I leaned over the porch railing, listening. I could hear them again. Off in the woods, just past the field before me. The cold night air sliced into my face and I felt my eyes watering, my boots creaking across the old planks. My house stood dark at my back, a dark tombstone in an expanse of empty country.
I was alone, and as I heard the noise once more, I had never felt quite so isolated in my life. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I shivered, wishing I had put my jacket on before rushing outside. The air smelled of snow and the moon was hidden behind a swath of thick cloud.
I stared out at the wall of trees across the field, an acre away from my front porch. I waited for the sound to come again. I had heard it last night, but by the time I made it outside, the sound had faded and hadn’t come again. Tonight was different though. There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt that what I was hearing was real.
The wind cut through my clothes, turning my veins to ice, and then the noise echoed from the woods once more.
It sounded like an owl. A huge owl, but that wasn’t quite right. It sounded like a person imitating an owl. And there was an odd reverb at the end of the call, elevating the sound across the wind.
“Don’t like that,” I muttered, goosebumps rising on my arms. “Don’t like that at all.”
I couldn’t imagine what the hell was making that sound. After thirty seconds, another call came, a low hooting drawl. I stared at the long row of dense woods. That one had sounded different.
Like there was more than one in there.
“Screw this,” I muttered, turning back to my front door. “Just stay in the woods and away from my house. Whatever the hell you are.”
As I went inside and shut the door, the hooting came again, as if in response.
I lay in bed, two hours later, staring at the ceiling, trying my best not to look at the big, dark bedroom window to my left. I could faintly hear the hooting still, coming every couple of minutes. It set my teeth on edge and pushed sleep from the conversation. I thought about calling someone. But who? And what would I say?
Hello, police? There’s some weirdos hooting in the woods in my backyard, can you come check it out? Yes, you heard me correctly. Yes, I am aware that owls are a thing. I understand. Sorry for wasting your time.
I turned my back from the window and stubbornly closed my eyes. I told myself to stop being such a baby. I tried not to think about how three people had gone missing from town over the past week. What a stupid thing to be thinking about right now.
“Stop it,” I growled, gritting my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut even harder.
I waited for the next noise, bracing myself for it. Everytim I heard it out there, I felt as if my heart was bathed in ice. I just didn’t like it. But as I waited, fearing the next distant hoot, it never came. Seconds turned into minutes and I slowly felt the knot in my chest begin to unfurl. I didn’t dare take a breath, stupidly thinking whatever was out there would hear me. I didn’t know why I was so wound up over such a dumb thing, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of dread engulfing me.
It’s just some dumb animal, I thought. You’ve heard a million weird noises in the ten years you’ve lived here, most of them coming from those woods. Why has this one got your penis curled up into your guts?
I knew though. And I didn’t want to think about it, but I did anyway.
It was because those noises sounded human.
I sat up in bed, rubbing my eyes. My mind just wouldn’t shut down. I looked at the clock and saw that it was already past one in the morning. I had work in the morning and I knew I was now doomed to a day of exhaustion.
“Stupid owls, why ca-”
My words died in the air as I stared at the bedroom window. I felt my body turned to liquid and a horrified scream gathered in my throat.
Perched on the ledge outside my window was a naked man. His palms were pressed flat against the window pane and his eyes were locked with mine.
I let out a gurgling howl of terror and scrambled out of bed, falling onto the floor in the process, the figure at the window an all consuming nightmare. In the process of falling out of bed and scooting against the wall, screaming the whole time, I realized something about the naked man at the window.
His eyes were huge and yellow, three or four times bigger than normal. And instead of a mouth, something else jutted out from where his lips should have been. It looked like a dark black beak, the skin around the protrusion an angry, bloody ring of flesh. His hair was long and wild, his mangled face dirty. He looked absolutely rabid, those huge eyes unblinking and massive.
