I don’t really know where to begin. Since last December, I’ve been travelling all over the continent with my husband, John. We got married in November 2021, and we decided to set off on a year-long adventure. We started in London, and by October of this year, we found ourselves staying in a beautiful, isolated villa near the town of Larvik in Norway. We wanted to explore Bøkeskogen (the Beech Tree Forest).
But I was already unsettled by the time we reached Norway. For a few months, I’d been certain that a man was following us. He’d probably been following us since London, but it was only when we reached Berlin that I became aware of him. He was standing in the street, watching as I drew the curtains closed. John and I were staying on the first floor, and the man was standing on the pavement in front of our hotel. This haunting silhouette seemed familiar. I could scarcely see his face, as he’d concealed it beneath a hood, but his green parka was so vivid that it sent a cold wave rushing through my body.
I should’ve noticed him sooner. I realised I’d seen him before. In Barcelona, he had been on the walking tour with us. I remember thinking that it had seemed far too warm for such a bulky parka in the middle of March, so he had certainly made an impression on me. Had I seen him in London, too? Paris? Rome? Perhaps.
“You’re scaring me, Louise,” John said.
“Yeah, well, it’s fucking scary. Who is he?” I asked.
“Probably someone completely different,” John replied, but his voice seemed unsteady.
“It’s him, John. I think I saw him in Belgium, too. In that pub. The terrible one.”
“The one with the shit ale?” He asked.
“Yeah. I remember seeing a man wearing that exact green parka. I know I did. I was pissed out of my head, but I saw it.”
Well, that resolved the matter in John’s mind. I had been far too drunk for any account of that evening to be trustworthy. To him, the case was closed. I would have loved to sweep it under the rug, but I couldn’t.
So, there I sat. John was sleeping, preparing himself for a full day of hiking through Bøkeskogen. Me? I was sitting in front of the living room window. Floor-to-ceiling glass panes stretched from wall to wall. The Beech Tree Forest lay beyond the glass. A black abyss. What’s that quote?
“If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
Nietzsche. I don’t care much for existential dread. I believe in the here and now. So, when I gazed into that abyss, all I saw was the man with the green parka. I could feel him. He was lurking in the emptiness.
The next day, John insisted on exploring. He was now comfortably certain that I was merely drawing dots between a sequence of coincidences.
“You want to see a green parka everywhere, so you’re seeing a green parka everywhere,” John said, leaning in to give me a kiss before we stepped out onto the porch of our villa. “It’s confirmation bias.”
“I suppose so. But that man in Berlin was watching me.”
“Well, he was probably a creep, but we’re not in Berlin now, are we? We’re in Norway. And that man isn’t here.”
I really did try to forget about him. I soaked up the stunning aesthetic of The Beech Tree Forest. A land of natural splendour, unspoiled by the chaotic world that I’d hoped we would escape on our travels. Thinking about that just made me angry. Who was this stalker? Why was he so intent on scaring me?
“I think we should head back,” I said.
“It’s only 2 o’clock,” John barked back, laughing as he plowed ahead.
“And we set off at midday. So, we would only get back at 4pm, even if we were to turn around right now,” I stated, feebly attempting to hide the nervous jitter in my voice.
“Just another 10 minutes or so of walking. Please? It won’t be that dark when we get back!” He insisted.
I felt like throwing a tantrum at this point. How could he not see? How could he not feel the terror I felt? This man had been stalking us since London. I knew it. I felt it in my soul. We were not free of him. He was watching.
“Fine,” I conceded. “10 minutes. Then, we turn back.”
John skipped along, merrily, and I begrudgingly plodded behind him. I wasn’t admiring the neat rows of trees that lined the footpath. Not anymore. I was gazing up at the sky. The sun seemed to be moving far too quickly. I remember thinking that. Nothing supernatural was happening. I could just feel it racing to the horizon. Daylight was rapidly disappearing. And I had an unshakeable feeling that the beauty of this forest would disappear with it.
