The warm glow of the campfire shimmered off of Lake Deerhead’s surface, providing the only notable source of light on an otherwise overcast August night. A few feet away, back towards our cabin, I could see fireflies buzzing listlessly through the air, flickering in and out of sight. The woods surrounding us were alive with the noise of crickets chirping, frogs croaking, and owls cooing. A perfect, peaceful, and relaxing evening with nature.
“I’m. So. Bored!” Mia yelled, kicking over the three cans of hard seltzer at the foot of her lawn chair, getting a chuckle out of me, but eyerolls from Andrew and Kelly.
“And what do you want me to do about that, Mia?” Andrew asked, tilting his head back with a sigh.
“I don’t know. Something?” She replied.
“I already started this stupid fire, which again, is banned in the leasing agreement. What else do you want?”
Kelly gave her boyfriend a worried look. “Yeah, actually, should we be concerned about that at all, or…?”
Andrew waved her off. “It’ll be fine. It said something about fire disturbing the wildlife, but that just seemed like some bullshit to get out of paying the license fee or whatever with the fire marshall. I can sweep the ash into the lake tomorrow morning. No one will be the wiser.”
“Sure…” Kelly nodded, clearly not reassured
“Guys, I think we’re missing the bigger point here. Which is that I’m bored. Let’s do something,” Mia continued to prod.
“Mia, it’s 11 at night and we’re in the middle of the woods. What else is there to do besides drink and stare at the fire?”
I decided to jump in at this. “We could do ghost stories. Unless L’il Andwew is afwaid of ghosts.”
He glared at me. “Stop dating my sister.”
“Make me,” I replied, flashing a smirk at Mia. She rolled her eyes, but I could see a blush forming on her cheeks. We’d been dating for a few months at this point and even though Andrew had come to accept it, I could tell the idea of his best friend dating his younger sister irked him to no end. My opinion was, if he didn’t want this to happen then he shouldn’t have such a beautiful sister and such a charming friend. What else could he expect, really?
“Ghost stories could be fun,” Kelly said, trying to keep the conversation light. “I don’t know any off the top of my head, but it’s a good night for something like that. Julia, did you have one?”
Her agreement caught me off guard. “Oh, um… No, I was just messing with Andrew because he always gets scared when we watch horror movies around him.”
“I don’t get scared, I just prefer comedies.” Andrew replied. “Anyways, I got nothing for ghost stories. There were some murders and shit that happened in this area that I know about, but not like supernatural stuff or anything.”
“Murders?” Mia asked, suddenly perking up.
Andrew shrugged. “Yeah, guy who’s renting this place to me mentioned something about it in his emails. I ended up looking into them a little.”
“And?”
He shrugged again. “About what you’d expect. I found articles from a few years back that talked about it. 5, maybe 6, years ago or so. Something like 14 bodies were found, I think.”
“Jesus…” Kelly muttered. I stared Andrew dead in the eyes, looking for any cracks or hints to betray his serious tone. There was nothing.
“Yeah, it was some pretty gruesome stuff from what I read. Torture, dismemberment, some stuff about ritualistically arranging the bodies. They actually found the first victim at this lake. Some couple had been out kayaking one evening and saw a foot float by them. Game wardens swept the lake and found the rest of him in about 12 different pieces. Everyone thought it was a mob hit or something, until a month later when they found the second body in the woods by that general store we passed. Same deal, 12 different pieces, but this time they were arranged in a circle around a tree.”
“Oh God…” Mia whispered. I could feel the air around us grow colder and the noises of the forest grow louder. I leaned in closer to the fire, now fully drawn into Andrew’s story.
“Pattern kept going for months. New bodies chopped to bits were found all over these woods. Some were men, some were women, some locals, some tourists. The cops were useless and couldn’t find any pattern or reasoning behind the killings. Just the ceremony stuff. It got so bad that a bunch of locals started moving out of town. Everyone that stayed loaded up with guns and ammo, just waiting for the guy to strike. Then, about a year and a half in, the killings just sort of stopped. No more people went missing and no more bodies were found. Poof. It’s like the guy who’d done it all had just up and disappeared without a trace. Nothing happened after that, no more killings here and they couldn’t find any similar crimes happening elsewhere. It all just stopped.”
