Ho-kay, where to begin?
Quite frankly, I’d LOVE to believe that what I saw was either a hypothermia-induced hallucination, or a weird gas formation, or something of the sort…but hallucinations don’t leave claw marks…or take your arm off.
I guess I should write-er type down my name and stuff for archival purposes: I’m Frank, I work at an automotive repair about half a mile from my home, and I own -or owned- a cabin up in the mountains about an hour’s drive from my house. I’m unmarried but saving money for a nice place of my own somewhere nice and calm.
With that out of the way, let’s get to it.
As all cliche horror stories go, the day started off normally with my blaring alarm clock going off, and the ever present “don’t wanna get out of bed” that lurks in everyone’s mind in the morning. My first red flag that something was off was the fact that my usual breakfast of eggs, sausage, and a glass of milk didn’t fill me up like it always had; even then something didn’t feel right, but I had a job to get to, and not enough time to mull over peculiarities.
Around noon, my lunch break started, and I was exhausted from both customers and my boss screaming at me over things that not only aren’t my fault, but not my job to fix. I still did the jobs though, gotta look good for the performance review, and it feels nice to get extra work done; More work done equals more money, after all. During lunch I noticed that I was freakin’ ravenous, tearing into my bologna and cheese sandwich like a damn lion that hadn’t eaten in days. At one point I even bit my finger (which still hurts, for the record). After I tossed my trash and went back out, I had a sort of uh…vision in my head, I guess you could call it:
It was a mountain, specifically the one near my cabin, and though in the moment I saw the mental picture I didn’t see anything, there was a feeling of being hunted that sent a chill up my spine.
Despite the oddity, I didn’t see anything inherently wrong with missing my cabin, so I made a mental note to head up there tomorrow (It was Friday at the time) and went back to work. Knowing what I know now, I wish I didn’t go.
…
Nothing interesting related to my ‘incident’ happened that day, though at one point I had a good laugh when a guy came in with his radiator literally shot by a bullet, however that image of the cabin lurked in the back of my mind. At the time I figured something was wrong and I had a sort of spider-sense goin’ off, or that I was just in need of a break from the work life and people around me.
Saturday rolled around, and I was up nice and late due to some conveniently-placed deadlines my boss set for me that I had to stay and take care of. Fortunately, I remembered to pack a few things in my duffle bag before popping into my truck and heading off into the great beyond.
The drive to my cabin was long, but I had some time to think about some things. Not like, meaning of life type of things, but some little bits of reality that I needed to let sink in. It’s always good to let some of the bad things in your head work themselves out while you aren’t doing anything too demanding, y’know?
I made it to my cabin around 11:30, the sun high up in the air, and the smell of nature tickling my nose as I breathed it in. Nothing seemed wrong with my cabin; it was a small, three-roomed log house that I’d built about 5 or 6 years ago, standing as a beacon of humanity in the frost-covered grounds.
I had built the cabin in the middle of two patches of forest, the parted tree line allowing me to see the grand visage of the mountain off about a day’s drive away. It was still cold though, I had to bring a coat if I wanted to go outside to chop firewood or anything of the sort, but I could and had managed to keep the place in order. I unpacked my things without any trouble, and stepped inside after fiddling with the screen door I could never quite get to stay closed.
Nothing was broken, missing, or damaged in any way, which was a great relief. I checked the two other rooms leading out from the main living room/kitchen -the bathroom and bedroom- and set myself up for a nice weekend out in nature. I was never one for drinking, but I found myself unable to resist cracking a beer while sitting on my hand-carved rocking chair that sat on the porch.
There’s a lovely peace, in nature. ‘Life’ is usually so fast, so cluttered, so dependent on so many things going right, that to sit and slow down in nature is a hell of a blessing for me.
