Some time ago, I had decided to go on a little personal vacation out into the woods of Northern Arizona, I needed a chance to really knuckle down and just enjoy the natural world again. I had spent six days out in the wilderness, just enjoying the feeling of being in nature, but the night of day seven was one I will never forget.
Noise. Something was waking me up. Groggily, I rolled over and looked at my phone. It was ringing. I looked to the top of it and blinked. No signal. That made sense. I had come out here for the isolation, a chance to clear my head and make some music again. So why was my phone ringing? How was my phone ringing? I stared at the number as my phone rang incessantly, an unknown caller. I heaved a tired sigh, swiped to answer, and croaked blearily “Hello?”
“You need to be ready. It knows you’re there, and it’s already here. It has come for you.” came the voice on the other line.
“Who is this? Who am I speaking to?” I asked, the exhaustion beginning to leave my voice.
“Be ready. It will be there soon. Don’t open the door.” the line went dead, my phone blinked and the words “Signal Lost” flashed on the screen.
“Don’t open…” I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and wearily watched my phone, waiting to see if it would ring again. “I must be losing it…” I murmured, placing my phone back on the nightstand and rolling back over to go to sleep.
That’s when the house thundered. Booming knocks shook the glass of the windows and rattled the glassware. “Jesus fuck!” I spun to the door of my room, and my mouth dropped. My door was closed, but it was rattling like something was trying to get in. BOOM BOOM BOOM. Three knocks in short succession thundered against my bedroom door. I didn’t remember locking it, the only door I locked was the front, it was the only one I figured I needed to out here. The angered knocking came again, three strong blows, and the rattling began anew. It shook the door, and as I watched I saw the frame begin to crack. My phone rang anew, and the rattling stopped. Sparing a glance, I snatched it off the nightstand and looked at the number. Unknown caller again. Shakily, I swiped to answer the call and brought the phone to my ear, saying nothing.
“It knows you’re in there. It isn’t going to be polite for long. Get under the bed. Hide.” then, the line went dead again, signal lost. I looked at the cracking doorframe and wasted no time taking this mysterious caller’s advice. Quickly, I crawled under the bed and watched.
It was only minutes, I knew it was only minutes, but it felt like hours. I stared at the door, terror wrapping its cold arms around my gut. My breathing became ragged as my eyes remained glued to the door. It wasn’t moving. There was no knocking. Had the caller been wrong this time? Was it done? Had it just given up? What was it? Questions raced through my skull, each firing out of the cannon of doubt before the next one could be rationalized. Could any of this be rationalized, though? Something had called me up and warned me of something else in my house. Now that something else was just outside my door. I couldn’t explain it, but I had this feeling. Like whatever it was that was out there was waiting for me to make a move. Like we were in some kind of terrible chess game. So I watched. I waited beneath that bed for agonizing minutes.
The sounds began shortly after that. Soft scratching noises, almost inaudible from my position. The one my signaless saviour alleged would keep me safe. I never let my gaze drift from the door, and I’m glad I kept it there because watching what happened next defied logic. The door itself began to bulge inward, I could hear the wood splintering as the center continued to bubble toward me. Then, it exploded. Debris and lethal wooden scrap fired throughout the bedroom. I wasn’t spared when this happened. My hiding place provided shelter from the brunt of the door’s destruction, but I was peppered with fragments of splintered wood that dug themselves into my skin. I wanted to cry out in pain, but the sight of what was beyond caught the scream in my throat.
There, standing in the doorway, I saw a pair of feet. Massive legs the must’ve been at least three feet across themselves, but that wasn’t the strangest thing. The skin was no tone I had ever seen on a human. It was this mossy green and brown, and the texture was so…wooden, like a pair of tree trunks. Slowly, the thing in my doorway ambled its way into my room. I could hear its heavy, ragged breaths, like some sort of hunting beast. It was at the foot of my bed, the scent of moss and pine clung heavily to it, but there was another scent I caught as it just stood there. Rot. Death. The pungent odor of decaying meat clung to the creature’s wooden legs. I had to cover my nose and mouth to keep from retching as it circled the bed. Was it going to throw it up and pull me out from underneath? Was this monster just waiting for the perfect chance to tear me to shreds? What the fuck was it?
