CreepCast - The Whistlers | Creep Cast

Episode Date: October 26, 2025

Deep in the woods, the whistlers call out. Are they hunting us, or are we the bait? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, just real quick. I got a nice little short horror film that you can watch right here. It's on my main channel at Meat Canyon. Just wanted to plug that and make sure you guys saw it. It might be hidden. It might be demonetized or something. So we worked out really hard on it. It's a lot of fun. So if you want to check out a little short horror film, be sure to check out right here. Click it. Go to it. Meat Canyon. Go, go, go, go. welcome back to creepcast today we are reading a two-part story called the whistlers and it starts off with ruth's account and then it goes into uh bill's account so it's two different stories very excited to it's i like these stories whenever it's you get one perspective

and then it goes to another what it was another story we read another story that was like that right the most, the biggest one we read like that was my husband's taking our roll blade too far. That's what is. It's from the, yeah. Yeah. And I think that was a lot of fun. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that story kills. Well, that was a Christian Wallace. Every time we talk about him. Uh, right? That was Christian Wallace. Or was an imperial incentive. Are those the same people? There's so many authors. Oh, God. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ta'all. It's taking for, probably, too far. Yes, I'm over 18. It was written by, yeah, Christian Wallace.

Woof. All right. Yeah, I was right. Thank God. So that was one example. The Whistlers, I feel like, is written under a pseudonym. Because, for one, the story is very highly rated. Part one, Ruth's account has 382,

votes and an 8.95 out of 10, which for old stories is pretty typical, like everyone goes and gives Jeff the killer 10 stars for the meme. But more modern stories, this one was in 2019, to have high upvotes on creepypasta.com is pretty good. I say upvotes because we're so Reddit poisoned to have high ratings to have 10 star ratings. This one, however, people seem to like it a lot, but the author is Amity Argo, which sounds like a pen name for a horror author. It does. And this is the only thing they have

written, at least that I can find online or on creepypasta.com. So this is probably someone who writes other stuff elsewhere, which adds some mystique to like, you know, the story itself. But we'll have it linked in the description if they ever, you know, post anything else on here. Be sure to go

upvote, about 10 star, the original story. But yeah, it's been highly recommended. The Whistler sounds like a cool premise. Like you said, switching between a couple of people. It sounds neat. So we're going to, we're going to check it out. We're going to see what all the fuss is about. If you're listening to this on YouTube as well, consider checking us out on Spotify or Apple Podcast. And if you're listening there right now, be sure to give us a good rating. It does help us out a lot. Also for our patrons, thank you so much for the support.

But then we also just got done doing an interview with Neon Tempo, the author of Left, right game super fun great conversation but man just just been that's been my new favorite thing with the patreon content is uh just going to do all like author interviews been really really fun so if you're interested in that please go check it out see if it's see if it's something you might like right support the show otherwise isaiah let's start whistling let's get to whistling let's get to let's get to sing it all right so the whistlers roost account i bought a camping backpack for an estate cell and found the following pages inside. There was a bundle of papers wadded in a deep pocket of the backpack, but I didn't notice until after I got it home. I went back to the house

where the estate cell was held, and a young woman answered the door. She couldn't say who the backpack belonged to and had no interest in the papers. Her grandmother was the one who died of old age, natural causes. Apparently, she was a bit of a hoarder, so I don't know if I'll ever be able to track down the source. Handwriting is tiny and the pages are damaged. I'll transcribe as faithfully as I can. I do feel about those intros of stories

where it's like, I found an old journal. I found an old notebook or I like what people. I like when people find lost media. That's why it's so captivating with like found footage. I think that's why I'm such a sucker for it. All right. So the series of entries from the backpack begins with September

5th. The man on the trail is dead and will need to be moved. that's a way to start out. That's quite an opener, all right? The man on the trail is dead and will need to be moved. It is a more difficult test than I would have guessed, nearly impossible for a five-foot-four woman with no help, no gurney. I tried to drag him towards camp right after I found him this morning,

but only succeeded in pivoting him and twisting his legs around each other horribly. Bodies look so wrong once they stopped feeling pain. I never thought I would have so much experience with death, but I haven't cried over the loss of someone since the lighthouse. This man shit his pants before he died, and moving him made the smell worse. It'll bring the animals in. Still no sign of Ira or Bill. September 6th.

I used Ira's foam sleepy mat like a sled to move the dead man. Still, it took me an hour to drag him 30 yards, and now the mat is so torn up that I'm questioning whether it was worth the effort. Gary Law. His driver's license is in his wallet. He's from Utah. I took the sight of him as a good sign at first. Another human on the trail might have met we were close to civilization, but now I'm not sure what he was doing out here or what it means.

I can't tell what killed him. No claw marks, no wounds on his hands. He stoutly built, but with a bagginess about his physique that makes me think he was starving. He died with his mouth open. Every mucus membrane turned ash gray. I don't think he was attacked. It's a relief. If he had been missing pieces, the logical thing to do,

would have been to move camp, but then Ira and Bill would have come back to nothing. I'm more afraid of being separated from them than I am anything else. Still waiting on them both. September 8th. I spent all day yesterday stripping and burying Gary Law. He was shorter in stature, but his clothes should fit Bill well enough. His feet were small, so I'm keeping the socks for myself. They're almost brand new, thick, blue wool.

I can tell he wasn't an outdoorsman. Everything else was new too. New shoelaces, new cross trainers, new windbreaker, none of it quite right for someone trekking this far out. And the pants are from Banana Republic, pleaded with a neat sheen. These aren't pristine like everything else and were hemmed by a tailor. I washed them in the creek, but they still smell like shit, death. Everything does, actually, to the point that I think the smell might be on me, in me. I waited the pants down on a stone near the ridge that gets full sun i miss bleach i put green bows on the signal fire today but there's no answering smoke i'm more worried about irid than i am about bill it was bill

who found this trail to begin with he always finds his way i like this set up so far of like somebody lost in the woods also this is just to point out to this there's nothing a paranormal about this people can just get absolutely lost uh yeah in nature like that which to me is so fucking horrifying. I think it's kind of wrapping on the door of paranormal because it's like there's somewhere where there's no civilization. So it's like a woods. They don't know, but they're there somehow. And then they're like she mentions the state of the driver's license is Utah as if like that shouldn't be right. And the guy had new clothes as if he wasn't trying to go this far out. So maybe it's like I don't. I mean, obviously I'm reaching here.

It could be like a portal thing. They walk in the woods and then they wind up and like this deeper woods it's kind of like an in between space it could be they were like you know drawn to keep walking into the woods or something like that i'm i was picturing it like it's people who were like oh yeah i found this trail or whatever we should go walk it and then they they walk it and then uh obviously it's like maybe it's unmapped or something kind of like in the movie the dissent where it's like oh it's an un no one's gone through this cave yet been here before yeah i didn't know if it was something like that to where it's like oh well we can go and come back real quick but then you actually just get lost in the fucking woods or the thing that's like

like no one else has been out there and then something else that's obviously that no one else has been in contact with that's what they come in contact with just something freaky like that you just gave me the weirdest deja vu there was really there was this super early creepy pasta it was either one of the first or like one of the first ones that got big that was just about a trail like the whole creepy pasta no no it was one of the first SCP hold on hold on I swear I'm not I'm not losing my mind

okay it's saying it's an O one proposal I'm not thinking of the O one proposal I'm not crazy okay there was either an SEP or an early creepy posture or something the comments will help me that was a trail through the woods that always goes up like regardless of how far you walk it keeps

going up to a point that should be like an impossible and the other way it goes back down you can always walk out it's just like a a spatial anomaly the way it works but it just looks like an unassuming nature trail um this is a thing i know it i'm not crazy someone will help me out here but yeah this this idea of like just a weird trail in the woods is like early internet horror yeah bill came back today he took his time coming through the trees and i got so scared i almost fired the gun but he clapped and i clapped back and he

called out to say he was injured oh they've got they've got running passwords that's cool it was the loose shale on the hill between camp and the cave where Lillian was killed. He got caught in a slide and wound up buried to his hips and one foot wedged between boulders. Couldn't get free until the rocks shifted again, which they did that night when a whistler came by. He sure it didn't see him. He had to spend two days convalescing within the side of Lillian's cave before he was well enough to hike back, two nights alone out there. I boiled water while I listened to his story and gave Bill some aspirin from the dead man's backpack. His foot needed to be wrapped, but I don't think it's broken. We should stop splitting up. He nodded and pushed his pack towards me. There was salmon and berries and

some mushrooms I didn't really trust. We should think about hiking out. Pick a direction and go. It's been four weeks and we'll only get weaker. When Ira comes back? I agreed, but Bill perched his lips like there was something he couldn't say. What? But he only shook his head. It's been 10 days now since Ira left. September 11th. Oh, well, rest in peace, you know, amazing grace. What happened?

I woke up this morning to a sound I thought was a whistler, but it was actually Bill on his knees, crying at Gary Law's grave. I yelled at him about it, about waking me up and making so much noise. He looked hurt. I felt bad. I'm just worried about Ira, I think, but afraid.

I don't know what we'll do when the weather starts getting colder. If we wait too much longer, hiking out won't be an option. There hasn't been any sign of rescue. No planes or helicopters, no smoke. No sounds, but wolf howls and the distant whistling. Like elk mating calls almost. If Ira were here, he'd tell us a story to get our minds off things.

He's a registered nurse. He doesn't panic. September 12th. I apologize to Bill last night. He shook his head like it was nothing. and so I put my hands on his shoulders and apologized again because I needed him to really hear it. Well, I'm sorry you were alone.

