The Hunger of the Forest

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.

The city folk had always feared the cabin, as stories had been told of a family experiencing a gruesome death of unknown cause. Folks believed the cabin to be haunted by the spirits of this family. Even the authorities that would have torn the cabin down or sold it to new owners refused to do so. No one wanted any connection to the cabin, and outsiders that asked about it were quickly silenced. Talking about this cabin was forbidden in the city.

However, the small groups that owned cabins closer to the outskirts of the woods knew the truth. Most who resided in them had witnessed or been involved in at least a portion of the events that had unfurled on that fateful night. They also knew they were bound to keep the truth of these events a secret, only passing on the forbidden knowledge to those deemed worthy by the entities that inhabited the woods.

The truth was that the woods were full of creatures and beings that remained hidden from the outside world. Creatures who had abilities beyond human comprehension. They could not be seen by the human eye unless they allowed their subject to see them, but this always came with a price. The city folk knew this was a fate worth taking extraordinary measures to avoid.

The cabin in the center of the woods, whose window now showcased a flickering light, was something of a beacon for these entities.

When the Warren family bought their cabin, the entities were unpleased. The spirits knew the Warrens had come to the forest running from something and they knew the Warren’s intentions around living in the woods were disingenuous.

They were a simple family. The father, Ted, was a banker. He had dark hair on a receding hairline and a beer gut but always dressed professionally. He focused his efforts on material objects and ensuring his wife and children did not want for anything. While many people strive to live a life like Ted's, the spirits of the forest knew that Ted allowed his wife and children to take an easy path in life, avoiding turmoil and due process. Ted was assuredly a hard worker, but he allowed himself to be blinded by money, routine, and the happiness of his family.

Ted's wife, Lynn, had long, brunette hair with a slim figure and typically wore athletic attire, but she also appeared to be a smart and humble woman. Had she not gotten used to a life of relative ease, she would have likely found herself in a successful career, perhaps as a social worker or schoolteacher. Unfortunately for Lynn, she gave in to the ease when the children were born, quitting her job long before the family moved to the cabin full-time.

Their children, Sarah and Noah, were young when they arrived, roughly 8 and 10 years of age. They went to school like normal children, being driven to and from by their mother. Their life in the city was relatively normal. The children behaved, but Noah’s teachers often remarked that he would prefer to spend time alone. Lynn knew that this was because he had left his friends back where the Warrens had come from, and that these friends had not been easy to make for Noah. Ripping him away from the place he had grown up in had been a hard decision, but Ted and Lynn believed it was in the family’s best interest to start fresh somewhere new.

Here, they chopped wood and everything took a little bit more effort on Ted and Lynn’s part, but they adapted quickly. They felt they had to, even if their children did not like their decision to move, especially to a place so secluded from everyone else.

Sarah had appeared to really love the forest when the family arrived, exploring the area around their new home, and asking Lynn to help her plant flowers. Noah stuck his nose up at this behaviour – like he appeared to do with most things since their move – preferring to stay inside and watch TV or play video games. As Noah was the older of the siblings, Sarah was impressionable and read Noah's disinterest to mean the forest was bad. While Noah became glued to the couch, Sarah could be seen kicking trees and throwing rocks in her spare time. She trampled the flowers she and Lynn had planted and stopped exploring the areas further from the Warren home.

The creatures of the woods were furious about this change in Sarah, despite their low overall opinion of the family.

Lynn would occasionally see Sarah doing these things that harmed the forest, and at first, she asked why. Sarah would tell her the forest was bad, and Lynn would scrunch up her face in confusion and tell Sarah not to hurt herself. Lynn and Sarah began to bond over Sarah's small destructions. Perhaps this was because her other child could always be found in front of the TV screen, but Lynn searched for ways to interact with Sarah regarding her behavior.

Lynn started by trying to teach Sarah to paint rocks, but she quickly grew bored of the activity. They built inukshuks and other rock sculptures, captured and observed caterpillars turning into butterflies, and had contests revolving around jumping into piles of leaves and thin twigs. But Sarah would always return to the kicking and other harmful behavior by sundown.

One day, Lynn showed Sarah how to start a fire. They burned twigs, roasted marshmallows, and even cooked dinner for the family over the fire that night. After dinner, while Lynn was cleaning up and Ted and Noah were watching TV, Sarah took one of her caterpillars and sat it on a log in the fire. She watched the flames slowly swallow it up before she heard a distant, pained roar from far into an unexplored area of the forest.

