There's Something Wicked in Them Woods

Blood drips onto the ground, forming a vicous puddle....my blood. Slow and steady my life force slips out and falls, seeping into the Earth. The blood coalesces with the fallen leaves, once again granting them color in their decay. Vibrant red. Warm, sticky blood...I've always hated the sight of blood. But seeing my own blood is another story. My thoughts become more and more clouded by this indescribable pain. Radiating, sharp, invigorating pain. What's left of my left arm sits limp at my side. Fear has long since taken over my body, leaving me a shaking mess of adrenaline. I'm going to die, aren't I? As sweat beads down my face and my heart races faster than before, a grey figure steps from behind a nearby tree, bearing its sharp teeth in a heinous grin... This....was the most terrified I had ever been. My own death was imminent. That moment was the climax of fucking years of torment and fear. Living under the umbrella of the legends of my town. As it turns out, these stories were more than just spoken words. I want to tell you about the circumstances that led to me bleeding out in that fucking forest. You need to be filled in, you have to understand those woods. I cannot be the only one. Maybe you can make some sense of all of this.My time in the woods changed me in a physical way...yes, and we will get to that, but more so on a psychological level which I cannot even fully grasp now. I'm fucked up...bad. I have never felt anything so damn paralyzing in my life. Brilliant fear, an emotion hard wired in our brains from birth. But my story is not an outlying case where I come from. My place of birth is an area of unexplainable events. Tales of witches spiriting children away in the dead of night, vampires stalking innocent victims, ghouls robbing graves, and ghosts or even demons tormenting the living. These stories are perpetuated by rumor, passed down like trinkets by the elders in an oral tradition of terror. My hometown is a place seemingly hated by God himself. Known only for its horror stories and branded a nightmarish hellscape....but, that's mostly by the townsfolk themselves.This town exists in Washington state, a small dot on the map called.....actually you know what? I really don't think sharing my town's name would be a good idea.You urban explorer, fright seeking dumbasses might just attempt to sojourn here for a cheap thrill. Let me tell you firsthand that coming here is a bad fucking idea. Nothing good can come of it. Anyways, the town itself is small. The word small is often used to describe those picturesque towns in every Americana wet dream conjured up, but the fact is that my town is small in the worst sense of the word. Its constantly dreary and covered in a thick cloak of clouds and rainfall here. There are no large chain stores like Walmart and we barely have enough kids to keep the schools open. Just houses and the central cathedral that is the town hall. Other than a few miscellaneous buildings like the courthouse, firestation, and police station, the only other feature is the dense forest that surrounds the town. I've heard the stories. Ghosts of people who died in there haunting the forest. Demons and monsters having free-range to torment any and all trespassers. This forest had always been the talk of town myths and legends...but I found out the hard way that these seemingly innocent stories were true."There's something wicked in them woods," my grandfather always use to cryptically say when looking off into the forest...its like he knew something that nobody else did. As if he were looking into the heart of that forest with feelings of sadness...and fear. He was my father's father, the only grandparent I had left, and he lived with us until the day he vanished to the forest. He was quite the fellow. Strong....so strong. A lover of the outdoors and a lover of life in general. He was such a kind hearted man, with a fire of spirit I have never seen in anyone since. He loved his grandkids dearly and would always humor us with stories from his past. But something in him changed the last year of his life. I'll get to that. I have to tell you everything as it happened. I have to. Grandpa became distant....and more preoccupied with those goddamned woods as the years went on. His stories became less joyful and nostalgic, and more dark and depressing as well. He was....a shell of his former self in all respects. One night, a few years prior, he randomly decided that he was going to tell us about the woods . Myself (Harrison), my older sister (Katie), my older brother (William), and my younger brother (Jay) were gathered around the fireplace with my grandfather as a thunderstorm raged outside. "Its the witching hour....gather 'round kiddos and Gramps will tell ya a scary story," he said with a somberness to his tone. We all listened attentively as he stoked the fire, embers dancing and the flicker of the flames causing shadows