I’ve always loved hunting. Being raised in the mountains of Virginia, I went hunting every summer with my uncle and grandpa. One time, however, they didn’t come back. And after two days, my grandma and aunt asked me to find them.
I got my friends, Stanley and Harry, and we grabbed some basic gear, flashlights, rifles, and some supplies, and set out. We drove up the route for about fifteen minutes with the truck until it grew too narrow and treacherous. We got out and Harry took a map and pushed it on the hood. “They should be somewhere around where the pathway forks, so they are within around two miles of here.” We split up the gear between us and set out on foot. Our destination was high up the mountain and far away from the trails. It was almost as if the trails evaded the area. We hacked our way through the thick forest. *How had they ended up out here?* Stanley checked his watch as we climbed. He wanted to get there before dark. I figured we would be lucky if we did.
Stanley and Harry talked like old friends, asking about each other’s wives and children. As the sun dipped below the horizon, Harry checked the map. “Almost there. Get your torches.”
“All right.” Stanley reached into his backpack and pulled out a flashlight. I did the same.
*WOOSH* I heard in the distant treeline before I saw a blur of movement. At the time, I shook it off.
“Do you know what’s up this way Micheal?” Stanley said.
I shook my head.
“Somewhere up here is an old cabin. Hunters used it as a base back when you could still hunt up this way. Let’s see if we can get there before there’s no light left.”
We didn’t make it by dark. Twilight gave way to night with little warning. Soon, we were relying on the light from our torches. Being on a trail in the sunshine lends a sense of security up here, even when you are alone. Now, surrounded by black and with the trail long behind us, an uneasiness grew in my stomach for the first time.
Stanley paused and swept his torch. He muttered something under his breath. Harry took a few steps to the right, lowering his head and squinting.
“There it is,” he said.
At the farthest reaches of Harry’s torchlight, the cabin emerged from the woods.
Stanley tapped Harry on the shoulder. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”
The cabin should have been a source of comfort, but it only added to my unease. The roof was half caved in and trees encroached on all sides, gnarled branches reaching out like fingers. It looked like the structure belonged to the forest.
The only door hung askew on warped and rusted hinges. Two windows had long ago lost their glass. Stanley shouldered open the door with a grunt. Leaves and branches covered the floor, blown in through the open windows and roof. in the cabin’s corner, we saw my uncle. It was too late. I almost gagged when I saw his face in the torchlight. Flat on his back, arms and legs bent at unnatural angles. The left side caved in, a red, bloody mess fragmented with the white of the skull. One green eye looked up, wide and unblinking, as the right side was intact. The rest of the face had an almost serene expression. It was not the look of fear that you would expect from someone about to have half their face crushed. No skin remained below the neck, and the contents of his torso picked so clean I could see his bare spine. I started puking. Once I gained my composure, I helped my two friends carry his body out. We had to sleep there, or we would freeze. We dumped the gear inside. Stanley took out a lantern and tied it to a horizontal bran. He flicked it on and the light glowed. If there was anyone lost nearby, they could not see it. Then we heard a noise again. In the distance, a tree fell. “Holy shit man, did you hear that?” “The wind blew that sucker down.” Then I saw the blur again, I felt this feeling of cold, dread, anxiety, and, oddly enough, hunger. We split up and entered the forest, guided by our torches. Harry instructed us to go no further than the reach of the lantern. It was our lighthouse on the horizon.
The wind blew in fresh from the north. I buttoned up my jacket against the cold. The beam from the torch was strong, but aside from the narrow cone of light, the forest was dark. Harry and Stanley called out the name of my grandpa. I did the same.
Every few steps, I stopped and listened. The forest was alive with the scurrying animals and insects going about their business. And the constant rustling of the wind through the leaves. It was hopeless. This was needle-in-the-haystack stuff. my grandpa could be unconscious on the ground a few feet to my left and I would never see him. We should camp and wait for the first light. Harry jumped and swung his torch out into the woods.
“What the hell did that to your uncle?” Harry said.
“My guess is a bear, that’s the only logical explanation.”
“I feel weird out here, let’s go back and camp now.”
“All right, that’s fine.” “Now, Let’s get back to the cabin and radio down the news.”
Stanley took a few quick steps toward the cabin and motioned for us to follow. He seemed agitated. I didn’t blame him. I followed on his heels. harry lingered, searching the woods with his torch until he too fell in behind.
The inside of the cabin felt like a sanctuary. Out of the wind and removed from the mangled corpse of Eddie, my mind processed the sight. This was different from the fish I had gutted before. I put my hand to my stomach and swallowed hard. They overcame me with a compulsion to repeat my unanswered question. What could have done that?
Before I could, Harry gave us some more bad news. There was no response on the radio, only static. It wasn’t surprising, the cabin sat in a depression between the peak we crested on our way in and the taller peak beyond. “We have to go back,” I said.
Harry shook his head. “Not in the dark and not when there’s someone still out there.” “Let’s just sleep, we will search more in the morning.” The next morning we walked back into the woods, calling my grandpa’s name, then suddenly we heard the most, ear piercing, bone-chilling, screech. Except it was *wrong*. It wasn’t human, nor animal, it was, in between. I waited for one of the two men behind me to dismiss what we just heard. To make light of it and crack a joke. Neither did. Stanley uttered a simple instruction. “No one goes outside without a weapon.”
