The Trees Have Eyes

by Tobias Wade

  My quiet whimpering turned into a full-throated scream when the first of them jerked its body onto the road. It was a person, but all the flesh had been stripped away. Chunks of cartilage still clustered around the ears and nose, but everything else was gone.

  Others followed, crawling up onto the road behind the first. I didn’t wait to see what happened. I shifted into drive and slammed on the gas.

  I picked up speed relatively quickly, and I was grateful for the V6 engine I didn’t think I’d need when I bought the car. But the flayed people were faster than I thought, and I had only made it a dozen yards or so before I was running over them. My stomach turned with each meaty thump, as the wheels rolled across arms and legs and torsos. A few of them managed to stand and then run towards my car, shrieking as they bounced off.

  By then, I was shrieking too. Even knowing how treacherous the hilly roads could be, I let my car reach eighty miles per hour before I let off the accelerator. At one point, the road curved and my headlights illuminated the way ahead.

  Where the land ended, I couldn’t see. But what had been only blackness upon first inspection was really thousands and thousands of bodies, skinned people, writhing and crawling just below the road.

  White-knuckled, I drove past (and over) them, whispering rapidly to myself, “What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck.”

  From what I recognized, I was maybe thirty minutes from the nearest town. Keeping my speed as high as I felt comfortable, I pressed on. Every hair on my head felt like it was standing on end, and every bit of peace I’d felt from the drive had evaporated.

  When the lights of Hollowfield, familiar welcome sign and all, came into view, I won’t even try to make myself sound brave—I cried like a baby. I had to take deep breaths to stave off hysteria. When more familiar, totally ordinary things came into view (the old lodge with the restaurant connected to it! Family Dollar! The U-Gas, complete with normal, non-skinned people pumping gas!) this became a little harder.

  And that’s really all, except for one thing.

  I made it through Hollowfield, and although I considered sleeping in my car there, I ended up pushing on to my parents’ house. I ran inside with my bag as fast as I could, locking the door behind me. I locked the bedroom door, too. I even checked under the bed, half-sure in my delirium that a skinless person would be hiding there.

  Suffice to say my relaxing vacation never happened. I kept everything locked and made sure I was inside well before sunset each night. When I returned to the city, I left early to ensure I wasn’t driving while the sun set.

  And the only tangible trace I ever found of what happened was embedded in one of the treads on my right rear tire—one brittle, blackened finger bone.

  Alanna Robertson-Webb

  Something Creepy at Moss Glenn Falls

  I'm twenty-six now and living in Pennsylvania, but when I was growing up I lived in Montpelier, Vermont. My summers were spent hiking mountains, swimming in lakes and exploring expansive forests. I knew that my state had bears and rattlesnakes in its more secluded, mountainous regions, but I never imagined that there was anything more terrifying than those out there.

  When I was nineteen my friend Emily and I went to Moss Glen Falls for a day of swimming and picnicking, as it gave us a nice change of scenery from campus. The waterfall is located in Stowe, which is a remote town in Vermont that has a population of barely 4,000. Emily was from another state, and had never really seen much of the area beyond our college's campus, so I figured showing her some of Vermont's quaint locations was in order.

  The day was perfect. We had packed plenty of food, sunscreen and towels, and since it was a weekday afternoon there was no one else at the falls except for an elderly couple who left not long after we got there. We spread our towels out on a large rock by the falls and alternated between climbing up the waterfall edges to get to the swimming pools and relaxing in the late afternoon sun. It was peaceful, and it was the perfect break after a long day of homework and classes.

  As the day wore on Emily wanted to explore some of the trails near the falls. I was familiar with a few of them, and tried to keep her on those. What I hadn’t accounted for was that she would insist on exploring some of the more outlying trails, and that we would consequently get lost. We spent nearly an hour walking in circles, our arms and legs getting covered in mosquito bites and our bathing suits drying uncomfortably onto our skin. We had the flashlights on our phones to give us a little light once the sun set, but they didn't do much to illuminate the dense undergrowth shrouding both sides of the trail.

