I’m not entirely sure where to start, so I’m going with a brief introduction. My name is Xander, I’m a freelance interior repair guy, I fix the seats, dashboard, and any other interior upholstery in vehicles, and I’m more or less the best in my area. You’d be surprised at the kind of money you can make fixing the car seats of rich people who can’t stand the tiniest mark. At the moment, I am taking a two-month hunting trip out in the middle of nowhere, and something is clearly wrong with me. I’ve only been in the cabin for a week, and I’ve eaten a bit more than two weeks’ worth of food so far, and at no point did it really fill my stomach, only stopped the hunger for a few hours.
It started on my first day up here. I got my SUV unpacked, fired up the generator and set up the satellite so I could have Wi-Fi and TV, then grabbed my gear and decided to see if I could find anything out by my tree stand. Once I arrived, I made sure my rifle was loaded and ready (Mossberg Patriot .308 bolt action if you’re curious), but still had the safety on and pointed at the ground until I saw anything. After about 2 hours the sun was just starting to set, and I’d barely even heard a rustle.
My spot was usually pretty active, and I saw plenty of small game, rabbits, ducks, and maybe one or two fisher cats as the sun set, but not even a flash of a deer running by. I was beginning to think I’d have better luck in the morning, when I heard something akin to a mountain lion scream, followed by what had to be an elk or moose crying out in pain. I’ve heard plenty of animals cry out after being attacked, but this was different. The scream had too much bass to it, and sounded disturbingly human. After a moment I heard the loudest crunch of bone I’ve ever heard, it was like the sound of a waterlogged tree breaking in half, and the wounded animal’s cries got much louder and more frantic, before being suddenly cut short with another massive crunch.
Now, it’s worth mentioning this area does not typically have mountain lions, and their attacks do NOT sound like that. It sounded more like an angry grizzly was tearing something apart, and neither option sounded like something I wanted to see, so I decided to head back to the cabin. I removed the mag from my rifle, popped the one in the chamber back into it, pocketed it, and made sure my dad’s old pistol was ready (.44 magnum Desert Eagle), before walking as quietly as I could down the path.
As I moved, I made sure I could still hear whatever was eating, keeping its relative position in my mind. Last thing I wanted to do was come face to face with a predator in the middle of a meal. As I listened, I heard less and less crunching, and more wet chewing. Whatever the thing was, it was finishing up, so I started to pick up the pace, and as I became more conscious of the noise I was making, I realized I couldn’t hear any other living thing in the woods, only that predator. That clued me in that whatever it was, it was unnatural.
To those who haven’t spent much time in nature, you might not know this, but when the woods go quiet, you get going. At best, you’ve got a predator nearby, and at worst, you’re already screwed. I almost started sprinting when I realized this, but instead I simply steadied my breath, turned off the safety on my pistol, but kept my finger off the trigger, and watched my footing carefully. If I trip now, I may as well ring the dinner bell. I could see my cabin in the distance, and I finally started to calm down a bit, before I heard that thing scream again. It sounded like a man who just lost a limb, a scream of pain and fear, but there was still something animalistic about it, something feral. It and to be something big, and possibly rabid based on the amount of noise it was making.
I heard the thing start to move around again, at first it was loud, wet footsteps, and then it turned to something akin to a gallop, this thing was sprinting, and based on the increasing volume of it, it was sprinting toward me. I lost my nerve, I started running myself, I could see the cabin, I could see the heavy reinforced door and the barred windows, I just needed to get inside, and I’d be safe. Or at least, that’s what I thought until I heard a tree fall not 20 years behind me. It shook the ground as it hit, and I knew without a doubt whatever was chasing me would tear down that door like cardboard. So, I made a stupid decision.
I turned around, put my finger on the trigger, and took aim at the center of mass of the things coming towards me. I fired once, and it didn’t slow. I fired two more times, and it faltered slightly. At that point, I didn’t care about well places shots, or about conserving ammo. I emptied my magazine into the thing and loaded my spare. It fell over and I moved in, firing every round I had into its head. It started to get up again. I grabbed my rifle off my back, loaded the mag, and repeated the process, aiming for the eyes. Finally, after my third to last shot, it seemed to stop moving. I fired the last two into its eye socket to be sure and loaded my spare mag just in case.
Finally, I took a moment to recognize what I was looking at, and I threw up immediately. It was human, but it was emaciated, ribs visible, stomach sunken, and limbs lacking muscle definition. It had no hair, its teeth were rotted and sharp, and its mouth was horrifying. Looking down its throat was more like looking down an empty well. It was a black pit that seemed to go down endlessly. What in God’s name was this thing? What was wrong with it? What can tackle a tree over while looking starved? Why did I suddenly feel hungry?
I got back into the cabin, stripped, and took a long shower. It wasn’t until I sat down to eat a meal that It finally occurred to me; that thing took 17 rounds of .44 magnum, as well as at least 3 .308 rounds to the torso and head before finally stopping. You could stop a family of grizzly with that and still have enough to get yourself a deer or two if you aimed well. That thing was screwed up in too many ways to count. I finished my food, and despite the growling of my stomach, decided it was enough for now, and tried to sleep. When I finally fell unconscious, I had horrid dreams of that thing. It chased me down and jumped on me, before laughing and jamming its blood-soaked hand down my throat, and at that moment I jolted awake, my stomach screaming out for more food.
I started out by making a few eggs, then some toast, then bacon, then pancakes, and finally I felt… well, not full, but the growling stopped for now. I didn’t feel bloated, or weighed down at all like you should after eating about 3 people’s worth of food in one sitting. I thought I must have just burned a lot of calories running from and killing that thing, but given that the hunger has stayed the same since then, I have a feeling it’s something more insidious. I stepped outside to get a better look at whatever it was I killed, and when I approached the body, I quickly noticed two things; one, there was not a single living thing near it.
No ants, no flies, no small scavengers, nothing. No living thing would touch it. Second, it seemed mummified almost, as if it had died in a bog a few hundred years ago. It was clearly decaying in some way, but there was no stink of a corpse, only the same sour body odor it smelled of when it was alive. I could only assume that not even bacteria wanted anything to do with it. I left it alone, and stepped back into the cabin to connect my phone to the satellite so I could try and Google whatever that monster could be, but nothing is really fitting what I’m seeing, and it doesn’t really explain my sudden hunger after its death.
Does anyone know what it could be? I can only assume it’s cursed me or given me some disease that makes me hungry, and I can’t keep eating this much, I’ll run out of food in a week if I do. Please, does anyone know what could do something like this?