, we stayed.
We didn't touch the chair, just sat there round the fire,
trying not to look at it, trying not to acknowledge
that we were sharing the circle with something we hadn't invited.
Eventually we drifted off to our tents, though none of
us really slept. I lay there in the dark, staring
at the tent ceiling, skin crawling. I felt watch, not
in the paranoid way, not like when your nervous in
your mind placed tricks on you. This was different, specific, focused, focused,
like someone was just outside the fabric, nearly, maybe breathing quietly.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I reached for
my backpack I always kept at zipschut right beside me.
I could crowd it without even sitting up, but it
wasn't there. I froze, sat up, slowly scanned the tent
with my flashlight empty, just my sleeping back and a
few crumpled clothes. A zipped the door and stepped out
into the clearing, the beam of my light jittering as
my hand shook. And there they were, all four of
our backcacks, found up neatly side by side, popped up
right against a tree, perfectly arranged. Each one's zip closed
facing the clearing, like they were waiting for inspection. My
mouth went dry. Behind me, I heard the other's tents
on zip. One by one they stepped out. None of
us spoke. We just stared at the rold backpacks, like
they'd somehow become sacred objects, like touching them would be
a mistake. Eventually Jen whispered, did someone, But she didn't
finish the sentence. We already knew the answer. We sat
up until dawn as red shoulders hunched, watching that tree
like it might do something else. When the sky finally
started to lighten, we didn't say much. We grabbed the
bare essentials, phones, wallets, car keys, left the rest. We
didn't even try to unpack the hence we just walked,
thated no brakes. The trail seemed longer than we remembered
the rout shopper, the slopes deeper. Nobody looked back. When
we hit the road and sold Darren's car part where
we left it, I nearly cried. The air felt different
on this side of the tree line, like it can
move again. We piled them without speaking, drove in silence
until we saw a gas station, and only then did
someone exhale. None of us ever went back. We don't
talk about it, not really, not even in group chats
or jokes. It's like saying it out loud might give
it permission. People love to tell stories about those mountains,
say they are old, old of the memory, that the
land remembers things people forget. Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't.
All I know is this. I left everything behind them,
walked away. That was the only thing I could do.
I was broke, bored and tired of what tever version
of life I've been living back home. So when a
friend of a friend mentioned they needed extra hands to
help map some land out in the middle of nowhere,
I didn't ask too many questions. The pay was solid,
and something about being unplugged for a couple months actually
sounded good. What I didn't realize then, what none of
us did, really, was that the deeper you go into
those woods, the less they start to feel like someplace
you're visiting, and the more they feel like something watching you.
Deciding whether or not you get to leave. The Hiken
took almost the whole day. We started early in the morning,
packs loaded up. Following to on. The crew lead along
a thin trail that barely existed. Every step took us
deeper into trees so thick they blocked the sun, until
it felt like we were walking through the inside of
a locked cabinet. No cell signal, no noise, no sign
of anyone else. It was beautiful in a way, but
not comforting, the kind of beauty that feels like it
doesn't care whether you were there or not. We finally
made camp on a flat ridge, just wide enough to
set up four tents around a little five pit Tom
had used on previous trips. The ridge gave us a
bit of space, but even then the forest pressed right
up against us, thick with pine and laurel. The trees
leaned into each other, and their roots twisted through the
soil like they were trying to claim every inch. When
you looked up, you could only see thin robbins of sky.
It was so quiet I kept catching myself holding my breath.
I didn't notice it at first, just this weird tension
that crept into my shoulders and never really left. I
kept expecting birds or bugs or anything, but there was nothing,
just us moving around, trying to act like it was normal.
The crew was small. Tom, who was maybe mimnus fifties,
had done jobs like this all over the country. He
was calm and efficient and always had a compass on
him like it was part of his body. The other
two guys, Illy and Mason, were around my age. Lee
was from Arkansas, lean and kind of wiry, always chewing
some fast seeds and talking about some girl he'd almost
proposed to. Mason was quajer, more thoughtful, kept a journal,
trynk in and coffee like it was religion. We didn't
know each other before the job, but out there we
didn't really have a choice. That first night around the fire,
Tom explained what we'd be doing, marking property, lined, flagging trees,
logging GPS coordinates. Pretty basic. The land didn't technically have
an owner, he said, some old boundary dispute maybe, or
forgotten paperwork. We weren't supposed to talk to anyone about it.
Just get the job done and head home. I remember
thinking that sounded a little shady, but honestly I didn't care.
It felt like something I could handle. Physical work, no bosses,
breathing done my neck, and no phone buzzing in my pocket.
For the first time in a while, I felt like
I could just exist. The first couple days were normal enough.
We woke curly eight oatmeal or granola bars, set up
with flagging tape and handheld GPS units. The work was repetitive.
Find a tree, flag it logged the point, move on
it gave me a rhythm, something to focus on. I
stopped thinking about anything outside the woods. Then things do
art to shift. It was off third morning when we
noticed the trail we'd cut the day before was off.
We'd spent I was hacking through a wall of laurel
tying red tape every ten yards or so to mock
a path. It was fresh, torn branches, footprints in soft dirt,
sweat soak shirts. But when we were traced it the
next morning, all of the tape was gone, not just
fallen off, gone, no scraps, no string left behind, no
knots on the trunks. The trail itself looked different, to
like it had been there for a long time, maybe years.