  Finally we came across a blackberry patch that we were pretty sure we had seen earlier, so by logical default we started heading down the path closest to the bushes. Emily kept asking me if I heard twigs snapping near us, and I brushed it off as a city girl being afraid of deer or rabbits. I didn't hear anything myself, so I figured she was feeling paranoid due to it being her first time lost in the woods.

  Then I heard it. The noise came from somewhere behind us, and it was too loud to be a small animal like a rabbit. I figured it was another person out walking, or maybe a herd of deer passing through. Stowe has never been a populous town, and the locals could argue that there's more deer than people in the area. I ignored the uneasy feeling building in the pit of my stomach and kept walking, chalking it up to my friend's paranoia rubbing off on me, and I babbled senselessly about cute guys to keep Emily and I distracted.

  After another ten minutes of walking we finally came in sight of the trailhead. There was a large boulder there with a plaque on it, dedicated to a young woman who had been murdered at the falls back in 1991, and right beyond that was my car. As we neared the boulder, relief evident on Emily’s face, a weird noise came from the woods behind us. It sounded almost like a cat, but it was distorted and static, like it was coming out of an old radio. My first instinct was that the cat was wounded, or in danger.

  I’ve always been an animal lover, and if there was a hurt cat I wasn’t about to leave it to become a coyote snack. I turned around, ignoring Emily begging me to just get in the car, and peered back into the trail opening. I gave Emily the keys and told her to get our towels, now that we knew where we were, and I promised I'd be back momentarily. If I didn't find the cat right away I wasn't going to spend forever looking for it, but I couldn't just drive away either.

  With the loss of the second flashlight the woods seemed a bit more eerie to me, and the darkness was nagging at my peripheral vision. I walked a little ways down the path as I called to the cat, hoping to locate it by its meow, but I didn't hear anything for several moments. I was about to give up when I heard a low, out-of-place laugh behind me. I spun around, my heart beating too fast, but all I saw was a large buck. I remember muttering something about stupid, sneaky deer, then I headed back to the trailhead. That was when the deer laughed again, and I froze.

  The harsh sound was completely unnatural. For those of you who don't know, deer make sounds like grunts, bleats and snorts. They don’t make any sort of laughter-like noises, and even if they did it wouldn't have the same cadence as a human’s laugh would, and as this deer's did. This situation was weird and unnerving, and I kept hoping that someone would pop their head out from around a tree and tell me it was a prank. That didn't happen.

  The deer took a few steps towards me, and then the odd cat sound came from it. I almost threw my hands up in a “nope" gesture, and I started walking away from it as quickly as I could. I was almost in sight of the end of the trail when I felt something snag my hair. I swatted it away, thinking it was a branch, since there were a lot of low-hanging trees along the trail, but the sensation returned instantly. I reached up to tug my hair free, but it wouldn't come loose. I turned to face the offending tree, my heart thumping in shock.

  The deer, now on its hind legs, had my hair caught on one of its antler points. The snarls from a day of swimming and hiking were entangled around its antler, and I could feel its cold
breath on my face. Not warm, not hot, but icy cold breath wreathed around me. I let out the most shrill scream I had ever heard myself make, and I violently yanked my hair off of its antlers. I sprinted for my car, screaming the whole way for Emily to start it. I heard the engine turn when I neared the boulder, and she didn't hesitate to floor it as soon as I was in the car. The tears streaming down my face were enough motivation.

  She didn't question me until we were nearly five miles from Moss Glen. I told her about the weird noises and the deer getting up in my face. I told her it startled me, and that on top of the stress of being lost that was just enough to make me panic. She bought my explanation, agreeing that we were both super tired, and adding that my mind was probably playing tricks on me.

