The soft hush of my breath hisses past my ears, like the gentle press of wind that weaves among the branches of the pine trees. I keep my flashlight down, pointed at the ground, motivated by an inexplicable need to attract no attention. (Why? It might find me anyway…) The moon is blurred by the silver clouds, and off in the distance I hear crickets chatter, somewhere under the leaves.
Despite the seemingly peaceful night, my heart is thrumming softly with held-back adrenaline. My eyes are jumping everywhere, straining to see something in the darkness. Anxiety morphs reality, and at times the trees overhead seem like monsters with outstretched claws. This night seems peaceful, but I know what this forest is hiding, and that knowledge transforms the night.
I stop just inside the tree line and glance back at my car, sitting on an ancient dirt road. My route back to salvation, and I'm leaving it. Because my salvation is no salvation - every way I can turn is hell.
He - no, no, not he. It.
It has been in my shadow. It has been standing, tall and strange, in the corner of my eye and disappearing when I turn. It has been studying me in my nightmares and watching silently when I scream myself awake, or when I'm too terrified to even close my eyes at all. It’s been behind me, around me, driving me insane.
There’s a photograph holder in my pocket. I don’t want to take it out again, but I remember exactly what all the pictures look like. A child in a crib with a tall, thin shadow standing over her. A gap-toothed toddler leaping haphazardly over a hopscotch pattern with a tall, thin shadow melting into the bushes beside her. A teenager leaning against her first car grinning impishly with a tall, thin shadow’s reflection in the window of the car.
Every picture has it next to me.
All I know is that it has something to do with this forest.
Maybe if I find it, it will leave me alone. Maybe if I show the world that it exists, it will fade away. That is the only reason I need. I won’t last much longer, with this thing stalking me.
I take a last glance over my shoulder to look at my car. Longingly. Then, I turn back to the forest.
My shoes crunch the short grass underneath me. I’m following a sort-of trail where there’s more gravel than dirt, but it’s not a clear path (who made this path?). I keep my flashlight down, and try to keep my eyes down as well. It’s when I turn my eyes up to find a shape in the blackness that my heart rate abruptly accelerates.
The path widens, and I move my flashlight up to rest on a large tree in the middle of a clearing (calm down just a tree). It looms over the surrounding trees, skeletal arms reaching over their speartip tops. I stop at the edge of the clearing and circle it, scanning it for something, anything important - there. A piece of paper.
I walk closer and see that it’s been nailed to the wood. The words HELP ME has been scribbled all over it in rough pencil, like a child’s scrawl (child was there a child here?). I don’t think about it too much and rip it off and stuff it into my coat.
My flashlight flickers.
My heart jumps into my mouth. I sweep the light around the forest and find nothing. But my heart's still beating like a drum, and I can feel it thrum throughout my body. My nerves jangle and I hasten away from the clearing.
Even after I’ve left the tree far behind, I still feel my heart drumming. I’m jogging, keeping my flashlight down. I glance behind me, but the night is dark.
I’ve slowed down and I’m breathing hard. My heartbeat has not stopped fluttering. I stop to rest and cough slightly at the intense beat.
My flashlight lands on a pair of legs.
My heart stops. I freeze. I don't even breathe. I don't move the flashlight. In its light, I can see two long legs, wrapped in black pants of some kind (tuxedo suit why is it wearing), with arms hanging down by its knees.
The arm moves - like it's reaching for me -
I scream, turn, and run for my life.
Adrenaline fuels me, and mid-flight I think of something. I fumble with my coat pocket and bring out my cell phone. I slow slightly as my trembling hands get the video camera online, holding my flashlight in the crook of my elbow (maybe if I film it, people will believe me - if I live to show it - when I live - stop just stop). When it's set up, I turn the camera on and swerve around.
Nothing. There's nothing there.
I lower the camera. My heart is still hammering.
I've been walking for an hour when something new appears in my field of vision. A house of some kind comes into view, with sides made of bricks and a roof made of some greenish material - probably normal shingles with moss grown on it. It's oddly short, with the roof resting on its walls just high enough for a person to walk through without bumping their head. There are no doors that I can see, but there is an opening where a door would go.
I glance around me, sweeping the flashlight in a wide arc - my pulse goes up as I wait for it to appear, but there's nothing. Feeling nervous, I step inside the building.
My first step clacks against the linoleum and echoes softly. I stop again, breathing hard at the sound, and fumble out with my phone again. I press against the cold wall of the building - also linoleum, oddly enough - and focus on the coldness, trying to calm myself down.
It doesn’t work. I go forward anyway, grasping the flashlight so tightly my knuckles turn white.
There are no lights, just white tile running across the floor and up the walls. The hall T’s after about ten feet, and I stand there dumbly, deciding what to do. After another moment’s hesitation, I take the left passageway. It turns again to the left to open up in a wide room with a single chair standing in the middle. There is a page on the chair.
The tile, the odd shape of the building… This must have been a bathroom area. Was this forest a park? I find the thought briefly comforting (there were other people here once, happy people). Until I move forward and see the page.
There is a crudely drawn picture of a tall and thin creature with no face, surrounded by the repeated word “NO.” The drawn creature sends a shiver down my spine. It seems… oddly familiar (seen it before out of the corner of my eye). But when that thought comes into my head, I stop thinking and stuff it into my coat.
As I walk back, I wonder to myself if there might be another page in the next room, the opposite end of the T. I bring my flashlight up to illuminate that side of the building, but there’s something in the way -
How - how did it - (white face)
I gasp - my eyes go wide - my heart starts leaping - my flashlight falls out of my hands - I’ve only caught a glimpse of it, in its heavy black suit, black tie, (black tentacles? what there’s something behind), knee-length arms and terrifyingly blank white face, but it’s enough to send me reeling - I stuff my knuckles in my mouth to keep from screaming - back up, I hit the wall of the building, turn, and run back into the room.