“Wait, so did they ever catch the guy?” Kelly asked, seemingly terrified of the answer.
“Nope. Never even released an FBI profile like they do with some serial killers. There are a couple of theories floating around out there about it. Mostly dumb shit, like it was a vengeful spirit or a top secret government experiment running amok. Like I said, pretty dumb shit. But one of the things I read actually stuck out and got me interested
“Yeah…?” I asked, now leaning so close to the fire my hair might singe.
“The owner of the place actually put me on to the theory. See, because the first body was found in the lake, people assumed that the guy had to be from this area. Might even live on the lake. This cabin was actually abandoned at the time of the killings, the current owner wouldn’t buy it for another few years. So like, an abandoned cabin in the middle of nowhere? What better place to go on a murder spree. No witnesses, no paper trail tying you to the place. And it makes sense how he could just up and leave without anyone noticing. Besides, when the heat dies down and people start to forget about you… Makes it all the easier TO COME BACK!”
He screamed the last part while kicking one of the bottom logs of the fire, sending a plume of sparks dancing into the sky. I yelped, leaping back into my cheap lawn chair and almost falling over. Across from me I could see Kelly doing the same, barely catching herself before tipping over. Andrew threw himself back against his chair, laughing like a maniac.
I sat bolt upright, almost leaping across the fire at him. “Fuck you! God! Was any of that true?”
“Not a fuckin’ word,” He said, trying to stifle his laughter. “Why would a landlord tell me his cabin had a serial killer squatting in it? What kind of marketing is that?”
“God you’re such an asshole,” Kelly replied, playfully punching his arm.
“You guys were the ones saying you wanted a ghost story. Well I’d say that worked pretty well.”
I steadied myself in the chair, letting out a long exhale before responding. “It was ok. Ending was a little rushed.”
“Come on, that was on the spot. You try ramping up to a decent reveal like that.”
Kelly continued to punch and prod at him, turning his attention away from me. Not interested in their flirting, I glanced back at Mia. She was ignoring all of us, instead staring out across the water towards the far shore of the lake. I followed her line of sight. Our cabin was situated on a small cove along the southern portion of Lake Deerhead, making it possible to see clear to the otherside, at least during the day. A thick cover of clouds had kept the moon and stars hidden all night, and the fire’s reflection off the water’s surface could only illuminate so much at that distance. Trees mostly, with some rocks by the water’s edge. Nothing of particular interest.
“Hey Mia, what are you looking at?” I asked, stepping towards her and putting a hand on her shoulder.
“I, uh… I’m not really sure, but… Does that look like a person to you?” She said, pointing across the lake. “Like, right up by the edge of the water?”
I squinted in the direction she was pointing. At first, the only things visible were the shadows of pine trees clustered into thick rows, and the thin rocky shore that lined most of the lake. As I continued to stare and my eyes adjusted to the faint light, a separate shape came into focus. A silhouette stood out just above the rocks, smaller and less fuzzy than the outlines of the trees. I couldn’t tell exactly how tall, but definitely in the ballpark of human size. The shape looked right, at the very least.
“Hey, Andrew, Kelly?” I asked, still squinting towards the horizon. “Does that look like a person to you guys? On the far side of the lake?”
They both raised an eyebrow at this, but looked out all the same. The four of us stared out across the water, everyone waiting for someone else to confirm what we all thought we were seeing. Finally, Andrew spoke up.
“I don’t know, I can’t really see anything,” He said.
Kelly continued to stare hard at the far shore. “I mean, I think I see what you’re talking about. It’s really hard to tell, but… Yeah, no definitely, that could totally be a person.”
“Hey Andrew, maybe it’s that serial killer you were ‘making-up’,” I said with a smirk.
“Ok, but like, what if we didn’t joke about that?” Kelly responded.