We should have never left you alone. He was looking into my eyes so sadly, and I imagined he was remembering all the awful things of the past weeks and feeling the same guilt I felt. It was our research that brought everyone here and recklessness and curiosity to blame. Then he kissed me, kept kissing me. Finally, I kissed him back

because I was feeling something for once, not even lust really more like homesickness a little breakthrough of pain and wondering after all the bitterness and hardening and cold we undressed each other and had sex in the tent i don't know why i've never cheated on ire before never even thought about it this didn't seem wrong in the moment but now it's difficult to write down it just felt like something we both needed we didn't say anything at all afterward he went outside to sleep by the fire like he couldn't stand to be so close. He spent this morning hauling water and wood, barely pausing to acknowledge me. I don't think it'll happen again. I don't think either of us will tell Ira. September 15th, it's late. We hear

whistlers just north of us, chorus of them. Bill says he hears eight distinct tones, but I don't know. Could be dozens. Put the fires out and now crouched in the tent with the knives and the gun. Bill reaches for me, puts himself between me and the sound when it crescendos. I don't think he knows why it doesn't i don't think it would make a difference we won't sleep tonight the story it like it uses the kind of journal format to its strengths to kind of just give you like this happened this day this happened this day but there's like musings on it where it feels like in depth like detail that they have sex but then he won't sleep in the tent with her so it's kind of like he doesn't really have feelings for it just needed to feel something in that moment um and like it just

hard cuts to there's a bunch of whistlers outside and he puts himself between me. I don't think he knows why it does it. Just details like that are good. They work well. Not a fully realized picture yet, but definitely people that are traumatized. I mean, first off, they've been out there a month, which is pretty crazy. Lost for a month. Yeah, I think

I think IRA's not coming back. I don't know. I got a feeling. I don't know. You may come back is not IRA. Something that looks like it may come back. So we'll see. September 21st. Ira's back. Okay, well. Well, there you go. Well, there it is.

I don't think she's coming and she's back right now. His coat is in tatters and his hat is gone. Is it speaking? I'd call it shock, but he's the only one with medical training and I don't really know what to make of him. He walks and moves fine. He doesn't look at me.

Doesn't seem to see me. Okay, I'm right. Something that looks like Ira came back. Yeah, I'm wondering. I'm wearing his old clothes. It's like, it's like something that looks like Ira is standing there. but that like the shirt it has a perfect imprint of like its heart getting ripped out yeah

there's blood all over him I'm fine blood all over he's okay yeah like where the chest is the shirt is completely ripped out and like claws marks and blood everywhere couldn't be better I just need to sleep not a scratch on him just like what oh this yeah yeah that was weird isn't it yeah my clothes just did that it's crazy I feel so guilty I'm the reason he's out here Now every time I look up, I find Bill staring at me. Tries to communicate with looks, but all I ever make out is the fear and shame. Ira won't eat. He zipped him into the dead man's jacket and left him to sleep.

But he's been shaking and mumbling all afternoon. He seems exhausted, but he hardly closes his eyes. It's my fault. September 26th. Ira hasn't improved much, although he is sleeping now and eating some. I've only seen him sick once before. food poisoning on our honeymoon he was so stoic about it i didn't want my help now he hasn't gone much choice i walked about a mile north and shot a porcupine and bill is setting up an alder

smoker so we can save the meat it's getting serious about us hiking out but i'm not sure how we'll manage with iris so sick he made it back here didn't he he'll snap out of it maybe so neither of us had speculated about what iris saw all we know is he was on the south side of the mountain Bill's proposed we go west as far as the river and follow it south. If he's right about where he thinks we are, we'll hit Red Hill before it starts to snow. There's a lodge there and a few permanent residents, or so the helicopter pilot said, if anyone's looking for us, they've certainly asked around in Red Hill. I'm glad we have meat now.

I've been feeling weak. Okay, so now we know they were married. Hunter, what is the appropriate time that Allison can, thank you're dead before she hooks up with someone in the woods in a life or death scenario a day I say one full day I would count me out after a day

if I was gone in the woods for one full day I'm dead like there's no way you don't want her to have any like not a crumb of like oh well I miss him or I'm heartbroken I don't feel that she would miss me but at the same

time, I'm gone. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gone. I mean, not even, not even a full half of a day. I would be comfortable being like, I think I'm dead. So after half a day, she's, she's free from the shackles of marriage I would just I would literally I would literally be fine if she's like I thought you were dead I'd be like I thought I was too like like 10 hours is like oh I got lost on the GPS like no no no there's no reason for me to be in those woods alone so let around maybe yeah I'm gone 100% okay that's fair I would say I'd say a week one week go ahead

I'd say I'd say what because I'm asking like the level that you're not like how you cheated on me where it's like no you like I understand

you thought I was dead and you thought you were gonna die so you blah blah blah two weeks maybe after because I think I could skit by in the woods for a week I feel like two weeks

is a reasonable time to assume I'm dead probably that's fair I'm that seems like a that seems like a good time table yeah in a forest where there's like whistlers or whatever they are

there's like stuff that can kill you actively and there's not like a food source. I think two weeks is fine. I think that's the stage where it's like it's okay. I don't. I'm going to change mine. I'm going to change mine because now I think I'm going to drop mine to like a solid 45 minutes. Just shy of an hour.

Not even the time it takes to like make a meal. She's already closed off having sex to somebody else. Yeah, I thought I was dead too, babe. Did you miss me? she's like, no. Okay. I love you, baby. You're my everything.

Hunter's like, I got to go to the bathroom. It's like, well, too long. I would assume that actually, 40, yes. I don't think it's, it's not crazy.

I feel like that's an appropriate response. 45 minutes is crazy. 45 minutes is like I went to, I went to dig a cat hole and oh, look, there's a rip. I'm going to get some water while I'm having that's 45 minutes okay I mean I see we're coming out but it's still very easy to assume that hunter could be dead at this

time right right okay if I'm a little for a period of time assume death okay if you're out of sight for it's like a toddler in the grocery store if he's at aside for his second it's a problem yeah exactly where's my child that's what Allison does for me as soon as I'm gone she runs hysterically through places and where's my husband I'm hiding in the coat section at a J.C. Penny. Don't ever do that again. You scared me to death. I'm like, he, he, I was about, I was about to go on a date with this handsome gentleman over here. Sorry to have sex with the guy. I thought you were dead. I'm like, hey, no, I'm not dead. I love you.

Just take the JCPenny. All right. This episode is sponsored by Displate. Capture all your passions with unique metal posters. Displate is over 2 million artworks available ranging from original art and officially licensed designs like Star Wars, Call of Duty, and Netflix. One of the best things about Displate is that it's tool-free. If you're living in a dorm room or haven't spent money on power tools, Displates go up easy with their magnet mounting system, which means no holes and no frustration.

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I'd like to take a quick moment to thank today's sponsor, Mando. Fall is here. And even though that normally means cooler weather, crisp air, and football, you can still break a sweat. So don't let body odor keep you on the sidelines, I say as if I play sports. Because Mando deodorant plus sweat control is there to stop odor before it starts. Thanks to Mando's clinical strength sweat control, with one swipe, you're good to go. That's because Mando is twice as good as the industry standard when it comes to controlling sweat. And most importantly, Mando doesn't just mask your scent, it prevents it, leading to all-day protection with

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I woke this morning with his arms around me, and the look in his eyes said he knew where he was, who I was, it was bursting with something he wanted to say, but couldn't. It's okay. Be patient with yourself. We had a cold snap last night that left frost on the ground. All three of us cuddled together to sleep. Ira, between Bill and I, and at one point, Bill reached over to grab my shoulder. I think we're done with the awkwardness. I think we both know we were just scared.

We don't have anywhere near enough food for the journey. We're leaving tomorrow anyway. Bill has a cold. All right. So that was all the initial post that was made on. I don't think we had time for the first one. But there was an update that was added on. Okay.

So maybe this all got, maybe this is a really old story. And I'm just wrong because it was uploaded here to creepypasta. com July 8th, 2019. I wonder if it was just all. update was just all compiled at the same time at it might be yeah because this update says it was from uh march the fifth 2015 so maybe this was like posted over a long period of time and then the whole thing was just put on creepypasta.com 2019 that might be what it is so so update march 5th

2015 hi all i'm glad so many of you shared my enthusiasm about the first entries though my enthusiasm has since twisted into something else. Yesterday in the comments, I mentioned that I felt lucky for finding these pages at the estate cell. I don't feel lucky anymore. I feel guilty. This is going to sound crazy. But the more I read and transcribe, the more anxious I feel about the pages and the woman

who wrote them. Her name is Ruth. That comes out in tonight's excerpt. I still don't know much about her. I have no leads to share about the young woman at the estate cell or her grandmother. Yet, I feel like Ruth is close. like she's aware of what I've done, like she's angry. I can't explain it.

It's as if I can hear her. Whispers of disappointment rising along with my own pulse. I'm certain now that she never met her words to be used this way. We posted online with so little context, offered up as entertainment. I didn't sleep well last night. Still, I feel like we've started something now that needs to be finished. A few of you expressed interest in seeing Ruth's original pages, I think that's where I should draw the line.

It's where I can redeem myself. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of photographing the original documents, original words, turning them into just another memento mori for the internet to have its way with. At this point, it makes no difference to me if you believe me or not. I guess that might seem selfish, but you can't hear like I can.

Anyway, here's the rest of what I've transcribed so far. October 3rd, 3rd, 3rd day of walking. I wish I could talk to Lillian about what happened with Bill. She was young, ambitious, and so funny. Plus, she had a whole horde of birth control pills. She and Jeff were dating. I forget how many you take any emergencies and how soon after it has to be,

but the pills are in her pack, and her pack is in the cave with the whistlers and whatever's left of her. She had the maps. She had everything that mattered. Cave is smiles behind us now. We built a big car and by the stream. at some point we'll have to lead rangers out here sure i want to collect lillian and jeff and the helicopter pilot

i can't remember his name i hope one of us makes it out so his family can hear that it wasn't his fault he had three daughters and was expecting a fourth i can't imagine what his wife is doing now if anyone finds this it was an electrical malfunction he got us to the ground safe and sound he was perfect even fix the problem then the weather closed in we couldn't take off Lillian knew the way so we hiked to the lighthouse and then the

whistlers came yeah the way information's being devulge is a lot of fun yeah it's just little bits of pieces just kind of adding to this larger puzzle is really cool like okay well there was a weird hillicod that's why they must just stop somewhere that they weren't really originally intending to

all that kind of stuff yeah and then like she mentions again right after they landed, Lillian took them all to the lighthouse as a safety. And in the beginning, it says, I never thought I would have so much conspiracy with death, but I haven't cried over the loss of someone since the lighthouse. So one of them dies in the lighthouse.

