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The Invisible Murderer

Short Terror Story

By Breeze-AmethystPublished 4 years ago 9 min read
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The Invisible Murderer
Photo by Thom Holmes on Unsplash

Tori-Jane had spent all day at the Elovea-Endel National Park, enjoying a morning coffee from Indi’s Coffee Hut and a ham, cheese and poppy seed bagel from Kelsi’s Homemade Breakfast Bar, enjoying the beautiful temperatures of late spring, on her first day off in three weeks. She had spent the entire morning reading her nature books, moving into the afternoon she brought a jacket potato with beans from Laurie’s Potato Cart enjoying her music through her headphones as she ate. She had just bought a large boba and was setting out to explore the forest, to see if she could find any new animals, plants or shrubbery; she loved to research and explore different local fauna and flora, being stuck indoors all day for her job in a large laboratory for an even bigger company, she spent as much free time as possible, being outdoors and exploring the wilderness, taking samples and pictures of anything and everything she could find.

As she was walking through the forest, looking at the trees and plants leaves, Tori-Jane lost herself in the forest. Realising she had wondered off the path, she turned to go back and that’s when she heard something, off in the distance, following her. At first, she thought that it was just an animal, curious as to the human walking through its home, but then she realized, after listening closely to the footfall, that it was walking on two feet. Tori-Jane hadn’t come out with anyone, and she hadn’t seen anyone other than vendors in the park, with it being usual work and school times, barely anyone would have been in the forest. Tori-Jane became extremely cautious, looking and scanning the areas around her, trying to see what or who could be following her. But there was absolutely nothing there, no animals moving or grazing close enough to her to hear, no people walking to the hidden picnic spot, or through the hiking trail but the sound of footsteps continued, getting ever so slightly closer as she was stood still looking around, desperate to see what was following her. She resumed walking, ever so slightly faster than before, towards the treeline and the open of the national park, trying to stay ahead of whatever was following her.

The Elovea-Endel National Park Forest, previously known as The Columbus-Roman National Park and Forest Trail, was known and recorded to be haunted, from the mid-1400’s to the late 1800’s the forest was used for numerous executions, mass burials and countless religious or cult rituals. It’s said that around 3,570 innocent women and children were hung, sacrificed and murdered in the forest, accused of being witches, for rituals or just by sick, monstrous murderers; it is also known that just over 1,350 convicted men were hung or shot within the forest for their crimes of murder, rape and treason. A further 6,435 poor or unclaimed people within the county were buried in unmarked graves between or underneath the forest trees. Many of these people were buried in mass graves following the devastation of plagues and disease which ravished the county, and some were buried in shallow graves and had trees planted as they were being buried to cover up a murderers dump sight.

Tori-Jane was so close to getting out of the forest, now running along the path, frantically trying to escape from the sound of heavy footsteps, bounding towards her inhumanly possible, with long strides and unnaturally fast. A large hand grabbed at Tori-Jane, wrapping long sharp fingers around her upper arm stopping her dead in her tracks, causing her to scream and drop her boba, sending the liquid and bubbles still left in the cup flying. Tori-Jane looked down at the hand holding her but there was nothing there, the pressure and scratch marks from the creatures nails were but there was no visible hand, she tried pulling it off of her, but she couldn’t, it was too strong. She felt another hand grab over her mouth as she tried screaming again; the creature that had been following and chasing her dragged her kicking, punching and thrashing back into the forest, Tori-Jane writhing as much as she could trying to get out of the creatures grasp.

The creature pulled her into a stone cave beside the unknown path of the forest; as she was being dragged further and further into the cave, everything around her got darker and darker, until all that she could see was, what she thought would be the creatures eyes. They glowed a red-orange colour, almost as though fire was coming from its face. From how high up the creatures eyes were inside the cave, Tori-Jane guessed that it must have been at least 10 feet tall, its eyes were very far ahead of her, so she wasn’t able to guess how tall or large the creature really, truly was. Reaching the deepest part of the cave, going through winding and twisting tunnels, Tori-Jane saw the creatures eyes glow brighter and deeper in colour. She was thrown against and slid down the wet wall of the cave, knocking the air out of her and breaking a rib; Tori-Jane winced in pain and gasped for air. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she noticed the wet was red, she was just been thrown into blood, fresh and deep red blood. Screaming again at the top of her lungs, the creature let her, no-one would hear her, and it began to laugh; a deep, monstrous, growling laugh ringing through the cave and rumbling through Tori-Jane’s body, stopping her screaming mid breath.