“I still can’t see what any of you guys are talking about,” Andrew continued.
“Well, whatever it is, I’ve officially got the creeps,” Mia said, while getting up from her chair. “Anyone else want to head inside?”
I nodded at her, “Yeah, sure, we can head in.”
“Sounds good to me,” Kelly replied, looking as unnerved as Mia.
“I suppose it’s getting to be about that time,” Andrew agreed.
He doused the fire with a bucket of water he’d been keeping by his chair and the four of us walked back to the cabin. The cool air from the window unit AC hit us the second we stepped in, blowing away the stale humidity of the lake and woods. After closing the backdoor, Kelly made a beeline towards the main bedroom while Mia and I flopped down onto the couch in the living room. Andrew hung back in the kitchen, emptying the remains of his PBR tallboy into the sink. The cabin had a cozy, one bedroom layout with a combined kitchen/living room and a loft up above the ground floor bedroom. Mia and I had graciously agreed to give Andrew and Kelly the private bedroom, after a brief fight during the car ride up earlier that day. Martyrs, the two of us.
The interior was what you’d expect from this kind of rental cabin. Wooden floors and walls, a few pieces of hand-carved furniture, one nice throw rug in the center of the living room, and a small stone fireplace with a neat pile of logs stacked next to it. Just about every inch of the walls was covered with some sort of knick knack, mostly paintings of the local wildlife or photos of the lake itself, with the big standout being a large, 8 point bucks head hung above the fireplace. We’d taken to calling him Deerick as a joke, after Kelly vetoed the name Bambi for being ‘too mean’.
I’d been staring off into space for a moment when I noticed Mia playfully nudging me with her foot from the other side of the couch. Egged on by the admittedly fair amount of alcohol in my system, I returned fire by flicking at the tops of her toes. She giggled and kicked harder at my leg. Finally, with no options left but to end this assault once and for all, I stood up over her, pinned her legs with both hands, and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. She grabbed the back of my head, cutting off my retreat, and with a coy smile pulled me in for a longer, more passionate kiss.
“Can you two throw a tarp over yourselves if you’re going to do that?” Andrew asked from the kitchen. “Just for decency’s sake?”
We both looked up and Mia flipped him off with her free arm. “Eat shit and die, asshole.”
Kelly poked her head out of the bedroom, eager for a front row seat to this new round of sibling bickering. Andrew stepped behind her and wrapped her in a bear hug.
“You see? You see how they treat me?” he asked, kissing the top of her forehead.
Mia gagged and yelled back, “Oh so you get to do it, but we don’t? Hypocrite much?”
“It’s cute when I do it.”
“It’s sick and perverse.”
“Can you two please stop fighting in front of Deerick?” I butted in, wanting this to end before it ramped up. The joke seemed to work, getting both of them to pause for a moment with a laugh. I even managed to get a chuckle out of Kelly. I usually couldn’t even get her to crack a smile.
With the pause in the conversation I noticed a new noise. A small rhythmic thumping, coming from outside the cabin and growing steadily louder. Everyone else seemed to hear it as well, keeping quiet and trying to make out what exactly it was. As the noise continued to grow, I heard it wasn’t just one singular beat, but several, galloping rhythms all out of sync and crashing over each other, with a faint crackling sound following the thumps. The realization came to me suddenly. Something, or rather several things, were running towards the cabin. Very, very quickly.
BANG!
Something smashed against the outside wall of the cabin, shaking the knick knacks and sending a framed photo of Lake Deerhead crashing to the ground. A whining, piercing screech followed the crash, burrowing like an icepick into my ears and drowning out the thumping noise. It stopped and started in fits, a shrill, bleating wail, growing softer and softer each time it returned. I frantically looked around the cabin, trying to take stock of everyone else. Mia and I held each other’s hands in a death grip on the couch, while Kelly and Andrew stood in the doorway to the bedroom, Kelly’s face buried into Andrew’s chest. A moment passed and the noise quieted to almost a whisper, while the galloping noises now seemed to be fading in the opposite direction they had come from..