As my eyes traveled down his body, everything happening in an instant, I noticed that between his legs hung a pinkish trunk, like an elephant, ending in an orifice that was slowly opening and closing almost like a lipless mouth. It slid across the window leaving a trail of slime as it searched for seams in the glass.
Before I could stand or make sense of what I was seeing, the deformed man suddenly raised his hands, which I saw were enormous as well, and balled his long clawed fingers into fists. He brought them against the window, smashing it, the noise huge and all consuming. I screamed again, mind a jumble or terror as he stepped off the ledge and into my bedroom, his feet filthy, his toes long and ending in hardened, sharp nails.
He took a step toward me as I huddled against the wall, tilting his head to the side. He cooed at me, the sound a reverbing tremor that matched the horrible noises I had heard from the woods.
“What are you!?” I screamed stupidly, trying to stand. “Jesus Christ, what do you want!?”
Instead of answering, the owl man leapt across the room, the movement shockingly quick. Suddenly his face was leaning down into my own, those massive, round, yellow eyes inches from my own, its head still cocked, its curved black beak almost touching my noise.
I took a wild swing at it, but it twisted its body and I smacked air instead. Before I could ready another punch, the owl man grabbed me by the neck and dragged me over to the window. Its grip was unbreakable and my bare chest scraped roughly against the wood floor. Clothed in only my boxers, the wind gusting in from the window bathed me in ice and I struggled vainly to pull myself free from the owl man.
A clubbed fist thudded into my back, knocking the fight out of me, the air crushed from my lungs. I let out an oof! and felt myself go limp, its powerful grip digging into my neck. Gasping, I felt the creature step up onto the second story window ledge, one foot planted on the shattered opening.
And then the owl man tensed its leg muscles, coiling into itself, then shot us out the window like a bullet. The force of our exit was so explosive that I felt my stomach drop like I was in free fall. What little breath I could muster was ripped from my throat as we rocketed through the night sky, the wind screaming in my ears. Blinking wetly through tear filled eyes, I caught a glimpse of my house behind us now, the field whistling twenty feet beneath us.
A thought ripped through my terrified mind like wildfire.
It’s taking me into the woods.
And then the branches and trees were all around us, cutting and flaying my exposed flesh like wooden whips. I felt a dozen pain points ignite like fire across my body as I was blinded by darkness, forest, and agony.
The entire flight lasted only a couple of seconds, but the pain and shocking explosiveness of the whole thing made the world blur by in slow motion. The creature’s grip on me never lessened as we descended through the thick forest, the ground rushing up to greet us at an alarming speed.
The owl thing landed on its gnarled feet effortlessly and casually tossed me to the ground, its firm hand slowing my momentum by a hair. I rolled across the frozen ground, rocks and dead underbrush lashing me, drawing ribbons of warm blood that splashed onto the dead earth.
Gasping, eyes bulging, I lay panting, every alarm blaring red. I coughed and spit out a tooth, feeling like I had just been run over by a train. I knew I had broken some bones in the fall, could feel the precursor of sharp pain in my side, but the coming pain was secondary to the owl creature before me.
It was staring at me from a couple feet away, its beak opening and closing soundlessly, the worm-like appendage between its legs rising up like a snake to inspect me, the gummy opening like a black hole.
I struggled to half sit and managed to with a whimper. The owl thing looked at me and then let out a long, shrill hoot that made me wince, heart racing. A second later, five more owl creatures dropped down from the trees. They all looked exactly like my captor with their huge yellow eyes, beaks, clawed hands and feet, and that disgusting trunk between their legs.
Six now, the creatures circled me, cocking their heads and hooting amongst themselves like they were talking, deciding what to do with me. I put my back against a tree, pain ripping up my left leg, chest heaving. Panic had rooted deep in my mind as I took in my surroundings, eyes bloodshot and strained in the darkness.