  I haven't returned to Stowe since then, even though I've visited Vermont recently. I know there's probably some sort of rational explanation for what I saw and heard that night, but I haven't been able to find what that would be. What I never told Emily that night was that the buck had fangs, or how there had been blood on its mouth. I never shared that the huge animal was able to sneak up on me noiselessly, and I didn't bother telling her that it had the coldest breath I had ever felt.

  She was my friend, but that didn't mean she would believe a crazy story. Emily, if you're reading this I hope you know I didn't want to lie. I was panicked, and in my nineteen-year-old mind I didn't want to get labeled as crazy or a liar. Please forgive me, and please never go to Moss Glen alone.

  The Goatman of Lake Elmore

  Growing up among the rolling, green hills of Vermont meant that I spent a lot of time outdoors. Even though I lived in the capital city of Montpelier, my activities of choice had always been camping, hiking and swimming. Most of my outdoors memories are happy, but there was one experience I had that almost made me never go camping again.

  My cousin Cory and I were on summer vacation from high school, and we begged my mom to take us to our favorite campground for a few days. The next afternoon we arrived at Lake Elmore State Park where a ranger gave us a map with available sites circled on it, and after checking them all out we settled on a lean-to called Ash.

  All of the lean-to sites at this park are named after trees, with Ash and Juniper always being our preferences since they were a little more private than some of the other sites. My family had been going to Lake Elmore since before I was born, and my mom and I both knew the grounds very well.

  Our first night was uneventful. Since it was the middle of the week the park was almost deserted, which meant that Cory and I never had to wait for paddle boats to become available, and we got prime lake beach spots without having to get there early in the morning. The trip was perfect, until the second night.

  My mom wanted to go home on the second day to check on my brother Nate, who hadn't wanted to come with us, so after dinner she left. We knew she wouldn't be back until around midnight, so we entertained ourselves by making s’mores and playing card games. After a while we got restless, and decided to walk down to the lake. From the bulk of the sites the lake is about a ten minute walk, and Mount Elmore, which looms over the lake, is always beautiful at sunset.

  We made it down to the lake shore just fine, and we enjoyed the cool sensation of wet sand squishing between our toes as we built a sand castle. The sun was beginning to set in earnest, and we hadn't brought a lantern down with us so we headed back to the site to grab one.

  I was ready to head back to the lake, but Cory suggested that we walk the trail that goes to the old fire tower at the top of Mount Elmore instead. I agreed, and we made our way to the outskirts of the campground where the trail started. An hour or so went by as we walked and talked, just enjoying the refreshing night air. The lantern gave us enough light that we didn't feel nervous, and we made sure not to go off the trail. There was only one path for most of the trek, so it was easy to follow.

  At one point a herd of deer came bounding out of the woods near us, their appearance so sudden that I nearly dropped the lantern. Cory, now a bit spooked, asked if we could head back to camp. I wasn't really ready to, but I wanted him to be comfortable, so I agreed. We had been walking for about five minutes when we heard someone in the woods off to our right. It was clearly a person, since their rhythmic footsteps didn't sound like an animal.

  It wasn't unusual for rangers to patrol the trails even at night, and if one of them had seen us they were probably checking to make sure we weren't doing anything illegal or destructive. We waited for them to appear, but the steps had stopped and no one entered the circle of light we were in. After a minute Cory called out a tentative “Hello?”, his voice quivering slightly.

  I thought it was a little odd that we couldn't see a flashlight by then, but I shrugged it off and kept walking. If some weirdo wanted to be creeping around in the woods at ten p.m. without a light then that was their business, not mine. It was probably someone sneaking away from their family to smoke or drink or something, which could easily explain why they weren't coming forward or greeting us.

  As we walked I noticed that, since the appearance of the deer, the woods had seemed oddly silent. I can admit that by then I was glad that we were heading back to camp. We were about halfway down the trail when a voice called out to us, which we instantly knew was my mom’s. The sound had come from behind us, and Cory and I spun around in unison. I shouted out a greeting, but got no response.

