There is a place where I like to go to be alone. A dark forest where the trees are always bare. The ground is always littered with decaying leaves and evergreens stand tall and proud above the rest, providing a dark green contrast to the clear blue sky. A thin layer of frost lies just below the leaves providing a near imperceptible crunch. Snow has not yet fallen but it is coming soon. Winter is just around the corner but somehow a small stream is yet unfrozen. It runs quietly, winding through the trees and under some small decorative bridges. Who knows who made them or why. You can step over the stream at any point but still, they do look nice.
There is a gentle wind that blows through this hollow forest. It carries a harsh biting wind that cuts through any jacket you could wear. This place is always like this every time I visit. It never changes. There haven’t been any creatures or life that I’ve seen or heard. No birds singing nor deer grazing. There is however always a presence. Something watching you no matter where you are and when you think you notice something it darts away or slips behind trees and under rocks.
No matter how much chase you give you will never find anything. It’s best to ignore it. Chances are there’s a reason it’s hiding. Likely it just wants to watch you enjoy its forest in peace. I think once I found a sign of another person being here. A jacket that was tattered and worn and hanging a few feet up in a tree. There were three tears that looked like claws in the back of the black wool jacket. Just a few feet away there was a rock. Slightly out of place now but it was obvious that it was upturned at some point recently. I didn’t dare flip it. The thought came to me though, and in an instant I felt the eyes burning into the back of my head. So I didn’t flip the rock. Nor did I look around the tree or inside the jacket. I left everything as is.
I tried a few animal calls once, into the silence of the forest. I started with some bird calls, crows and things. To my surprise I got some calls back. They felt off though, almost like the calls were just exactly the noise I made but through a grainy speaker. When I moved on to some deer calls I got in return the most guttural, wrenching screech I ever heard. It is still to this day hard to describe. It was a high pitched shriek that attempted to mimic a deer call through human vocal chords but it sounded like it was being played through a broken PA system. It was grainy and echoed far into the distance. It vibrated to the very core of the forest to the point where my vision got shaky and I saw dozens of figures standing just behind each tree, antlers poking out of the sides of their otherwise human heads. All of a sudden the cacophony stopped and I was once again left alone in the forest. The same familiar wind shifting through the empty trees. I was alone again but in the special way that you are alone in this forest. I never called out after that. I never even spoke a word when I was in the forest. I still do go though, it’s too nice not to.