My name is Marcus. I’m twenty three. I’m going to Hell for selling my house.
I lived in an old farmhouse, way out in the boonies. The closest town was maybe half an hour away by car. I inherited the place from my grandma when she went missing. It was written into her will that I would get the farm, and I’ve lived here ever since.
The property itself is pretty big, with most of it being taken up by the woods surrounding the house. There’s a small clearing that the house sits in and a single field where I kept chickens. Despite having several acres of land, I only ever interacted with maybe one acre’s worth of it unless I was hunting.
On the note of hunting, I first noticed it after I came back from a hunting trip. I had tagged a deer, and was bringing it home to eat. Every once in a blue moon, I find a deer, prep it, and freeze most of it for whenever I need to eat. This has become so much of a habit for me that I really don’t have much else in my house by way of food. At the time, I had a few boxes of instant rice and an expired packet of instant ramen or two.
I should note that I saw the antlers off of every deer I hunt. I keep the antlers separate because people like to buy them for various reasons. This is relevant later.
The house has a screened-in back porch with a staircase leading to the cellar underneath the house. I have a tarp set out back there for whenever I bring back a deer, and I set my catch down for a bit to go inside to take a piss.
When I came back out, it was gone. The whole deer carcass was missing. For any of you who don’t know, deer aren’t exactly easy to carry. There aren’t many creatures out where I live that could move a deer by themselves without leaving a single trace of it, and especially not that fast. The screen door was perfectly intact, so it didn’t look like anything had broken its way inside.
I spent a solid while looking around for any sign that my deer had been stolen, and found nothing. I gave up and went back inside for the night.
Fast forward a few hours, and it’s dark. I’m making myself one of the expired ramen packets because I don’t have any deer meat. I’m standing in my kitchen, playing music on my phone and stirring the ramen, when I hear it for the first time.
It sounded like a low growl, but… off. It sounded like someone someone was trying to speak by breathing in instead of out while their mouth was full. Mixed in with the strange noise were gurgles and short, sharp coughs. It sounded like whatever was making the noise was choking.
The farm I live on has a lot of wildlife in the surrounding woods, ranging from coyotes and deer to bobcats and the occasional boar. In the years I’ve lived here, I’ve woken up to the sounds of some predator choking and coughing because of whatever it ate. Somehow, this sounded… different. Worse.
The noise continued for a while. I sat down to eat when my noodles were done cooking, and the noise just… kept going. Eventually, it slowly died down into faint gurgles and quiet wails. If there’s one thing I know about living out in the middle of nowhere, it’s that I shouldn’t investigate any spooky noises when it’s pitch black outside.
The next morning, my chickens were gone. I always feed them right after I wake up, because they get pissy with me if I don’t. As per usual, I go out at six in the morning and find the coop empty. Not even a corpse or a drop of blood, just… empty. The door was closed and locked, just as I had left it.
I went back inside to grab my hunting rifle in case whatever got in couldn’t find a way out. I unlocked the door and quickly flung it open, hoping to catch whichever predator ate my chickens off guard. I was surprised when I found nothing inside. No foxes, no snakes, no coyotes, nothing. Just an empty coop and a few fallen feathers.
I would’ve assumed that one of my neighbors was fucking with me, but my closest neighbor was eight miles away, and we never talk.
I went about the rest of my day as normal, stopping in my free time to Google what could’ve made a deer carcass and an entire coop of chickens vanish. I couldn’t really find any answers that didn’t sound outlandish.
That day, I went out to find another deer. I spent hours outside, rotating my hunting spots to all of the usual areas the deer like to hang out in. I didn’t find anything. I didn’t see or hear anything at all. No squirrels climbing trees, no birds tweeting, no deer. Nothing.
That night, I made myself a pack of instant rice and decided to go to the store in the morning to stock up on food. My meal was interrupted by the same noise from the night before.
This time, it was louder. It sounded more like a shitty attempt at speech than like an animal’s call. The noise started off as the same low grumble that it was before, but it would occasionally spike into a higher pitch. When it did, I swear on my life it sounded like someone asking for help. It was like the noise was being pushed through a broken flute. It sounded strained and forced. It made my skin crawl.
I grabbed my rifle and sat in my living room. I loaded every magazine I had for my rifle and sat on my couch by the front door. I’m not superstitious, but I’ve heard about all the evil shit that lives in the woods. I wasn’t taking any chances.
I started hearing a shuffling noise, like something heavy was being dragged across the dirt. The noise came from my right, where the kitchen is. I sat with every muscle tensed, my breath shallow. The noise crept towards my front door.
I heard a sharp crack as my porch lights went out. I stared into the darkness through the window on my front door, my rifle raised. It feels like a small eternity passes. I realized that I was shaking.
The noise came back. Hearing the disgusting, twisted form of speech made me want to vomit. At first, the noise was incoherent. It sounded like anguished wails, but nothing recognizable. Before long, the sound changed. It’s pitch fluctuated, it’s tone switching over and over again.
I listened in horror as the voice slowly spat out a single coherent sentence: “Marcus, is that you?”
My heart sank to the floor. This fucking thing was imitating my grandmother’s voice. Before I had time to react, the window to my front door shattered. A deer head with missing antlers came flying through. I couldn’t see much in all the panic, but the thing poking through my door looked like some kind of fucked up imitation of a human wearing the skin of a deer.
The thing stuck its disgustingly long arms through the window and tried to open the door. I fired off every round I had prepared into it. The sound it made haunts my nightmares.
An inhuman screech that was impossibly loud. It felt like the sound bore into my brain. I covered my ears and it did nothing to quiet the noise. I fell to my knees and started screaming. I didn’t know what else to do.
Suddenly, the noise just… stopped. I looked up and saw the thing standing in the doorway. It had backed away from the door, with the only visible part of the creature being the deer head it wore. It stared at me for a few seconds before dropping to all fours and sprinted away.
I went to my room on the second floor, locked the door and windows, sat on my bed with the lights on, hugged my knees to my chest, and cried until the sun rose. The moment day broke, I sprinted to my car and left as fast as I could.
Since then, I managed to get the house sold as a “fixer-upper”. I made it cheap, and offered to leave everything I had there as incentive for someone to buy it. After a month of people seeing the property and deciding it wasn’t worth it, a young couple with a small kid decided to buy it.
I wanted to tell them it was a terrible idea, that they shouldn’t ever go anywhere near there, but the words just… wouldn’t come out. I needed the money from the sale to find a new place to live. I just couldn’t bring myself to warn them.
I think I’m going to Hell for it. Honestly, I’d rather be anywhere than on that damn farm.