We're given that bit of information there. And we hear that there's the helicopter pilot. We know that Jeff and Lillian have died. And then the Whistlers have now taken stuff back to the cave, the cave that Ira had to hide out nearby for a couple of nights. It's just like

we're given drops of stuff, but they all connect back to clues we've been given beforehand in like a puzzle piece way almost and it's fun too there's this group of people that went in the woods they uh weather forced the helicopters say that they went to a lighthouse and then the whistlers game uh that's really cool creates a mystery around the whole piece and also there's our framing device of this person who's uploading these pictures online or these like transcriptions of the pictures online and they're saying that whatever happens at the end of the story, they feel Ruth's presence.

They feel like she's nearby or that she's like speaking to them in a way. So it's like, why is that? What happens at the end of Ruth's narrative that would cause that to be? It's just a cool, cool way to tell a story. Yeah. October 10th. It hasn't rained for two days. The dead man's jacket is nowhere near warm enough for Ira.

Too big, but we don't have anything else. At least it's waterproof. we hear whistlers every night now just after sunset three or four of them calling back and forth Bill's convinced they're tracking us you stack rocks around the fire well it's not hard to track you if you're building a fire every night well that's why I think well yeah I mean yeah I guess that's true I guess the implication is they're freezing and like Ira it would like die at night like because he needs the jacket and least it's waterproof but it's like like, Bill's convinced they're tracking us.

It's just that we walk away and then light a giant flame in the middle of the night. Yeah, how do they keep finding us? These guys are too good. Is there around a glowing fire? We're following a new game trail now instead of the river. The walking's easier.

I didn't think twice about it until last night. Bill leaned forward on his elbows at the fireside while the whistlers seem to be circling us. What if this isn't a game trail? What if they made this? I don't have the energy to think about that. Simple. We're walking a trail they made.

If their nightly whooping is urging us into a trap, we're screwed. Iber curls up in a ball when the whistlers start calling. He rise like someone is sticking in with pins. All he said so far is, let's go. Interesting. I guess, I mean, I think that they're trying to set up the point that they're tracking him

because I feel like, in my opinion, or if I had to have a bear, trap moment. I think that he, I don't think that Bill is a whistler, but I do feel like he's marked somehow or some Bill or Ira. Ira. I are Ira. I are my bad. I right. Yeah. Yeah. I think I yeah. I think definitely IRA is for sure. Uh, he's dead weight and they should probably cut him loose. I would say. Um, but of course, that's her husband. So she's not going to do that, you know, to the dire straits. I don't know, though. She's getting good dicking from somebody else named Bill. That's you curled up in the tent, like, you're dying and you're saying about your wife.

Ruth. Ruth. What? Should we be doing this? She's like, not shut up. Like, okay, baby. That's actually just me talking about wife. Allison, can I kiss you again?

She's like, no. We're divorced. I'm like, sure. whatever you say such a fun cat and mouse game we play big with your wife yeah to your

cat and mouse dear wife oh it's just will they won't they think huh October 14th it's hail today hard we had to take shelter under a tree

and when dark fell there was no whistles for the first time in a week the silence was somehow more eerie than the threat of the whistlers Ira felt it too It's about 15 minutes after dark He stood up and started whooping and whistling Out into the rain

Don't like that calling and screaming in a tone That didn't sound like him Nope Okay Nope I think you need to shoot Ira I think you need to get rid of that guy You need to pull a little

You pull a little fucking of mice of men on him Or whatever the fucker Or grapes of wrath Whichever one it is where they shoot the guy at the end Mice of men. My some men. Give him one of those. Give him a rabbit and pull the trigger.

That's all I got to say. Think of the rabbits, Lenny. I think, uh, I like her explanation for it is like, huh, the dark's kind of eerie. I guess Ira feels kind of eerie too. Yeah.

Cidding. Wow. He sure is scared. Poor kid. I would kill him. I'd kill him. Who doesn't speak anymore? It just mumbles to himself.

Yeah. You want to bark, boy? You want to go out there and start barking? Ruth? Hiram, what is it? Whatever you do, don't fuck Bill or I'll go crazy.

Yeah, I have problems. You sat there with a lot of uncertainty. Ira, please stop it. Bill's like, oh, they'd hear about us fucking. Yeah, Bill, no! And that's when he gets up and like, writs out of the tent and just dead sprints off the woods. Yeah, yeah.

Bill yelled at him to be quiet, but he acted as if possessed, calling out to them at the top of his lungs with his eyes rolling back in his head. Oof. Bill tackled over the ground and beat him to shut him up. Stop it! I said, at first, but when I redone, didn't stop making noise, Bill looked at me, and I closed my eyes and nodded. He had to knock Ira cold to get him to be quiet, and he was sobbing while he did it, pleading with iron to settle down.

The wind was sharp, and I think it saved us. Every tree was vibrating and creaking and howling. Whistlers had likely all retreated to their caves. Maybe they hibernate. Maybe they'll leave us alone soon. That's such a fucking scary visual of your friend, like, crying and beating you, because he's so scared. Yeah.

So they're going to fucking kill us. You know what I mean? Yeah, you got to shut up. Yeah. You have to. There was, there's some story right about that. It was World War II, I think, where it was like this kid was freaking out in a in a gun fight and was going to scream and let the others know. So his buddies had to like cover his mouth and ended up suffocating him to keep him from yelling.

I can't remember where that's from. But yeah, that's a horrified visual. It'll be like, sorry, sorry, bud, got a, we have to be safe. Have to keep everyone alive. October 17th. Ira was his old self this morning, as completely as if we had gone backward in time. He was up before either of us, eating water. He said he took so long to recon the south side of the mountain because the whistlers caught him in a trap.

It was a hole, clearly dug with tools. They only came out at night. And I didn't get a good look at them. I could hear them. I didn't see silhouettes, but nothing definite. It was too dark. I don't know what they wanted with me. I got out, I climbed out and I ran.

We're well away from there now, finally reaching the end of the ridges and the start of a valley where everything is very green. I hope the change in bio means a decrease in the Whistler population. Part of me wants to take steps to document as much. It's true, but all of our field notes were lost with Oliant's gear, plus the Night Vision goggles and the cameras. My biggest fear is that we'll all be killed and our disappearance will inspire some other young researchers to come up there and solve the mystery for themselves. We'll become just another line in the sick folklore that draws people at this cursed place.

I would hate to be part of that cycle, knowing what I know now. The whistlers are very real and they don't want us here. I like how obviously there's still a trap at play, but the idea that all it took to fix cyro was to just beat him unconscious and he wakes up like oh guys yeah it's good to see you actually that was a bit of a bummer sorry you know what you know what guys my bad maybe because they're getting farther and farther away that it's like maybe losing its grip on them maybe could be could be that or it's all part of the plan November 1st I dreamed last night that I was pregnant with Gary Law's baby nothing else happened to the dream I was hiking

endlessly with Ira and Bill, and all three of us knew that I had been with the dead man and it bothered us, but we wouldn't talk about it. I woke up with my period, thank God. I've been so happy doing laundry. We've made camp by a small lake in the low point of the valley. It's uphill from here to a distant saddle Ira thinks he remembers seeing from the air. It's only about two miles away. Red hills should be just beyond that, Ira says, but we don't have the energy to push that far yet we'll rest today and tomorrow

we'll move hopefully we'll be drinking beer at the Red Hill Lodge before dark where I assume they're getting water from the river where on earth are they getting enough food for three people like well they've established

that they keep hunt that she at least has been hunting or whatever yeah they shot a porcupine I saw what you know I'm just saying like at least they've established that she like you know she has done that some food happening at some point.

Yeah, yeah. Ira's the best shot. So he took the gun to look for rock, Ptarmigan, Tarmigan? I don't know the fuck that is. I've never seen. Just say squirrel. Is that what a Ptarmigan is?

I have no idea. Yeah, oh, it's a bird. It's like a pigeon-looking thing. Okay, can you just say, can you just say a pigeon? Just say, say goose. Hold on. Tarmigan. It is pronounced a tarmigan.

Okay. Whatever. he took the gun to look for the bald eagle to look for the endangered species Brent we're eating eagle tonight pirate please just any other bird will do no it's got to be eagle it's got to be a bald eagle

if I don't commit it's a felony to own these things feathers watch this I want to talk about my first going to be bald by the night let me tell you that I'm going to pluck that thing try. I'm going to plug that motherfucker dry. It's going to be

delicious. We let two fires and agreed he's not to go beyond shouting distance but I still worry. The Whistlers don't seem willing to attack when we're in a group. Lillian and Jeff were both alone when they were killed. Besides, I'm not convinced

to I was fully recovered yet. He says nonsensical things and asleep cries out in scratches. That's new. I don't care if I was the best shot. You not give that dude a gun no that seems like a horrible idea bill and i went fishing after the laundry was done it was stupid doing it in that order all we caught were minnows and even that took hours you was staring at me while we sat the cold was seeping into my bones making me irritable

i've been warm in weeks what he's not himself you know it he's better than he was he's okay we'll find him a doctor in red hill what if red hill isn't on the other side of that sat What if we get up there and we're facing another week's worth of empty forest? What then? I realized my eyes were closed. I opened them, and the lake seemed oddly bright. Bill's fingers were pressed against his brow. We'll worry about that when we have to.

I'm saying I don't trust him like this, Ruth. He does remember the other night? After the hail, he can't control himself. He could kill us. He's my husband. He's my brother. Oh, hmm, the drama. of the drama unfolds.

Interesting. Wait, who was it that was leading them down this path? I thought it said Bill knew about the saddle at the top of the hill. No, no, no. I think it's, uh, I think it's IRA. The IRA, yeah, it says it's uphill. Ira thinks you remember seeing from the air. Yeah. Okay. So they're definitely going straight into the whistleers.

I have a feeling that's what it might be. I have a feeling there is no, I'm feeling there ain't no camp red hill anywhere. I think they're going straight into a cave. I nodded. but that was all I could do. I've known Bill longer than I've known Ira and spend more time with him most days back at home since we work in the same department.

He introduced me to Ira at a Christmas party six years ago now. What should we do? I don't know. I think we may need to open the idea of cutting the rope at some point. If it gets any worse, it may come to that. Bill started rock climbing on the weekends in college. Cutting the rope.