The branches we'd cut were weathered, our boot prints had faded.
The whole thing felt old. Tom squinted at the trees
and said, maybe wind had taken the tape, or maybe animals.
But his voice didn't match his words. He looked like
someone who didn't want to believe what he was seeing.
I remember Mason crouched by one of the trees we
flowed and ran his fingers over the bark. This isn't
just a couple hours of her growth, he said, quietly,
This looks heeled. Nobody replied. We kept working, but from
that point on something was different between us. We stopped
talking as much during the day. The jukes faded Evenly,
who never shut up, stirred a keeping to himself. I
caught him chewing on sun far seats one afternoon and
just staring off into the trees, like he was listening
to something none of us could hear. Then met it moved.
We just finished a long day surveying a low what
section of the forests. When we got back to camp,
the fire was still smoldering from the morning, and everything
looked in touch except my tent. It had been shifted
a few feet closer to the fire pit, not dragged
or half collapsed like you'd expect if someone pulled it,
just moved neat precise, like it had always been there.
I looked at the ground around it, no drug marks,
no footprints. The dirt underneath was unsturbed. It made no sense.
Asked the others if they'd moved it. Tom said no.
Mason shook his head. They just gave me this look
like he wanted me to drop it. That night, I
lay awake staring at the top of the tent. I
kept thinking about how careful the move had been, like
someone or something wanted to send a message, but didn't
want to scare me off. Not yet. After that, none
of us really slept well. Tom admitted one morning over
brent coffee that he'd heard something walking around the camp
at night. Not animals, he said, not twigs napping or rustling.
First steps, slow, deliberate, he said. They circled the camp
just beyond the firelight, and when he called out, they'd stop,
then they'd start again from the opposite side. The next night,
I stayed up to see if I could hear it too.
Around midnight, I caught it. Crunched, crunch, long pauses, the
sound of someone walking slowly, like they were testing each step.
It started to the left of the camp, near Mason's tent,
then nothing for a while, then again, this time behind me.
I sat up parpounding, I wanted to believe it was
one of the guys taking a leak, maybe stretching their legs,
but I knew it wasn't. The steps were too slow,
too purposeful. I whispered hello, no answer, just silence so
thick I could hear my own breath. Then, right when
I started to convince myself i'd imagined it, I heard
the steps again, coming from the opposite side, like whoever
or whatever it was had moved around the entire circle
of tents without making a sound. I didn't sleep after that.
By the second to last week, the job didn't feel
like a job any more. It felt like we were
just trying to make a three stay without breaking apart.
The four est felt heavier, like it had thickener round us,
Distances stretched longer than they should have. Landmarks changed slightly
from one day to the necks pasts we walked the
day before looked unfamiliar. Then came the hollow. It was
narrow and him by steep hills and pat with thick trees.
We were flagging trees as usual. When I noticed Tom
wasn't with us, I figured he'd lagged behind, so I
picked up a pacee to Catchually a Mason at the ridge.
When I got there, Tom was already standing at the top.
He looked normal, maybe a little tired. He nodded at
me like nothing was wrong. Then I heard him call
my name from the hollow behind me. My stomach dropped.
It wasn't just similar. It was Tom voice, the exact
way he said my name when he needed help. Same pitch,
same rhythm, same slight rasp. He called again, closer. This
time I turned to look nothing but trees. The Tom
in front of me looked just as confused as I felt.
He said my name quietly and took a step back.
That was it for us. We didn't wait another night
at Haawn. We broke KEMP, left, the flag paths, the
GPS logs, even some of our gear. None of it mattered.
We just carried what we needed to make it out alive.
The forest had tolerated us for a while, but that
day we all felt it shift. My cousin Red had
just inherited a chunk of who had lanned out in
a place called Blue Hollow, just acres of untouched trees
and undergrowth, sitting there like they had been waiting to
be left alone. Rit said he thought he could make
something out of it, just the two of us, a
couple of machetes, some beer, and enough gear to rough
it for a few nights. It was early October when
I made the drive out. I remember because the trees
were just starting to change color and the roads were
scattered with orange leaves. The stopped to my win short wipers.
I spent six hours on highways, then another iro or more,
winding through smaller county rows that terraned to gravel and
then eventually to dirt. The last few miles did not
even look like a road. It looked more like the
remains of a creek bed that had dried up just
long enough to form my ties into thinking it was safe.
I lost our service a while before the last gas station,
and Maggips gave up completely not long after that. I
had to go off Reed's directions. After there, ridden out
behind on a receipt, and somehow I still made it.
He was already there when I arrived, sitting on the
hood of his beat up Dodge with his bootsap and
a beer in his hand. His window was down and
he was chewing some of our seats like he always
did when he was killing time. He tossed me a
beer before I had even turned off the engine and said,
you ready to disappear off the grid. The first day
was actually kind of gray. We started clearing just past noon.