…
*Crack*
*Snap*
*CRAACK*
I jolted awake from my bed at the sound of what I thought was something snapping fallen branches outside my bedroom window. Turns out that I woke up right in the middle a freak snowstorm, and those noises were from the windowpanes straining under the sudden cold. My fingers and toes were so cold I thought they’d frozen stiff, but a few minutes by a newly lit fireplace put the blood back into ‘em, and I was out covering the windows and doorframe with spare blankets I had put away “just in case” (take that, buyer’s remorse!)
It was so cold I could see my breath next to the fire, and of course there was no cellphone service, so I couldn’t call anyone. I could, however, check the weather app, and find out that this storm was gonna be raging until the following morning. The next couple of hours were a blur of making sure nothing broke, keeping myself warm, and checking the weather app for updates of what was going on.
That’s when I heard the howl of something within the storm.
A howl barely distinguishable from the whirling wind, but deeper, like one of those alphorns they got up in the…alps. It scared the shit out of me at the time, but I was stupidly curious, so I peeked out of one of my less covered windows to try and gauge what the sound was, and oh my God do I regret doing that.
I was met with a long, grey snout, the size of two car doors lined beside each other, with razor sharp teeth jutting out of the bottom jaw, pointing upwards. Hoarfrost covered the window in waves as the thing’s nostrils flared, sucking in air; It was searching for a scent. Why couldn’t it see me, you may ask? It didn’t have eyes, just hollow depressions where eyes should be.
I shot away from the window with a yelp, obviously it was no bear, it was some sort of either mutant wolf, or a…what are they called again? Wind, wend, whatever -agos? I was never a folklore buff-
Anyways, the thing obviously caught my scent, as it pulled back from the window as well, and began to stalk around the cabin. The thing was huge, I remember seeing a silhouette out from one of my windows: I’d say it was at least fifteen feet tall, bulky, walked on long arms and shorter back legs, and had a long, serpentine tail that waved behind it as it moved. The thing’s antlers probably raised it up another four feet. You may ask how I know it has antlers when I only saw a snowy silhouette, and that’s because it raked them against my chimney as if trying to goad me into coming outside.
It seemed so comfortable, so unbothered by the storm outside I gave the beast a name: Frostbite.
After what seemed like an eternity of just walking around the cabin, it began to shoulder against the walls of my cabin, the logs straining against the beast’s tremendous weight. So much so, in fact, it brought in freezing winds that nearly blew the fireplace out. That little fire was my only lifeline at the moment, I had no time to prepare anything else.
Frostbite continued this routine shoving for a while, then moved onto breaking anything it could find outside. I found out it had foot-and-a-half long claws on the end of those long, white-furred arms - it used them to smash my rocking chair. I also heard the sound of metal screeching, meaning it found my truck out in the frigid snowstorm, which was starting to look more like a blizzard by the second. My stomach growled, and I realized that I was starving. I had no time to address this, though, as Frostbite whipped its tail into the side of the cabin, breaking a few of the thick logs and letting in the cold air so fast it blew charcoal cinders in my face. I covered my eyes as I stumbled around, hearing its heavy treads just outside the cabin, closing in.
The last few things I remember was a piercing cold wind, a heavy impact that knocked me against the wall, and deep voice that rattled the windowpanes, “So frail… Humans aren’t meant for the cold.”
…
I woke up in the morning, missing an arm, though the nub was frozen solid. The cabin was leveled around me. I have no idea how I survived in that cold for so long… I guess nature decided to take pity on me, or the beast found something more interesting to pursue. Whatever happened, I’m just happy I’m still alive today.
My truck was flipped over in a ditch about fifty feet away from where it was parked, covered in huge, jagged claw marks. Despite how many times I told police that it wasn’t a bear or moose, they ruled it as a bear attack and moved on. My arm-nub was evaluated by the doctors at the local hospital, and after a few days I was discharged with a diagnosis of severe frostbite. Hell, I even got two weeks off work, and no, I didn’t revisit the cabin.
I’ll never forget what I saw that night, but I could never get anyone to believe me when I’d tell them there was a monster in the woods. I’ve learned that whenever people ask how I lost my arm, I tell ‘em I lost it to Frostbite.