The feet turned, and suddenly my blood felt like ice. My whole body shivered as the temperature in the room suddenly plummeted. I could see my breath as this thing let out an ear-shattering roar. I can’t place the sound, but it reminded me of a mixture between a jet engine’s roar and a grizzly bear’s growl. I watched from my hiding place as the nightstand was lifted and launched across the room. I could only hear the thing shatter as the creature tore the place apart. My eyes were discs in my head, my hands were clamped over my mouth to hide any sounds of breathing or whimpering, but just as it spun to face the bed, it stopped. Instead whatever it was turned and shambled out of my room.
“What the fuck…what the fuck…” They were the only words I could choke out as the creature disappeared from my sight. Then the phone rang again. Terrified, I seized it, trying to silence the ringer. I swiped to answer the caller and immediately began to whisper into the phone. “What the fuck was that? Who are you? How the fuck did you know it was coming!?”
“There’s no time for any of that. It knows where you are. You need to run. Jump out the window and keep running until you lose sight of this place. Keep going until you reach the highway. Don’t come back until morning.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? That thing is huge! I can’t outrun it!”
“You have to, it’s the only way you win this.” then the call cut out. Signal lost.
I steadied my breathing and psyched myself up, shooting out from under the bed as I heard that dreadful roar again. It was coming back. I didn’t have time to think. No time to find shoes. I bolted toward the now shattered window and dove, slicing my arms and legs against the shards of glass. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, urging me to ignore everything else. I ran. Bolted through the forest as fast as my legs would carry me, twigs and rocks tore into my feet, but I kept going. Even as my chest began to tighten and my lungs began to feel like there was a fire being set beneath them. I ran.
I couldn’t hear the monster behind me anymore. Maybe it stayed at my cabin. Maybe it kept looking elsewhere. Every ounce of me just hoped I had gotten lucky, but the voice on the phone told me to keep running until I hit the highway. So I did. I ran through miles of backcountry woods never stopping, pushing myself far beyond anything I thought I was capable of. Just to get away from whatever the hell that thing was. I could see darkness starting to push its way into my vision, my legs were beginning to feel like they were made of stone. My body ached and every muscle screamed for me to stop, but I kept pushing.
When I burst through the treeline onto the road I stopped, almost instantly I began sobbing and I dropped to my knees. I gazed up at the moon as my phone began to ring again. I pulled it out of my pocket and looked at the number. Before I could do anything else, darkness overtook me.
I woke the following day in a hospital bed. Apparently someone had discovered my unconscious and bloodied body on the side of the road. The Sheriffs had a million questions. None of which I had a good answer for. They thought my story sounded like something I had made up, but when they went to the cabin, many of them were singing a different toon.
“It looks like you got lucky and escaped one of the biggest bears I’ve ever seen.” one of them said. “Didn’t find it, but the claw marks in the wood made it look like a damn dinosaur. Grizzlies are huge, son, but not even they leave marks like that.”
When I asked about the phone calls, they just shook their heads. “There’s no cell service that far out. You might’ve imagined that part in everything.”
It took me over a week to recover from my injuries. I was told I had lacerated a tendon in my right arm, and that it’d never quite function the way it had before. That was the arm I used to play guitar, and to this day, there are still certain notes my fingers just can’t quite nail anymore.
The day of my discharge I was given the things that they had found me with and given an escort back to the cabin. The debris was mostly cleaned up by the time I arrived to collect my things, but the damage to the building itself was visible, and the cops were right. Whatever the hell it was that came after me that night must’ve been massive to leave the marks it did so deep in the wood. I checked my phone as I crossed the threshold of the house to gather my things and sighed. No signal.
“Well…thanks, whoever you were,” I muttered, gathering what stuff was left after the attack.
Then, my phone rang.