Speaker 1: My life had turned into one of those cliche country songs.
I was divorced, broke, unemployed, and annoyed at the world.
Five years down the drain with a woman I thought
I'd spent my life with, only to come home one
day to find her already packed and half way out
the door. The job loss came a month later, and
at that point I figured the universe was just trying
to kick me while I was down. I needed space.
No well meaning friends telling me to focus on myself
or find the silver lining. To hell with all of that.
I didn't want silver linings. I wanted silence. So when
I found a listing for an off grid cabin in
the Appalachian Mountains, it felt like the perfect escape. It
wasn't some cozy rental package with the hot tub and
a fire pit on airbeam be just a bare bones
cabin buried deep in the mountains. The description was short,
remote off grid cabin in the Appalachian Mountains, no service,
no electricity for those looking to truly disconnect, no reviews,
and the pictures were blurry, but it looked beautiful. I
didn't even have an exact location, just a general area
and a contact number. Normally I'd be wary of something
that vague, but at that point I didn't care. I
booked it for a full month. The guy who owned
the place was weirdly insistent that I couldn't drive there myself.
He said the trails were too easy to lose and
that GPS was useless that deep in the mountains. Instead,
he arranged for a local guide to take me up.
He made perfect sense. Mountain roads, rough terrain, the risk
of getting lost didn't seem that strange. I met the
guide at a run down general store about an hour
outside the nearest town. He was already waiting when I
pulled into the lot, standing beside an old ATV with
a trailer hitched to the back. The guy looked like
he'd been living in the woods his entire life. Try
picturing a stereotypical park ranger that's been doing his job
for a few years too long. That kind of guy,
you the renter, he asked. I nodded, toss my backpack
onto the trailer. That a veous He grunted and climbed
into the ATV get in. The ride up was rough
as hell. The trail was barely more than an overgrown deer,
full of sharp turns and sudden dips. After about an
hour of bouncing over rocks and weaving through dense tree cover,
we hit a clearing with no more roads. This is
where we walk, he said, already unloading my gear. I
stared at him. How far is the cabin? A few miles?
I cried to my bag, adjusted my jacket and followed
him into the trees. The hike took another hour, and
the deeper we went, the more I realized just how
far removed this place was. There truly was nothing here,
just solid forest pressing in from all sides. I expected
to hear birds, bugs, maybe a distant stream, But at
some point the woods got quiet, not in a normal way,
not in the peaceful, wow nature is so relaxing way,
I mean quiet. I noticed that the guide also hadn't
spoken in nearly half an hour. When the cabin finally
came into view, I exhaled. It was exactly what I wanted. Small, sturdy,
a simple two floor set up with a wood stove
and a creek near by for water, just me, the
trees and miles of untouched wilderness. The guide set down
my gear on the porch and adjusted his cap. You
will be fine, he said, finally breaking the silence. Long
as you don't wander too far. Then, without another word,
he turned and disappeared into the trees. The first few
nights were exactly what I needed. I woke up when
the sun came in through the windows, spent my days hiking, reading,
and just existing. I finally didn't have my ex wife's
lawyer blowing up my inbox. The first time I realized
how deep I really was in the mountains was on
the second night. I had stepped outside to do my
business and was hit with a kind of silence you
don't get in normal life. It wasn't just quiet, it
was absolute. At the time, I figured it was just
how the forest worked. I read once that predators moving
through an area could cause sudden silences. Probably just the
bear passing through, right, So I shrugged it off and
went to bed. By the fifth morning, I started noticing things.
It wasn't anything obvious at first, just the sense that
the landscape was slightly different. The bushes by the tree
line looked disturbed, like something had moved through them, probably deer,
plenty of them in the area. But as I walked over,
I saw the dirt was churned up, like something had
been digging or shuffling around. Further along, I found scratches
and a few trees deep ones. I ran my fingers
along the grooves. I had no idea what kind of
Mark's bare claws would leave, but I figured this must
have been a big one. That was the first time
I got that nagging feeling, that weird, got level discomfort,
that something was off, even if my brain was trying
to logic its way out of it. I pushed it down. Bears, deer,
mountain lions. This was the wilderness. If I was going
to start jumping at every broken branch and disturbed bush,
I was going to drive myself crazy. So I went
back inside, made coffee and told myself to stop being paranoid.
But for the rest of the day I couldn't shake it.
By the twelve day, I was feeling at home in
the cabin. It was still eerily quiet most of the time,
but I convinced myself that's just how it was out here.