She got up to go find her mother but froze in her tracks as the forest’s secrets were revealed to her. Sarah had killed one of the forest’s living creatures, encouraging the forest’s paranormal and cryptid entities to hatch a plan to wreak havoc on the Warrens. Still frozen in place, Sarah met the eyes of a myriad of creatures that she had been unknowingly sharing space with for several months. Some of the creatures bore resemblance to the likes of werewolves and hellhounds, while others appeared only as silhouettes and static. They stared back, waiting for her next move.

Sarah remained wide-eyed and screamed as loudly as she could. She was quickly grabbed by a creature, who held her up above the ground in its long arms. The creature was pale white and close to ten feet tall. She could see it was vaguely human-shaped, with four thin arms and long, sharp nails coming out of each seven-fingered hand. The creature held her in one hand by her torso, allowing Sarah to cover her eyes with her hands. She could feel it breathing down on her from above, its breath a wet mixture of copper and soil. It let out a sinister growl and continued to hold Sarah above its head. Sarah felt like a beacon as she surveyed the forest of creatures from her new vantage point. She shut her eyes tight as if trying to convince herself she was asleep and having a nightmare.

The rest of Sarah's family was unable to see the creature that had grabbed her, and thus only saw Sarah floating, with her eyes closed and her arms stretched outwards. Lynn sprang forward to run to her but found herself weighed down the moment she stepped off the wooden porch. She gasped for air as the weight pressed down on her. Lynn watched her fearful daughter levitate in front of her very eyes as she felt their previously trampled flowers curl themselves around her ankles and wrists, hardening and holding her in place.

Ted didn't dare to move. He had seen much less of the forest compared to his family and knew even less about how to respect it. He was a city man at heart, who had hoped the forest would be a nice place for his family after the things they had previously endured. He never expected them to find the supernatural in their forest paradise. No, he had only meant to give his family more room to breathe, away from the busy city life.

He called out for his son, who did not respond. This was typical, but now that Ted was really listening, he could hear static crackling violently through the screen, and even a faint echo of static from the radio. Ted remained locked in place, willing the creatures to forget about his existence and move on from wreaking torment on his family. In the end, the creature comforts that Ted and his family had grown accustomed to had been all but forgotten as the creatures stalked their prey.

Inside the cabin, Noah had already gone cold. For his age, the boy's mind was already barren of original thought and clouded by unchecked depression, leaving his mind unguarded from those who would infiltrate it. One of the forest entities had been watching the family closely, and immediately invaded Noah's mind when Sarah had placed the caterpillar in the fire. The entity that inhabited Noah's mind drank up his memories and mannerisms, learning how the boy would behave around his family.

Upon hearing Ted’s call for his son, the entity did not respond, but it did begin making its way to the scene outside. The human body is cumbersome to those without a physical body, which required the spirit to get used to the motions. The boy’s body swerved in jagged motions, making cracking noises as the entity explored its limitations. It found that walking on all fours felt more natural than continuing to stand upright.

Outside, Ted heard the cracking of bones and began to pray for his life. When he looked down again, he saw his son, crawling on his hands and knees toward him. When ‘Noah’ looked up, his father looked into static-filled eyes and saw a wide, twisted grin upon his boy’s face. He let out a blood-curling scream as the beast inhabiting his son’s body tortured him as it saw fit. The family heard the screams, but nobody dared to look, and no one was able to move to intervene. When the screams stopped, the family knew Ted had met his end.

Lynn had been immobile since the beginning of this interaction and could feel the flowers and twigs growing around her and slowly pulling her under the soil. As Lynn began to sink beneath the earth, she opened her mouth to shout – to apologize to Sarah for not trying harder to help her – but was instead met with a mouthful of flowers forcing their way inside of her. As hard as Lynn tried to breathe, the flowers overtook every inch of her. She put up a brave fight but was ultimately overtaken by the whims of the forest.

While Noah’s body remained lifeless aside from the entity inhabiting it, Sarah remained alive and physically unharmed. Sarah had sobbed through the whole ordeal, but she had kept her eyes shut and did not witness the carnage the forest had wreaked on her family, despite hearing the graphic details. She did not say it out loud, but Sarah remarked feeling right about her assessment the forest was bad. The forest was actively terrorizing her and had terrorized and murdered her family in ways her young mind couldn’t have previously fathomed. She cursed the forest and screamed as loudly as her little lungs would allow her to, helplessly hoping someone would hear her.