I throw myself into the corner, behind the chair, as if it might protect me from the creature, and I tremble, cowering. I’m biting down on my knuckle to keep from screaming and leading it to me (but it saw me leave stop just stop), and I keep my eyes wide open, staring at the opening into the room. If I blink, he might appear. Even when my eyes start to water, I keep them open. Even though without my flashlight I can hardly see anything in the blackness, I keep them open.
Perhaps it took a minute, perhaps an hour before I realize there’s liquid running down my hand and I taste something strange in my mouth. I glance down and see a drop of blood fall from my hand to the clean white linoleum floor. Slowly, I take my hand away and observe the saliva-covered wound my frightened teeth have inflicted on my skin. I can see the white of a finger bone if I pull the wound apart with my other fingers. It’s numb and I can’t feel any pain, but it disturbs me (so scared I did this so scared).
I rip off a chunk of my sweater and wrap it around my hand. It’s immediately soaked in red, but I still can’t feel anything. One of my tears from my twitching eyes lands on the makeshift bandage.
I glance back up, the tear reminding me why I’m keeping my eyes open. There is nothing there.
Deciding to risk it, I blink. More tears fall out of my eyes. Nothing appears.
My hand begins to throb. I shake water out of my eyes and stand up. My knees are shaky and weak, so I lean against the wall, pressing my back against the cold smooth linoleum. Still nothing.
It couldn’t have left. It couldn’t have.
I wobble to the opening and peek out. My eyes strain in the blackness, and I see nothing.
I walk back out into the hallway. My flashlight has rolled around and it’s now pointing at my shoes. I pick it up and turn it off. Without looking around, I stumble out of the building. My hand begins to burn with pain.
About a five minute’s walk from the bathroom building, I come upon a double row of rusty round tanks. I walk around the area more warily this time, scanning the night without blinking. I belatedly realize that I had to instruct myself to blink while I was walking here.
There. A page, nailed to one of the tanks. LEAVE ME ALONE written in a haphazard scrawl. I stuff it into my coat.
Suddenly, my skin tingles - up and down my body, goose bumps rise and I whirl around, eyes wide, tracking with my flashlight. The rusty orange of the tanks leaps at me, highly contrasted against the dark forest, and I run out of the rows. As I sprint, (don’t look behind) I look back behind me, and think I see a black tentacle rise up above the tanks against the night sky, but it might have just been a tree branch.
I’m running full out, and my skin is still shuddering all over, uncontrollably, and the fact that I can’t control even that is scaring me all the more (stop trembling I can’t think stop stop stop). I chance a look behind me and see that white face (THERE IT’S THERE) which spurs on a greater burst of speed, and I turn back to see - a truck, looming out of the darkness?
I try to stop myself, but it’s too late - I slam into the bed of the truck, knocking the wind out of my lungs. I struggle to breathe and attempt to turn without wanting to scream in pain, and I glance over my shoulder. It’s gone, I can’t see it, but I still feel my heart drum and my skin shiver, so it must not be far.
I look the truck over again and frown. It’s old and rusty, but the keys are still in the ignition. Surely that means someone else has been here, but… but they didn’t make it out.
(No no no no no no no no stop no no no stop no)
This thought sends my pulse racing again and a bucket of acid fear splashes into my stomach, but I force it down and circle the truck, looking for a page. There’s nothing nailed to the car, but there’s a little shed off to the side, painted an audacious and slightly comical yellow, though it’s faded a little. It doesn’t raise my mood, though - as I walk toward it, the crunch of my feet on the grass seems to be the loudest sound in the forest, and the lightning gallop of my heartbeat seems to be a thunderous beacon, screaming to That Creature “I’m here! I’m here!” I want to turn around, but I daren’t, because - what if it’s behind me? What if it’s right behind me? (don’t look behind)
I keep my eyes forward and circle the small shed, rip off the page I find, not even bothering to read what it says (saw it from the corner of my eye - “DON’T LOOK OR IT TAKES YOU” - don’t pay attention I didn’t see it).
And now I hear a new sound, not the thunder or the lightning, but a fizzing sound, like acid rain, and I almost sprint off again, but no, it’s not coming from around me, it’s coming from - from my sweater pocket. I pull out my cell phone, still recording its video, and there’s static running all over the screen, up and down, and making such a loud noise - I try to turn down the volume, but it won’t go down. Is this something that.... That Creature can do?
I’m about to shut it off altogether when the static clears, just slightly, and I can make out an image of something - a blank white face -
I shriek and toss the phone away. It bounces off the side of the truck and falls, still hissing, and I take off running, not bothering to pick it up or fix it. The static hiss seems to follow me, though, and it’s all together now, thunder and lightning and the eerie rain, racing through my skin, and I want to curl up in a ball and make it all go away, only that would allow It to catch up with me, and… and I can’t think about that, I will not become a page in Its forest, I will not, I will…
A rock looms up, out of the darkness, and I’m going too fast again, and I trip and practically fly over the thing. I shriek as I hit my wounded side again and drop the flashlight, I dropped the damn flashlight - I know It’s behind me, I’m lying on top of Its two black shoes -
An animal sound, a primeval sound of pure terror rips from my throat. I scramble to my feet and try to run again, but my knees give out. My flashlight is flickering, flickering, and now it’s gone dark. I’m wheezing like the harried wind through the trees, all part of the storm, and…
(don’tturnaround)
I turn around. I look over my shoulder, and see the source of It all.
It is standing there. I knew It was there. Staring into It’s face, It seems to swallow me up, and all I can hear is the storm, and all I feel is fear, and the static fizz is drowning my ears -
All I see is that face, that blank white face -
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