to dance on his aged face. "I want to tell you all a story about when I was younger....about those damned, cursed woods and how they took my brother's life," he said as his eyes drifted to the window...towards the woods.Grandpa told us that he had a younger brother named Adam. But it was the oddest thing...we had never known about this before. Dad sure as hell never mentioned that we had a great uncle. How could a detail that big just be left out. It was puzzling. Anyways, when he was 17 and his brother was 7, they both were outside enjoying the sunshine, a rarity in our town. Grandpa was sitting in an old tire swing, swaying in the breeze, as his brother ran around outside with the family dog, Dagger. I might have neglected to mention that we still live in the same house. It's been passed down for a few generations, improved upon and maintained like a totem of the past. The woods that I mentioned earlier surround the back end of our property. They surround the entire fucking town, like a circle of fire. The old oak tree with the frayed remains of the rope that once held that tire swing rests a good distance from the forest within our yard. Grandpa was in the tire facing away from the woods when he heard a horrid symphony of agonized yelping. It was coming from inside the forest. Kids in the town have always been warned to avoid the woods at all cost, even in the light of day. Grandpa knew this and so did Adam, but the woods beckoned for whatever reason. Grandpa quickly lept from the swing and spun to face the woods as the yelping abruptly stopped and an eerie silence filled the air. My grandfather said, and I shit you not, that the woods seemed to be humming. As if each, tree were contributing to the harmonic sound. He walked slowly towards the wood line and entered. "Its like I had stepped into another place," he said, "time seemed to stop in its tracks and no light could get in there." "That darkness...that stillness is something I'll never forget," he said sadly. "There weren't no birds chirping, no nothing....just silence."Grandpa ventured deep into the beckoning wood. The trees bowed in at their tops causing any light that would have penetrated the canopy to instantly be snuffed out.... He continued to walk. Strange noises filled the air and the atmosphere of the forest was heavy to him. "I had to fight for each breath," he said as his eyes displayed a hint of fear. His pace came to a grinding halt when he came across the corpse of Dagger, the family dog. Well...what was left of it. He had been completely torn apart and was barely recognizable. As if he had been turned inside out. Only chunks of black fur and his severed, blood spattered collar distinguishable from the bloody mess. "That poor dog looked like a pile of ground meat and those fucking monsters are what did it," he said, this time with an inflection of anger in his tone. "The dog was just an appetizer for the main course," he said gritting his teeth. We all sat there bewildered by grandpa's tale. Monsters?  He had to be kidding. Monsters cant possibly exist in a world so cut and dry as our own...can they? At the time we all had a naive notion that this was nothing more than a story meant to frighten us children, like the boogeyman....but we were so fucking wrong. Grandpa continued, saying that he kept going further into the woods. By this point, the house was completely gone, as if he had stepped into another dimension. The humming reverberating throughout the forest soon changed into something even more disturbing. "Whispers of the dead is what I heard in there," grandpa said. He told us that he heard numerous whispers with no point of origin. Male, female, young, old, and even  some.....inhuman voices. The sounds followed him and their volume never changed, as if they were just as much a part of the forest as birds would normally be.Grandpa had walked for some time until he came to a horrific sight...a trail of blood. Fresh blood. In addition, torn bits of green clothing littered the ground, the same color as the sweater his little brother had been wearing.... He moved forward and came to an abnormally shaped and massive oak tree. The tree seemed to be the center of the forest itself. Its branches spread out like tendrils and its roots spread to infinity. "That tree looked like a damned bees nest," grandpa said. He told us that the tree was filled with holes as if something were living in its recesses. Most disturbing of all....there were bones littered all around that tree, like a dumping ground of corpses. Some animal and others suspiciously human-looking. Once grandpa came up to the tree the blood trail ended in a small pool. "But something was off," grandpa said nervously as his voice cracked, "blood was STILL dripping into that puddle and it was coming from high in that tree!." We all were pissing our pants at this point as grandpa told us that when he looked up his eyes met the mangled corpse of his