It's a metaphor for letting Ira die so we can live. November 2nd. Yesterday, while Ira was still out hunting, we heard three shots in the woods. Two too many to take down a rock tarmigan, and Bill and I stood staring, tense, for just a moment before we hurried to put out the fires, pack what we could into our bags. Ira came running into camp, breathing so hard he couldn't say what was wrong. He had no gun and no back, and he grabbed my arm as soon as he was close enough and pulled me through the grass

up the valley towards the saddle. Bill looked alarmed, caught up to us and pride us apart. He yelled at Ira and handed me my haphazardly stuffed pack. All our clothes were still wet, torn from the line, and Ira's eyes were wild. He stared off behind us. Where's the woods he'd run from? It's a warning. I understand it now.

It's a warning. Bill tried to talk him down, but then we heard the Whistler's eerily musical voices. I've never heard it during daylight. And ever so close as this, followed Ira's gaze into the trees and stared and listened. Couldn't move my legs. I couldn't even draw breath. I held onto my packed straps with a stony grip, like it was attached to a balloon that might whisk me out of harm's way any moment.

Ira took my arm again, and now Bill was helping him, pushing me along the trail until I could run, until we all were running as fast as we could. The trail led straight into the open, and we all reacted differently. ducking through alders or sweeping wide from the trail to be closer to the cover of the hemlock. Ira took the shortest path, straight through the matted grass of the game trail, and soon he was far ahead of me, and it was all I could do to keep my eyes on him and my legs moving as fast as they would go. He was the first to reach the hill covered in scrub, the saddle between two jacket peaks.

He ducked low as he ran, and I lost sight of him. Bill's bad foot and pack slowed him down, and I saw him stop and crouch, wide-eyed beneath the trees, after we've been fleeing for 10 minutes it felt like fleeting seconds. Ira's vanishing sent panic straight to my toes. It took me no time to decide not to wait with Bill. I had to catch Ira. I kept running until I reached the ridge.

My lungs burning, but once I arrived, there was no sign of him. A trail to follow. I lumbered to the crest of the saddle, clapping frantically, looking back over my shoulder for Bill. It was also gone. From so high up,

I could see the force beyond in the river and the flat brown bay at low tide. No town. No red hill. I clapped, but neither of them clapped back. I was so exposed, but the whistling was distant now. In fact, I couldn't pick it apart from the wind with any certainty. I walked closer to the trees and built two fires with my firesteel and shaking hands.

The second in the open of the hilltop, big and smoky. The hemlock makes for thick cover. There's plenty of dry tender. We left the tent behind and the sleeping pads. Bill had the stove and the cooking pots. Ira had the gun. I have the hatchet, the fire still, the wet laundry. I made a lean to with a small roof of bows.

It sat through the evening with my back tents against a thick tree and waited, slept fitfully. I did the same today. I kept the fires alive, and now it's getting dark. I should walk back down into the valley to collect the tent, but the sound of the daytime whistle is stuck in me like a splinter. I can't face the creature that made that sound even after years of looking for it

I never believed the stories not really we came here to research the folklore to listen to elderly trappers and hunters tell the outlandish stories they grew up with to record them for posterity we should never have come here no sign of Ira Bill

interesting so now she's alone up there yeah it seems that wherever Ira went and Bill gone to man this is like the tension they're playing is pretty good like the the escalation and the the action of moments and stuff like that very very good yeah i probably wouldn't ran after ira if i'm being honest let the motherfucker run off in the woods again i would stick with bill he's your better bet yeah but it is her husband so yeah well november third the rain came through my pine shelter last night

but at least i can say it broke me out of my trance i tied in the hip belt on my pack added a few hours of wood to both fires, unsheathed my knife and taped it to my hand. Bill told me to do this a long time ago if I knew I might have to run and fight at the same time. Walking back north towards the place where I saw him fall, where it's the place where the whistlers surprised us. Whistlers aren't the only things to worry about in these woods.

There are bears, wolves, coyotes, fearless predators that encircle our warm camp at night. Conventional wisdom is to make noise when passing through denser growth. avoid surprising a carnivore. Yet, I have long suspected that noise lures the whistlers. Pray species don't announce themselves. They pass in stealth.

After what happened to Lillian and Jeff and recently, Ira, I have no doubt that we are prey. I resolved to go quietly along the margin of the hemlock, keeping the game trail to my right. The signal fires smoke squarely at my back. I walked carefully, keeping low, whispering for Bill whenever the wind slowed, pausing sometimes to listen hard. after nearly an hour of creeping and murmuring fruitlessly through the trees i lost my caution god damn it bill i shrieked and seconds later his clap came two shocks of sound i clapped back needed two then i found him damp and chilled of the bone slumped against the base of a tall spruce tree not thirty feet from where i'd yelled the needles where he sat were soft and dry and i sat down right beside him overcome i tore the tape off my

hand and held his face in my palms. His eyes were alert, spite everything. Where are you heard? He lifted his ankle. It was still wrapped, but swollen now, rising like bread dough. Must have been fractured all along, and sprint across the valley was the final straw. He was quiet, but grimaced as I wrestled off his sock in the inadequate wrappings. I held his foot against my thigh, feeling the mess of swollen tissue. There was deep blue bruising all across the top of his foot. He took my hands before I could do anything more where's Ira I smelled the smoke from your camp I shook my head I couldn't catch him you didn't have a pack to weigh him down he's such a fast runner to begin with he was over the ridge before me and once I got up there he was gone if he saw my smoke

he hasn't let on he loved you he had no gear yeah wonder why that is what I yeah he's probably like a mutant freak that lives in a cave now Well, I did see him one night, but he was jumping from the tree tops and kept hissing at me, but he does that sometimes. He had skin underneath his arms that let him fly, and he was whistling. So it was just, it was kind of pretty, but weird. It reminded me of our two-year anniversary. Bill's like, get me out of here. He's like, Ruth, Ruth, I need you to shoot me.

Bruce, pointed out my temple and pull the trigger. I need you to blow me. me smooth off. I need you to blow me. He's like, what? I kill, sorry. He came out weird. Yeah, sorry, Freudian slipped there, but just kill me, please, right now.

Oopsie to oopsie. I focused on the foot, knowing I would need something tied and sturdy to wrap it in if I had any hope of moving Bill up to my camp. Took the dead man's blue wool socks from my feet. They were small for Bill and worked like a compression bandage. I rolled both of them onto the one foot And there were tears coming down his face Before I was done

I'm sorry But you're lucky I don't think it's broken all the way through Just badly fractured Ira would know He stared to me after I said this But I avoided his gaze I cast about until I found a dry branch Straight enough to make into a crutch

Bill is just over six feet tall So it was awkward walking a mile uphill With half his body weight on my shoulder I could see he was in tremendous this pain, but we made the trek without stopping. And it wasn't until he had collapsed beneath my pine shelter that I paused to let myself wonder if I'd pushed him too hard. It didn't matter now, I reasoned. We were as safe as we could hope to be. I fed him the last of the dead man's aspirin and elevated his foot. There's nothing else. No food, nothing to catch food

with. I'll worry about that tomorrow. Tonight, it's all I can do to keep the roof intact and the fire burning. Iro will see the smoke and come to us before Bill is ready to walk again. He will. He has to. November 6th. The swelling has gone down on Bill's ankle. I killed a bird, a grouse, by throwing rocks.

Seems like a new low. Rock throwing is part of a deeper tear of human desperation. We should never have had to access. While sitting immobile, Bill has made a bow. He'll use the birds. God damn. Seems kind of complex. Exactly.

We didn't realize is that Bill was an elf and he actually made an amazing bow. Also, too, I just want to say she killed a bird

with a rock. I mean, like, Jesus. I mean, that's pretty impressive. I mean, it's not impossible.

It's not as impossible. I'm just saying it's impressive. Yeah, yeah. Now, what is impossible is fashioning a recurve bow. I do think that it'd be fun.

She's like, he made a, crossbow it's like what what it's like made of steel everything yeah this you did a trick he's constructed a uh I forget the name of the scorpions the giant like Roman crossbows like our artillery pieces yeah too too oh it's thankfully he's constructed a catapult that should throw us to red river should launch us the whole way there bill while while sitting idle made a Nissan Ultima, a 2006 Nissan Ultima. He plans to drive out of the forest soon.

Thankfully, he built one with off-road tires so that should get us at least down the mountain. Yeah, the whistling is getting closer. Bill has made a bow. He'll use the bird's feathers for arrow-fletching and maybe for fishing flies. He saved the longest tail feather out for me. He uses a quill, he said, in case my pin dies.

Where are you going to get ink? I guess you would dip it inside of the pin. Blood. Yeah, I want you to use my blood For that notebook We need to scout the area before we move again I could hike to the top of one of the peaks But I can't justify leaving Bill alone that long

Not that he's helpless But the awful truth is we're both down to the last of our endurance We get separated If I wind up alone again I don't think I'll have it in me to keep going It's bothering Bill not knowing what happened to Ira The whistles were behind us He was ahead

if they were hunting they would have caught me so they weren't hunting what did they want why didn't he stop at night we hear them in nearly every direction but they keep their distance they're circling closer like they usually do it's as if they want us to know

we're within their boundaries trapped within their home turf if we sleep we sleep in shifts what is what was that thing Ira said I get it now it's a warning yeah he's like I get it now that's a warning whatever which i'm wondering if he was tried to elude that like they keep following

them they're like hey you guys are going into bad direction or what yeah yeah that the whistlers are giving them a warning now yeah november 10th no news the weather's dry but much colder than last week winter is late and i worry that when the snow finally comes it will fall all at once burying us in any points of reference i built a windbreak and improved our shelter caught a rabbit helped bill bath. I keep catching him putting weight on his foot, rushing things. No signs of Ira, not much sleep. November 12th. Snowed overnight, at last, just as I predicted, came into big rush, a great dumping of powder and then a sunny morning. The signal fire on the hill was smothered, but Bill wouldn't let me go out and relight it. He would have seen it by now. He said, meaning Ira. Save the drywood.

He made a second crutch and uses both to humor me, but he says he can't be idle anymore. It seems such a risk To move on this weather With you hurt If we stay here, we'll die He's talking about building a sled Once the snow is thick enough I can't listen

I'll take the bow to the top of the hill Scout our path Look for game They 100% Because it keeps talking about How they don't have proper cold weather gear If they woke up under snow They're dead

They have hypothermia They're all their clothes are soaked So like they're not gonna get dried They're gonna die They're 100% dead. At the very least, they're catatonic and can't move. Ain't no building a sled and like taking your homemade bow with you. We'll be like Santa Claus.