“Holy shit! Was… Was that a deer?” Mia asked, a little bit louder than necessary.
Andrew looked at the two of us. “I mean… It’s gotta be, right? Like that or a moose or something.”
“Do you think it’s still..?” Kelly asked.
We all exchanged looks, no one wanting to volunteer for the obvious task. Finally, with a sigh, Andrew spoke up.
“I’ll check.”
As he moved for the front door, my guilt got the better of me. I stood up and chased after him. “Wait, wait, wait… I’m not gonna force you to do this by yourself.”
He smiled gratefully at me and the two of us exited out the front, while Mia and Kelly gathered together in the living room. As we stepped out onto the porch, the rhythmic pounding noise came back, now quiet and far in the distance. We’d left the front porch light on earlier that night, but the two bulbs on either side of the door were on their last legs, barely illuminating 10 feet past the railing. It didn’t even reach the bumper of Kelly’s car. Despite this, I still tried fruitlessly to peer out into the woods after the noise.
“That had to have been, like, a whole herd of them running by,” I said off-hand. “Deer or whatever.”
Andrew nodded beside me. “Must have been deer. We saw like 5 on the drive up today. Whole area is full of them.”
“Do you think they got spooked or something? It sounded like they were sprinting.”
“I guess? Can’t really imagine what else it could be,” He replied. The two of us stood there for a moment, both dreading the inevitable task of seeing whatever poor creature had been left behind. After taking a second to resolve our nerves, we stepped off the porch and walked around the corner of the cabin, where I could just barely hear the sound of ragged breathing.
The deer laid in a heap next to the wall, its neck clearly broken and bending at a harsh, unnatural angle towards its body. The left antler dug into the animal’s side, plunging deeper with every feeble, shuddering breath it took. A pool of warm crimson had formed on the fur surrounding the wound, trickling down its body into a small puddle on the ground. The deer kicked weakly into the air with its hindleg as it continued to struggle and wheeze. For a split second our eyes met and I could feel every bit of pain and desperation this creature felt. I turned my head away, only to spot the large red splatter on the wall where it had made contact.
“Jesus Christ….” Andrew muttered under his breath.
I swallowed hard and could feel a few tears forming in the corners of my eyes. “Should we… You know…?”
Andrew sighed. “Yeah, I mean, it’s the least we can do. Jesus… I’ll… I’ll do it, just help me find a rock…”
The words were hard to hear, even though I understood it was the most humane thing to do. Turning on our phone flashlights, the two of us began scouring the woods for anything big enough to do the job. After a minute or two of searching, I heard Andrew call out from a few yards away “Found one!”
“Ok!” I replied, before turning and jogging back the way I’d come. The deer had stopped kicking by this point, instead focusing all of its remaining energy on simply drawing breath. I slowed as I approached the animal and saw Andrew emerge from a thicket of trees carrying a football-sized rock with both his hands.
He looked up, evidently seeing the grimace on my face from the sight of the deer. “You can, uh, you can head back in if you want to. I can do this by myself.”
I considered this for a moment. Andrew, for every bit of bravado he put on, wasn’t some unfeeling machine. I still remember back when we were kids and had found a dying rabbit out behind his parents house. We’d put it in a shoebox and tried to nurse it back to health, only for it to die later that afternoon. Andrew had been inconsolable for the next two days.
“No…” I said, putting a hand on his back. “I’m here with you.”
“Thanks, Jules,” he said with a smile, before turning back towards the deer, squatting down, and raising the rock over his head. I looked away, closing my eyes and waiting for the crunch to tell me the job was done. It came a second later, brief and sickening, followed by silence. Opening my eyes again, I saw Andrew breathing heavily and staring blankly at the now motionless animal.
“You ok?” I asked.
He nodded absently at me. “Yeah… Yeah, I just need a second. I’ll be inside in a bit.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, don’t worry. I’ll just be a minute,” He said, waving me along.