I had been living off canned food and dried goods,
but I still had a good supply of vegetables, rice,
and seasonings. I figured i'd treat myself to cooking something hot,
a big pot of stew. I knew cooking food outside
was a gamble in the wilderness. Even with scent blockers,
it wasn't fool proof. If an animal got a whiff
of it, I'd probably lose the whole thing, But at
that point I didn't care. Worst case, I'd be out
of some food. So I built up the fire in
the stone ringed firepit, set up my cast iron pot,
and threw in everything I had. Let it simmer low
and slow, covered it with a heavy lid, and just
to be extra safe, wrapped the whole thing in a
scent neutralizing tarp. Then I went inside, stretched out in bed,
and fell asleep to the distant crackling of the fire.
The next morning, I stepped outside and the yard was
completely destroyed. At first, my brain couldn't even process what
I was looking at. The dirt had been torn up
in massive swaths, like something had been chlawing or shoving
at the ground. Chunks of earth had been thrown in long,
scattered arcs, as if something had raked through it with
oversized limbs. The bushes near the tree line were flattened,
smashed down into the soil. Some of them were uprooted completely,
lying in mangled piles with their roots exposed. Several small
trees were bented on natural angles, their barks scraped away
in places I had expected to find it gone obviously,
maybe the pot knocked over the food licked clean. Instead,
the pot was shattered, split into pieces, scattered across the yard.
Chunks of food were everywhere, rice, carrots, potatoes, smeared into
the dirt like something had deliberately flung them around. It
looked like someone had picked up the entire pot and
slammed it into the ground over and over. I stood
there a long time, gripping the railing of the porch,
trying to wrap my head around it. A bear would
have eaten the food, even a raccoon would have at
least picked through it. This felt like something had been angry,
like it hadn't been looking for food, but throwing a tantrum.
I swore under my breath and ran a hand through
my hair, feeling annoyance. Outweigh the unease. I had been careful,
and now I was down an entire meal and a
good cast iron pot. Great, I muttered, bending down to
scoop up some of the mess for the next hour.
I cleaned up, trying to convince myself it was just
some animal acting weird. I buried the ruined food deep
in the woods, scrubbed the yard down as best I could,
and sat on the porch as the sun sank below
the mountains. I wasn't scared exactly, just annoyed. The whole
thing fell like some bizarre prank, except there was no
one around here but me. Whatever had wrecked my yard,
throwing my food around and smashed my pot had done
it for no good reason, and now I was down
a solid meal and cooking equipment. I sat on the
porch for a while after dark, sipping from my flask,
staring out of the tree line. The night air was cool,
the forest stretching endlessly into blackness beyond the dim glow
of the cabin's lantern. I tried listening for anything. I
laughed dryly, shaking my head. That's when I thought I
spoke into the silence. Before finally heading inside, I bolted
the shutters, stoked the fire, and crawled into bed, still
smelling the faint scent of stew on my hands. And
then the noises started. It wasn't loud at first, just
a faint disturbance, something pressing into the earth outside the cabin,
a long, dragging sound. I lay completely still, eyes locked
on the ceiling, heartbeat, picking up another step, then another.
I wasn't just imagining it. Something was walking through my yard.
In all my nights i'd spent here, I had heard
nothing come this close to me. Yet the way to
the footsteps was deep, solid, not a small scavenger, something big.
I strained my ears trying to track its movement. It
wasn't the erratic rustling of a hungry animal. It wasn't
snuffling through the dirt looking for scraps. It was just walking.
I swallowed, forcing myself to stay calm. Of course, it
was back. Whatever wrecked my yard last night was properly
checking for more food. But there wasn't anything outside this time.
I smoked myself, rolling onto my side and pulling the
blanket up. Jokes on you. I closed my eyes, listening
as the footsteps circled the cabin closer, now, a slow,
steady crunch of something huge pressing into the soil. Then
for a long moment, there was nothing, so I fell asleep.
When the sun finally climbed over the mountains. I was
itching for answers. I grabbed my boots, stepped outside and
just stared for a second. There, pressed deep into the
damp soil, were tracks. At first I thought they were
hoof prints, maybe from a deer or an elk. But
as I crouched down, my stomach tightened. They were massive
and wrong, the spacing, the weight distribution. They weren't four legged.
Whatever left these tracks had been walking upright a bipedal.
I traced my fingers along the edge of one, feeling
the way the dirt had been compacted, Picturing the size
of the thing that could leave Prince this deep. My
head buzzed with static. No, that didn't make sense. I
stood up, scanning the yard, following the trail with my eyes.
