My family has been keeping the forest at bay for generations

This was simple, years ago when I was young the ritual was nothing more than another holiday. But now, it's just survival veiled as a ceremonious event just like Christmas . As a child  my father would always get excited about this longheld family tradition but here I sit buried in mud and underbrush staring at a deer that I know damn well isn't a deer. It all started in 1910 when my god knows how many great grandfather took on the burden of this forsaken land. I know very little about Clarence Benton but luckily he left a notebook to his son Samuel Benton when he died. I will provide you with these entries now so you might understand how far this land strays from God's grace.

February 25 1910

This land could not have come up at a better time, Flossy already has everything unpacked and spread out around the house, it doesn't really make much sense how she's laid everything out but I think she's just tickled that we have our own place. My eldest Emmet had a very hard time after the Cherry Mine fell in, he kept his mother calm while my brothers dug me out of the mines and thank god i was found because from that alone Emmet has changed. I fear the boy may never be the same. He seems so sullen even though I am home now. Flossy wants me to hang up a picture of her parents so here I must go.

April 18 1910

This land is cursed, I thought we had run unto a life changing deal with this land but now… now I want nothing more than to be gone from here but unfortunately the settlement from the mine wont afford me that and the locals know the evil of this land and unfortunately the odds of me finding someone as foolish as myself are nil to none. Every night I am forced to sit on the porch with my shotgun to keep the evil that lies in these woods at bay, Flossy and Emmet dont and will never understand what i am experiencing. I know not what lives beyond the treeline but from the inhuman shrieks alone I know it wants me gone or dead. I know this all seems unbelievable and it sounds like sacrilege but God has undoubtedly turned a blind eye to this land as I believe Satan himself lives within this ground. I hear the trees moving again so I must go once more.

December 3 1910

My mother died nine years ago today. I would normally celebrate this day in her memory but the cold has not staved off these beasts as i was hoping it would so here i sit again. I feel horrible but Emmett was my only opportunity for reprieve, back in June I thought I was going to go insane from the sleep deprivation alone so I sat him down and told him everything I knew. 13 is too young to have to try and grasp something like this but Emmett is proving himself every day. By July I was awoken by screams from the woodline, I had explicitly told him to never leave the porch, his shifts were only four hours every other day because it was the bare minimum to keep me regular. I jumped out of bed and grabbed my rifle before sprinting to the window where I could see Emmett at the treeline with one leg on what appeared to be one of the creatures dead and gone. I couldn't believe it myself but there it was in front of me, Emmett was screaming into the woods and I could see the brush moving away he had scared them off.

We tied the creature up in the barn, it looked like a coyote but I'm not naive and I knew whatever it was would show itself soon, no creature of satan would let itself be killed so easily. I tied its arms to the rafters and its legs to a hook on the floor before pulling up a chair and waiting. It began to writhe around 4am, its skin began to slide off and beneath it shown a man, or what I believe most would describe as a man and by 5am what i believe to have been a man possessed lay restrained before me breathing as though he had run a marathon naked as the day he was born. I approached him and asked him what he was and he replied “something your god would not take kindly to” before whipping his neck with a sickening crack and dying on the spot. Emmett will never be the same and neither will I, I have to bury this creature so I must go.

January 1 1911

Emmet when you find this I need you to understand that what I've done I did for you and your mother my dearest Flossy. If you are indeed reading this I've most certainly been killed and claimed by these creatures and fortunately they did not recognize this as an item of value. I'm standing outside the camp of these things, I would call them people but that they are not and I am certain of it. 



I began tracking them some time ago, I know you thought the idea foolish but at the time it seemed a means to an end. Now more than ever I know it to be a mistake, their skin is beginning to peel and wet fur shows below, I know not what will make itself known when these godless amalgamations show themselves but hopefully there will be nothing left to assess when I write my final act. I must try to kill them now when they are most vulnerable Emmett. If you are reading this, get your mother and leave. You will have nothing and this land will not be worth a dime but you will have your life to show for it. I'm goin in now. I love you both.

Clarence didn't put a dent in these things, But like every person after him he gave us just a bit of insight into how these things tick, honestly if we didn't know about the shearing of the flesh we would be years behind in research but luckily he stumbled into that bit of information before he got shredded. Whenever they get ahold of one of us they steal the remains. I'm not sure if it's cultural or ceremonious but they always runoff with our bodies. Funny enough the only body we've ever found was the son of Clarence, Emmett Benton. Emmett was the first great knowledge of these creatures we had, watching his father die for what he felt was the second time broke him. He never told his mother of his fathers final message to flee because he wanted nothing more than to find himself even with the beasts. 

Emmett Benton however did not get this knowledge just for slaughtering hundreds of the creatures, Emmett Benton married one of them, nearly brokering peace with them. I suppose before I get into this whole ordeal I should give a few entries from Emmet’s notebook



January 1 1911

Dad’s gone, I went in after him when he didn't come home for our change of guard. I found his notebook but nothing else, there was a clearing of trees just upwind of it with what looked like bird nests on the ground surrounding a fire. I took the notebook home, mom wont believe me but I know in my heart of hearts that he’s gone. I haven't shown her his notebook because that would just make her want to pack up what little we have left and move on but I am not prepared to give up just yet, dad is gone and I will take vengeance on this spawn of satan if it's the last thing I do.

This beast is on the move, it's like it's being pulled by a rope. The deer is now bipedal, it's not the first time I'm seeing something this strange running through the woodland but it still somehow makes me uneasy. I think it's finally bringing me to its homeland. Emmet led us to this but I never thought we would actually get this close… never thought we would actually bring this to a close. This war of attritian with these greasy fucks is a tale as long as time itself, when someone drags metal or theres just something so off you cant ignore it? I live in an uncanny valley amidst the creatures that terrorized our ancestors and now hide amongst the trees waiting for helpless victims to meander by. This is too much right now, you need to understand what Emmet brought to us. 