Sarah struggled in place and attempted to push herself up and out of the monster’s grasp to no avail. The creature’s grip tightened, then released, dropping Sarah to the ground. To her utter shock and surprise, she could hear the creature walking away. She opened her eyes slowly, scanning her surroundings through a wall of tears. She recoiled at the sight of the forest’s creatures, but they didn’t appear to be interested in her anymore. In fact, they seemed to be walking away from the cabin.

It was then that she noticed the scene they left in their wake. The flowerbed Lynn and Sarah had worked on before the carnage was in full bloom. The flowers stood tall, with thick stems and eerie red and purple petals that had once been white and blue. Behind them, the cabin showcased claw marks on the wall and spatters of blood against the wall. Sarah could see that a struggle had taken place, but no one was around to claim victory or defeat. Sarah cupped a bloom in her hand, silently apologizing to her mother for what she had put her through in the past year.

She took a shaky step toward the cabin, and then another, and another, never knowing if her legs would support her body weight or collapse. She was shaking violently, but she had no choice but to figure out what had happened before she could attempt to search for help. As she passed the flowers, she noticed the flower’s veins were pronounced and showed through the surface of the petals as dark brown. The flowers otherwise looked healthy, strong, and beautiful, making the dark brown veins even more off-putting than they would have been normally.

When Sarah brought her attention back to the cabin, she saw her brother staring at her with eyes of static. Sarah briefly thought about how she never wanted to watch TV again but continued to keep her eyes locked on his.

“Sarah,” Noah’s distorted voice spoke, “Do you remember why we left our home? Why we came to the forest?”

Sarah gulped hard. She knew why. She had always been curious and reactional, but she had never meant to cause harm. She didn’t need to accept the blame because she had never intended for anyone to die. Her eyes filled with tears again as she remembered the boy she had pushed out of the tree in their old schoolyard. Her best friend. They had been playing, trying hard to climb higher and higher up the big tree in the schoolyard. They had spent weeks mapping out the best path to get to the tallest part of the tree that would hold them, and Sarah wanted to get there first.

Carefully climbing up the tree, Sarah and her friend raced each other to the top, but the little boy made the grand mistake of being faster, taller, and a little bit stronger than Sarah. He hoisted himself up onto a branch above them that Sarah couldn’t reach. She had to go back to the center of the tree to catch up. Begrudgingly, she did, catching up to the boy who had already stopped and was waiting for her. She accused him of cheating, saying it wasn’t fair he could do things she couldn’t do. The boy laughed it off and told her she would catch up to him one day, but Sarah couldn’t bear to be anything but first.

The boy went to put his arm around her to steady her on the branch while they sat, but Sarah saw this as an opening and pushed the boy down. He screamed for a few moments, then hit the ground with a thud, but all Sarah could think about was that he deserved the pain for thinking he was better than her. She crossed her arms and pouted. When she eventually looked down, she could see a crowd of people had formed around the boy.

She could see adults with worried looks on their faces, scrambling to get help and consoling each other. Her parents were called, and an ambulance arrived while she waited. Her friend was packed away in a bag and her parents began planning to move. As Sarah was just a child, she was not charged with anything, and her parents instructed her to tell anyone who asked that it was an accident. The school cut the branches every time they grew long enough to sit on after that, and they ordered a memorial bench to mark the incident. Sarah didn’t really understand the finality of what had happened to her friend then, but in this moment, with her parents gone and Noah expecting her answer, she was beginning to.

“I remember”, she managed to choke out after a moment of reflection. The tears flowed, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off her brother.

“You owe a debt to those you have harmed, both within and beyond the forest. Your family has perished and yet you still do not comprehend the consequences of your actions. You are bound here now, in life and in death. And we will always be here to ensure that you remain with us.” Sarah could tell that it was no longer her brother speaking, despite the spirit’s attempts at copying Noah’s voice and mannerisms.

“What if I don’t want to? What if I find someone who will take me far, far away from this horrible place?” Sarah asked, a note of pleading present in her tone.

“You can leave, Sarah Warren, but we know your name. We know your scent and we know your mind and soul. The forest will not help you. You will do as we will you to do.” Noah’s limbs made horrible cracking noises as the entity spoke. “The body I possess will decompose slowly, but there will come a day when I can no longer inhabit this form. I will hunger for a new body on this day, and you will come, or you will serve as energy for this body to continue being a viable host. If a threat comes to this forest, you will die with it. The forest will be your final resting place. You will join us in your afterlife regardless of how you meet your end. You are tethered here, Sarah Warren.”