brother, suspended from the tree. His throat slashed and his crimson blood cascading down. "I-I didn't know what to do, but I knew Adam was gone and there wasnt anything I could do to help him." Suddenly, the whispers that filled the forest stopped and silence gripped the forest. Grandpa stood there, nervously darting his glances around the forest. Then, out of nowhere, grandpa started to hear clicking noises that at first sounded distant but began closing in on him. As the clicking noise became thunderous in volume, it was joined by voices.....they sounded like demons conversing. Deep and resounding growls, the language of the underworld. Grandpa could make out a few words these things were saying...."DEVOUR" "FEED" and....."BLOOD." That, and rapid steps crunching on the layer of fallen leaves on the forest floor. He said the steps sounded unnaturally rapid and heavy. "I took off running and did not look back and once I busted outta them woods I turned around and saw somethin' quickly slip back into the foliage," grandpa said.A search party consisting of volunteers, first responders, and local law enforcement was sent into the forest, but the bee-hive oak was nowhere to be seen...and neither were the bodies of Dagger and Adam. The forest was....normal. It's like those two had just vanished into thin air. "I'll tell you all something and I beg of you to head my words" my grandfather said the night around the fireplace,  "stay away from them woods....theres something wicked in them woods." Grandpa blamed himself for what had transpired in the forest...he just could not let go of the guilt. He came from a large family and had 5 siblings when Adam was still living. They all eventually died, including his parents, leaving Grandpa the sole survivor of his family by the time my father took control of the family estate. But Adam's death was the one he never truly could get over...it was unnatural and so violent. The forest had claimed the lives of my great uncle and his dog, that much is obvious, but it too claimed the very memory of those two.The town soon forgot about the incident, a normal occurrence with these events. It was as if those two never fucking existed. Grandpa, however, never forgot and was always haunted by that memory. His preoccupation with the forest was something akin to insanity. I always found him staring at the forest silently, deep within his own thoughts. My father told me that when he was growing up, grandpa had the same obsession with those woods, but it had intensified as the years went by. Grandpa would be caught staring from windows in the house and standing just on the outside of the wood line, but like I said it got much much worse during his last year on earth. This past autumn, something terrible happened.I am nineteen as I write this and my grandfather dissapeared just last year. He just...fucking vanished. In the autumn of that year I had just turned nineteen and not long after that, another sunny day graced our town. Like I said, these are rare occurrences due to how much fucking rain we get in a year. If it's not raining it's so goddamn dreary outside it might as well be, but I digress. On that day, me and my siblings were attending school while my father was at work and my mother was a few towns over visiting her sister. Grandpa was alone in that ancient house, trapped with nothing more than his own thoughts....When we all eventually ended our days, we converged back to our home. I arrived home first. I approached the front door and was about to use my key to let myself in. There was a stillness about our property. The wind blew slighty and whistled as it traversed the air. A chill ran down my spine and I shivered. The door creaked open and I walked into the foyer I could immediately sense that something was....off. The house was dark and empty, not a sign of life anywhere. "Grandpa!," I called out, not thinking much of it as he was a heavy napper, and he loved his naps more than anything. I searched the entire house, but there was no sign of him. He was eighty at the time and I knew he couldnt have gotten far due to his age causing typical mobility problems. At the most he would wander outside and walk around, staring into the woods. I ran outside and called out to him again, "Grandpa!!, where are you?," I yelled. But there was no response. Just more fucking silence. No birds chirping, no sounds whatsoever.I wandered to the wood line and there was no sign of anyone. I was a nervous wreck to say the least. It wasn't like Grandpa to just disappear like that. He could'nt drive, so he always remained at home. He should have been there! My eyes wandered all around until they eventually met an object lying on the ground....it was grandpa's walking cane. The polished wood visible through the thin cover of leaves that cloaked the ground. He wouldn't get far without his cane...I knew that in my mind. But even so, he was nowhere to be seen. His cane haphazardly tossed