The machete sliced through the undergrowth with the satisfying rhythm,
and the deeper we got, the quiet of the world
seemed to become. No traffic, no phones, no people, just
the sound of laid on vine and the occasional coal
of birds overhead. We made it maybe half a mile
before the lights started fading, and we picked a spot
near a shallow stream to set up camp. No tents,
just tops, sleeping bags and a small camp stove. We
heated up cans of chili, drunk warm beer, and spent
the evenings swapping dumb stores from high school that neither
of us had told in years. Reed was always the
kind of guy who could laugh with his whole chest.
That night he laughs her hard. He nearly dropped his
chili in the dirt. We were exhausted, but in a
good way, the kind of tire that comes from doing
something real with your body. That night he snowed like
a chainsaw while I lay in my sleeping bag, stirring
up at the sky so black and full of stars
it looked fake. The next day started early. We ate
granola bars and drank ins and coffee that tasted like
campfire ashes, then got back to work. The sun was
bright and the air had the crispage that only happened
right before everything turns truly cold. A couple I was
in Reid stopped swinging and pointed off to the side
of the trail. You see that, he asked. At first,
I thought it was a pile of sticks made a
fallen lock. But as we got closer it became clear
what it really was, or at least what it had been,
a deer, or what was left of one. But it
did not look natural. There was no blood, no torn flesh.
The skin had been peeled back like a jacket, clean
and intact, as if someone had made a single, precise
cut and just pulled. The ribs were bare, pick clean,
but nothing had been chewed, no bite marks, no torn ligaments.
It looked dry, almost old, but it had not been
there lawn. The grass underneath it was still pressed down coodies,
Reeds said, but his voice did not match the word.
There were no tracks around it, no drab marks, no
signs of a struggle, just the two of us standing
there and our own beaut prints leaving in and out.
We moved on, but the silence between us got heavier.
Maybe an aile later, we came across a patch of
forests that just fell wrong, like it did not match
the rest. A dozen trees, maybe more, each with a
thick black ring burned into the trunket exactly the same height,
about waste level. The rings were perfect smooth, too smooth.
But there was no sign of fire anywhere else, No
scorch branches, no ash, no smell. The moss that grew
along the buck did not seem touched, only that when
spot on each trunk, like someone had leaped a branding
iron around them. I said, I've never seen far do that.
Breed did not answer. He just kept walking. That night,
we did not build a fire. He told me not to,
said the smoke might draw Attentionine maybe a ranger, maybe
someone with a drone. But the look on his face
had something different, like he did not want to risk
lighting anything up not here. We ate cold beans out
of the kin and barely spoke. Around midnight, I woke
up frinched in sweat, My sleeping bag felt like a furnace,
but the air outside was cold, freezing even. I could
not hear anything. No owls, no wind, no bugs, just
this dead, crushing stillness that felt heavier than silence. I
opened my eyes and knew immediately something was off. I
did not hear anything move, no brunches snapping, no animals rustling.
But I had that feeling, deep and solid in my
gut that some one was watching me. I stayed perfectly still,
barely breathing. Then I unzipped the side of my top
just a few inches and looked out. Reed's top was empty.
I whispered his name. No response. I slipped up barefoot
and clicked on my flashlight, aiming it low. That's when
I saw him. He was standing at the edge of
the clearing, maybe fifty feet away, perfectly still facing me.
His arms hung at his side, like he did not
know what to do with them. I whispered his name again.
He did not answer, did not move. Then he took
a step back, then another. He did not turn, did
not stumble. He just started walking backward, one careful step
at a time, retreating into the shadows between the trees,
like something was pulling him on invisible strings. I did
not move. I stayed rooted in place until the sun
started rising. He never came back. I packed everything that
morning except his top. I could not bring myself to
touch it. It did not feel like it belonged to
him any more. I tried to follow the trail we
had clear, but nothing looked right. The turn were off,
the landscape did not match what I remembered. Every time
I checked my compass, it pointed somewhere different. I passed
those burned rim trees again twice, even though I was
walking in the opposite direction. It was like the woods
were folding in on themselves or shuffling when I was
not looking. By midday, I was out of order. My
lips were cracked, my legs were screaming. I sat down
on a flat rock and pulled up my phone, even
though I knew it would not help. And then I
heard his voice behind me, Hey man, you good. I froze.
Then from my left, trails clear this way. Then from
my right, don't get turned around, same voice, same tone,
palm like he was still standing a grinning at me
with a bier in his hand. But it was not him.
It sounded like someone had learned how to wear his
voice like it had been listening and decided to try
it on. I shut my eyes and counted to one hundred.
It slow. When I opened them, everything was quiet again.
I did not look back. I just picked a direction,
any direction, and walked. Eventually I heard a hum in
the distance, a generator, faint but real. I followed it
like a lifeline. I stumbled out of the wood some
time in the late afternoon and collapsed outside a ranger's station.
They were at my feet, gave me water, called me lucky.
I told them my cousin wandered off. They said they
would send someone to check, but did not find anything.
The three of us had spent most of our lives
in the foothills around that area. Camping trips were as
normal as grabbing a bouger after skull or sneaking into
old drive in lots to hang out. We weren't survivalists,
but we knew our way around the woods, or at
least we thought we did. That sense of confidence maybe
arrogance is probably were goddess in trouble. We done weekend
hikes and a few multi day trips, always sticking to
mort trails. We were always near enough to civilization that
if something went sideways, we could find our way out.
But that summer something shifted. We wanted more of a challenge.