Figuring it’d be best to give him his space, I began walking back towards the front of the cabin. Right as I passed the railing of the porch, I caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye. Out past the gravel driveway, at the edge of the dirt road that surrounded the lake, I saw a shadow. A human shaped shadow.
I leapt back behind the corner, barely managing to suppress a scream of surprise. Andrew heard the sudden movement and turned in my direction. I put a lip to my finger while waving him over with my other hand.
“What’s up?” he whispered as he approached.
“There’s a guy,” I answered, just as quietly.
“What?”
“A guy, there’s a guy standing out in the middle of the road.”
He arched an eyebrow, before peaking around the corner and immediately whipping his head back, “Holy shit, there’s a guy right there.”
“It’s almost fucking midnight, what’s he doing just standing outside our cabin?” I asked, not even trying to conceal the note of panic in my voice.
“I don’t… “ Andrew started answering, pausing as if to catch up with his own thoughts. “Shit…. Ok, ok, ok, I’m gonna go see what he wants. Just stay behind me, and I don’t know, back me up or something.”
I stood a full 6 inches shorter than Andrew, not to mention about 40 pounds lighter, so I had no idea exactly how I’d be “backing him up”, but I nodded along to his plan all the same. He shot me a thumbs up, before abruptly stepping out around the corner, hand raised in a wave.
“Hey there! Something we can help you with?”
I followed behind him, hanging back by a few feet. The man hadn’t moved, still standing motionless at the edge of the road, his arms resting at his side and a long, skinny object dangling from his right hand. He looked to be about average height, with the object in his hand probably being a meter or so long. Once again, the porch lights failed to reach far enough, leaving the finer details of his appearance obscured behind a sheet of darkness.
A moment passed from Andrew’s first question before he spoke again. “Ok, look, if there’s something you want to-”
“You folks might want to turn off your porchlight,” the man suddenly spoke up, his voice rough and gravelly. ”Tends to spook the wildlife out here.”
Andrew glanced down at his pants, now stained with a streak of blood and gore from the deer. “Yeah, no, definitely. We’ll definitely do that.”
“Just a suggestion,” the man said, shrugging. The object in his hand shook with the shrug and I could see a second part of it had been hidden behind his arm, fatter and with a different shape than the rest of it. Before I could even think to categorize it, his hand turned again, hiding it away.
“Right, yeah…” Andrew replied.
“Are you, um, are you staying on the lake too?” I asked suddenly, hoping to keep him around long enough to get a better look at whatever he was carrying.
The man tilted his head towards me, but didn’t respond. I continued to stare at him, trying to make out any identifying details I could. A beard, hair color, a stain on his shirt, anything. Finally, after another period of uneasy silence, he nodded at the two of us.
“You two be havin’ a good night now.”
Andrew and I exchanged a look, but before either of us could respond the man turned down the road and began walking away. As he did, I briefly managed to catch another glimpse of the back portion of the object in his hand and a sudden flash of recognition fired in my brain. It was the shoulder stock of a rifle.
The second his footsteps fell out of earshot I grabbed onto Andrew’s arm. He looked to be as unnerved as I was.
“What the fuck was that?” he asked, still keeping his voice low.
“Did you see that thing he was carrying?” I whispered back.
“Yeah, was that like a walking stick or something?”
“I think it was a gun.”
Andrew’s eyes bulged at this. “What?!”
“It looked like a rifle.”
He looked back at where the man had been before turning back to me. “You’re sure?”
“I mean, it was dark, but like he wasn’t using it as a walking stick. It looked like a hunting rifle. I don’t know what that guy’s deal is, but I really don’t like it.”
“Ok, Ok. Fuck, um… Look, let’s just get back inside. We can talk it over with Kelly and Mia.”
Unsure of what else to do, I followed Andrew back inside through the front door, taking care to flick off the porch lights as we did. Mia and Kelly immediately rushed us as we stepped in.
“Were you guys yelling about something out there?” Mia asked, putting a hand on my shoulder. “We heard you guys yelling.”
