I found a note that my cousin wrote a couple days before he died. His death was so unexpected to us; he was young and healthy. He went on nature hikes and prided himself on eating only healthy food.
For the weeks leading up to his death, he had been isolating. I thought it was because he had lost two of his close friends. People grieve in different ways. I didn’t know them very well but I knew that their deaths were a tragic shock, though I couldn’t even get my cousin to tell me how they died. He would just shut down.
My cousin’s cause of death was undetermined. It was as if his heart had stopped for no reason at all. It added to the confusion of his untimely death.
I found the note when I was going through the things in his room before the funeral. Looking at the date scrawled on top of the papers, I realized that it was only written a few days before he had passed. I had hoped that it would give me closure but instead it just added more questions. Before I share this note with you, I want to make it clear that there is no history of mental illness in our family. My cousin’s toxicology report came back clean, so I know he wasn’t on any drugs.
The note read as follows:
I write this down in the event that something happens to me. I don’t want my death to be a mystery. What I’m about to share sounds crazy but it is all true.
It started when Dave, Jackson, and I went hiking on the Lakeview Mountainous Trail. The trail led up a small mountain and wasn’t easy terrain, but the three of us had hiked it before with no issue.
We were about a quarter away from the top of the mountain when Dave stopped us to point out one of the trees. There was a nest on the tree and in it, a very large egg. It looked like an ostrich egg, it was so big but that wouldn’t make any sense. For one, there were no ostriches even close to this area unless you counted the ones at the local zoo. Two, even if it was an ostrich egg then why was it in a tree?
We decided to take a closer look. We watched our steps because the tree was close to the edge of a large drop. Jackson climbed the tree and picked up the egg, holding it close to his body like a football as he climbed back down.
We looked curiously at the thing as we stood at the base of the tree. To our surprise, the egg started hatching while in Jackson’s hands. We watched in amazement, holding our breath as we waited for the large chick to come out. Our amazement quickly turned to horror.
This thing wasn’t a bird. If it could be compared to anything then I guess it would be an ugly dog with a thin, narrow, pointed face. It opened its eyes only to show two black orbs that felt lifeless.
Jackson let out a yell of surprise and accidently dropped the egg with the creature still inside. It slid the small way to the mountainous edge before plummeting down.
The drop was too big; nothing would have survived it. It had all been an accident.
“What did you do?” Dave and I yelled at him as he looked at his hands in shock.
“It was a monster!” He yelled back, a note of pleading in his voice. “Maybe it’s better off dead. Who knows what it would grow up to be!”
That led to a new topic: where was its mother? We decided to get the hell out of there and raced down the path back to Dave’s Jeep. We swore to never speak about it again. That was three weeks ago.
A couple of days later, Jackson started acting paranoid. He kept saying that something was watching him. Not SOMEONE. SOMETHING. He claimed to hear a hollow howling outside of his house at night and he stopped sleeping. I thought he was feeling some type of guilt but he insisted that something was after him. Dave and I couldn’t calm him down. He was scared for his life.
His fear was warranted because within a few days his body was discovered. The coroner couldn’t find a cause of death. Our friend was gone and something was so wrong about it.
The next week, Dave started calling me up. He said that he TOO felt the eyes of something. He TOO heard that ghostly howling in the night.
“I think this is about that creature.” He told me. “Something wants revenge for what we did. Something is tracking us down.”
I tried to calm him and myself, but to no avail. Dave became more manic, more restless, and then he too was found in his home, dead. The coroner was once again baffled because he couldn’t find a cause of death. He reported his findings to the CDC just incase there was some unknown disease making its way through the town. But I knew it wasn’t a disease.
I write this because I too now feel the eyes on me. I hear howling in the night. I’m so afraid. I haven’t slept in days. The daylight brings no comfort.
If I die, know that it wasn’t a disease that took me. It was one of those things.