Not to mention, they've been out here for like two months. Three, three months. Three months. When the story started to say, we've been out for four weeks. They have spent a season out here. No, ain't no way. November 13th. Nothing much to see from the high ridge yesterday.

No snow is falling. and yet around the bay and it occurred to me that we might just follow the coastline south we could set a new fire every day on the beach leave it smoking maybe a plane will pass maybe ire will see us from wherever he's hiding maybe the whistlers don't swim bill says we'll leave tomorrow what about ire you shrugged looking exhausted don't know which way he went don't know where to look don't know how he is if we leave we will never see him again i started to cry. Bill walked away to the shelter and curled up like he was going to sleep, turned his back to me. Looked out across the saddle in the valley and tried to keep my tears quiet.

It was just dusk, no distant fires, no smoke. If he's nearby, he's cold, he's dying, and I'm helpless. It's full dark now. For the first time in weeks, Whistlers haven't made a sound. November 14th. Bill woke me up at dawn. he had hot water in the scrap of rabbit for me. I'm saving the bones and feed in a plastic bag. Don't know if they'll be any good for soup, but soon, they may be all we have. It lifted my pack for me to put on,

then put his hands on my shoulders. I'm sorry. I don't know what else to do. I looked back at him, watched while he got into his own pack and kicked snow and dirt over the fire's embers. Thought of leaving a note for Ira to follow, or some kind of sign,

but the snow is falling again in pellets. every trace of us will be obliterated soon. Like, these jumps in time are insane. Another like four days out here in between the journal entries. Like, my gosh. They have got to die soon. They're dead.

They should have been dead months ago. They should have been dead months ago if it was like a happy forest with nothing but like singing birds and the rabbits, not with the whistlers praying around. November 18th. The hiking has been easier since we

below the snow line but the weather's following us the coast is icing over we're making good time and i think we're both relieved to be off the game trail aside for mud and rough gravel the terrain is much easier here along the beaches than it was up in the trees it's been five nights now since we heard the whistler five nights of freddies since we heard the whistlers maybe they don't like the cold or maybe we finally left their natural range even the smallest hope is agony we had some luck with fishing yesterday. An enormous trout was stuck in a low pond after the tide went out. Probably sick, probably

already dying. We spent the whole day gorgeing on it, cutting strips to smoke. I found Ira's gold watch in my pack. I gave it to him for our second anniversary. We had habits of taking it off whenever he worked with his hands and must have stashed it in my bag

to keep it safe. I'd spill if he wanted to wear it, but he said no. There's no point looking at the time, I guess. I buried it near the fire. built a car and overtop said some words like a funeral bill didn't say anything i had to do something in order to keep moving i don't feel certain ire's dead but i can't fathom what it means if he's out there and we're leaving him behind most horrible thought is that he's the reason the whistlers are gone maybe he's leading them on chase away from us or maybe they were hunting and they caught him

their hunger satisfied for now don't think like that bill says but i know ira is in his thoughts, too. Bill's a folklorist, like me, but that's not what drew him here. He wanted to see the Whistlers with his own eyes, like Lillian did. He wanted to document them, their habits, describe them as a species or science. Everything that's happened so far fits the stories. Don't, Ruth. But I don't stop, because he knows the stories even better than I do.

He knows we're just like all the other characters now. hunted doomed They picked the groups apart They separate people They take their prey One at a time You don't believe the stories

You never believe them Open my mouth But the words were delayed I believe we'll never see Ira again Sleep a little bit apart Despite the bitter cold He's always up before I wake Bill says he recognizes this coastline

There's a pinnacle to the east he calls fan phone point. I'd say we're eight days north of Red Hill if we stick to the coast. I'm not getting my hopes up. Eight days north. Jesus Christ.

It's going to make Christmas by the time he gets to the fucking Red Point, dude. Give it up. You're dead. You're dead. Don't worry. We only have to walk another 10 days. Where is that an actual place? Red Hill Forest coastline.

Because it sounds like it's like far north Canada, right? Like maybe western coast Canada or something like that. Yeah, but I mean, maybe. There are places in California. I guess you could be that far out in like the redwoods or something.

But they're on the coastline, right? Like even north, California coastlines pretty well things, right? Yeah. Okay, the only red hills I see is Colorado and Colorado does not have a coastline. So this has got to be like fictional way, way up west, western Canada.

I would think. November 28th 10 days since I wrote it all blends together spit of shoreline looks just the same as what we saw days ago water just as flat and gray if it weren't for Bill and the compass

I would assume we were skirting a large lake not an inlet of the Pacific Ocean okay you know what not really a bear trap but I'll take it I'll take it same I'll take it as me

I'd assume we were going in circles. We do have fan phone point to navigate by and the stars. The weather is cleared. Winter is hesitating again. I worry I'll never see leaves on trees again. Flowers opening up in a field of grass. I worked all the time. Iron I didn't take a vacation last summer.

I squandered so much. Some days, Bill and I don't speak a word to each other. Stop walking. He assembles the shelter. I build the fire. He unpacks the food. I hang our damp clothes. We eat, we sleep, and in the morning, we walk.

December 1st. I saw Red Hill first. Our trip of shoreline was getting rocky, so we went up into a stand of cedar and found a steep bear trail. We haven't heard whistlers in weeks, so we beat pots and shouted every few steps, and something about us using our voices made us giddy. Bill started singing a camp song I never heard,

something from when he was a child, I guessed, full of rhymed bodily functions. He laughed while he sang it, laughed until tears rolled down his face. He had to stop to catch his breath, and I walked short ways onward because it seemed he needed a moment alone. It seemed he was finally realizing what I realized when we left our camp near the saddle that we had abandoned Ira to an unknown fate.

He might have died a preventable death because we were too scared and broken to search for him. I walked toward a break in the trees with Bill hyperventilating at my back. saw a straight line far away and a clearing where lighter green grass vibrated amongst dark evergreen. We were on a bit of a ridge and could look down into the distant orderliness of a miniscule town, just a lump of weedy brush and granite rising out of the marshy lowlands. Now I was crying. There was a water tower, a long split rail fence, distantly.

Some low buildings and power lines were visible against a curtain of trees. I called the bill, who ran up beside me and stopped and stared. He wrapped his arms around me in his relief, squeezing me hard against his chest. I kissed him without thinking first, and he jerked his head away, sailing, shakling in my hair, but not releasing me from his arms. I'm sorry. I don't know how to. He began, but didn't finish.

I used myself out of his embrace and gestured for him to follow me down the hill. It started snowing. Darkness fell when we were still about a mile outside of Red Hill. The terrain was difficult, thorny and muddy. I struggled with my dimming flashlight, focusing intently on my feet and the ground ahead. Bill grabbed my arm as the moon was rising. He stopped me. Look. I looked ahead to Red Hill.

I could see the water tower, clearly still. An armored dome high above everything, silhouetted against the sky. What? There are no lights. I blinked, search, but of course he was right. This night fell. Nothing had come to life in Red Hill. There were no porch lamps, no glowing windows.

no blinking red beacon atop the water tower. The place looked abandoned. As still in dark is death. We can't stop here in the open. Can you make it without your light on? My flashlight was nearly dead, and the moon was rising anyway. I switched it off and we continued, not struggling as urgently as before. I was aware of the sound my boots made in the soggy ground.

Bill's voice dropped to a whisper, stick with caution. We'll knock on the first door we come to. We'll lead them to the fact that our chopper went down. What do you think is wrong? What are you afraid of? I was terrified, but I wasn't sure why. I don't know. The moon was directly overhead by the time we reached the split rail fence we'd seen from the ridge.

Caution and fatigue had made that final stretch of our journey seem endless. There were sounds in the woods nearby, not whistlers, maybe wolves, but I was more concerned about people. Lillian had warned us about the residents this far out in these isolated stretches of forest. The lighthouse keeper had held a rifle to her forehead once when she said. surprised him after a few weeks away. We passed through the split rail fence and walked across a flat expanse of dirt stuck with poles, tetherball poles. It was a schoolyard. There were no children to be seen, no people, no signs of life. I turned my light back on and built it the same. He had a headlamp brighter and wider than my little incandescent torch and walked ahead of me through the yard,

up toward a chain swing set and a few low buildings that look like houses. The street between them was hard dirt scattered with rough quartz gravel that glittered in the light. He was bold. He walked up to the low porch of the first house we leveled with and wrapped sharply on the front door. Anyone home? Our helicopter went down. We need help. All was silent. I looked around while he stared at the door, hoping the noise might draw movement elsewhere in Red Hill. No luck. We went house to house knocking and calling at eight buildings on that lonely street. We ended at the lodge, sort of multi-purpose building that contained rooms for rent, a post office, and a meeting hall. It was deserted like the rest.

My flashlight flickered and died while we stood on the front porch. Bill tested the handle and found the lodge unlocked. I can't see how anyone would object. He said tapping his headlamp beam downward and looking at my face, we were both shivering. The pilot said people lived here year round. He must have been mistaken. This is such an interesting, like, plot device to use because the story was already creepy. It's like, you know, the monsters in the woods and then being stuck out there.

But now it's like, why is this town empty? That doesn't feel right. Why, you know, no one's answering. The schoolyard's empty. It's like it switched to a completely different setting that ties into the same kind of creepiness that we've seen before. It's pretty cool. Inside, Bill felt along the Lodges Wall for a light switch, but there was no power. I found a full kerosing lamp on a bookshelf and a book of matches and an ashtray on a table in the Lodges dining area.

I lit the lamp and breathed a little easier. Bill walked around the lodge's rooms with his head lamp and in his bearings. But I sat at a table with the lamp, holding my head and trying to feel grateful for the shelter. He came back, wiping his hands on his pants. The breaker didn't do anything. There's a generator back in the utility room. Looks like it's got a little fuel left, but I'll wait until morning to try it. When I didn't respond, he came to sit across from me at the table.

Abandoned or not, we're going to have to, we're going to have to winter here. I nodded. We'll get our hands on a radio. As much food and fuel as we can find. We'll hold up and wait it out. Someone will come for us. I nodded again, but couldn't look at him.