onto the ground. Where the hell could he be?, I thought to myself. I leaned down to pick up the cane...and I saw something that made me stop in my tracks, frozen with dread. There was a fresh puddle of blood with what appeared to be chunks of flesh floating in it. That blood. God, I cannot fucking stand blood. Thick and deep red. But this blood made me feel the same type of deep, awful fear that Grandpa must have felt seeing Adam's blood so long ago. Like a knife buried in my chest. The tightness....it wouldn't stop growing. My heart was in a vice grip. So much pressure. I felt like I was going to pass out. And, I did.When I finally came to, I awoke in a hospital bed with electrodes attached to my body and an IV sticking in my arm. The heart monitor's constant beeping reminding me I was still alive. The room was quiet, still and mostly dark. The buzz of the airconditoner filled the air. My mother was asleep, sitting in a chair with her head resting on the foot of my bed. It turns out, I had suffered a mysterious, heightened panic attack episode that made me lose consciousness for thirteen hours. I only found this out much later. The doctors had never seen anything like my case. Even severe panic attacks typically resolve quickly and don't result in losses of consciousness, especially ones so persistent. "Some external stimuli has to be to blame for your son's anxiety attack," those quacks at the hospital relentlessly spat. Whatever. My head pounded and my body ached, and there was a persistent thought echoing in my head. All I could think about when I awoke was my grandpa. The last thing I remembered is clutching his cane, feeling dread. Dread that he was bleeding out in the woods. That he was dead. I passed out and couldn't finish my search for him. He was in those woods and I was stuck in that fucking hospital. I was such a fucking idiot, letting my emotions get to me like that. But....in that moment my guilt subsided for a brief moment, and I recalled something. The last thing that I saw before my body collapsed onto the earth below. I saw.....something. Right before I lost consciousness, I saw a grey figure slip behind a tree within the forest. I'm was not sure what that fucking thing was. Grandpa mentioned in his fireside story that he saw something on the day of his brother's death. And I too saw a figure on the same day my grandfather, the very man who had a lengthy obsession with the woods, disappeared into them. That series of events did not sit well with me. Those fucking woods had to be involved, they just had to! And I had to find my grandpa or at least have some kind of closure. The only thing that I knew for sure was that Grandpa was right....there was definitely something in those fucking woods, and I was going to find whatever the hell it was.My discharge from the hospital following my panic attack was not a joyous occasion. I was not greeted with smiling faces and gratitude from my family upon seeing me back on my feet. Mom mechanically continued life, making dinners and running the usual errands. My siblings more or less seemed unbothered by the whole situation. And my father seemed more distant and cold than he ever did before.  The day I returned home from the hospital, I returned to reality. The reality that my grandfather was considered to be dead by the local authorities and the townsfolk. But I can more or less understand others giving up. It's not their problem, so theyre less reluctant to toss in the towel. What fucks with me still is how content my own family was with grandpa's dissapearance. My mentioning of him at all was met with, on my mother and siblings' parts, them changing the subject or avoiding the subject entirely. My father, on the other hand, was enraged by the mentioning of my grandfather. Grandpa became taboo for me, at least as far as mentioning him aloud. I was alone in my own head with these theories and ideas regarding my grandfather, the woods, and the figure. I was alone. It's like my entire family, along with the town, was settling and simply accepting the idea that he was dead with little effort to prove the contrary. The fervor by which the unexplained is simply swept under the rug in this town sickens me. Like with Adam, minimal search efforts were made to comb the woods, but they were in vain. No signs were found of my grandfather, and soon, like I said, the town forgot all about it. That's what pisses me off the most about this backwater shithole. These bizarre, otherworldly things occur and these dumbasses retreat back into their boring lives, blissfully unaware of the shitshow going on right under their noses. Either that or something is fucking making them forget. I want to think it's the former, an intentional ignorance. It is bliss, isnt it. They all may have forgotten but I was hellbent on going into those woods myself. Some weeks later another sunny day blessed my small town, and I planned on venturing into the woods.It was