Kelly reached out for Andrew’s hand, but he brushed past her while gesturing at the stains on his clothes. She stepped back at this, “Oh God, what happened?”
“It’s just from the deer.”
“A deer did that to you?”
“What, no. I got it when I… Look, let me just wash off first, ok” Andrew said while moving towards the sink.
“Seriously guys, was there someone out there? Why were you yelling?” Mia asked again.
I gave them a quick summary of what happened. The deer, the guy, the maybe-gun. Andrew remained silent the entire time, furiously scrubbing at his hands in the kitchen sink.
“That’s really fucked,” Mia said after I finished.
Kelly had her arms crossed while standing next to Andrew in the kitchen. “Yeah, actually, I really don’t like that. Was he trying to be threatening?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “It was just… It was definitely a rifle. I’m like, 100% positive.”
“He could be a hunter, or something,” Andrew offered.
Kelly looked at him doubtfully. “Just wandering around a dirt road in the middle of the night? No. It’s August, nothing’s even in season right now.
“Could be poaching. Might be trying to slip past the game wardens by going at night.”
“Then why would he be doing it right by a bunch of occupied cabins? And walking up to people to talk? Nothing about that makes sense.”
“Do you have a better idea?” Andrew asked.
“I do,” Mia spoke up. “He’s a fucking psycho with a gun. Why are we discussing this? Let’s just get in the car and leave.”
“And go where?” Andrew asked incredulously. “We’re like an hour out from the nearest town with a motel.”
“Well, I’m not spending a night in this place while some lunatic runs around and threatens people with a gun. Seriously, what are we still doing here?”
Andrew sighed. “Look, obviously we’re all on edge right now, but I think-”
The lights cut out before Andrew could finish the sentence, his words drowned out by the shocked screams of everyone else. On my left I felt Mia’s hands shoot up and grab at my shoulder, almost knocking me over as she did. From the kitchen came a loud banging noise and string of furious cursing.
“Andrew!?” Kelly called out in the dark.
I heard Andrew groan a few feet away. “Goddammit… I’m good. Just got startled and smacked my head on a cabinet…”
“What the fuck!?” Mia screamed, her hands trembling as they gripped my arm.
I instinctively pulled her in closer, just then noticing the lack of a once omnipresent background hum. “AC’s out too. I- I think all the power’s out.”
Mia and Andrew both started shouting at once, each trying to yell over the other while Kelly weakly attempted to calm them down. I could feel my breathing grow short and a pit form in my stomach. Whatever calm, rational thoughts I’d had left went out with the lights, now replaced by an all-consuming panic. As suddenly as the lights had gone out, a popping noise came echoing in from outside, immediately quieting everyone. A gunshot.
Mia and I both dropped low, and I could hear Kelly and Andrew do the same. A moment of almost unbearable silence passed before a second shot rang out, this one sounding closer then the first.
“Andrew, I’m dead serious, we need to get the fuck out of here,” Mia said in a trembling voice, clutching my hand harder then I thought possible.
“The keys,” Kelly whispered from across the room, followed by the sound of jingling metal. “I still have the keys in my pocket.”
Another shot echoed, growing still closer.
“Shit, shit, shit…” Andrew muttered. “Ok, but we need to fucking run. Kelly, when we get in there, you gotta floor it.”
“We have to go right,” I said, only now regaining some of my composure. “ The gunshots are coming from the left, we have to take the road right, up the northside of the lake.”
“Got it,” Kelly said, her voice resolute.
With everyone in agreement, we began a slow crawl towards the front door. The clouds outside had started clearing and now faint shafts of moonlight came in through the two front windows, casting the cabin interior in a silvery glow. Not much light, but enough to navigate around the furniture in the living room. Enough for me to see the looks of fear and anxiety on everyone’s faces as we crowded in front of the door. Andrew stood up first, placing a nervous hand on the wooden door handle. The rest of us crouched down next to him, making sure to stay out of the window’s line of sight. We stood still for a moment, everyone steeling their nerves for the run to the car.