We wanted to go offskirt, so we planned a three
day trek, cutting straight off the standard route into the
deep woods. No signage, no mapped campsites, no rescue markers,
just the three of us, our packs, and the assumption
we be back by Sunday night. We told our parents
the basics where we were starting and when we check in.
We brushed off the half hearted warnings with the kind
of casual bravado only teenages can get away with. The
first day felt like freedom forrests swallowed the trail behind us.
Within minutes, everything felt bigger. Once we left the marked path,
heels were steeper, brushed, thicker trees, and dense uneven clusters.
It felt and touched wild in a way I hadn't
experienced before. Every so often we stopped and stood day listening.
It was exhausting, but in a good way, like we
were earning something. By the time the sun dip below
the hills, we were ready to stop. We found the
small clearing beside a narrow creek set up our tents
and got a small fire going. The ground was damp
and a little spongy under our sleeping paths, but we
were too tired to care. That first night should have
felt peaceful. The running water had that soft, steady sound
that usually knocks me right out. But I couldn't shake
a sense that the woods were a little too quiet,
not silent, just watchful, like there was weight behin hind
the stillness. Nothing I could explain, just a low level
on each Sitting in my chest while collecting fireward, I
wanted a bit farther outstream and noticed something weird. There
was a tree, wide and old, looking just past the bank.
His bark had been gouged in a spiral pattern. Deep
cuts went and upward, and clean, almost rhythmic lines, not fresh,
but not weathered either. They were deep enough that I
could press my fingers into them without touching bark on
the other side. It didn't look like natural damage, not
like anything I'd seen before. I caldily in Marcus over.
They shrugged and said, probably a bear. He sounded unconcerned.
Marcus glance then turned back to the fire. Bear climbed up.
That's all. He tossed over his shoulder. I wanted to
accept that I really did. But I'd seen bare mockings before, jagged, rough, chaotic.
These were sharpened, deliberate too. Even I stared at those
grooves longer than I probably should have, then forced myself
to walk away. The next morning, things started to feel off.
We worked to find our gear, slightly re arranged, nothing dramatic,
no torn packs on missing supplies, But our stuff wasn't
where we'd left it. My sleeping bag was on zipped haffy,
even though I remembered closing it tight before crashing. Lee's
pack was tilted on its side, with the top flap open.
Marcus found his water felter taken out and sat neatly
beside the stove gate. All the zippers opened and closed,
nothing missing. Even the grand olla bars in an outside
pouch was still there. It was like some one or
something had gone through our things and put them back.
Accoons rely mumbled, but without conviction. Raccoons don't open zippers
and close them again. I said, I wasn't trying to
be dramatic, just stating a fact. No one argued. No
one wanted to. We packed quickly and kept going, heading
deeper into the hills. At first, the trail, or what
we thought was a trail, seemed to lead somewhere, but
the terrain became unpredictable, steep ridges, sudden drops, thorny underbrush
that hadn't been disturbed in years. There were no signs
of other hikers, no footprints, no war dun logs, no
broken branches to follow. At one point we passed a
crooked birch tree with a split right down the middle.
Nothing special, just one of those weird looking trees that
sticks in your memory. We crossed it and moved on.
About an hour later we passed it again, same split,
same not on the left side. None of us said
anything at first. Then Marcus muttered we must be looping
and picked up the pace. That should have calmed me down.
Maybe we turned around without realizing it, but his face
told a different story. He looked pale and tight lipped.
He kept looking over his shoulder like he was trying
to spot someone behind us. That night, we didn't talk much.
We built a bigger fire and sat closer to it
than usual. No one said we were scared. We just were.
Some time after midnight, I woke cold, heart pounding, with
no idea why the fire had burned down to glowing coals.
I lay still, trying to figure out what had stuttled me,
And then I heard it. Footsteps, slow, measured, crunching just
beyond the light. Not rushing, not hiding, walking, pacing, like
someone was circling us. Not a deer, not a bear,
not anything trying to avoid detection. I sat up quietly
and whispered Marx's name. The second I spoke, the footsteps stomped.
Everything went still, not just quiet, dead still light. The
forest had exhaled and decided to hold its breath. I
didn't leave the tent. I couldn't. I sat there, frozen, listening.
My body was tense, palms damp, chest height. I stayed
that way until I must have passed out from exhaustion.
Next morning, Marks looked like he hadn't slept at all.