bitterly cold that day. Autumn was taking on the bone-chill of winter. My house, too, was a cold, unwelcoming place these days. My father left the house for work that day without saying a fucking word. His coldness had extended to all of us, including my mother. She was nothing more than a hollow shell these days, withering away at a rapid pace. Going through the motions like a ghost, replaying events past. My siblings and I soon left as well and my mother wandered off, to escape her sentence for sometime. The house was once again empty. Just like the day grandpa was lost to the forest. I acted as if I were headed to school but, in reality, I walked back home when I was sure my siblings and nobody else at the school had seen me. I had packed my backpack with necessary supplies the previous night, such as some food, water, a first-aid kit, a large hunting knife, and, most importantly, a small 9mm pistol. My dad kept it in the house in the event of an intruder, but I knew I would need it if I ran into that fucking thing. I swiped the holster too and stapped it on my hip as I was walking. Nobody else could be involved with my journey and especially with the forest itself. I had to do this shit on my own. It's not like I had any allies anyways, so fuck it. I avoided the main roads as I did not want anyone to see me.Today was the day I would be realizing my mission. I was going into the forest and I wasnt coming out until I found whatever had taken my grandpa from me. That fucking thing I saw lurking that day. My panic attack was still fresh in my brain, but so was the memory of seeing something in the woods. I ran back at a brisk pace and stopped just at the woodline in my yard. The wind blew ever so slightly and caused a chill to run throughout my body. Something wasnt right....I was being watched. You know the feeling I'm talking about. Like hundreds of fucking eyes on you. Terrible, predatory eyes staring daggers into your flesh. It was at that moment that I heard something snap a twig behind me. I jerked around....and there was nothing there. As I turned my head back to face the forest....my grandpa's face was fucking inches away from mine. But, he didnt look right. His eyes were void of life and his skin was grey. He smelled like rotting flesh. He grabbed me firmly by the shoulders and got right up in my face. "Stay away from those woods Harrison, do you hear me??? Don't fucking go into the woods! There's something wicked in them woods, boy!!!." His voice sounded like it was filled with static and it had a ghastly echo to it. He shook me violently as he spoke. I closed my eyes for a brief moment and once I opened them...he was gone. My heart was fucking racing. That was indeed my grandfather. Offering the same warning he always did about the woods. I heard his warning but I foolishly ignored it. "I have to fucking do this," I said to myself outloud. Maybe I didn't have to, but I felt drawn to the woods. I could not get them...I mean my grandfather off my mind. I looked deep into the woods and could feel gazes being returned. I hesitantly moved some branches out of the way, placed my hand on the pistol at my side...and stepped inside the darkness.The woods were just as Grandpa had described them in his story so many years ago. I miss those days. Everything was so simple. These woods fucked it all up.It's as if the branches had curled themselves back around my entrance hole, effectively trapping me inside. The tops of the trees did bow in. There was barely any light penetrating the dense foliage. The sounds from outside, the birds and cars, were instantly silenced. It was as quiet as a graveyard. The only sounds were the leaves crunching under my feet as I strolled along. To have beem in a place that is not explored by the townsfolk....it wasn't overgrown in the slightest. It's as if there was a well-trodded path, like something in a national park to guide tourists. Like it was guiding me to a set place. A goddamn yellow brick road to hell. I kept walking and as I did....the humming started. The humming grandpa had mentioned. It was like someone was striking a tuning fork and holding against my ear. The sound never changed its volume and sounded as if it were all around me yet nowhere. As I continued on, the humming soon transformed into that damned whispering. I heard female voices of all ages, male voices of all ages, and some voices that sounded less human and more animal. I heard harsh whispers that were almost like growls.... "THIS ONE" "FEED" "SPECIAL" "TEAR" "KILL" The volume increased to its crescendo....then it stopped abruptly. It stopped as my eyes locked onto a large tree in the middle of the forest. At this point, I drew the pistol from its holster and held it in my left hand, pointing the barrel at the ground. The biggest fucking tree I had ever seen stood in front of me. The perfectly maintained path converged at this tree. It should have towered hundreds of feet above the