Sarah’s spine felt cold as she listened to the spirit speak. She knew the spirit’s words to be true, but she was only 8 years old and believed she could still outrun her fate with the help of adults. Stoically, Sarah stepped toward her brother. His TV static eyes somehow appeared curious as she put her hand on Noah’s shoulder. She leaned in for a quick hug before bolting past him.

She was on a mission, and she needed to leave now. Wiping tears from her face, Sarah ran from the cabin in the direction of the city.

***

After several hours of running, Sarah reached the outskirts of the forest. There was a cabin there with a candle burning in the window, just as there had always been in her family’s cabin. She yelled for help as she ran towards it, pounding on the door with all her might. An older gentleman answered. Sarah told him the story of how her family had been murdered, and that there were scary things in the forest that wanted to hurt her.

The gentleman comforted her and told her everything would be alright. He invited her in for a warm meal and told her they would go speak with the police first thing in the morning since it was getting dark. As he closed the door, Sarah noticed that his limbs cracked as he moved. Less noticeably than her brother’s had, but more than a normal person’s bones creak.

Sarah looked out the window, remembering how close she was to the road and wondered if she would be safer elsewhere. The window no longer showed the road, but an extended stretch of forest. Moving around the corner, Sarah looked through a window facing the other side of the house. More forest. More trees. She excused herself to use the washroom and peered out the window there, which faced yet another direction. She was only met with more forest. She was sure she had seen the road just beyond this cabin.

Sarah returned to the main room of the cabin to find herself walking in on a family’s dinner. The older gentleman was sitting at the head of the table, with an older woman and two younger children, a boy and a girl, sitting around the table. They were talking about how successful their day was and how their patience had paid off. They were slicing up pieces of meat, talking about how delicious their ‘long pork’ was, and how long it had been since they had it.

The boy stood up from the table, and Sarah immediately recognized him to be Noah. She began to panic, searching for a way out.

“Sarah,” Noah paused, several consecutive cracking noises ringing in the air, “It really has been a long time since we have had a meal with the living. Won’t you join us?”

Sarah froze. She could not find it in herself to move or speak, but she knew she was in grave danger. She ran to the front door of the cabin, barely able to reach the handle, and tried hard to get out. When the door wouldn’t budge, Sarah ran for the nearest window, climbing up onto a chair to hoist herself out of the window. As she looked up, she came face to face with the older woman who had been sitting at the table.

“Now dear, you can’t just leave when you’ve been invited to dinner.” The woman picked Sarah up from outside the cabin and brought her toward through the front door. Sarah could see the forest entities gathering around the cabin, and the road was nowhere in sight. “We’ve lived in the cabin in the middle of the woods for a long time, you see, which is why our friends tend to come around when we have guests for dinner.”

Passing around the side of the house, Sarah could see the same flowerbed that she and Lynn had worked on together. The purple and red flowers almost pulsated, the brown veins seeming more alive than they had been mere hours ago. They faced her continuously as they rounded the corner toward the front door, as if they might know something Sarah didn’t.

Sarah squirmed in the woman’s arms but was eventually brought inside. The immediate danger was apparent to Sarah, and yet her small body did not allow her to do any damage. She bit the woman in a feeble attempt at escape, but the woman only laughed and brushed Sarah’s head with her hand. The rest of the family had been awaiting their return with a hungry look in their eyes. The meal on the table had been eaten ravenously, with small bits of blood staining the white tablecloth.

“Let me draw you a bath, dear.” The older woman set Sarah down and locked the door. The chairs had been moved away from the window and Sarah helplessly noted her other escape routes appeared to be blocked. Sarah was trapped in the home with no way out.

She sent a pleading look to her brother, but she knew it wouldn’t do her any good.

“We are the only beings that belong in these woods. Your family was never meant to be here, but we will not pretend we are not grateful. You have given new life to not only our woods but you have given us new bodies and renewed nutrients for us to thrive on. You have allowed these bodies to remain alive.” The girl finally broke her silence, “Your crimes in life put you at the bottom of our food chain, as you will soon see. But you may one day change that, depending on your actions.”

Sarah could hear the water boiling in the tub, and slowly backed towards the front door.

“Don’t worry, this will be quick,” spoke the gentleman. He was armed with a frying pan, which connected with Sarah’s head and knocked her out before she knew what happened. She watched the candle on the windowsill go out, leaving a long trail of smoke.

She laid on the ground, an immediate hunger overtaking all her senses. The next thing she saw was her body being taken away while she remained rooted in place.

“Your sacrifice means everything to us. The next family that moves in will light this candle, and you will know it is time for your own hunt to begin”.