He said he dreamed some one kneeling at the foot
of his sleeping bag, tugging gently at his boots. We
tried to laugh it off, but when he went to
tie them, the laces were already and done. He swore
up and down. He tied them tight before bear. We
didn't jerk. After that, we all agreed, without really saying it,
that we needed to get out, head back, find the trail,
follow the sun if we had to. But every path
we took lead as deeper ridges dropped into hollows identical
to once we'd already crossed. We found the crook could
birch a third time, then a fourth. By late afternoon,
we stumbled into a clearing. None of us recognized. It
was wide open and too quiet. In the middle sat
a perfect ring of stones, maybe ten feet across, not
jagged or random, smooth uniform fitted together like someone had
spent serious time arranging them. Inside the circle, the dirt
was bare, no grass, no leaves, no twigs, just smooth
swept earth. We didn't go near it. None of us
said a word. We turned away and picked the direction
at random, walking as fast as we could. That night,
we didn't bother with the fire. We sat huddled in
the dark, backs to each other, listening to every shift
in the rush. Then the footsteps came back, same pace,
same rhythm, just outside the reach of our headlamps, circling
us in wide, deliberate loops, never coming closer, never backing away. Tyler,
who hadn't said much all day, was shaking. I could
hear his teeth click. Marcus breathed fast, hands clenched in
his lap. I didn't even try to sleep, None of
us did. We waited for the sunlight. It was a
life line. When morning finally came, we started walking, no plan,
just kept moving after what felt like IROs. I saw
thin slushes of lighthead through the trees, a strip of
asphalt the highway. None of us here. No one said
a word. We walked faster until we reached the edge
and stepped on to the shoulder. Gravel under our boots
never felt so solid. That was enough. I haven't been
back since, I haven't camped, and I haven't hiked beyond
where I can see the road. I was nineteen when
it happened. MICUs and Maddox had asked me to help
him check on this old hunting cabin. He kept up
past the last switchback, deep in the hills outside of
Graver Hollow. We loaded up his truck with what we needed, flashlights, food,
sleeping bags, a couple of rifles we didn't expect to use,
just precaution. Maddocks had been saying for a while that
he wanted to check for squatters or storm damage, basically
make sure the place hadn't been overrun by raccoons or teenagers.
We took the dirt road until the trees thickened and
narrowed the sky to a sliver. After that we hiked
the trail, went through steep switchbacks and shady ridge lions,
chewing up the afternoon faster than we planned. At first,
it was easy. We joked about mountain lions, old hermits,
and what we do if the cabin had somehow fallen
through the earth. Dumb stuff to pass the time. But
as the trees closed and then the path cut loser underfoot,
more rocks, more sliding dirt, the talking stopped. You know
how it goes. The deeper you get into woods that
don't care if you're there, the more you go quiet
without thinking about it. The cabin was still standing somehow,
It looked like something that had held its breath through
decades of weather and forgotten seasons. One shutter clung to
the frame like it was afraid of falling. The door
hung half open, not broken exactly, but not fully closed either.
Maddock circled around back to check the hunting blind in
the foundation, and I stepped inside same as I remembered,
same smell of old smote that never fully left the wood,
same caught against the wall, worn through in the middle,
same kettle on the table, stained and dented like someone
had once tried to clean it and gave up pathway through.
Cobwebs in the corners, dust on the windows. I brushed
off the cot more out of muscle memory than intention.
Everything inside felt still, too still. I heard a creek
near the stove and told myself it was the wind.
Something scrouching faintly under the floor. Mice, definitely mice. Maddock
mumbled something from outside, maybe talking to himself, maybe talking
to me. Hard to tell. We sat down our packs
and ate with the kind of silent urgency that means
you want to get through the meal and move on.
No camp fire, just dry bites and a shaved flask
of water. Then came the part I still can't explain.
I heard Maddox's boots on two sides of the cabin
at the same time. At first I thought I was
misjudging the direction, maybe sound was bouncing weird off the trees.
But it wasn't just the footsteps. I heard him muttering,
same cadence, same rhythm, same words, but the voice was
coming from behind the cabin and also from the front steps,
like some one had taken a recording of him and
was playing it just out of sink. The version from
the steps was a half beat behind, too precise, too slow,
like it was trying to copy him but didn't quite
understand timing. I stood there, listening, waiting for the echo
to fade or for it to resolve into something normal,
but it didn't. I went to the door, tried to
keep my voice easy. You good, I called out, Yeah,
just checking, he said from behind the cabin, But the
voice in the front steps kept going saying the same thing,
matching his tone exactly, and there was no one standing there,
just the porch and the dirt trail. Maddox came back
around a minute later. I looked at him, he looked
at me. Neither of us made a joke. That's when
I started feeling it. That's low crawling awareness that something
was off, but not in the way you can name,
like the cabin was holding its breath waiting for us
to acknowledge it. We didn't. We just moved through the
tasks like we were supposed to be there. We shut
the door tight, closed the leaming shutter as best we could,
stuck somewhat, checked the corners, but I avoided the porch.
It felt like standing on it meant something. Something. Night
came heavy in full, the kind of settles on your
shoulders and makes every noise shopper. We turned off the
flashlights and laid down rifles, clothes. Neither of us really slept.
At some point I must have dozed, because the next
clear thing I remember was waking up to Maddock's voice
calling my name from outside, drawn out, playful, just loud
enough to be heard the way he says it when
he's being a smart us. But he was right there
next to me, still breathing, so and steady. I reached down,
touched his arm and shook him awake. He blinked, looked
at me, and then we both heard it again, his
own voice from the front steps, calling my name, steady, patient.
It didn't sound scare or angry, just expectant. We jumped up,
grab the rifles, turned on every flashlight we had, and
opened the door. There was nothing there. The sound moved
as we stepped out, just a little deeper into the trees,
like it was backing away. Keeping just out of reach.
It called again, same voice, same cadence, like it knew us,
like it was waiting. We didn't follow. We slammed the
door shut, voyaged a chair under the knob, and waited
out the night. No sleep, just the slow grind of
time and the occasional shifting of whit as something warped
the perimeter. At dawn, the world looked wrong, not scary,
just too calm. Then we saw the ground around the cabin.
