Timber
Forest was off limits. It had been for nearly fifty years. In the past, the
forest had always drawn people into its depths. People used to do all kinds of
things in the forest like annual picnics and family camping trips. There was
always activity going on in Timber Forest.
Then, out of nowhere, bad stuff
started to happen. People who went into the forest started to disappear. No one
ever saw what happened, and nothing was ever found of them again; it was like
they just wandered off and got lost. Then the disappearing started to escalate.
In only two months of these incidents happening, the situation changed from
just individuals to entire families just vanishing. Police only found abandoned
camp site.
Of course, though, when events
people can’t explain start to happen, rumors arise to fill the void. Some
believed the forest was haunted. Others thought that some insane murderer was hiding
in the forest. Plenty of other explanations were also made, from surreal (alien
abductions) to ridiculous (a bridge to a different dimension), but no one had
ever figured out what was going on.
After many months, the only thing
growing about the case was the list of missing. The forest was quarantined. A
ten foot electric fence was erected around the forest, with armed guards and
motion sensors watching the entire perimeter. But in those twenty years, no one
went in and nothing ever tried to get out. Fear alone kept people away.
So people just left the forest alone.
The armed guards went away, the motion detectors were taken down, but the fence
was left standing. No one entered the forest; families started having their
annual picnics and parties at other locations; no one disappeared, and the case
just went cold.
However, just because something is
considered off limits, that doesn’t people will stay out. Early, before the sun
rises, five teenagers, four boys and one girl, rush across a field up to the
fence. Four of them carried camping equipment. The group stopped about four
feet from the fence. The boy in front wielding a small shovel with a wooden
handle about two feet long slowly approached the fence with the blade out in
front. He cautiously prodded the fence with the blade of the shovel. The only
sound was that of metal on metal.
“See,” the boy said, turning to
another boy, the only one not carrying anything, “I told you it wasn’t
electrified. That’s more money you’re going to owe us tomorrow.”
“That would require that you actually
do come back tomorrow, Hunter,” the boy said.
The first boy, Hunter, replied,
“Matt, you might as well give us the money now. I’m telling you, there is
nothing in there,” he pointed over his shoulder toward the forest. “Whoever
caused all of those disappearings fifty years ago is long dead. We’ll try to
bring his skeleton back as a souvenir.”
“Whatever, dude,” Matt said. “You
have to stay overnight. That was the bet.”
“Yeah, I remember,” Hunter said.
“And you remember that the bet applies to everyone who stays the night with
me.”
Hunter had managed to talk his team
into going, too. They called themselves a team because they had always done
everything together. They had made bad movies together, traveled together, and they
even tried to be a rock band at one point.
Hunter was their unofficial leader.
He was brave and friendly, but also had a bit cocky. Joseph was the quiet one
of the group, but he had lived next to Hunter his whole life, and helped with
math homework, so he was probably Hunter’s best friend. Sarah was the only girl
on the team. She was very cute, yet she was fully capable of pulling her own
share of the weight. The last member, Aaron, had money and too much time on his
hands. Aaron met Hunter at school, and their personalities just meshed like
vinegar and baking soda.
Aaron and Sarah took their backpacks
off and climbed the fence. Aaron stayed at the top while Sarah went over to the
other side. At these positions, they started an assembly line for their
equipment on the other side of the fence. Once everything and everyone was over
on the other side, Hunter turned back, gave Matt a crisp fake salute, and then
headed into the forest.
When the sun started to show the
team was already a mile into the forest. The large trees blocked much of the
light from the sun. Fifty years of no human activity had done its toll on the
forest. It was wild. Any foot trails made by humans had long been overgrown.
After another couple of hours of
hiking, they came across a small field with a creek alongside it and decided to
set up camp. It was decided beforehand that they would just use two tents, one
for the three boys and one for Sarah. Sarah’s one-person tent was up so quickly
that she could help the boys with theirs. Lunch consisted of sandwiches when
camp was set up.
Afterwards, they set off to explore
the area around them. The forest was peaceful and quiet, yet had a sense of
eeriness to it. The deeper they went, the thicker the canopies of the trees
were. The leaves were so thick that it blocked most of the sunlight, making it
look later when it was midday.
Aaron was the first to speak up
after a while. “Do you guys notice something?” he asked.
The whole group stopped and turned
to him. “What do you mean? I don’t hear anything,” Sarah responded.
“Exactly,” Aaron said, “it’s really
quiet in here.”
“That’s because no one is talking,”
Hunter said.
“No,” Aaron said. “I mean it’s just
quiet. This is a forest. Shouldn’t there be more than just silence. Other than
bugs, we haven’t seen any animals since we got here, not even dead ones, and
not even animal tracks.”
“That is weird,” Joseph said. “What
do you think happened, Hunter?”
“I don’t know,” Hunter said. “If
there aren’t even tracks, I guess they just left the forest.”
“But why?” Sarah asked.
“Who knows?” Hunter reasoned. “Let’s
keep moving.”
They continued their hike, which
only confirmed Aaron’s point. There were no animals to be found anywhere. After
a while, they decided to head back to camp.
They spent the rest evening around
camp. The thick ceiling of leaves made it darker quickly in the forest, but in
their little field, they probably had about an hour left before it was too dark
to do anything. Dinner was made and eaten quickly. After dinner, everyone just
went to sleep.