The creature turned from Tori-Jane, knowing she couldn’t go anywhere, with the mixture of a broken rib and the labyrinth of the cave infrastructure. Tori-Jane saw a large, heavy wooden chest move closer towards her, the creature either dragging or pushing it; the chest pushing the blood on the ground closer towards and splashing onto Tori-Jane’s feet. Still out of breath from the creatures growling, Tori-Jane turned away in horror and disgust, gagging and hacking at the smell of the chest; violently and suddenly, the chest ripped open, sending a putrid and rancid smell up into the air, this time Tori-Jane actually threw up. Bugs and maggots spilled out of the chest and writhed towards Tori-Jane, insects flying and buzzing around her head, she shuddered and batted painfully at them. Looking up at the creatures eyes, she began to cry. The creature threw her into the chest, breaking her legs, the bones protruding through her skin, to fit her inside, screaming and throwing up in pain, Tori-Jane was locked inside.

Days went past, hearing the creature eating things, chewing disgustingly and crunching, outside of her prison, occasionally losing consciousness, very slowly and painfully losing energy from malnutrition and dehydration. Maggots were eating at her flesh, wriggling inside of her wounds from having her bones broken and the whimpering and screams got quieter and quieter until they stopped. Tori-Jane didn’t realise the horror in store for her, she thought that she was going to slowly starve to death in that chest, that was until the chest was opened, now the cave was bright, blindingly bright. To any normal person, it would have been considered dull, the flicker of a small fire would not be very bright, but after God knows how many days of pitch black, any amount of light was blinding for Tori-Jane. The creature reached into the chest, grabbing at the chest of Tori-Jane’s withering body and pulled her out, her arms limp and legs riddled with maggots, flies and eggs.

Lifting Tori-Jane’s feeble body up to eye level, the creature looked over her body, seeing its handiwork and grinning with sharp and jagged teeth. The creature dangled her by her head and then grabbed at her legs, pulling on them pulling the bones in and out of her skin; Tori-Jane was so malnourished, dehydrated and broken, she couldn’t even wince in pain, she could only manage to throw up bile, causing her to pass out, the bile dripping from her mouth and nose, landing in small puddles on the ground. The creature pushed her body into the ceiling, puncturing her skin with the cave’s sharp stalactites, drawing blood which trickled across her body, leaving tracks of red. The creature watched as the blood dripped from Tori-Jane’s body, landing on the floor and swirled into the puddles of bile that she had dribbled before.

Slowly regaining consciousness, Tori-Jane screamed as the creature continued its torturing of Tori-Jane; it began ripping and pulling her body apart, at first it was slowly, the creature savouring the activities, pulling at her limbs, ripping her hair and nails out. After that, the creatures furiously and monstrous passions which had been festering over the last few days, waiting to pull her out of the chest, the creature savagely ripping her legs off, shoving them into its mouth, crunching down hard on her bones, blood dripping onto the floor and splattering across the walls. Tori-Jane was at that very moment in time, still alive, barely breathing in short shallow breathes, hanging on to life; just as Tori-Jane’s last few breathes were being taken, even more shallow and further apart, the creature ripped through her throat, finally killing Tori-Jane with its razor sharp teeth, pulling her spine from her body. The creature dropped her head and spine to the ground as it lapped up the blood from Tori-Jane’s beheaded body, putting the body into its mouth crunching her bones to dust before swallowing her whole. Only her head and spine was left now.

The creature plucked the spine from Tori-Jane’s head, placing it in a large chest, different from the one she had been locked in, amongst hundreds of other bones; some were still covered in scraps of skin, muscle or veins, others were completely clean and some looked as old as those found from archaeologist digs in Egypt or Rome. The creature grabbed her head, pulling out her eyes and popping them into its mouth, pulling her teeth and plucking the hair out of her scalp. Littering the cave chamber with her hair and teeth, soaking in blood, bile and throw up with flies and maggots feasting on the flecks of flesh leftover on the floor.

The creature was older than time itself. It had been around longer than anything else, but no one knows what it is, what it looks like or how it got here.

Have you ever felt like you were being watched, followed or something breathing down your neck in bed at night? Or have you had someone in your town go missing, with absolutely no trace? Or maybe even, seen a pair of orange or red eyes when you were out in the forest? It was probably the creature that was to blame.

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About the Creator

Breeze-Amethyst

Creativity will forever be my escape from life's tortures

Never should a person be so lost or alone in the world that they leave it before their time, writing is one of my forms of life

Love for all things, especially the creepy and macabre

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