Alright. To make things clear, I’m 20 years old. In my sophomore year of college, going into my junior year. This summer? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Right now, I’m in a beat-to-shit old ass truck in the middle of the woods somewhere– I don’t even know where. My phone doesn’t even have service– I’m writing this in the notes app.
It started last week. A couple of friends and I decided we’d go on a camping trip. I had experience camping, having gone with my family since I was a small child, and I had all the shit we needed to comfortably camp: tent, fire-starter, a few sleeping bags, heavy-duty bug spray and tick spray, a swiss-army knife (for carrying convenience), a pocket knife. Hell, I even had a book on the local plants. I knew my shit, even if my friends didn’t– they had me to lean on. Thankfully, they at least knew how to cook over a campfire, so I wasn’t doing all the work. So, we threw everything into the trunk of one of my friend’s cars, and we set off to the site.
Once there, I set up the tent and started a fire. It was late when we got there, already past six, and the weird thing was that there weren’t any other campers. To be honest, this should have set me off. I should have packed our shit and we should have gotten the hell out of there. But, the site was cheap, and the ice was free. Who would turn down free ice? We had hotdogs for dinner and s’mores for dessert. It was only when we put the fire out for the night that we noticed we weren’t totally alone here. There was another fire lit, far off in the distance so that it seemed like just a speck of red-orange light. I remember feeling relieved at the time.
That night, the four of us got into out sleeping bags and tried to sleep. It was maybe an hour later when one of my firends, I’ll call them John for the sake of the story, said: “Dude, what the fuck? Get off of me!”
John was the more sensible of the lot of us, so I assumed somebody had rolled in their sleep enough to somehow get on top of him, but when I looked, there was nobody there.
“What are you talking about, John? There’s nobody there?” I said. I was tired, and the other two hadn’t even woken up.
John seemed more surprised than anything when he looked around the tent to see nobody even close to being on top of him. That was only the beginning. An hour later, I felt something crawling up my legs, past my torso and up my neck to my face. Of course, I thought it was just a harmless spider, but then I felt something grab my arm. I startled and sat up in the tent, looking frantically around only to see my friends peacefully asleep. And then it kept happening. And it kept happening. One of us would be startled awake every hour. In the morning, I started another fire to make breakfast. I noticed there was another tent closer to our site, too. It couldn’t have been the tent of whoever the owner of that fire last night had been, but I couldn’t see a tent in that general location, either, so I wasn’t sure. Maybe whoever it was had decided they didn’t like their site and moved? It was possible, but you’re not supposed to switch sites.
The others shuffled out of our tent one by one, looking ragged as all hell and like they hadn’t slept a wink. I imagined I looked much the same. I used a cast-iron skillet on top of a grate over the fire to make eggs. John took out a monster energy drink from the cooler and tossed it to our other friend, who I will call Alice for the sake of this story. The last one out of the tent, who I will call Betty, sat cross-legged on the floor next to our site’s picnic bench. Alice cracked open the monster and sat next to Betty, but not before grabbing us all some paper plates for the eggs.
“Was that tent there yesterday?” Betty asked. I shook my head in response.
“Maybe that guy with the fire from last night decided he liked us, so he moved his tent closer,” John laughed as he said this, but it put a feeling of unease in my stomach.
“That’s weird if he did,” Alice said. I hummed in agreement.
That night was the same. One difference is that we heard scratching at our tent, starting about an hour after we settled into our sleeping bags. And it continued every hour, along with one of us being woken up each hour from various things. And then it continued on the third night. And the fourth. And the fifth. On the sixth night, Alice woke up with deep scratches on her left arm. Betty woke up with a gash on her right thigh. John woke up and basically flew out of the tent to throw up the entire contents of his stomach. I woke up with a long gash on my stomach. In the morning, on the seventh day, all of these injuries were gone. And none of them remembered anything. Except for me, I guess.
That night, that seventh night, we each heard a woman screaming in the woods. She sounded hurt, she sounded like she was in agonizing pain. She sounded close enough that we could help her. So, we ran. And we ran. And John tripped over some tree roots and hurt his ankle enough that he told us to go on without him. So it was just Betty, Alice, and me running after this woman’s screams. She seemed to be getting further and further away the more we ran.
Eventually, we got into a small clearing with a house. Well, more like a shack. It was small, and, once we got closer, we realized that the windows were busted in, and the door was hanging off its hinges. We went in, because of course we did. In the middle of the room there was a metal table, like one you’d see in a morgue. On the table was a woman. Her mouth was wide open, she was missing teeth and, next to her, there was a bloody pair of pliers. Alice screamed. Betty turned white as a ghost and threw up. For some reason, instead of reacting like a normal person, I walked up to the woman on the table. She was skinny, almost emaciated. I assumed she hadn’t been fed. Her eyes were wide open– like, wide open. In fact, on closer inspection? Her eyelids were missing. They weren’t there, they weren’t on the table. But you could tell that they were cut from her face: there was dried blood surrounding her eyes. I wanted to throw up. I almost did. My instinct told me to take out my phone and call the cops, but when I took my phone out there was no service. I turned to ask Betty or Alice if their phones had service, but they were gone. In their place was a man. He was wearing a stereotypical lumberjack outfit, like you’d see in a cartoon. I screamed. He took a lumbering step toward me. I didn’t know what to do. This man could have been the guy who was torturing this woman, but he could also be in the same situation as my friends and I. But, then I remembered that Alice and Betty were both gone. And that man was in their place. I chanced a look down at the floor and, surprise surprise, there they were. On the floor, knocked out. The man had a hammer. I ran.
I ran and I ran and I ran. And now I’m here. In this truck. It’s just getting light out, but I can hear rustling in the woods. I don’t know if I’ll make it out of here. I just hope he doesn’t check the truck.
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Supplemental:
This was found on the notes app of {Redacted}’s Samsung Galaxy model S22. Upon arrival to the site, the phone was the only item in the truck, a 1956 Ford F-100. {Redacted} was nowhere in the vicinity, and a search for {Redacted} is ongoing. None of {Redacted}’s friends mentioned in the note have been found. Search is ongoing for them as well.
Upon entering the house mentioned in the note- two miles away from the truck- there was no table, nor was there a woman. The house was effectively abandoned. The only evidence of life was a mattress in the corner of the adjacent room and a puddle of water in the sink of the bathroom.
Family have thus far refused to comment except to state that the timeline of the note checks out.
End Supplemental