Several hours later, in the middle
of the night, Hunter woke with a start. He needed a tree. He put his shoes and
jacket on and grabbed his flashlight. He unzipped the tent and quietly left. It
was a quiet night; a light breeze cooled Hunter and the full moon was bright
enough to see the entire field their camp was in. Hunter walked up to a tree at
the edge of the field and had just unzipped his pants when he thought he saw
something.
He originally saw it out of the
corner of his eye, but he turned his head and saw it again. It was a blue light.
It kept flashing and moving, but it was there. It didn’t look like a lantern,
or at least it wasn’t a lantern that Hunter had ever seen. Hunter didn’t think
it was a firefly, since he had never heard of blue bugs.
Whatever it was, it was deeper into
the forest. Hunter’s curiosity dragged him out of the field and into the
darkness of the forest.
Hunter followed as quietly as he
could, but he was still walking through the brush in the dark. The light seemed
to be toying with him. Whenever he got less then probably thirty feet from it,
it would start to move again. Hunter soon lost track of time; all he was
focused on was catching up to whatever the blue light was.
When it stopped again, Hunter tried
to sneak up on it. He was probably just ten feet away when it just disappeared.
It didn’t reappear at all. It took a few seconds for the gravity of the
situation to fall upon Hunter. He was lost in the middle of the woods in the
middle of the night.
Hunter panicked for a few seconds
before he forced his brain to start working. He remembered he had his
flashlight in his pocket. He pulled it out and turned it on in one movement. He
checked his surroundings and only confirmed that he was lost. Hunter had a
photographic memory, but trees just look like trees.
Two leaves fell on his head and
shoulder each. He noticed them and was about to brush them off when his brain
turned on to a horrifying fact. There was no breeze. How were the leaves
knocked out if the air was dead still?
He turned around and flashed the
flashlight onto the trees. He traced the trunk of one tree up to the first few large
branches where he saw it.
It was perched on the first large
branch Hunter came to, not even ten feet from where he stood. It clung to both
the branch and the trunk with both arms and feet. At first glance, it looked
human. It had a torso, head and arms that appeared human, but that was where
the similarities stopped. For one thing, the entire creature was blue. The next
things that stuck out were the giant blue wings, fingered like a bat’s but
possessing blue and black feathers. The creature’s legs were normal human
except for its feet; it had huge three toed feet, each adorned with a short
curved talon like a bird. The head had long black hair going down its back, and
yellow eyes filled with pure malice. The arms appeared normal enough, but the
four of the five fingers on its hands had long claws, the middle claw longer
than the others. The tail looked to be about five feet long, and ended in a
bulb-like feature.
Hunter barely had time to think when
the creature pounced, roaring as it slammed into Hunter, all claws and fangs.
The trees muffled his final screams.
The next morning, the rest of the
team awoke to notice that Hunter was gone. They searched the entire area for
hours, but never found anything. It came to the point where Sarah and Aaron
wanted to keep looking, but Joseph, being the voice of reason, said that they
needed to leave. Joseph brought up points that they weren’t equipped to stay in
the forest for an extended period of time; their food supply was out and they
were running out of water fast. They finally agreed to go back, restock, and
look again the next day.
The next day, Sarah was unable to go
into the forest, but the boys went back in, promising that they would find Hunter.
Just like Hunter, neither of them came back.
Sarah lost her mind the day she lost
her best friends to Timber Forest. No one would help her; everyone was still
terrified of the forest, and three people very recently disappearing only
brought that fear back. Finally, Sarah went in by herself to go find them,
since everyone else was scared.
She only took one things with her, a
video camera she had gotten for her birthday. It was wirelessly connected to
her computer back home, so even if she didn’t make it out herself, people would
finally see what was terrorizing the forest.
She, too, never came out of the
forest again, but what the camera caught was quite disturbing and eye opening. It’s
the middle of the night; the camera recording is set on night-vision, so
everything is mostly green. For about an hour, all it shows is her walking
around the path they used the day they camped out, when, in the distance, a
light suddenly appears. Sarah leaves the trail and follows it. For several
minutes, it toys with her, until it just flickers off and is gone. The camera
pans around several times until it shoots up to see the creature waiting for it
in a tree. The camera gets about two seconds of good footage of it before the
creature pounces, claws and fangs barred. The camera is knocked out of Sarah’s
hands, but falls to where it catches what happens next.
The camera catches the creature crouching
over Sarah, slashing her with deadly claws. Sarah screams and attempts to crawl
away, but the creature pulls her under itself. Like a snake, the creature
strikes, driving fangs and claws into her shoulder. Blood dampens the area
around them quickly as Sarah struggles. Inevitably, her struggling weakens and
the screams quiet. When she stops, the creature lets go and inspects her from
head to toe, the bulb on its tail flashing.
Then something even stranger
happened. The creature then noticed the camera, and stepped over Sarah’s body
to inspect it. After its inspection, the creature picked it up, pointed it at
itself, and said, “This is my forest. Stay out.”
After that, it just drops the camera, which
lands still facing Sarah, only on its side. Sarah is just barely alive when the
creature picks her gently up, spreads its giant wings, and takes off. It takes
hours for the battery in the camera to die.
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