The earth was marked wide, dragging lines, not prints, not tracks,
just deep skyers, almost circular, like something heavy had moved
around the building, over and over. Not a raccoon, not
a bear. Nothing I've ever seen moves like that. We
didn't talk much on the way back. I think we
were both afraid saying anything out loud would make it
more real. By the time we reached the track, it
felt like the trail had rearranged itself. I kept looking
over my shoulder. Maddox kept his hand near the rifle
the whole time. He never went back to the cabin.
He got married that winter, started a new job, sold
the truck A few months later. When I asked him
about that night, he shrug and changed the subject, but
I know he remembers because I do, and I still
hear the voice, sometimes, not often, just now and then.
I'll be walking near trees, nothing deep, just some part trail,
or behind an apartment complex, and now hear Maddock's voice
calling my name in that same rhythm, slow, familiar, patient,
And there's never any one there. I started wearing ear
but's carrying a flask light even in daylight, by time
my steps, so there's no gap, no rhythm for something
else to match. I didn't tell my cousin. I still
hear it. What would be the point. We don't talk
about the cabin any more. It's still there, probably still
leaning in the trees, still waiting. People have asked me
about the story. When I've told little pieces of it,
they'll laugh, or they say it sounds like something I
made up. A friend once told me I should turn
it into a short film. But I'm not telling it
for entertainment. I'm telling it because whatever that was, it
knew how to sound like someone I trust, exactly like him,
not close, not similar, exactly. It didn't try to trick
me in a flashy way. It didn't knock or rattle
or howl. It just waited. They called me by name
and waited for me to come to it. And I
wonder all the time what would have happened if I
had stepped on to the porch, if I followed the
voice just a few paces into the trees. I was
twenty when I picked up a summer job working for
this land survey outfit that specialized in forgotten properties, all
plots bearrowed deep in the Appalachian backwards. My main task
was the hike to remote boundaries, half of which hadn't
been checked in decades. Big co ordinates, snap a few photos,
and move on. The company was small base out of
a town no one's ever heard of, Wickler, I think,
And the guy who hired me was the kind who
you didn't talk much. He just handed over field assignments
with a staple print out and a nod. I didn't mind.
I liked the quiet, like that. I was paid decent
money to wander around places so overgrown they barely remember
people existed. That sense of being the first person in years,
maybe decades, to walk through a patch of land. It
had a strange pull to it. That morning I left
before sunrise. I drove up past the last gas station,
through two towns with more bordered windows than open ones.
The paved road faded to gravel and eventually graveled to dirt,
weaving between hills that grew steeper and more claustrophobic than
far that I went. By the time the track ended,
I was deep enough in that even the GPS signal flickered.
I pot the truck at a little clearing that had
clearly been used before, flat enough for tires, some sun
bleach to beer cans in the wheeze, and locked it
up behind me. The assignment was simple. I had to
follow a narrow creek listed as Little Weaver Branch on
the top a map for about three miles. At the
end point there was supposed to be an old iron
boundary marker set back from the water photograph. It logged
the coordinates and head back. They told me there were
no standing structures out there, no cabins, no maintain trails,
pure forests, the kind of place even hunters had stopped
going a long time ago. I started off in a
good mood. Weather was decent, hack wasn't too heavy, and
I liked having the creek as a natural guide. It
ran along my left As I moved a pill on east,
the girdlings found a weed comfort. I remember the trees
feeling dense, but not oppressive, at least not yet. I
walked for maybe an ire, stopping here and there check
the map and make sure I hadn't feared, of course,
But then something about the creek caught my attention. It's
hard to explain, but the floe looked from like the
current was sinking with my movement. The faster I walked,
the faster, it rushed. When I slowed down, it almost lack.
I told myself it was just an illusion. Maybe my
eyes were plain tricks, or the tray made it seem
that way. Still, I pulled out my compass to double check.
The needle wobbled, not in the steady spin, not broken,
but twitching. It danced in place like it couldn't pick
a direction. I set it down on a rock, thinking
maybe my body was interfering, but no luck. It kept quivering.
I figured maybe there was iron in the soil or something.
Mountains do weird things to magnetic fields, right. I pushed on,
telling myself i'd be at the mocker soon. Then I
saw the first tree. It sid just off the creek
buck clicking in gray strips. At first, I thought some
one had carved initials, maybe left a message. But as
I got closer, I saw they were just talers, straight
vertical lines, not grouped in fives like you'd expect, just
scattered up the trunk in no real pattern. Some of
them were shallow and old, faded into the bark, but
others were fresh top sat still wet round the edges.
It unsettled me, not because they were there, but because
of how deliberate they look. There wasn't anything random about it.
Some one had been keeping count of what I didn't
want to guess. I kept walking, maybe a hundred feet
and saw another tree, same marks, but more of them.
Then another tree was even more. They felt like following
some one's ongoing count, moving deeper into the woods. With
every stroke of the knife, the f started to feel
thicket like it clung to me. I shooged it off,
told myself to focus a gun who fought to turn
back without finishing the job. My feet started hitting patches
of ground that felt soft in the wrong way, like
I was walking on hidden layers. And then the land
dipped again, deeper than the map suggested I should have
been on a gentle slope, but instead I found myself
stepping down into a hall. That's when I saw the rocks.
