This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/horrorfan_9 on 2024-11-26 03:35:09+00:00.
After the divorce and a long, grueling custody battle, I thought I’d finally found a place where my daughter and I could start over. The house wasn’t much—a small, two-story cabin near the woods, miles away from the nearest neighbor. It wasn’t luxurious, but it was quiet, isolated, and affordable, thanks to a modest pension from my years in the military and a body too broken to work a demanding job. For an introvert like me, it was perfect. For my daughter, Emily, it was an adventure.
At first, life here was as peaceful as I’d hoped. The mornings were filled with the soft sounds of birds and the rustling of leaves, the evenings with the crackling of a wood fire. But, as idyllic as it seemed, the town had its quirks.
The first odd encounter came at the grocery store. An old man with a wiry frame and piercing blue eyes kept watching me as I moved from aisle to aisle. I tried to ignore him, but eventually, he approached me and Emily, tipping his hat in greeting.
“Y’all are the new folk up at the old house, aren’t ya?” he asked, his voice rough and gravelly.
I chuckled nervously. “Are we that out of place?”
“Not at all. This is just a small town. Everybody knows everybody is all.” He smiled, but there was something in his expression—a flicker of unease that didn’t sit right.
After introducing myself and Emily, the old man, Rick, invited us over to his place for a “proper town welcome.” He mentioned wanting to “discuss a few rules,” which struck me as strange, but I chalked it up to small-town eccentricity and agreed.
That evening, Rick and his wife hosted us in their cozy, overstuffed living room. While his wife entertained Emily with cookies and stories, Rick and I sat out on the porch, sipping whiskey as the sun dipped below the horizon. After some small talk, Rick’s expression grew serious.
“We’ve got a few rules around here,” he said, swirling his glass. “You don’t have to believe in ’em, but you do have to follow ’em. This is old land, son. And they’ve been here long before we were.”
“They?” I asked, frowning.
“The Forest Folk.” His voice dropped to a near whisper. “We’ve got an understanding with them. You live near the woods, you’re practically roommates with ’em, even if you don’t realize it. There’s rules: don’t whistle in the woods, don’t follow voices calling your name, and most important of all—leave an offering. It doesn’t have to be much. A loaf of bread, a dead squirrel. But leave something.”
“And if I don’t?” I asked, my tone half skeptical, half curious.
Rick’s eyes flicked to the window, where Emily sat laughing with his wife. His face darkened. “Then they’ll decide what to take.”
I didn’t know what to make of it, but Rick’s sincerity was unsettling. For weeks, I shrugged it off as superstition. Then, one cold November afternoon, Emily vanished.
I’d been working on the house, patching up a drafty window in preparation for the coming snow, when I realized the house was eerily quiet. I called her name, first casually, then with rising panic. My search of the house turned up nothing, and I bolted outside, screaming for her. Relief and terror surged when I saw her standing at the edge of the property, right before the woods.
“Emily!” I ran to her, grabbing her arm. She looked up at me, surprised by my panic.
“Hi, Daddy. I was just playing with my new friend.”
My blood ran cold. “What friend?” I asked, scanning the tree line. She pointed into the shadows, but there was nothing there—just the faint smell of damp earth and decay. I told her to never, ever play near the woods again and marched her back to the house. Later, I went to where she’d been standing and found tracks in the soil—her small footprints alongside larger ones, inhuman ones. They weren’t like any animal I’d ever seen.
After that, I took Rick’s advice seriously. Each night, I left something on the porch—a piece of bread, a strip of jerky—and each morning, it was gone. For a while, the unease subsided. Then the snow came.
That December evening, I was bone-tired. Cutting wood in the freezing cold had taken its toll, and I’d fallen asleep without setting out an offering. I woke to the sound of Emily standing by my bed.
“Daddy,” she whispered, her voice trembling with excitement. “Santa Claus is on the roof.”
I blinked, disoriented. “Honey, Santa’s not—”
The sound cut me off. Heavy footsteps. Something was moving on the roof. My breath caught as the weight shifted directly above us, followed by a long, deliberate sniffing sound, like a predator scenting its prey.
Panic took over. I slid silently out of bed, grabbing my hunting rifle from beneath it. Covering Emily’s mouth to keep her silent, I pointed the gun at the ceiling, my hands shaking. The footsteps grew louder, closer. I fired. The deafening shot echoed through the house, and whatever was up there scrambled, letting out a guttural, animalistic growl before leaping off the roof.
I told Emily to hide under the bed and not to come out unless I told her to. Heart pounding, I grabbed my flashlight and rushed outside. The snow on the roof was disturbed where my shot had landed, and below, near the front door, the snow was trampled and stained with blood. The tracks led into the woods.
I shouted threats, firing a few more shots into the trees. The only response was silence—and eyes. Dozens of glowing eyes stared back from the shadows, unblinking and unmoving.
By the time the first light broke through the trees, the car was packed to bursting. Emily sat in the passenger seat, clutching her favorite stuffed animal, her face pale and tired but trusting. I strapped the last bag into the trunk and took one last look at the house. The porch light flickered weakly against the morning fog, and for a moment, I thought I saw movement in the woods—just a shadow slipping between the trees.
“Are we ever coming back, Daddy?” Emily asked quietly.
I hesitated, my fingers tightening on the car door. “No, sweetheart. We’re not.”
As we pulled out of the driveway, I couldn’t help but glance in the rearview mirror. The cabin grew smaller, swallowed by the woods, until it was gone completely. For hours, we drove in silence. The sun rose higher, but the weight in my chest didn’t lift. The further we got from the house, the more I began to feel like we weren’t really leaving. That whatever lived in those woods wasn’t bound by property lines or miles of road.
“Daddy?” Emily’s voice broke the silence, small and hesitant. “My friend said goodbye to me this morning.”
I gripped the wheel tighter, my knuckles turning white. “What do you mean, Emily?”
She looked at me with wide, innocent eyes. “When I woke up, he was at my window. He said he’d miss me, but he’d always know where to find us.”
I didn’t respond. There was nothing to say.
The open road stretched ahead, empty and endless, but no distance felt safe enough. Behind us, the woods waited, and somewhere, deep within, something watched.
We kept driving.
And we didn’t stop.