The sun set somewhere around 3:45pm. I lit the way with my torch, and my eyes were darting between my watch and the footpath as we speed-walked back to our lonely little villa. Well, I was speed-walking. John was huffing and puffing behind me.
“Will you slow down?” He panted.
“You stopped for 20 minutes to take photos. I told you we needed to head back,” I snapped.
It sounds mean, but I was irritated. I wanted John to take my fears seriously. But he’s always been the type to bury his head in the sand at the first sign of trouble. It means I usually win arguments, but it’s not a great character trait in a crisis.
“Relax, Louise. We’re, what, 30 minutes away?” John replied.
“More like 40,” I sighed.
That’s when I heard it. The snapping of a twig. I stopped in my tracks, but John trudged forwards, obliviously.
“Shhh! Stop!” I hissed.
“What? I thought you wanted to get back,” He groaned.
“I heard something.”
John stopped. I turned around, frantically trying to find the source of the snapping sound. I cast the torch-light in John’s direction, and he shielded his eyes.
Nothing.
I slowly moved the light across the tree line, trying not to focus on the fact that my heart was hammering my rib cage.
“It was probably just an animal,” John said.
“It wasn’t a fucking animal!” I screeched as quietly as possible.
There was a much louder snap this time, followed by the noisy rustling of shrubbery. I cast the light in the direction of the second disturbance, and that’s when I caught the brief glimpse of something horrifying. A green shape vanished beyond the reach of my light, and bushes shook behind it.
“Did you see that?” I asked, sweat drenching my face.
“Yes,” John spat, barging past me. “It was a ‘fucking’ animal. Come on. I want to get back.”
As we walked, I listened attentively. The forest was quiet. Actually, it was silent. That was worse than branches snapping and leaves being trampled. At least I could track the hooded man when he made a sound. At this point, I started to wonder whether he might be something supernatural. I knew he was still following us. Watching. But to do so without a sound? Nope. That’s fucked.
We got back to the villa around 4:20pm. Not late. Not at all. But it felt late. It was pitch-black outside. No sign of civilisation. Nothing. Just a black house set in a black landscape. I didn’t even feel comforted by the sight of shelter. I was beyond paranoid. I half-expected the man in the green parka to be standing in the hallway, waiting for us.
But he wasn’t. John twisted the key in the door, stepped inside, and turned on the main lights in the open living area. I shut the front door behind us and hurriedly locked it.
“I’m going to bed,” John grumbled, stomping up the spiral staircase to the bedroom.
“I’m just going to stay out here for a while,” I replied, gulping.
I stood in the living room and stared. There it was. The window into the void. Even more terrifying than the night before. I wasn’t dealing with hypotheticals anymore. The man in the green parka was out there. He was the void.
“What do you want?” I cried, with a voice barely louder than a whimper.
Then, the motion-sensor light outside the window came on. There, standing in the middle of the clearing between our villa and the tree line, was the man in the green parka. I tried to scream for John, but my voice was hoarse. No sound would come out.
I froze. The man and I must’ve locked eyes for no more than 10 seconds, but it felt like an eternity.
Detecting no more motion, the light turned off. The sound of shattering glass followed, as did scattering footsteps. The hooded man had hurled something at the light to break it.
I realised this was it. He had become more than a watcher. He had broken the veil between us. No more games.
“Louise?” John appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Stay there, John,” I warned.
“What was that sound? Did you break something?” He asked.
“Do not come downstairs.”
I would have said more, but I was interrupted by the sound of knocking on the front door.
“What the… Who’s that? We’re in the middle of nowhere!” John bellowed.
“Do. Not. Come. Downstairs,” I repeated.
He didn’t listen. Of course he didn’t. He raced downstairs, but I beat him to the door and clumsily unbolted all of the locks. I didn’t trust John in a crisis. And then I eyeballed the now-unlocked door. I hesitated, trembling.
“Louise…” John began.
He couldn’t get another word out of his mouth. I yanked the door open, and John gasped. Gasped as he realised I had been right all along. There he was. The man in the green parka.