They were sticking out of the ground like broken teeth,
arranged in a square, roughen and even, but too symmetrical
to be natural. At first I thought they were just
old stones, maybe a collapsed wall. But the closer I looked,
the more it resembled the outline of a foundation. Whatever
had stood there was long gone, no wood, no metal,
but the shape remained. Then I saw the boots. Inside
the stone square. Lined up side by side, were four
pairs of boots, warm weather beaten but operate. They were
randomly dump or scattered. They were placed there carefully to his,
all pointing forward, like some one had arranged them. I
stared for too long before I realized there were more
behind me, half buried in dead leaves. I spotted a
child's size pair further back, others big or smaller, different styles,
but all similarly aged, not fresh, but also not rotted,
the way leather usually gets after years. Outside, my scalp prickled,
the kind of unease that creeps and slow but doesn't
let go. I backed away, not sure what I was
walking through any more, but I couldn't leave yet I
hadn't found the marker. I turned to follow the creek again,
though at that point I wasn't entirely sure I was
even walking in the same direction. The trees had shifted.
I recognized the fallen look I'd passed earlier, only now
it was split down the middle, a break I swore
hadn't been there before. My map might as well have
been a napkin sketch. None of it matched what I
was seeing. Then, just as I was about to turn around,
I saw a roof line through the trees. A cabin
not marked in the map, not mentioned in the job notes.
It leaned slightly to one side, the boards dark with
age and rain, No windows, just two squirre holes where
they probably used to be. No door either, just a frame,
No sign of smoke or human life. I should have
walked away. Every part of me knew better, but a
step closer, I called out just a simple Helloa, and
felt ridiculous when my voice I could too loud. Nothing answered,
No birds, no bugs, not even the creek. The floor
creaked as I stepped in, but it held. The smell
hit me instantly. Dam board meled you, something faintly metallic.
The floor was covered in clothing, not just a shirt
or two piles, layers, folded jackets, trousses slumped in corners,
oldcoats hanging limply off nails, none of them modern wool vests,
clay patterns, high collars, stuff you'd see in black and
white photos from fifty years ago. I felt like I
was walking into a closetfrozen in time. Then I saw
the names. They were carved into the walls, knot scrupled,
carved deep, deliberate first names, mostly some repeated two or
three times, some unfinished, the night strokes cutting off mid letter,
hundreds of them. There was no space left on some boards.
I remember following the line of names with my eyes,
trying to figure out if there was a pattern, some
kind of lists. When I heard the faint a shift
behind me, and when I turned around, she was there,
standing in the doorway. I don't know how to describe
her without sounding crazy. She looked like a woman, tall,
pale dress, lawn baque hanging straight down, but she didn't
seem real. She didn't move, didn't speak, just tilted her
head slightly like she was listening for something. Her arms
hung loosely, palms facing me. There was nothing frittening in
her posture that somehow made it worse. My whole body
locked up. I didn't breathe didn't blink. I just stared.
Then something in me snapped and I bolted. I ran
straight through the doorway past her, half expecting to feel
cold fingers brushed my skin, but there was nothing, just
a tree swallowing me again. I crossed through branches, tripped
over roots, scraped my arms and face, but I didn't stop.
I kept my ears trained, and the sound of the
creek the only god I trusted any more. The compass
on my chest bounced wildly, the needle spinning out, like
it had given up trying. After what felt like I
os but was probably minutes, I broke through the tree
line and stumbled into the clearing. My truck was still there,
same as I left it, some like glinting off the hood,
like it belonged to a different world. I threw my
pack into the bed and didn't bother checking what fell out.
My hands were shaking so bad I dropped the keys
the first time, put them in a second try, and
peeled out so fast I let the trail of just
behind me. It took ten minutes of climbing a ridge
before my throne buzzed back to life. One bar enough,
I called the office and told them I was done,
didn't care about the money, didn't want another assignment. I
didn't give them an explanation, just hung up and kept
driving Joan up. My cousin had this idea that summer
something bigger than our usual hikes. He wanted to push
deeper into the Appalation back country than either of us
had ever gone, like really deep past them maintained trails,
past the spots with cairns or old blaze marks past
even war hunters usually bothered to room. That was just Jonah.
He was always chasing something unspoken, like the age of
a map. Wasn't just a limit, it was a challenge.
I was more of a nowhere or an next meal
in shower a kind of guy. But I went with him.
I usually did. Maybe it was the way he talked
about it, or maybe I just didn't want to be
the guy who said no one then heard he got
lost at there alone. We planned for three nights, packed freeze,
ride meals, water, filters, a compact stove, a weather proof tent.
I brought a GPS looker, a little device about the
size of a match books that maps your trail as
you go. It had this feature where you could review
the route on a tiny screen oplug it into your
laptop later to overlay it on a map. I used
it before, never failed me. The morning we set out,
the ranger at the check and station barely looked up
from his crossword. We filled in the log book sind
our names. Just before we left, another ranger, older guy,
deeply sunburnt nose, smelled faintly of tobacco, looked over and said,
not really loud he boys be clamed no map bottles
with He kind of smirked, but the tone was weird.