All you need his rest. He said, softer now. He led me toward the bedrooms and opened a creaking door for me. The room had a double bed with a pretty cream colored quilt, a closet with accordion doors and a wide window that looked out on blackness. Is there a room without a window? I looked at my reflection in the dark. looked at my reflection in the dark glass and looked at the real me.

Carried the kerosene lamp and my unsteady grip, Castieri's shadows. Of course. He ushered me into the room directly across the hall. It was adjacent to a doorway that led away towards a lounge full of deer trophies and enormous television screens. It had skylights and the moon was showing through. The bedroom was nearly identical to the first, except the bed spread was blue patchwork and the window was replaced with a hanging tapestry of sweet pea blossoms. I nodded, set my backpack down, and placed the lamp on top of the dresser, so it cast light on each of the four walls.

I had zipped my jacket, but Bill stayed in the doorway. I could take the room across the way. Don't be silly. Gave me a serious look, but was packed down beside mine and came to get in bed with me. Suppose it's too cold to sleep apart. He said, taking off his boots and settling rigidly under the covers. Why is it different from sharing a tent? It just is.

I thought I'd fall away into the deepest sleep of my life. The wind picked up in the lodge Crete and shuddered around us and thought every other sound was a footstep or a human whimper. At one point I woke Bill up. Dead certain, I heard a baby crying. Stroked my hair and listened for a full minute and pressed me against the mattress by my shoulder before lying back down himself.

Back to sleep. I didn't sleep. Instead, I took the kerosene lamp to the chair in the corner and wrote down the strange day. Bill is motionless in his sleep One arm slung beside him in the place I left It is different Just the two of us sharing a domestic space

What will become of us during months of isolation What will we look like to whoever finds us I hear it again now Whaling that is certainly not the wind The doors are locked but that's hardly any consolation If the Whistlers are real What else could be living in this place A banshee? A windigo

something even stranger Bill sleeps through the sound he won't believe me in the morning this I'm okay so you you get on to me sometimes for being like I'm bought in well I'm here to tell you I'm bought in like I've been bought in for a while

but the story keeps buying me keeps up in the price like the little character dynamic between Ruth and Bill and like it's weird to share a bed it's weird to have a domestic space and it's like they both feel that they're betraying Ira,

but there's no way Ira's alive. And they're, and they've got to settle here for a while, but it's still uncanny because there's no one there. But it provides warmth and like, what else could be out there? It's just everything the story, every development the story's taken so far works for me.

I think it builds on itself very well. December 2nd. I woke up in the chair where I fell asleep riding. The lamp's wick was low and it burned down far too much of the kerosene before snuffing itself out. There's a spare can, but it won't last long. I'll have to be more careful. Bill was gone when I awoke.

He had covered me with the quilt from the bed. I found him in the lounge inspecting the mounted moose heads and elk skulls. There were books, field guides and old almanacs, scattered on a coffee table. The wood stove was blazing, tickling with heat. Bill wasn't relaxed. He greeted me in a whisper and moved tentatively through the room. I nearly forgotten about his injury. Let me have another look at your foot

You should rest in bed for a few days Now that we're safe He shook us head We're not safe Come look He led me through the lounge And onto the porch at the front of the lodge There's no snow or ice on the ground outside

The road's muddy Ground soft enough to hold indentations From the porch steps We saw the street and its quartz gravel The small ruts we made Walking from house to house In the dark last night But now our steps are not the only marks

in the road. There are other prints, too, evidence of pacing steps and sliding gashes with the gravels been scraped completely away. Could be the tracks of dozens of pairs of feet or just a few going around and around the lodge while we slept. Footprints form an unbroken circle around us. Evidence of the stalking, pacing, nightwatch of the whistlers. They've retreated now, apparently.

But how far? Man, that's freaky waking up the next day and there's a purpose. circle around the lodge, like over and over again. I don't like that at all. In the moment, I could scarcely breathe. I staggered back against the lodge's front door, my body crumpling down and heaving. In the stories, the whistlers don't have tracks. Bill shrugged and kept a stoic face.

They look human to me, like a grown man dragging his feet. His voice was low, tired. What's wrong with you? He shook his head. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if this is a game the whistles are playing or that the people of Red Hill disappeared last night to make these marks, to mess with us. It doesn't matter if it's aliens or mole people or fucking Lillian and GF back from the dead. We can't stay here now. You open the front door and nodded me back inside. We'll gather what we can and keep going south until we find another town. There's a closet. There's a closet with some gear, a good tent, tarps, lanterns, and a stove.

you start getting things together and I'll see if I can find a vehicle that runs I stopped in the doorway I was breathing so hard I could taste blood no we can't split up we're no safer during the day than we are at night we can't make that mistake a second time she is so right

she is so rude she's such a queen for that because as soon as he said that I'm like that's the worst idea I've ever heard what are you thinking bro how about you stay here and I'll go on the other side of the town where you can't see or hear me he paused fine i'll take what we need from the closet you have a look for food in the kitchen

then we'll pack up and scout out a vehicle together agreed i would assume that the moment they hit that lodge they would just be scrounging for food right yeah also i would just i would not want to leave for you've been walking for four months yeah yeah four months is an insane amount of time you literally have shelter now i'm like why don't you just hang out for a bit I understand that, like, they're around the lodge. And that's a problem, though. And yes, it is, it is. But what, how are the woods any safer?

Exactly. How were you any safer anywhere else you were? Yeah, they were walking around out there too, obviously. So I nodded, but was not completely reconciled with Bill's plan. How long can we run before hunger stops us or the cold or the harsh unknowns of the landscape? we saw this region from the air saw the dead end logging roads and ghost town surrounded by miles

of wilderness where you both know Red Hill has no outlet a single road leads west to an air strip and a dock that freezes over every January mail comes by boat only in the summer Bill knows there's actually nowhere we can run maybe the Whistlers know it too

one task at a time food I walked into the dining area back beyond a buffet table waiting for chafing dishes into the kitchen. It is thoroughly modern with wood veneer cabinets and a walk-in freezer with a gleaming door.

Someone put a lot of care into this kitchen. Perhaps they photographed it for brochures. Bear tours have become popular among the wealthy and well-armed. The cupboards are nearly bare as one would expect them

to be at the close of the season. There's a bin with a few cups of stale flour inside, a bottle of rancid oil, gallon-sized can of fruit cocktail, a box of crumbled tea bags, a canister of powdered milk, a stuck-together brick of sugar cubes. I opened the refrigerator, but the stagnant air behind the door poured over me, making me reel and gagged before I forced it shut.

I glimps molding vegetables, rancid meat, obscure plastic wrappings dotted with black mold. He must have gagged audibly because soon Bill was at the kitchen door, eyes wild and shining like he'd been sprinting. What's wrong? The fridge is full of spoiled food. He frowned. That doesn't make sense. They would have cleaned everything out before closing the place up for the season.

But if it wasn't closed up... I said my voice was shaking. The front door was unlocked. The tables and chairs still out. The TV cabinet and the lounge is wide open. The currents weren't drawn in the bedrooms. Gas in the generator. Nothing winterized.

Like they left in a hurry. Back of my throat had gone dry. I walked to the freezer and yanked against the long steel handle, prepare myself for another wave of pungent odor. but deciding that spoilage in the freezer could be the final piece of evidence that proves the emerging theory, something had gone very wrong for the residents of Red Hill. Bill stood at my shoulder, watching with a weary hand over his nose and mouth as the doors hinged creaked. The food on the shelves at the walk-in was actually better contained than what had been

in the fridge. There was spoiled meat wrapped in paper, looking sunken and gory. The ice and ice cream had all melted within confined containers as if power outages were routine. Besides a deeply musty, almost rubbery smell, first I thought the freezer, no abandon, was benign. Ruth. Bill said behind me, saying creeping shakily along my shoulder, trying to turn me back toward him. Don't look, Ruth. What? Now I look squarely to the back of the freezer, where a pair of rounded shoes was visible behind a pallet stacked with sunken bags of frozen vegetables.

The steel floor beneath the pallet was shining. with dried fluids that had leaked from the bags, maybe days ago, maybe weeks. Don't. He repeated, but I kept looking, following the shoes to a scrawny pair of legs, bent knees, depleted black pants and white coat of the lodge's chef, middle-aged woman with wiry white hair and a shriveled gray face. I took a step toward the dead woman, felt my bare feet sticking in the mess on the the freezer's floor. Bill's grip

tied in on my shoulders. Look at me. Look away. What happened here? Pulled me away, out of the kitchen, through the lounge, all the way back to the bedroom, or gently shut the door and put me to bed, grabbing me tightly with the quilt. Just as sleeping beside Bill is different

out of the wilderness. So death is freshly strange within the confines of the lodge. The dead chef makes less sense to me than Gary Law, the lighthouse keeper. She died indoors. in a place where the beds were still made, where the refrigerator was filled with food, she would have been safe.

Why would they ever leave her here? knelt at my feet with a bottle of water and a washcloth, scrubbing the freezer's sickness off of them. I left my shoes at the front door ages ago, it seemed. When he spoke, his voice shook. What exactly did you hear last night? You woke me. You heard something. A baby?

It sounded like a crying baby, the lighthouse keeper. The lighthouse keeper, he said he sometimes heard the Whistler's laughing, laughing like his parents in the reception hall after church on a Sunday. They'll get inside your head. They'll lure you in. You can't let them, Ruth. I was dazed and couldn't speak, so Bill kept talking. I imagine they were already here in Red Hill before we arrived.

Spook the residents. The power must have failed already. Before she went in there. There was a park on the hook outside. She didn't take it. Must have been in a panic. She went there to keep herself safe. Maybe people started leaving and she couldn't get out.

It was all an accident. He said, rubbing my leg reassuringly. They didn't realize. She was trapped. There's a bell. An emergency alarm. Her fingers, Bill. Her fingernails.

They were scraped bloody on the door handle. Torn up. So maybe there was no one left to hear the bell. Maybe everyone else But I set up right on the bed Couldn't calm down That night when it hailed He would have done anything to make Iyer quiet down

They got inside Ira's head didn't they Maybe they got inside hers too You think her own people locked her in there I tried to speak reasonably Tried for academic composure There's a story isn't there One of the old ones A story about the old people

The Whistlers don't kill There's one in almost every group Every story, someone, susceptible, who comes to a kind of madness, tearing at their own flesh, losing their minds, killing their companions. Lillian thought it was kind of a Stockholm syndrome. Bill nodded. Tell me the story of the family who lived in the outpost north of the lighthouse. It was years and years ago. Mother, father, three children.