They led from the tree line straight to the porch,
and then they stopped, like whatever made them had just disappeared.
That night, I didn't even try to sleep. I was
done pretending this was normal. Whatever had been coming to
my cabin wasn't just looking for food. It was looking
for me. So I stayed up, killed the fire early,
doused myself and sent blocker, and sat in the darkness,
knife in hand, waiting for it to come back. On
forty three am, the sound was distant, a rhythmic crunch
of heavy footsteps pressing into the dirt. I gripped the
knife tighter, barely breathing. It was back. The footsteps approached
the porch, and then wood groaned under an impossible weight.
Something was standing right outside. The floorboards creaked as slow
dragging in hail. It was breathing. I could feel the
weight of it through the walls, the pressure in the air,
like the whole cabin was shrinking around me. I'd planned
to peek through the window, maybe even step outside and
see what it was, but I wasn't so sure in
the moment, because whatever was standing on my porch wasn't
a deer or a bear or anything else that belonged
in these woods. It sounded huge. I stayed completely still,
every muscle locked, gripping the knife as hard as I could. Then,
just as suddenly as it had come left, the weight
pulled away from the porch, the footsteps retreating back toward
the trees. But I knew somehow that it wasn't really gone.
I was just waiting for the right moment. I didn't sleep,
I just sat there in the dark, staring at the door,
knowing that I had no way out of these mountains
until the guide came back. I should have grabbed my pack,
walked until sunrise and never looked back. But I was
too afraid of getting lost, so I made a plan.
I wouldn't try to fight it, I wouldn't try to
see it. I would just hide. The following night, I
did everything I could to raise myself. I doused myself
in scent blocker, rubbing it deep into my skin, my clothes,
my hair. I piled furniture in front of the bedroom door,
not that I thought it would help, but it made
me feel safer. Then, gripping the only weapon I had,
a rusted, hunted knife i'd found in the cabin, I
squeezed into the wardrobe and pulled the door shut. I
sat in the dark, knees to my chest, breath slow
and controlled, and then I waited. This time, it didn't
make me wait long, and midnight I heard it. It
let out a sound like a hyaena choking on its
own laughter, then a loud bang. The door downstairs shattered inward,
the whole cabin shaking from the impact. Heavy footsteps, wood splintering, furniture, shattering.
The thing wasn't so suching cautiously anymore. It was tearing
through the cabin, breaking things apart. As it moved, A
deep sniffing sound filled the air, dragging inhales like a
dog trying to catch a scent. I pressed myself deeper
into the closet, tightening my grip on the knife. The
sniffing stopped for a long moment. There was silence, then,
from just outside the bedroom, a heavy creak. It was
at the door. I held my breath. I wanted to
close my eyes, to squeeze them shut and pretend I
wasn't there, But some horrible part of me needed to
see it. So I shifted just slightly, just enough to
peer through the slats in the wardrobe door, and that's
when I saw it. It had a dock under the
door frame as it stepped inside, tarering easily eight feet tall.
Its body was a grotesque mixture of animals, as if
something had stitched it together from several different corpses. Its
arms were long, ending and disturbingly human like hands, except
the fingers were doubled, two sets of knuckles, each twisting
and crackling Its body was covered in thick, matted fur,
except for its torso, which was strangely bare. Pale, scarred
skin stretched tightly over its ribbed cage. A pair of
antlers curled from its skull, but they weren't symmetrical. One
was twisted, bent at the wrong angles, jotting out unnaturally.
Its jaw didn't match its face. The mouth was wide,
gaping too far, filled with teeth that didn't seem to
fit together. But it didn't seem to have any eyes,
or its eyes should have been. There were only patches
of dark, sunken skin. It was safe to assume that
it was blind, but that didn't seem to matter. It
sniffed the air, turning its massive head in slow jerking movements,
its breathing deep and uneven. It knew something was here,
and it was angry. It took another step forward, shifting
its weight on to the wooden floorboards. The scent blocker
was working, but I didn't know if it would be enough.
I stayed still, silent, I didn't breathe. For a moment.
I thought I was safe. Then it lunged, not toward me,
but toward everything else. It roared, slamming its fists into
the walls, a guttural, furious sound, frustration, twisting its movements
into wild, jerking violence. It ripped through the room, tearing
the bed apart, knocking over the dresser. I gritted my teeth,
trying not to flinch. Then its hands landed on the closet.