It stuck with me, Dome. He just grinned like someone
had paid him a compliment and walked out the door.
By noon, we'd left the last recognizable trail. The brush
closed and fast, and the forest started doing that thing
where feels like its closing ranks behind you. Dense stands
of hammock takets of road day that swallowed the sun.
We had to scramble up blue green spots weighed through
nee deep mud and others. It was slow going, but
Jonah didn't seem to mind. He said, that's how you
know it's real, when the land stops pretending to be convenient.
I started noticing at that first evening little things. A
tree at didn't match the elevation, moss growing in a
direction that didn't match the sun, a chunk of hillside
that looked recently disturbed, like a landslide had passed her
and then been erased. But I chalked it up to
being tired and sore. That always messes with your perception.
We set up camp at a hollow between two ridge lines,
nice spot plot grand They can be above a clear
little creek about thirty feet away for water. We made
a fire pit from some nearby rocks and had a
quiet dinner. No wildlife to speak of, no deer, no squirrels,
not even a raccoon trying to raid our packs. But
it didn't feel empty, just restrained. That night, I woke
up all at once, you know, that sudden, bone deep alertness,
No dreams, no tossing, just awake, and it took me
a second to realize what was wrong. Silence, not just
the absence of noise, the kind of silence that presses
on your ears, like your underwater or in a vacuum.
No crickets, no breeze, no waters sounds from the creek.
It was like the walls had been muted. I sat
up slowly, blanketpoltide. I was its wedding. I was freezing,
which didn't make sense. Summer in those mountains is humid, warm,
even at night. But the colts clung to me, sharp
and dry. Jono was still out. I could hear him breathing.
Iron zipped the tent as quietly as I could and
stepped outside. The air had that heavy pre thunder storm stillness,
but there were no clouds. I looked around the camp,
just trying to reassure myself everything was where we left it,
and that's when I saw it. The tree line had shifted.
I didn't even realize it at first. I was looking
at the poplar that had been on our east side earlier,
only now it was behind the tent on the west.
A clump of saplings I remembered near the fire, big gone,
and the fire pit itself. It wasn't right. The rocks
were scattered, no hush, no charred would just to stir dirt,
like we haven't built anything at all. I reached for
my phone, hoping to check the time dead. No response,
not even the low battery screen. I clicked the power
button a few times, then held it down. Nothing. I
walked over to where the creek had been. No sound,
no shimmer of water through the trees. When I got there,
the bet was dry, not damp, not reduced try. The
rocks were dry, the leaves and touched. It looked like
water hadn't touched the ground in years. I turned to
go back, and then I saw it. A pale light
was seeping up from the forest floor. Not moonlight, not
even close. It was low and cold, and it pulled
in weird places, like water might if the ground dipped
in odd ways. It moved, not flickering, not swaying, moving
like it was alive, sliding around the roots and trunks,
careful not to be seen too quickly. The air began
to vibrate. I could feel it in my teeth, this
low broken from layer under a high pitched wine. It
reminded me of an old engine trying to turn over
after sitting in it garage for a decade. I backed
up toward the tent, but something shifted in the glow,
a shape. I stopped moving. It was tall, really tall,
lank kap, but not like a human. Its proportions were
off too long in some places, too short in others.
And it didn't walk. It hitched like it was jerking
forward in tiny bursts every time it moved the light
around it walked lightly. I didn't think. I just turned
and ran up the slope, except the slope wasn't there.
My foot went down on what should have been solid ground,
and it fell hard. Only I didn't hit anything, just
dropped like gravity had let go of me. Cold air
rushed past him. I couldn't breathe couldn't scream. My arms flailed,
but there was nothing to grab on to, and then nothing.
I woke up to the sound of my alarm. The
digital trip had set before bed. I was back in
the tent, wrapped in my sleeping bag. Jonas knowed beside me.
It filtered to the nilon. The creek was back rushing, cheerful, alive.
I got out, slowly, checking the camp, higher pit intact,
same rocks, blackened wood, even a bit of unburned marshmallow
on a stick. Everything looked untouched, except it wasn't. I
grabbed my GPS tracker and checked the overnight look. It
had been running just like I left it, but the
date told a different story, with starts between midnight and
free eh em like some one had turned it off
and on again and again. Then nothing, a blank spot,
three hours of missing data. I didn't say anything to Jerna.
I just walked down to the creek. That's where I
found the worst part. Right along the edge, parallel to
the water was a strip of bone, dry ground, perfectly straight,
maybe four feet wide. Leaves brittle, unbent, no moisture, no dew.
It was like something had been there, something massive, and
then disappeared. We packed up fast. Jonah didn't ask why,
he moved like he felt it too. We made it
back to the range of station by early evening. Didn't
say much on the hike out, just kept walking. I
thought maybe I was losing it, that it was some
kind of dream or hallucination, lack of sleep maybe. But
then the next morning, Jonah looked at me over breakfast
and said, hey, did you smell it? I just stared
at him. He rubbed his arms, made a face like
Bert marshmallows, sweet and kind of chemical. It was all
over my clothes when I woke up. He didn't know
I'd smelled it too. I hadn't told him. I'd washed
my shirt twice and still caught the scent. We never
went back, and that is the end. Thank you for listening,
and I will see you in the next one.