The father sent a dispatch one day to say he had killed his wife and his kids, strangled them. he had received a warning he said so he killed them all when the rangers arrived the residence was empty there's no sign of any of them no sign of a struggle as if they had banished over the rocks and into the sea okay so that whole vignette was stellar i got a chill when she's in the freezer and bill says don't look and then she says i see a pair of shoes at the end that got me that may be like I was I once again I became conscious of where the door in my room is like started looking at my own reflection that was great but also that mentioned at the end about the father that called the dispatch and said there was a warning is the same thing Ira said before he ran off yeah so maybe it's like it's a warning and you have to kill the people you're with to save them or whatever I don't know um but that's the same thing I was said for we ran off to be crazy if it's ira walking around the house that's what i think it might be because she said the whistlers don't leave footprints right yeah just got to be so-and-so it could be ira

it is very wind ago in the sense of it's like it is a physical thing but there is a spirit that is trying to like draw you out and there's like a supernatural element to it um yeah that's pretty cool this is like i said i am hook line and sinker currently and scared i'm now scared Bill told me to lie down for the rest of the afternoon, but I couldn't. I'm ready to go. I said, and we wasted no time. We packed our bags in a mournful silence. I was greedy and overstuffed my pack,

taking the quilt from the bed, spare batteries, candles, matches, mouthwash from the bathroom, and then the remaining kerosene. That ain't greedy. I would be ripping the nails out of the walls if I thought it could help me. What are you talking about? And there's other buildings there you could search too, right? yeah but i'm wondering if they're talking about weight like trying to conserve their energy too i understand she's concerned for that but i would be like there could be a honey baked ham in one of those houses

you don't know what you're passing it's true bill found a handgun in a locked drawer plus ammunition he had braved the freezer a second time discovered the drawer keys in the pocket of the chef's coat she wrote something he said when he returned there's a clipboard mounted on the inside of the freezer, an inventory login pin. Sheffat scrawled a desperate message on the blank backside of the page. I understand it now. After all these years, all these long winters of hearing those damn things halling there in the woods. The whistlers stand with their back to us.

They stand between us and something terrible. They've been protecting us. All these years, keeping it at bay. Whatever it is, that we're warning us. All this time. But now it's too late. Too late by far It's come to Red Hill at last

Interesting Hmm That's what I mean by It was a warning So what are the Whistlers keeping back The Whistlers must have not been the ones That killed Lillian and Jeff then Something else did

Wissers are like harpingers I've copied it verbatim I can't stop thinking about it You're right Bill said shaking his head Once he was finished reading He crumbled the page and left it on the table Stockholm syndrome.

I was wrapping the end of a fireplace poker with duct tape, but slowed and looked at Bill now, considering the chef's words. They caught ear in a trap. Yes. They didn't kill him. Didn't hurt him. He was well enough to find his way back to us. He escaped them.

But I don't want to hear it, Ruth. I nodded and practiced swinging the poker against fire logs. Even now, all we have to go on are other people's words. We came all this way to conduct our own research, and the only thing we've learned is fear. We hear the whistlers, but have not seen them. We fear the unseen, but what if that's a failure of imagination? Perhaps there's something else to be afraid of.

Some reason the stories are so few and scattered. Some reason there are so rarely any survivors. Some reason Bill and I have made it all this far. Some unknown. We wrote a note that we left on a side table near the front door. Our names and the date, contact numbers for our families back home, an apology that we didn't do more for the woman in the freezer. We couldn't spare the time and energy it would take to barrier.

I put the kitchen parco on over my jacket and pants. Bill layered his clothes under Gary Laws. We took gentle steps away from the lodge, across the barrier line of Whistler tracks, listening hard. In the light of day, it was clear that Red Hill had been evacuated in a rush. There was split logs, stockpiled beside every structure, potted plants drying out on porches, a garage door left open, its contents and disarray.

Not many vehicles. Bill said as we walked to the far side of Red Hill out toward the skinny dirt road that led out of town. So this road must lead somewhere. They got in their cars and took this road out of town. Bill didn't seem to encourage. To a dock, to an airstrip maybe. I'm sure a town this size is emergency of act procedures.

We could follow this road and end up in a dead end. Still, it's better than not knowing. It's better than planting our feet here and waiting to starve for worse. Dugged on his coat and squinted against the bright white sky. we looked into the houses along the main street okay good i'm like surely they're going to look right most front doors were left unlocked one had key stuck in the knob dangling we found a loaded revolver stashed under a mattress and a dog trapped inside a bare kitchen pantry it was a mutt shaggy pissed off we opened the door and it shot away into the woods didn't

look back even that brief scouting wore me out bill kept looking over his shoulder tightening his grip on the gun and staring around at every sound. My shoulders were aching under the pull of my pack straps. At last, we found two worthy vehicles, each with slightly less than half a tank of gas. One, a smallish van, and the other a Jeep with studded tires and the keys sitting on the dash. Bill leaned his hand on the Jeep as if it meant we were saved, but I stood apart, able to shake a sick feeling in the conundrum of the chef's final words. What if we don't leave?

What? you said yourself there's nothing certain at the end of the road we could drive to the coast and get stranded we could end up on foot again the woods exposed we're exposed here did you not see those tracks I did they surrounded us last night they were everywhere

and yet here we are standing in the street alive for months the whistlers have been on top of us but we're still breathing tell that to Lillian and Jeff tell it to Ira He was yelling now, panning. Our faces red, close.

I was blinking away tears, but I wasn't upset, just overwhelmed. One more night indoors. Let me wash and be warm. Just one more time. I'm so tired, Bill. So tired. He didn't agree, not explicitly. While we stood with the Jeep, it started snowing.

Just the lightest veil falling between us. We returned to the lodge. He moved around with a sort of quiet, powerless violence, locking and barricading the doors, drawing curtains, checking and re-checking the guns. We parked the Jeep in front of the lodge and loaded the backseat with gear and tools, as if to remind me that our present comfort was necessarily temporary.

We dragged the bed into the lounge, close to the stove. We moved the lounge's couches and tables towards the windows. They made the bed, almost reflexively, shaking the quilt out between us and trapeying it over the, and kneaded sheets. Night was falling by then. We're getting out of your first light. I'm going to boil a kettle and take a bath. He softened just a little. I saw towels in the closet.

Okay. Once again, I really like their dynamic. They both feel realistic. Neither feel stupid. They both have realistic reasons for what they want. And that little moment of, he softened a little and said, I saw towels in the closet. That feels very real. Feels very lived in. I want to ask your opinion, Hunter, what do you do in this scenario? Like, do I stay or do I go? Is that you mean? Yeah, yeah. You cannot kill yourself. Hmm. Well, you know me too well. I would stay.

Yeah. I think I think with the kind of the nuance of like me, the Whistlers could have killed us by now if they wanted to. That's my thought is like we're way safer here. Then we weren't our tent and they didn't kill us then. Also, we can try to barricade the door. We're safe from the elements. And we can just like look through the all the other houses and get food. Like yeah, to me, I'm like, it just makes the most sense. That's your best, especially where it's cold.

Maybe if it was the summer, it would be a little different. But where it's cold and you can just die in your sleep from hypothermia, I feel like you've got to stay there, especially because this town has to have some kind of radio thing somewhere, right? Good thing. But there's no power. Well, they sat that generator with half the gas, right? they could just move equipment over there and try to get word out.

I would I would completely exhaust that town before I decided the woods were a good idea again. Yeah. But I also understand his idea of like those things are close. I don't want to be here anymore. Yeah. But like he's not dumb. It's a realistic idea.

But I would also say stay in town. Or you at least have a roof from the snow. If we were walking a couple days, I'd maybe be more inclined, but we've been walking for four months. Four months. Four months is an absurd amount of time to be walking through the woods. Everyone's skin and bones, like no body fat at this point.

Everyone should starve. Yeah, no way. The water pressure is low, but the faucet still work, drawing from the water tower, I assume. Only needed a few inches of cold water anyway. I wanted to dilute the heat. I was eager to be cleaned of the dead chef and Gary Law, even Ira. Here to get the smell of the forest off my skin and start forgetting the things we'd done to stay alive. I took my hair down while the water dribbled into the tub.

It had grown long and had coalesced into oily tendrils since the last time I watched it. There were split ends and strands of gray. I were always liked it long. I thought about cutting it off with my pocket knife. Thought of how light and unencumbered I would feel once the oily heft of it was gone. I think about getting clean the way I think about eating. and drinking. It's a need I can't imagine anyone taking for granted. It feels like it may never be completely satisfied. I hadn't added the hot water yet when I was interrupted by the sound of

Bill barreling through the hallway. He opened the bathroom door, saw me halfway undressed with my hair down, and closed it abruptly. Sproke through the door in a rush. It's them. We're away from the windows, the front hallway listening to them. The howl, high pitch, nasally, throaty, so hard to find. The terror is not just something I remember and have learned to feel but innate. I experienced the fear of the sound on some deep, unconscious level. It is a warning, leaked into the deepest part of my mammalian brain. Danger.

Bill had my fire poker in both guns. How was he holding all three? Gave me my choice. I took the revolver, only four bullets left in the cylinder. He took the handgun in its full clip. He rested the poker and the hatchet against the wall. and stood behind me near the doorway, pressing his body against my back, his mouth to my ear. At least four of them. Close enough, I could hear footsteps.

