It Stalks Us

My girlfriend Lauren and I live in a pretty secluded part of the country side, covered with farms, sheep and rarely any cars ever pass by. Our little house was mostly surrounded by a dense forest that was always filled with animals during the day like foxes and rabbits.But at night, the forest was deserted and nearly terrifying to look at. Whenever you brought this up in a conversation, whoever you were talking to would just fall silent and go extremely pale, almost like something really horrible happened there.

I invited some of my mates over from the city for a barbecue one day, most refused due to the fact that I lived too far for them to travel, but the three people that did show up were some of the coolest people I know. Sam, Harry and Kelly stayed for the barbecue and a while after and we started to catch up and talk about our past together. Eventually they started to leave but I insisted that they stay the night, they agreed and I put out one of the large tents we had in the loft. Lauren stayed out with us and we stayed up till god knows when talking to each other. Eventually Sam asked about the forest and we all fell silent, though none of us looked pale like the locals do. Harry suggested we moved the tent into the middle of the forest, Sam and I agreed but the girls looked nervous. I told them to stop being huge wimps and eventually persuaded them. We packed up, grabbed some torches and went deep into the forest.

We walked deeper and deeper until we found a clearing for our tent to be set up. We set it up and went inside, Kelly and Lauren decided we should have a game of Truth or Dare, we all agreed and sat in a circle outside the tent. I was first to be asked by Lauren "Truth or Dare?" I picked Dare. Us being young adults were still quite immature so Lauren said, "Go to the edge of the forest where the trees meet the clearing, pull down your shorts, and do the YMCA dance." I did what she told me to do and everyone burst out laughing, it was only when I was pulling up my shorts I saw something in one of the trees. It looked like a man squatting on one of the branches,closest to the clearing. I only saw him for a second because I turned around and walked back to the tent. Everyone was still laughing from my dance and when they calmed down a bit I asked Harry, "Truth or Dare?" He also picked dare. I dared him to go into the forest, far enough so he couldn't see us, find a rock and bring it back, he left to do his dare.

After 20 minutes or so Harry still hadn't come back and we'd all started to get worried, so we each grabbed a torch and set out to look for him. After what felt like half an hour of walking we stopped at sat on a nearby rock, I looked up and saw the man in the trees again, a little bit closer this time. We started walking again and found another clearing with a tree in the centre, the branches looked sharp and the whole tree just felt, wrong. We walked round the tree and found nothing. Until we turned around.

On the branches of the tree were three things, a dead fox, a dead dog and Harry with one of the branches going through his stomach and another through his left eye. I turned around to vomit but something stopped me, a large man at least 8 feet tall. His eyes were like a cat's, they were yellow with small slits for pupils, this thing wasn't human, it had no mouth, instead there was a frown carved into his face where the mouth should be. It didn't have a nose or ears and it's hair was matted and white with patches of blood all over it. I grabbed Lauren and we ran faster than we ever thought we could, we headed back to our house and I could hear it chasing after us. We kept running and I could feel it's hot foul breath on my neck, I thought this was odd as it didn't have a mouth or a nose but I didn't care I just ran, it tried to grab me but we turned sharply and its razor sharp claws caught my back and I felt the warm flow of my blood go down my back. I could see the house now and ran faster towards it, Lauren and I launched ourselves out the forest and landed in our back garden. The thing skidded to a halt and looked at us with a hungry look in its eye. It walked back through the forest and out of sight.

We haven't heard from Sam or Kelly since and have just accepted they are most likely dead. Every time I go into the garden I can see it watching me with those yellow eyes, waiting for me to go into the forest again.