Deep Woods Harvest

Ill omen bred these dark phantasmagoric creatures from the unceasingly evil and insidious depths of which they emerge their hideously foul translucent forms. I write, of course, of those wretches that linger in the surrounding woodlands. They tried to constrain me within the confines of this town , but for what? I hope I never discover it.

Who I am, does not matter, but the tale I tell must be told. I had visited for the sake of my ailing brother. He's dead now. His degenerative disease did not take him as they would like me to believe. No. I remember what I saw. They can't take that from me. No matter how much I would wish them to.

During the night of a crescent moon, the clamoring of metal sounded as a breeze banged against the wind chimes, and suddenly screeches of a shrill, loudly vicious beast could be heard. There was a thud atop the house accompanied by many more slow unnerving stomps on the tiles. There was a smash, a crack, and then suddenly a single tile dropped to the bare earth in the front yard and shattered into a half dozen pieces.

“Wake up!” I shouted to my brother after I had swung his door with so much force that the metal handle dented the white plaster of the wall, yet he still slumbered with sweat forcing the cotton of his clothes to cling to his skin. “There's something here.”

I slapped him and nudged his almost lifeless form to no avail. Anger and frustration danced within me and fear crept behind me with a bony hand over my shoulder. My brother had always been a heavy sleeper who I had to awaken every day till the end of his schooling years. As the youngest in my family, I could get away with such rude methods of waking him by retreating to my mother and father’s room.

“Damn you… Wake up… Don’t die just yet...” I said with a heavy-handed slap after each sentence before something slipped through the open window from the shadowy night. As the bright blue moon-born luster hit, it looked to have the face of an older grimm man void of flesh between skin and bone. The creature had a body with four legs and a long leathery neck. A pawed monstrosity that had claws like sharp jagged knives. As it bore its pearly fangs from behind black charcoal lips, it seemed that it held a cautious hostility towards me.

It growled and suddenly gave a loud booming roar. As I stood still in heavy silence, I could feel my anxiety grip harder and stronger. Its amethyst eyes pierced through my soul as if it feasted on the fear festering inside me. It approached the bed where he lay, and I only watched as it took a soft bite at his hand while his skin became pale like old milk. The flesh on his bones began to shrink and fade. It stole vigor with each passing moment, and I could feel the sapping as though it took from me as well.

The thing left him to lie there as it departed through the window into the chilling air while the light of dawn began to illuminate the outside world. I had no words and felt my heart continue to beat heavily. Tears welled behind my eyes as I walked up to my brother’s bed to find he had no life to speak of.

His sheets were drenched and soiled with a mixture of sweat, piss, and shit. All of what remained of his muscles were seized up and made it impossible to move him from how he was, still looking peaceful in slumber. His face was left gaunt with his eyes forever shut to never see the daylight again.

They came for the body as quick as I called them as though they knew. Maybe they did? I never felt safe amongst those people of the town. Every single last one of them. Their speech seemed to sing of the same songs and not one was unique in personality. They only seemed to want to fulfill their purpose and smile those fake insincere smiles, but their eyes spoke all kinds of truths.

When I came, I was greeted by an old cumbersome man with caramel brown skin. He had shaggy unkempt hair that seemed to battle amongst themselves like warriors rising from his scalp. A war between salt and pepper, and it seemed that salt was winning. Though it was neither his appearance or his rather homely stink riddled clothing that brewed my suspicions.

It was more so to the too kindly gentle way he had spoken to me, and the way his eyes looked hollow and empty. “Hello sir.” He said with a soft smile and his eyes closed, as he tilted his head slightly to the right. “I hope you’ll come to like our little town.”

I wasn’t sure then, but now I knew what he meant. They meant to keep me here, so I may have the same fate as my brother’s. No. No. No! I refuse the idea that my being here is nothing more than the designs of such backwards people.

They were disgustingly simple. Those foolish lot that inhabit this near pointless town in the middle of nowhere drowning in a sea of verdant treelines of tall overlooking evergreens. I was a man from an Ivy league school. My doctorate was in psychology, but I’ve never seen a poorer lot of unstable people.

There was a young girl to whom I remembered well to have been running and laughing, but after a month that I’ve been here, she had reached her thirteenth birthday. Then she seemed hollow and lifeless like the rest. This young freckle faced girl I had seen vibrant and lively as her blonde hair shined in the bright light, like spun gold, was now dreary and showed the signs of the incandescent yellow giving way to dirty brown.

Ever the shut in now, I looked out into the woodland from the inconsequential hovel that my brother died in. He had been “generous” in entrusting his roach and termite infested abode to me in his final will. The plot of land was too small to be worth the effort in selling and it was built atop hard rock that had too little dirt to support even a tiny garden.

The forest was dense and I could see the shadows prancing wildly akin to the sight of an aboriginal ritual. I had tried to leave in my silvery steel stallion of a luxury car, but as I approached the end of town a behemoth of fiery crimson jumped atop the hood of my car and puffs of gray black smoke exploded out from it. Even through the dense ash that flew into my soot coated face, I could see it had eyes of flowing magma as tears of burning vermillion flooded out of them.

It spat at me and I could even smell the scent of my skin searing as its putrid and blazing saliva touched me. It had a long flowing bronze orange mane and an open mouth filled with more teeth than I could count. Fists were raised above broad hulking shoulders with a flex of massive muscles before it smashed through my engine causing it to blast violently.

I had several shards of metal in me and was in a coma for a month or so. Witnesses reported that my car had blown suddenly and the sheriff assured me that there was no beast at the scene where I had been removed from the wreckage. They think I’ve gone insane. I’m the only sane one here.

Maybe I am not so sane. Especially with that thing… the one I left lingering… In a state of stenchy black corruption beneath an azure tarp tied onto the back of his own truck. I had entered his home in the deathly shadow of a cloud plagued sky that let not the bright of the cool horizon nor the glimmer of moonglow emerge from its cover. Never was I so strong as I was then.

I remembered the pain of nails cutting into the skin of my forearms as my muscles tightened to strengthen the grip of my hands around his abnormally long neck. He looked at me with an iris dark like muddled earth and skin of a pale yellowish shade. I pressed my thumbs on his adam’s apple and held a harsh vicious stare on him. The life faded from him as the whites of his eyes began to become crowded with branches of bright red.

He became like a ragdoll with arms flopping about as I carried him and then threw him onto the back of the truck. There was still a bit of light frost fogging up the window and I had to wipe it away as best as I could. There’s nothing left for me in this town and hopefully, I can go with my soul intact.

I will leave this note here for those who find themselves in the same predicament. To warn them of the things that linger about ready to take all you know and love. Escape if you can. Fight if you must, but let nothing else stop you.