“Oh… God… Call the police!” I screamed, refusing to peel my eyes away from the menacing figure in the doorway.
“J… John…?” I whimpered, maintaining eye contact with the man at the door.
John did not reply.
“My name is Peter Blake,” The man said.
“Leave me alone…” I wept.
“She died here,” The man explained, ignoring my incessant crying. “This is where it always ends.”
“Please…” I begged.
“Don’t plead with me. I’m trying to save you,” The man said.
“Save me from what?” Louise asked.
It happened so quickly. The hooded man fell silent. There was John. He stood at Peter’s side, plunging the knife into the side of the stranger’s skull. Then, he let the hooded man’s body crumple to the ground. But all I really remember is that smile. That awful smile.
“From me,” John answered.
I turned on my heel and ran. I sprinted into the kitchen and through the open back door that John had presumably used to creep around the side of the house.
I started to run towards the forest. I know. Stupid, right? But we were in the middle of nowhere. I wasn’t going to go inside and hunt for the keys to the car. I figured that my safest bet was to hide somewhere deep in the forest until morning. Then, I could get my bearings.
Realising I’d left the torch at the house, I pulled out my phone and used it to light the way. Over the sound of my rapidly beating heart and the grass crunching beneath my feet, I heard laughter.
“Louiseeee,” John sweetly called from somewhere behind me in the darkness.
He sounded almost inhuman. Gone was the man I’d married. I started to feel nauseated as I realised I’d been sharing my life with a monster. I tried to hold back tears (and vomit) as adrenaline fuelled me onwards. I delved deeper and deeper into the dense forest, too afraid to find the footpath and make myself an easy target.
It all felt oddly reminiscent of our walk an hour earlier. Yet again, I was being stalked by an invisible and silent predator in the darkness. I longed for John to say something else, or even to unleash another icy cackle, but he had become one with the terrifying black silence that surrounded me. I thought the forest was engulfing me. Choking me. Then, I realised I was having a panic attack.
I just needed my primal instincts to carry me a little farther before I could allow myself the relief of completely falling apart. So, when I saw an entanglement of branches and leaves in the distance, I beelined for it.
I was struggling for breath at this point, but I managed to stumble into Nature’s makeshift den, cutting my arms and legs on branches as I went. I lay flat on my face in the dirt, shakily dialling ‘113’, Norway’s emergency number. The conversation with the operator is hazy, but thankfully he spoke English. I gave him the address of the villa, and he told me that it would take half an hour for the dispatched police officers to reach the house.
I was fucked. It was over. I was dead. They would still have to search the forest for me. John would’ve found me by then. I couldn’t feel his eyes on me, but I could sense them searching for me, somewhere in the darkness.
I turned off my phone light. I didn’t want to advertise my location to him. I remember thinking that maybe I could stay deathly quiet and wait for the police to scare John away. 30 minutes, at the very least, before they even started to search the forest. It was too long. And then I saw it. Not what I had expected to see.
The green parka.
John was wearing it. In the dim light of his own phone torch, I could make out red smears on the coat, and I had to exert all of my willpower just to avoid hurling. I couldn’t even see John. The parka was zipped up, and his face was lost in the ceaseless black hole at the centre of the hood.
“I love it out here. So quiet. So peaceful. I’m furious that Peter disturbed our precious time together, but he’s gone now. It’s over, darling. Let’s go back to the house.”
My hand was clasped over my mouth, and tears were rolling down my cheeks as my body writhed uncontrollably in the mud. John looked around, surveying the area with his phone light. He must’ve been no more than 30 yards away from me. Fortunately, my little den was far too dense and overgrown for my body to be visible, but I could sense John’s temperament changing.
“You think I want to be out here in this cold fucking forest? I’m getting bored now, Louise. Come out, and we can pretend none of this ever happened.”
He was on the verge of leaving, and then my phone rang. It was my mum. I was supposed to call her that evening. If only she’d waited. Just waited until the morning. I still hear John’s victorious laugh in my dreams. A bloodcurdling sound. Like an animal that had finally caught its prey.