  Cory looked at me, concern clear on his face. It made sense that it had been my mom in the woods, probably trying to get us back for all of the pranks we had pulled over the years, but it was weird that she suddenly wasn't responding after just having called to us. We waited for several minutes, occasionally calling out to her. I started to get mad, because by then her little prank wasn't funny anymore, and I was becoming unnerved.

  A few more minutes went by, and I was finally fed up. I grabbed Cory by the elbow and began to march back to camp, grumbling about annoying mothers and stupid pranks. Cory hadn't said a word, but I noticed him watching the woods around us carefully. As we reached the last ten minute stretch of the trail my mother’s voice once again rang out behind us. It sounded strange though, and I immediately thought she might be hurt.

  I spun around, the swinging lantern casting distorted shadows. I couldn't see anything but trees, and I didn't hear anyone moving around. I was slowly becoming scared, and I just wanted to get back to the safety of the campfire. My attention was drawn to the lantern light reflecting off of something in a bush nearby. It was pair of green eyes, but to my confusion they were about eight feet off the ground. No animal around here could be standing that tall, even on back legs.

  “What the hell?”

  Cory echoed my confusion. We were both staring at this towering shadow, neither of us daring to move. After a moment it stepped towards us, and our feeble hope that it was just a deer on its back legs was smashed. To this day we still don't know exactly what we saw, but the word goatman is the best way I have of describing it. A pair of wooly legs and a fuzzy abdomen gave away to smooth, humanoid chest and arms. The face was horrifying, a mix of goat and man that still haunts me.

  I watched as it opened its mouth, my mother's voice giving a cheery-sounding hello coming out of the creature, but it was warped and too deep.

  “Hi baby girl. Good morning Lonnie!”

  To this day I don't remember getting back to the campsite. I remember screaming, and running as fast as I could away from the creature, but that's it. I don't know if it followed us, or tried to communicate further, and I'm not sure that I want to know. We never did tell my mom or the park rangers about our encounter. We figured that they would tell us we were crazy, or chalk our experience up to the use of recreational substances, so it wasn't worth the hassle.

  Cory and I have both returned to Elmore since then, but neither of us has ever seen anything like that again. I've often wondered if we imagined the whole thing, or if it was some sort of weird dream. People don't usually share th
e exact same dream though, right?

  Candice Azalea Greene

  Ahanu’s Story

  “Have any of you heard of a wendigo?” Max asks from a crouched position next to the campfire. A marshmallow roasts on the sharpened tip of a stick. Her short, spiky hair is the same color as the jumping red-orange flames. From my position across the fire, it looks like she has a small inferno of her own blazing on the top of her head. A sizzle as a bit of marshmallow melts and lands on a log whispers across the silence that follows her question.

  “What’s that?” her girlfriend Julie asks from the log behind Max. I recognize the twinkle in Max’s brown eyes before she turns her head to Julie. It’s hard to see in the dark, but I know her well enough to know Max is about to say something that will shock us all.

  Max turns back to the fire with a grin. The marshmallow on the stick lights her eyes with flames of its own. She watches it burn with glee as she speaks.

  “The Algonquian people believed if a man was in desperate enough need of food and turned to eating human flesh, he would change into a monster that haunted the woods with an insatiable appetite that grew with each person it ate. No matter how much human flesh it consumed, it would never be satisfied because its body grew with each meal. It became a tall, emaciated creature that barely resembled the man it once was.”

  “Where’d you hear something as stupid as that?” Syd laughs. Emma’s huddled against him more than ever. I can tell he doesn’t mind the stupid scary stories we’ve been telling as long as she remains close to him.

  Syd told me when we arrived at the mountain that he was hoping the story he had planned would scare Emma enough that she would want to share a sleeping bag with him later that night. He winks at me and grins. It’s a reminder of what he said earlier. Max glares at him. That wipes the grin from his face. Max isn’t a person you want mad at you. I duck my head to hide the smile that spreads across my own face.