Stanley bent down and fished a rifle from the bag. My heart beat like a drum in my ears. And then something else. Whispers. What sounded like whispers, entreating us, inviting us out into the darkness of the forest.
Stanley inched open the door with the muzzle of his rifle. He stepped through the gap and watched the trees. He stood beside the door and searched the corners of the forest illuminated by the light. Nothing moved.
Harry unclipped the leather strap on his belt and drew a pistol and went to the doorway. I felt exposed with my hands empty. I took a step backward, and then we saw it.
A shadow flashed through the trees and Stanley swung the muzzle of the rifle and shot, the crack piercing the night. He raised the rifle to his shoulder and flicked it from side to side searching for movement. With a rush, a long-limbed creature dropped onto Stanley from above. He screamed and wrenched the rifle around but had it knocked from his grip. Harry fired two shots and the creature let out a wail. It bound towards the door and Harry slammed it shut. He pointed the pistol at the closed door and emptied the chamber.
Harry took a step back and shot me a glance. Throughout the entire ordeal, I had not moved. I had barely breathed. Was it dead? Was Stanley ok?
“The window!” I screamed.
The long thin fingers of the creature wrapped themselves around the inside of the window frame. Then the head appeared, human-like but distorted and disfigured. The chin elongated and the teeth were like razors and drenched in blood. Its eyes are white and piercing. The creature was thin–but it corded its limbs with sinewy, ropy muscle. Its torso again looked like something that had once been human. But a human that had been stretched and twisted to be almost unrecognizable. Long arms hung nearly to the ground. Beneath an emaciated rib cage hung a distended, protruding belly. Thin stick legs with backward-facing knees ended in tufts of white fur and large black hooves. Its enormous hands, tipped with long filthy nails, held the shredded remains of what looked to have once been a rabbit. The creature, now fully in view from behind the tree, opened its red-stained mouth to reveal rows of long, knife-like teeth. And from that horrifying maw, came the shrill, whining bugle of a bull elk. Harry grabbed me by the arm and hauled me into the back room of the cabin. He slammed shut the flimsy door. The back room was windowless and the only light was a thin strip at the base of the lantern in the front room.
We crouched together, our shoulders pressed against the door. We listened. The light patter of footsteps. Two thin strips of black interrupted the strip of light at the base of the door. Something stood on the other side.
“Come out, it is ok.”
It sounded like Stanley. Had he killed it?
“Come out.”
Harry straightened and I grabbed his shoulder.
“Don’t open the door,” I whispered.
My hand brushed against Harry’s back and knocked the flashlight from his jacket pocket. I fumbled in the darkness until I found it and I flicked it on. I scanned the room for something, anything we could use as a weapon. I walked away from the door and kicked at the twigs and leaves on the floor. All that was good for was kindling.
Something smelled rotten like.
“It’s Stanley,” Harry said.
I pointed the torch to him. His eyes were wide and wild.
“He must have killed it.”
“Come out Michael.” I heard my grandfather say, “it’s okay.” I heard my uncle, I was going to open the door, then I remembered, he was dead.
The door slammed open and carried with it the rotten stench. What stood in the doorway was not Stanley, but the monster. Harry kneeled before it, breathing in the noxious fumes.
I shined the torch onto the creature. Its gray skin pulled tight on a gaunt frame. It snarled, its mouth opening wide and dripping with saliva. It wrapped two hands around Harry’s neck and leaned in.
I acted, without thinking. I jumped at the creature, swinging the only weapon I had, the torch. I brought it down on its head with all the strength and adrenaline I had. It bucked and sent me flying into the front room beyond. I threw out my hands to brace my fall and grabbed the lantern Stanley had hung from the ceiling. It could not bear my weight and the cord pulled out from the ceiling and I fell with a thud.
I jumped up at a burst of warmth from my stomach. The lantern had smashed on impact and the white-hot filament broke free of its casing. I groaned in pain and the creature lumbered forwards. I retreated into the corner of the room and pulled my knees up to my chest. It stood over me and opened its mouth, razor-sharp teeth gleaming white.
Then the smell of smoke. The creature hopped and then scrambled backward. The leaves and twigs covering the floor ignited under the heat from the lamp filament. A small flame burst up and the creature covered its face. Fire. It didn’t like fire.
I crawled forwards and swept as much of the kindling as I could grab onto the flames. The fire grew and the creature screamed. As smoke filled the room it coughed and spluttered. It made one last effort to come at me and then retreated out of the room and into the forest.
I went to the back room and grabbed Harry. We stumbled out of the cabin, the fire now spreading up the walls and to the roof.
Stanley lay below the lantern hung from the tree, unmoving and with a chunk of flesh missing from his throat.
We ran into the forest in the opposite direction the creature had gone. We first climbed up to the crest and then back down the mountain. It was night again.
We stumbled our way down by the light of the torch. Adrenaline coursed through our veins and we imagined that thing right behind us, stalking us in the dark. When we crossed a trail we followed it back down to the ranger station.
A team of police and the national guard hiked up to the cabin after the sun rose. The cabin had burned to the ground, the pot belly stove the only item that survived the blaze. They brought the bodies of Stanley and Eddie down. They said Stanley’s flesh had been picked clean down to the skeleton. That was the first day of November 2012.
We listed my grandfather as a missing person
Around campfires, people still tell stories of monsters like the “Wendigo”. I don’t know if they believe they are out there. But I know, I have seen it. And I know that, somewhere, it’s still out there, hunting, looking for its next prey. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s you.