My breath hitched, the wardrobe shook. I pressed myself as
far back as I could, feeling the rough wooden panels
against my spine. The thing sniffed again, growled low in
its throat. Then it shoved the clauset over. I crashed
through the ground, tangled in wooden fabric, my knife slipping
from my fingers. For a single agonizing moment, I thought
this is it. But as I there frozen, waiting for
teeth and claws and death, I heard it shuffle and
then it left. I don't know how long I stayed there,
lying in the wreckage, staring at the ceiling, shaking so
hard I thought my ribs might crack. Eventually, the sun rose.
I was out of the cabin before the sun fully
broke over the horizon. No hesitation, no second guessing. I
didn't care about my supplies, my food, or the fact
that I still had weeks left before the guide was
supposed to come back. I just grabbed whatever I could carry,
my backpack, a flashlight, a knife, a bottle of water,
and I ran. I didn't look back. If I got lost,
so be it. It was better than waiting to get
kill ill by whatever that thing was. All I knew
was that I couldn't be there. When night fell again,
I tried to retrace my steps, following the same path
the guide had led me down almost two weeks ago.
But the deeper I went into the woods, the more
uncertain I became. Everything looked different. The trees felt denser,
closer together, the trunks pressing in around me. The light
filtering through the leaves felt dimmer than before. I tried
to focus, tried to match landmarks in my head, the
rock formation I'd passed that on the way in, that
fallen tree. Had it been on my left before or
my right? Doubt crept into my mind like rust. The
oppressive silence returned, and I thought back to that article
i'd read, how the entire forest goes silent when there's
a predator around. I wanted to believe it was an animal,
a bear, a deer, a goddamn crocodile, if that was
even possible, anything but what I knew it really was.
I wiped the sweat off my brow and kept moving.
For whatever reason, it never showed itself. During daytime. I
walked for hours, the sun climbing higher in the sky,
my legs burning from the effort, But no matter how
far I went, the feeling never left. I was still
being followed, not hunted in the way a predator goes
after prey. This was different. It was letting me tire out,
toying with me. All I saw were more trees and
behind me, just at the edge of my hearing that
awful sound. One moment, I was forcing my legs forward,
dragging my body through the thick forest, lungs burning with exhaustion.
The next, pure survival instinct took over. Branches whipped against
my arms, roots snatched at my boots. My breath came
and went, my vision blurred with sweat, and still the
feeling of being followed never left. The sun was lower now,
the trees stretching into elongated shadows, and just as I
thought I couldn't take another step, I saw it. The
break in the trees houses I stumbled forward, my body
moving before my brain could process what I was looking at.
A small village, old buildings, wooden storefronts, a few houses
tucked between them, a church, people rising in the distance.
It wasn't modern, not a row of houses with mailboxes
and street lights. This place felt old, weathered, like it
had been sitting here, untouched for decades. I didn't care
how strange it was, didn't care how it wasn't on
any map I had seen before. All I cared about
was that it was civilization. I had made it. I
was safe. Relief flooded me so hard I almost collapsed.
For the first time in hours, I felt something other
than sheer terror. I was out. I turned. I shouldn't have.
I should have kept walking, should have run straight into
that village, screaming for help. And that's when I saw it,
standing just beyond the tree line, motionless. The last light
of the sun stretched long across the dirt road, painting
the sky in shades of gold and deep violet. And
just as the final sliver of daylight dipped below the mountains,
it moved slowly. It got down to a crouching position,
like he was getting ready to run. The first building
I reached looked like an old general store. The wooden
sign above the door had long since faded, but I
didn't care what it was. I just needed to find someone.
I pushed through the door, the bell above jingling as
I nearly collapsed. Inside. The air was thick with the
smell of dust and aged wood, dim lantern light flickering
from the walls. A few people stood inside, men in
old work jackets, a woman behind the counter, a boy
sitting on the stool near the stove. They all turned
at the same time. Their expressions were blank, not surprised
or alarmed, but definitely curious. I gasped, trying to catch
my breath. My throat felt raw, my lungs burned. I
must have looked insane, covered in sweat and dirt, shaking
like I just crawled out of a grave. I tried
to speak, but my voice cracked. I I need help,
I managed, gripping the door frame. Something's out there in
the woods. They said nothing. No, what are you talking about? No?
Slow down, son, No, that sounds crazy. Just silence. Then,
after a long pause, the woman behind the counter stepped forward.
She didn't even ask what I'd seen. She just looked
me dead in the eye and asked, calmly, carefully, did
it follow you