“Do I see you in there, Louise? That looks cosy. Mind if I join?”
I scrambled out of the den and started running. I left my phone. I know. Don’t even say it. If you’ve ever been in a life-or-death situation, you should know that rational thought leaves your brain. Survival instinct isn’t necessarily intelligent instinct.
I was sprinting into the black forest and praying that I wouldn’t run headfirst into a tree. I knew my best chance was to loop back to the house and hide somewhere until the police came. I barely had my bearings, but I used to be a Scout. That’s what I kept reminding myself.
After 10 minutes of bumping into trees and nearly tripping on branches, I saw the distant lights of a house. The villa. I was almost there. But then everything fell silent around me. Truly silent. Not a creature or insect stirring anywhere in the forest. I felt the hairs stand on the back of my neck. I froze. I don’t know why I froze. There was the sound of crunching leaves right behind me.
“Hello, darling,” John whispered into my left ear.
The burning sensation that followed was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I looked down to see a red pool spreading through my top. I could feel a blade in the left side of my lower back. I wailed at a volume I didn’t know I could reach, trying desperately not to pass out as the excruciating pain overcame me. I felt that pain twice as John then wrenched the knife from my body and pushed me to the ground.
I started to crawl. I was clawing at the light of the house. It was probably only a couple of hundred yards away. 15 minutes or so until the police arrived. I just had to last for 15 minutes. I would probably hear the sirens echoing through the night soon. That was what I thought to keep myself going. To keep myself conscious.
“You were my favourite. I hope that gives you comfort. You really impressed me,” John said. “But Peter was right. Everything ends here. This where I come to reset.”
“Wait!” I cried, stalling for time. “Don’t you want to know?”
I rolled over onto my back, crying out in pain and gazing up at the faceless green parka that hovered above me. John titled his head to one side, seemingly curious.
“I have a secret, too,” I whispered.
“Oh? And what might you be hiding, Louise?”
“I’m like you. And you’re not my first, either,” I replied.
“You are not like me, Louise.”
I groaned, making up my speech as I went along. “Do you think I cared about that stalker? Given the chance, I would’ve killed him myself. That’s why I answered the door before you. I was trying to protect you. I didn’t know you were like me.”
John paused. I could almost hear the cogs whirring in his head. I was certain he saw through my lie, but that didn’t matter. All I had to do was entertain him a little longer. If I could keep him interested, I could stay alive. That was my logic.
“I don’t believe you,” He said, finally.
“Okay. I just couldn’t die without letting you know,” I responded, clutching feverishly to both the lie and my last strand of life.
“This… No, shut up, Louise. What game are you playing? This isn’t part of the… You’re not playing your part,” John scowled.
He was furious. For the first time, I was glad I could barely see his face. I realised the void might be less terrifying than what lay beneath.
“It doesn’t matter, either way,” He sighed. “If you were like me, you’d understand that I have to do this.”
Sirens. Halle-fucking-lujah, I thought.
I blinked, and the man in the green parka was gone. Not lurking in the shadows. Gone. After months of being followed, it felt strange to finally be free. No eyes on me, at long last. All I could see was the night sky. A cold chasm of darkness above me.
“Over here!” I screamed hoarsely into the night.
I screamed that over and over again until the police officers found me. I don’t really remember anything else from that night, but I woke up in a Norwegian hospital. My parents and my brother flew out to be with me. Obviously, they were just happy I was alive, but I couldn’t stop thinking about John. The police still haven’t found him.
I’m back in England now. For the past month, I haven’t been able to get John out of my mind. I keep jumping at the sight of my own shadow. I moved away from London, obviously, but he’s out there.
The scary thing is that this isn’t the same as it was with Peter. I could always feel that old man watching me. He didn’t conceal himself. John, however, is a ghost. I don’t feel his eyes on me, but my head tells me that he’s close. Last night, I was drawing my curtain, and I swear I saw a flash of something green disappear into an alley at the other side of the street.
I’m scared.