The Fog in
the Woods
Patches of fog hung throughout
the woods haphazardly, as if thrown from on high to wherever they might chance
to land. Now, someone with science in their soul might say the lay of the land,
the positions of the trees, or even the level of the water in the ground were
to blame - but the reason isn't important when we're taking in the scene.
Understanding can help in many ways, but you don't need to know what a painting
is of to comprehend its beauty.
Forgive me, I'm feeling
philosophical today. But much as you can see out that window, the fog was
patchy. Here and there amongst the trees; obscuring some routes, but leaving
others clear. It's quite beautiful to wander in, but this particular day.
This particular day there was
something else there in the woods, not just men and women foraging or hunting
or collecting branches. There was a beast amongst the trees, hiding in the fog,
stealing from place to place in moments. A handful caught sight of it, and I
heard a whisper of something stalking the woods on my way in, but I paid it no
heed. Hindsight tells me... I wouldn't have gone in, had I known. But if I
hadn't gone in, things may well have gotten worse.
I was a forager in those days -
barely into my teenage years, but I searched the wood from what felt like one
end to the other for mushrooms, berries and the like. No-one in the village has
seen a far edge of the woods, but I was sure I'd gotten close. Childish hope or
folly, but it made me feel at home in there. We grow up near the woods, and
spend so much time there that we often forget that as a child it is often a
place of fear; cold, foggy, and stretching further than any have ever been. If
it were dark as well I don't think I'd have ever braved it.
But I did. And on that day I
did. Whispers didn't scare me. It was an unlucky day for foraging; come midday
I had found a handful of mushrooms and nothing else. Thinking back, I believe I
had foolishly walked the same path I did the day before. Absent-mindedness.
There's a trait I do not miss.
It was shortly after midday, as
I was looking for a nice place to lunch, that I found the first body. It was a
woman, but the body was so. Damaged, that I could not identify her. I found out
later that it was Myrtle, the old blacksmith's first wife.
Details? You don't - I guess you
do. Something had dropped onto her from above, mouth open, I thought; or it was
tall and bent down from above. Then it had bitten off most of her top half,
leaving a jagged tear from her right shoulder, to her waist, then up on her
left to just below where her rib cage should have been. The remains had been
clawed at wildly, and... later they found the rest of her spat out in the fog.
I'd prefer not to describe the
rest, if you please. Oh yes, there were more. There was another body in the clearing
I was in; I caught sight of it as I back away from the first. I didn't take a
good look at that one; and they never could identify the man - likely he was a
traveller, or someone who had taken to living in the forest years ago.
Seeing another body so soon
after the first was more than I could take. I almost started running at random,
but I knew getting lost was suicide - especially with something that could do
such things on the loose. So I took the quickest path home I knew, eyes peeled
for anything at all. But despite my supposed alertness, I tripped over the next
body.
This one I recognised - Barra, a
huge woman who found, and cut down, copses of thicker trees. For building
homes, mostly. Whatever the creature was had bitten deeply into her, but not
managed to tear her apart; the sheer number of wounds led the elders to later
conclude that she'd fought for minutes as the beast slowly bled her to death.
*wince* Ah, sorry. I - I tripped
over her, and rolled over her. When I came up my hands had splotches of her
blood on them, and there was some on my clothes as well. I was never one for
believing in things beyond this world that control us all, but I hoped for them
then - and I hoped harder that they would be merciful. It was one of those
moments that feel like an age creaking past - it haunts me to remember the
blood *wince*.
I started sprinting again, after
that, and didn't stop until I had to. I was barely halfway home - despite
running a distance far greater than I could ever run now - when stopped to
'catch my breath'. Moments later I was curled up on the forest floor,
underneath the very roots I'd stopped and leant upon. Coughing, hacking,
wheezing, groaning.