With a dawning horror, I swept my eyes upward and saw three more people, completely human people, above me. They were naked as well and hung upside down from the trees, their bare ankles laced and knotted with a thick white webbing, binding them to the branches. They looked dead and their bodies were swollen, horribly swollen, as if they had been pumped with air. Their torso’s were puffed and bloated, as if they had comically been stuffed. Their arms and legs looked like broken stubs that jutted from their engorged bodies, the skin across their abdomen and broken chest cavities was torn and ragged, like they could barely hold whatever was fitted inside of them. I could see the white of exposed ribs and torn stomach lining, exposing a sliver of duller white from inside.
Blinking hazily, I realized that these people had been impregnated with something. And from the shape of their stretched, rounded bodies, I had a crazed realization that each of them hosted a giant egg inside their bodies.
With a surprised yell, I felt myself yanked by my ankles toward a tree. Two of the owl creatures were pulling me toward the impregnated hosts.
You’re going to be hanging next to those three if you don’t do something!
The owl men who weren’t dragging me were gathered around egg corpses, poking and prodding them, the dead bodies swinging from their perch as they were tested. With a horrified shiver, I saw one of the hosts shudder, its bloated stomach quivering. With a sudden pop, a chunk of flesh fell to the ground, exposing the white wall of the massive egg inside the host’s guts.
The patch of egg cracked then, a spiderweb of dark lines and then a large finger poked through, pushing the broken shell away. As I was dragged past it, I saw a human face with enormous yellow eyes stare out at me from the dark hole in the flesh.
I was jerked again and felt myself going upside down. The world inverted and I realized I was being pulled up a tree by my ankles. I felt warmth envelope my feet as I was hoisted higher, my arms dangling in the air past my head.
I looked up and saw that one of the owl men was oozing a thick white web from the fleshy tube between its legs. The trunk of muscle and pink weaved and moved around my legs as the thick white gunk dripped over my bare feet and down my calves.
Before I could kick out, I felt something huge and warm slam into my mouth. I gagged and my eyes went wide, a sickening taste erupting across my tongue and down my throat. Eyes watering, I saw that one of the owl creatures stood before me and had inserted the trunk between its legs down my throat. I spit and gagged, choking horribly as the invasive tube slithered further into me, vomit begging to be released.
It’s going to spit an egg into your guts if you don’t do something RIGHT NOW.
In an act of desperation, I bit down as hard as I could, while kicking up with both legs. They must not have been expecting the sudden resistance, which was my saving grace. The wet goo flowing over my legs stopped momentarily and the owl men hopped back from my swinging legs, dropping me in the process. As I fell, biting down on a mouthful of owl cock, I jerked my head and ground the flaccid member into my teeth, tearing away the head in a bloody eruption that squirted into my eyes as I hit the forest floor with a thud.
I rolled onto my back as the owl men hooted and screamed, the one with the wounded trunk flopping over next to me as hot red blood pumped out of its wriggling, gored flesh tube. I spit the hunk of owl hamburger out of my mouth with a retching gag and then scrambled to my feet.
The owl creatures were frozen in place, their massive yellow eyes darting between me and their wounded comrade, their curved black beaks clicking and hooting urgently.
I didn’t wait for them to finish their conversation. Gritting my teeth, pain shooting up my leg and across my side, I bolted away from them. My bare feet were still covered in the white goo and I felt the substance beginning to harden. I didn’t have time to scrape it off as I flew between the trees, the night around me filling with enraged screeching.
I don’t know why they didn’t come for me. Maybe no one had ever fought back and they saw me as a risk. Maybe they just wanted to help the owl I had injured. Whatever the reason, they never came. As I exploded out of the woods and into the field, my house came into view. It was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen.
I made it to the front porch in a breathless rush, crashing through the front door to get the keys to my truck. I grabbed them from the kitchen counter and then bolted back out into the night.
As I fired up my truck and hit the gas, I knew that I had been unbelievably lucky. I had been moments away from an excruciating death and had made it out alive somehow.
As I roared down the road toward town, toward help, I heard the woods at my back erupt in screams from the owls.
Their new host had gotten away.