With one final look at the rest of us for reassurance, Andrew nodded, flung the door open, and sprinted out into the night. Kelly went next, the car keys clutched tight in her right hand, with Mia following close behind. I brought up the rear. As I rounded the door frame, I saw Andrew and Kelly had both cleared the porch, now almost to the car, with Mia’s front foot right at the edge of the front steps.
A fourth gunshot pierced the air.
Mia jumped at the noise, her foot slipping from the front step while her body continued forward. She hit the ground hard and skidded along the gravelly driveway, barely getting her hands up in time to shield her face from the blow. I forgot completely about the car, instead leaping down and crouching by her side. She groaned weakly and managed to push herself up onto all fours, wincing as she did. Cuts and scrapes covered her arms under a thick layer of dirt, but those looked to be the only injuries. Gingerly, I reached for her hand, motioning for her to grab my shoulder to help her stand. She looked up, only for her eyes to move past my face and go wide at whatever she saw behind me.
I turned my head and my heart stopped. Sprinting towards us from out of the woods, came the shadow of a man holding a large rifle across his chest. The same man I’d seen before. My legs refused to move and my mind went blank with fear, caught between fight or flight and settling on neither. He ran to the edge of the driveway, only 10 feet away, before stopping and leveling his gun. Behind us I heard indistinct screams from Kelly and Andrew. Timed seemed to slow as the man steadied his aim in our direction, before slowly lifting the barrel up over our heads and firing.
I clutched my ears as he pulled the trigger, anticipating the explosive bang of the gunshot. What I didn’t anticipate was the deafening, ungodly growl that followed. Coming from behind us, it echoed through the woods, rumbling deep and low. I looked out across the dirt road, towards the forest spreading out beyond. The tops of trees bent and swayed to an invisible force, the growling accompanied by the groaning of branches and the rustling of leaves. As the roar subsided, two loud thuds followed, the trees moving in sync with the noises.
“STAY DOWN!” the man screamed.
Clutching his rifle with one hand, he reached down at his side with the other and pulled out what looked like a bulky pistol from a holster. He aimed high and fired, sending a bright red flare arcing into the sky before coming down towards the opposite side of the road, casting stark shadows against the treetops as it did. Behind the trees, at least 30 feet off the ground, two bright circles reflected the light, with dark, narrow slits at their centers.
Eyes.
They shimmered for a brief instant before the flare fell too low and the dark again overtook them. The growling returned as the flare died, quieter than before, but with an undercurrent of unmistakable fury.
The man raised his rifle again, as he stepped past Mia and I, roaring as he did, “GET INSIDE AND KEEP THE LIGHTS OFF!”
We didn’t need to be told twice. Mia and I both scrambled to our feet and up the steps of the porch, before sprinting through the still open front door. Andrew and Kelly came in close behind, Andrew slamming the door shut as he did. The four of us ran to the corner of the bedroom, as far away from that thing as we could possibly get. The sounds of gunfire and growling continued for the next several minutes, growing slowly quieter until a total silence overtook the night. We stayed in that corner until the morning, nobody daring to move until the first beams of sunlight came creeping in through the windows.
With some lingering fear, the four of us stepped outside to survey the damage. A few trees had fallen on the other side of the road, but both the cabin and car were untouched. We drove about 3 miles up around the lake, until Mia’s phone picked up a strong enough signal to call the local sheriff’s department. They’d been scrambled all night with reports of disturbances and power outages, but invited us to file a report at their main office all the same. The officer we spoke with clearly didn’t think much of our story and I’m not sure how much he actually recorded. We returned to the cabin after that, staying only long enough to gather our things, before reembarking on the five hour journey home.
The sheriff’s department never followed up on our report and no stories came up regarding anything similar to what we’d seen. The only communication we ever received regarding that night came from the owner of the cabin. A week after we returned home, Andrew received an irate email from him saying he’d found the ash from our fire still piled on the beach and that the security deposit was forfeit.
We decided not to fight the charge.