Then I saw it. Three metres
tall, it was like - have you seen a scorpion? Yes? The mouth was the tail. On
the end of the tail, I suppose I should say. Instead of pincers, it had four
grasping, clawed hands, and right in the centre sat a great orb of an eye - it
was thirty centimetres across, you can see where it sat on the skeleton. With
its two left hands it held another body, a fresh kill. The head and left arm
were missing; they never did find them. That body is one of the three that were
never positively identified, the three 'unknown women' they like to say,
although we know who died, just not... Who was who.
The creature tossed the body
against a tree very near where I lay, trying as hard as I could not to make a
sound. It was hard, controlling my breathing like that. I hoped, prayed even,
that it would not wander over. I couldn't move if I wanted to, and the speed at
which it had wandered it told me I couldn't have outrun it anyway.
The creature skittered right up
beside the tree I was hiding under. I froze - completely and utterly. My body
understood, I guess, that if I moved I was dead. With its eye on the top, a
good metre off the ground, it hadn't spotted me beneath the root. I even saw it
bend its head forwards, scanning ahead with its eye. But it didn't look to the
side.
Then, fast as fire through
sawdust it rushed off towards the nearest patch of fog. I lay out, flat on my
back, and thanked whatever force was watching over me. I had almost been let
down, but I was sure it was hoping and wishing to whatever might be there that
had saved me.
What I heard next is, with the
blood, a fixture in my nightmares. From the far side of the fog, faint and
fairly distant, I heard screams. A man, a woman, several children. The creature
had missed me, but it had found an entire family to kill. One by one, the
screams stopped. Most ended with high pitched shrieks suddenly cut off. Now
honestly, if there's a power out there that find it amusing to save someone
with a miracle, then let that happen, such a thing isn't worth worshipping.
They're as random as chance, and they might as well be.
I think it's just us seeing
patterns in chance, especially when it seems overly cruel. I hope so, at least.
Otherwise a prayer of mine doomed an entire family to death. That's guilt for
you.
Laying there was my only option
for the next twenty odd minutes. I didn't hope that the creature wouldn't come
back, or anything else. I - I think I cried a little. I don't know. I've been
told the feeling is called 'shock', although I had a pretty good grasp of time
during it and I didn't lose consciousness. After I felt like I could move
again, I stood up and - avoiding looking at the body - I started jogging back
to the village.
When I felt close enough to make
it, I sprinted. It felt like an age, but the truth is I've never covered that
far so fast before or since. I ran straight to the town law-keeper, and babbled
out my story to him. He believed me - trust runs deep in our village. I
described the creature to him in detail while his assistant started to rally
the village. I was... In serious shock, after I finished speaking with him. I
barely remember him walking me home.
I was the first to get out of
the forest, that day, although a few more fled soon after. But I was the only
one to see the monster had live, until the town militia managed to corner it.
The old law-keeper was a brilliant man, I've got to say. He used fire to clear
out patches of fog, since what I said told him it could see through it. And
when they found it they blinded it quick-smart and confused it into a trap by
making noise off to the sides when it tried to flee.
Only one of the militia died,
and she only died because a lucky slash from one of the creature's hands got
her throat when they were blinding it. Apart from that, a handful of injuries.
The destruction of the creature was absolutely masterful.
I like to focus on that instead
of... Instead of the number of dead. Ambushing individuals, or small, unarmed
groups, it killed twenty-four people in the forest. We still have no idea where
it came from, or if there are any more. Why did it just kill? Ordinary animals
might hunt humans to feed, but a killing rampage? And if I'd been faster
getting out...
Yet I probably wouldn't have
seen it if I had. Even if I did make it out, the militia would have been blind.
There would have been more bodies to bury. It was a terrible night, burying all
the bodies we'd managed to find before nightfall. There were still many
missing; most were found over the next few days. Some were never found - yes,
their families still cling to hope. I wouldn't take it away from them.
So that's the story of the fog
in the woods. I should add, there was one lucky break - a missing couple had
eloped to another village for a few days, and no-one knew because they were
skipping out on work. In the woods. But apart from that, the entire thing is a
scar on this village. I know you want to romanticise the hunt, but maybe...
Maybe wait until it's just a
legend, and no-one living knew the dead.
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