forest but I had never seen it until now. Its massive tendrils spreading far and wide on the ground. I slowly approached and saw the holes. Numerous, large holes as if something were burrowing into the tree's massive trunk. On the ground were countless piles of bones. Some of them were obviously animals but others looked like human bones. I felt the tightness in my chest that I felt the day grandpa dissapeared. Sweat beads formed on my face. My arms and legs were trembling. Another panic attack was coming on. I was so brave until I actually came in here. Fuck. I was letting this shit happen again! Damnit! Just when my panic reached its peak, a firm hand gripped my shoulder. The touch did not scare me. It felt warm and familiar. I looked up, with tears in my eyes, and my grandfather was standing in front of me. He was holding my shoulder and looked at me with an understanding, yet pained expression. He looked the same as the day he vanished but before my eyes his appearance altered drastically. Just as when he appeard before I ventured into the forest, he looked dead. Colorless and mute in expression. His eyes bloodshot and fixated on me. A long, deep gash slowly opened up across his neck. He spoke...and his voice still had that static echo to it. With every word his desperation grew and thick blood gushed from his mouth and spattered out. "Harrison, you should not have come here....you got to run right now," he begged. "They are coming, damnit, they smelled your fear and they will kill you, you gotta r-". Grandpa's image dissolved before my eyes mid-sentence. Almost immediately, I heard one of the inhuman whispers right in my ear. "FLESH" Then, the hand in which I was holding the handgun, was viciously torn off.Blood drips onto the ground, forming a vicous puddle....my blood. Slow and steady my life force slips out and falls, seeping into the Earth. The blood coalesces with the fallen leaves, once again granting them color in their decay. Vibrant red. Warm, sticky blood...I've always hated the sight of blood. But seeing my own blood is another story. My thoughts become more and more clouded by this indescribable pain. Radiating, sharp, invigorating pain. What's left of my left arm sits limp at my side. Fear has long since taken over my body, leaving me a shaking mess of adrenaline. I'm going to die, aren't I? As sweat beads down my face and my heart races faster than before, a grey figure steps from behind a nearby tree, bearing its sharp teeth in a heinous grin... Here we are, the moment in which I came face to face with the demon that had been tormenting my family since these things killed Adam. Hell, it could have extended farther beyond that incident. It's not like anyone remembers these occurrences. They always fucking forget. As I looked down, hand had been torn off, just above the wrist. the bone visibly jutting out. It was far from a clean cut, jagged and imprecise.  Blood continued to pour out of my wound onto the forest floor. My hand laid on the ground, still clutching that pistol. But I was far more distracted by the being that had now revealed itself. Slithering out from behind that tree. It was a horrendous creature with grey, wrinkled skin. It was extremely tall and lanky and...it had no eyes. What was noticable was its abnormally wide grin filled with rows of razor sharp teeth. Just imagine that Russian Sleep Experiment picture of the odd looking creature that surfaced. They were very similar to that, but so much more fucked up. It shambled towards me like a fucking zombie or something. I could hear the whispers emanating from this thing. It was soon joined by dozens more of whatever the hell these things were. I've decided since to call them Greys. All of the Greys were coming from the giant oak. They must have been living in that fucking thing like an ant colony. One of them had a distinguishable feature....fresh blood in its teeth. I was unable to move. These things were closing in on me. "KILL" "BLOOD" "THAT ONE". The whispering was at a mind shattering level. I was beginning to feel light headed, I had lost a lot of blood. I stumbled and picked up the pistol with my other hand...my only hand and began to run towards the direction in which I came from. This was all too real. I did not know these fucking things were actually in the woods. I wanted to find out what happened to my grandpa. I needed to know and I got in too deep. The Greys had killed Dagger, Adam, Grandpa, and I was next. I was going to die. I ran as fast as I could, stumbling and swaying as I moved forward. The whispers, along with clicking noises and rapid footsteps, were hot on my trail. My foot caught a root and I tumbled forward, my face digging into the earth and the handgun flying in front of me. I thought for sure I was dead. I kept my eyes closed and breathed shallowly in and out. I waited for the pain. The pain of a Grey tearing into my flesh and bone, but that feeling never came. I opened my