March ? 1922

The creatures know that I'm hunting them, and honestly? I think they fear me and everything I carry with me. I have amassed a small army of followers that for one reason or another whether it be the need for a cause or a bloodlust that only these humanoid abominations can satiate. They flee when we gain the upper hand but when a member of our ranks is found at their mercy, well we never find any remains. I think the ritual is happening tonight and unlike my father I am prepared to do what needs to be done. I will be updating this with what my hubris has allowed me to assume our overwhelming victory over these vile creatures.

I am unsure how long I have so I will be telling you everything I can with what is left. We came upon a scene similar to that I found in my fathers journal. They were standing in a clearing chanting but the only noise to escape was like that of a piece of chalk scoring a chalkboard. Our ranks had advanced entirely surrounding them but that unfortunately was not enough. They began to shear their skin off revealing fleshy horror beyond my understanding and what fell to the forest floor began to inch closer and closer to the fire and the closer the flesh got and the greater it amassed the flames began to grow exponentially, I should have waited and I should have been more cautious but I just needed to act. I signaled the militia and we moved in, the flesh shot away from the mass and back to the bodies from which it had been flayed from, the creatures began to reform. Bears, wolves, birds, and raccoons to name a few reformed in a fleshy horror show I wish not to dwell on now as I have what I assume to be little time left before I will surely die. We killed nearly everything at a detriment to our own ranks, at the end stood I and a deer turned bipedal. The buck ran at me and I fired upon it, wrenching its brain from its skull. That was it I thought it was over but moments later I felt an agonizing pain in my abdomen, I looked down and saw a cloven hoof protruding from my stomach. The hoof was withdrawn and I felt unable to feel my legs, and as I lay in agony another bipedal deer stood over me. There was a complete absence of thought or intention from its eyes, just evil. I thought this creature would end me but it got on all fours and leapt away as nothing had happened, but what I found to be most concerning? That doe was pregnant.

I hope my son Daniel is ready to take up this mantle because this is far from over, and evil still lurks in these woods, and Daniel if you are reading this.. I am so very sorry my boy I tried.

These are very few of very many entries made in the notebook that I now carry as a reference guide from so many of my ancestors that have fallen before me. I must finish this, their ceremony is today. I've referenced the book and found the pattern, the only way I can end this gruesome tale of loss is to kill everything involved even if that means sacrificing my own life.

The deer is slowing down, in an effort to be less noticeable I have switched to the thermal drone I launched before setting off into the woods. The deer just arrived at a clearing nearly dead center in the middle of the property. Woodland creatures are starting to gather, just as the book tells there are black bears and signatures reading as small as mice and opossums.

I put the remote away and got on the radio. I paid a local cropduster to stay on standby with the understanding that after initial contact if I didn't make contact he was to take off and drop a canvas package on the location listed by my tracker.

I made my way through the wood looking through the trees knowing that at any moment even my slow deliberate movements could be detected by these creatures bringing on my untimely death. I got just outside the clearing undetected, just as Emmet had described himself. All the creatures were standing in the strange nests and to my horror they began to peel their flesh away. I had to fight back the urge to vomit as the flesh began to creep towards the fire. I had read these accounts time and time again but no written word could prepare me for the scene unfolding before my very eyes now. I waited patiently because what Clarence had done before was compulsive and foolish, he ran into the fight. Every single time this ritual happens someone catches it but acts on instinct and disrupts it. I did not, I waited to see the flesh heap for what seemed like hours. As the flesh heap grew the smaller creatures began to collapse into their wooden nests, as though they had been drained of all their life force, just bone and few organs remaining. 

I was growing tired and the flames of the fire began to grow dim, but very suddenly  the flesh began to heap itself onto the fire, undulating gooey masses seemingly quashing the flames and permeating a horrid odor that I know I will never forget as long as I live. A being began to rise from the flames. It started with the legs all bone and as it got taller flesh and fur followed, I was mesmerized by the creature and its size whilst it grew. It looked humanoid but the arms weren't correctly proportioned and its legs… well everything was just wrong. The creature's head is what haunts me, horns began to grow like deer antlers at over 9 feet tall and in that moment I realized that I had to stop this. I ran from the weeds firing on the flesh stripped corpses, with every shot the beast began to collapse falling into pieces of burning flesh. With all the horror and chaos and the prospect of potential victory over these freaks of nature though I had forgotten one thing.



The beast was gone and all of the creatures dispatched I  collapsed, bathing in the waves of ecstasy and adrenaline. The fight was over and I had broken the cycle, my son would never know the horrors of this place, we could finally live in peace. This was of course short lived because of something called Murphy's law. I heard a buzzing overhead, saw the tail light of a bushplane flash by overhead. I hadn't called in on the radio in over 30 minutes and Robert was following through on his promise, 20 lbs of pea gravel and T.A.T.P. was plummeting towards me and there was nothing I could do but smile, but just as I accepted my fate I heard a rustling in the bushes and I looked just to see a deer running on its hind legs, it turned and made eye contact before disappearing over the hillside. Before I could give chase I heard wind being broken and a pop.




I woke up in a hospital weeks later, im paralyzed now from the waist down. It's a miracle my orgon's werent liquified and honestly that I can even provide this account of events as they played out. The federal government was notified when the bomb went off and I was found launched clear of the blast, and surprisingly after hearing my story, well our story they have decided to take a vested interest in the land. My family and I will be moving but not far, I'm going to be the technical advisor on this extermination as they call it. 

There is one thing I won't forget, the look in that deer's eyes. If there's anything that keeps me going it's that look, they wont stop until that creature forms and If Im being honest im terrified to think what happens if it does.