eyes to discover I was laying in my yard just outside of the forest, right on the dividing line between our yard and the woods.When I looked down....my hand was right where it was supposed to be. Attached by some miracle. There was no blood, no signs of an injury whatsoever. I was pissed. It's as if everything that had JUST happened had not fucking happened at all. I know I'm not fucking crazy. I saw what I saw. Grandpa saw these things. They killed his brother for God's sake. I got myself up and dusted myself off. I grabbed the gun which had landed some distance when I tripped. I looked deep into the woods, expecting to see one if those smiles staring back at me. Those damned woods. Those fucking conniving, illusory woods. There was nothing in sight. The Greys that were just chasing me were nowhere to be seen. The familiar sounds of birds and car engines whirring met my ears. I was relieved....but even so I could not let this go. I had to go back. I had all the proof I needed that something strange was indeed going on in the forest. I could have killed those fuckers easily. I didnt even fire the gun goddamnit. Grandpa was in the forest...trapped. These thoughts continued to spin about my head at a maddening pace. As I turned around with my to walk back into the house, my eyes met, standing no closer than four feet from me, the wide grin of a Grey. Its lanky arms and long, thin fingers sat limp at it side. Hissing and clicking noises came from deep within its throat. Its elongated teeth dripped with drool. It had no eyes but it was staring directly into me. I didnt think these things could leave the boundaries of the forest. They never had before...so strange. I had pussied out in the forest. I was not going to lose my shit this time. I had one of those fuckers in front of me. I raised the gun, pointing it at the Grey's chest and I squeezed the trigger. BANG BANG BANG. I rapidly fired off three shots, two of which hit the bastard, knocking him down as blood sprayed out. He moaned and groaned as he lay there bleeding. As if hearing the plight of their kin, four more of those things came skulking up. I fired the gun BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG, emptying the magazine and knocking all of them down. That was it. I had killed a Grey! Well...multiple Greys, but I had actually done something. I completely conquered my fear and slain some of the things that had killed Grandpa. They could be killed. I had my new mission, eliminate all of these fucking things from my town. However, my victory was short lived. More of these things started coming towards me from the street. I ejected the spent magazine and quickly popped another in. One of the creatures began to speak in that growling whisper...."GET DOWN". It had something in its hand, as if it were pointing a gun at me itself. A sharp pinch in my chest and then my body buzzed with electricity. Everything went black..."Male, 19. Local Resident. Patient was admitted following a violent incident at his place of residence involving law enforcement. Patient was found in a hyper-psychotic state with confirmed hallucinations taking place. Patient was found armed with a loaded Smith and Wesson 9 MM handgun. Patient is responsible for the murders of all five members of his family. Law enforcement agents dispatched the threat by inducing an electric current through the use of a taser"... When I awoke I was in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm, but my arms and legs were restrained. It was weird but I assume my run in with the Grey's had caused me some mental stress and they simply taking precautions. After being surrounded by those fuckers, I thought that it might get a bit ugly, but somehow I managed to get out alive. It doesnt really matter I guess. In the end, the town tends to forget about these events as fact and simply remembers them as nothing more than scary stories to tell children. It was a familiar sight indeed. Waking up in the hospital following an encounter with the Greys. As I write this in the present, I am confined to my room. I have been allowed to roam the room now that I am better. I am better. I have a small bed, a nightstand, a tiny desk, and a brilliant window with a hell of a view. I should be getting out soon. I havent seen mom around nor my siblings. Dad sure as hell wouldn't come here to visit me. I'm sure they're all just busy. Yeah, that's gotta be it. They will come to collect me soon enough. I just have to be patient. I cannot wait to get out of this place. I'm feeling a bit stir crazy after my encounter with the Greys and I'm ready to get back out there and begin to cleanse the forest once and for all. I know I have to go back to the woods. Grandpa's warnings were much more than just fearful paranoia. There definitely is something in those woods. I'm honestly really glad....that the window in my hospital room looks out into them... via /r/Insidious_Nebula https://ift.tt/2HpFIQh