Sound came from every direction. The whistles were like car horn blast, so loud the tendons in our necks tensed. The porch steps creaked, but our angle was awkward. I could barely see the front windows from where we cowered, and the low light from the stove and the electric lanterns barely reached the door. We could go out through the kitchen, exit. he whispered between hard breaths to the furthest cabin no lights run for it she's okay the next line is it was a fine plan

that doesn't sound like a fine plan to me I think sprinting in the darkness to another house is the worst thing you could do right now they obviously know you're in there they could break through the door if they wanted to they clearly don't want to so maybe just sat there

and chill out it was a fine plan the whistlers might be attracted to the light and heated the stove in the lanterns but not notice us slipping away yet at that moment i didn't have it in me to flee again they drove us from the lodge who was to say they wouldn't drive us from a cabin back into the woods couldn't survive being out there again not in the looming snow not just the two of us thought of the wash line and tents we abandoned the day we lost irea now our flight

across the valley it cost us no not again i charged away from bill straight towards the front door where the whistlers murmured. I threw open the door despite Bill's warning cry and saw only one figure beyond it, a dark, lanky shape on the bottom step, swaying listlessly, skeletal shoulders hunched beneath the head of shaggy hair. I was blinded by fear and I raised the gun as I stepped out onto the front porch. I fired. I saw his face in the flash, a swollen lower lip, empty eyes, hair clinging wetly to a fevered forehead. He fell like the wind had blown him down, instantly dead, and a moment later I was with him, laying my body on top of his, crying against his face and asking for forgiveness.

I couldn't hear anything. The bill told me later that there were no whistles, no sign of them, just Ira. Oh, no, oh, gosh. Oh, okay, clearly it's the whistler setting this side. up right or some entity setting this up that's why he was but it was him just making the footprints and she just domed her husband walked out of there just blew him away gosh dude just his blood and footprints on the walkway and the steps bill carried us inside first me then his brother he lay eye around the floor and i lay down with him pressing my face to his stone quiet chest

while its warmth ebbed away asking him weeks worth of questions whose answers we can never ever know now. So clearly, I read this whole time has been like under the influence of the Whistlers or possessed, maybe dead. And this was just like his body being puppeted by them. But regardless, her just stepping out there and shooting him. Ah, dude. December 5th. I love this story. This is great. This is classic like campfire, horror woods, creepy lost out there kind of thing I like. This is great. December 5th. Bill left me there with Ira that night. He shut the doors of the lounge and slept in the bed alone. I've kept Ira's body for three days, trying to comprehend it.

His right arm is missing, pouring away. The wound crudely cauterized somehow, but deeply infected. He was barefoot, feet frostbitten, his eyes riddled with broken vessels, hair missing in patches, the nails of his left hand groan and worn like claws. He wouldn't have survived the night. Don't blame yourself. Since they lost Ira, they walked like another two or three weeks, right? Yeah, a long time.

So in this state with a missing arm and an infection, he supposedly managed to walk that far. I don't mind. I think the whistlers carried his rotting body. Set him up on that front porch. There ain't no way that he walked all that way. I shaved Ira's face, but it didn't help. Did it make him look any more human?

I could hardly see him anyway through the tears. The moment you open the door, it stopped. I'm so sorry. Are you listening? The whistling. It stopped all at once. I didn't see any of them out there. I didn't see anything but you and him.

I saw his face. It's all I saw. The prince circled the cabin and I were walked among them. We know that much. Since that night, you haven't heard the whistlers. Not once. So that's almost saying that there isn't a whistler. It's just like the noise you hear when the spirits, you know,

it's some kind of supernatural. Yeah. It gets closer. Or it's like a metaphor for the insanity that sets in when you're out here. you know, all the folk, all the folklore pressed on to you. That would also, that's 100% a you scenario, hunter. You're like, oh, I'm missing an arm and I've died of infection, but I've made it back to my loving wife.

Boom! Oh, honey, I'm home. December 7th, Bill Doug Ira's grave today. It snowed hard that night before, and the topmost crust of soil was frozen. Digging was punishing work. It took hours. I thought we were desensitized to death, but I found him sitting on the edge of the hole

when it was done. It was like stangling down, sobbing into his hand. I didn't know what to do, so I sat beside him. I rose inside the lodge still, rolled in a pale yellow sheet, wrapped up so we couldn't see his face. He sat there together for a long time, both of us pretending we were safe and he was alive and the hole was anything other than a grave. I felt the cold of my joints like shards of glass.

Why don't we lie down with him? said, remaining down in the hole. Stroked the back of his head. I couldn't think of a good answer. It seemed to me we'd been offered plenty of chances to die and to climb them until now. Looked into the dark of the hole whose bottom was settling with tiny snowflakes that didn't last. Snow would fill the grave over us eventually. Preserve our bodies from the Whistlers until the residents of Red Hill came back at the start of the dry season. I've heard freezing as a gentle death. Like falling asleep, Bill left my side, carried Ira's body. body to the grave, hefted him down, and then came up again, standing, pulling me up beside him,

taking me away. I'm sorry. He said, though I still hadn't spoken a word. Don't listen to me. That's rough. See, I've got, have I told you about my buddy that almost froze to death? No. I've got this friend of mine.

His name's Ian. He was in Nashville, and he was. kayaking one day on he decided to take his kayak out at the kayak out to the middle of the lake like a genius and he got way out there and then like a

record breaking blizzard came down on him was and his kayak with like super high winds flipped his kayak he had to swim to shore and he was in the middle of nowhere he was in the middle of like a park that was several miles away and he didn't know which way his bearing was he was parked several miles up the lake

and he's running through the wood And as he's running for like an hour, he starts to get slower and slower and it gets harder to move. And he gets the sudden urge that like his jacket is like too cold. So he takes it off. And as he's walking, he's like, man, I'm really tired. I am so, so tired. And he's like, I bet if I sleep, I'll feel better. Like his brain just gets overwhelmed with the idea of if I lay down, he found a little spot behind a log and he lays down.

down. He was like, if I take a quick nap, I'll wake up energized. And that's a hell good idea. He was almost to sleep. And he was like, oh, wait, that's what the cold wants me to think. That's how I die. So it gets this burst of adrenaline and runs with the woods and eventually find someone's house. He comes up to the door and he's slamming on the door. They call the police on him because they think it's someone trying to break into his their house. And he's like outside the window. They're like, I'm calling 911. And he's like, yes, please. I'm begging you call. 911 and the cop show up. So yeah, but he almost died, but he, he attested to that, that he was running and then all of a sudden he's like, I should take a nap. A nap will help

me a lot. So yeah, that's terrifying. The idea of that you just, all of your motor function turns off and you're like, I'm kind of sleepy. Yeah, I'm feeling a little tired. I feel a little sleepy. This will take, this will take a nice little rest. I mean, while they find a grown man frozen to death in the woods of Nashville. It's in the scene. The funniest thing was, so he had his wife, I think he had

gotten that kayak for his birthday or something like that. And then his wife hears about it. And then she drives to where he's at, or he calls her, and he's in the back of the ambulance, like getting warmed up with a blanket. And the first thing she says to him,

she turns the corner of the ambulance, it goes, so you lost the kayak God Yeah, hon Yeah, I lost the kayak The kayak's gone, babe, sorry Yep, yep

Oops, my bad Oh December 9th We had a baby Ira and I Five years ago today She was born with a heart defect And didn't live long

Didn't ever leave the hospital I have scars Her name was Catherine I left town before the funeral Went to a medical conference Two states away But Bill was there Got drunk and courted me

In his mother's living room She should have been mine He said so close I could smell the whiskey Oh Well this recontextualizes Some of the earlier stuff Yeah

It's why Bill doesn't believe me When I say I hear an infant's cries on the wind He knows it's Catherine's birthday He thinks about her too. I hear her wailing in the early evening, often just before the whistlers start to hell, an overture, prelude.

We're out of food. Each night we build a fire in the stove and set before it with shaking hands, with cups of tea. There's snow on the ground, snow to reveal that the whistlers haven't circled close since Ira died. There are no tracks but our own.

I started asking myself the question in practical terms. If I have some choice in the matter, how would I like to die? If I choose to go as Catherine did, swaddled and sedated in my mother's arms. There's a time when I thought I wanted to die fighting. My knife and my hand, knuckles red from the cold. I'm not sure anymore. I'm not sure I have the patience for that.

Everything is different since we buried Ira. Difference is between us, yes, and in the atmosphere of Red Hill. Bill doesn't bustle around the way he used to doesn't set visual at the windows and watch the distant trees there's something we've discovered beyond fear a separate emotion a detachment all that matters is the heat of the fire

the weight of the blankets we hardly speak anymore it's interesting that Bill previously had like this weird brush with her it's also real messed up for Ira to leave his wife for a medical conference after their child dies that's the insane saying that's kind of it's kind of not great yeah it's a little creepy

yeah that's a little don't do that hey guys fellas relationship advice don't do that your kid dies stick around probably good advice December 13th Bill leaves the lodge every afternoon now to look for food

says he wants to go alone and I don't argue made a good few fines popcorn instant coffee noodles dried parsley half a bottle of bad gin each day he circles a little further out, stays away a little later. Last night, it didn't come back until an hour after dark

till I'd already heard the mournful chorus of two whistlers far away in the woods. I thought of walking out to them, my desolation. I want to see their faces. I want to know my tormentors. When I try to envision them now, all I see is Ira. Ira at the end, scant face and yellowed eyes. Do they suffer as he suffered? I recognize their faces? When Bill, When Bill came back, he pressed a pack of chewing gum into my palm and went straight to bed. He was limping on his bad foot. He had walked too far. Why were you out so long?

But he rolled over against his pillow, pretended not to hear. December 15th. There were about six inches of snow on the ground. I spent the day stacking firewood on the porch. Bill stayed close at my insistence, wandered through town like a tiger in a small cage. There's nothing left to eat in Red Hill, no game nearby. but coyotes and wolves. In the early evening, he walked across the road with a gas can, siphoned fuel from the van, which is parked outside a gray house just up the street. I watched

him from the porch. He looked up from his work to look back at me, meet my gaze through the falling snow. We might go to the coast after all. For all we know, there's a radio out there, phone, some other means of contact we've overlooked. Maybe the Coast Guard will send a patrol. Maybe someone's been looking for us all this time. Bill stops. staring. His head turned suddenly, towards the woods behind the house, like he'd heard something, snapping of twigs. What is it? I called, but he did an answer. We walked a few steps towards the woods, craned his head, but then a streak of brown and black emerged through the trees, went straight for him. There was a deep growl, a scuffle of motion, and Bill's strangled cry,

a dog. The dog we released from the pantry days before. I sprang from the porch with a stick of firewood in my hand, but was too late. Bill had slipped in the ice, fallen hard against the edge of the van's bumper. The dog tore into his leg, but released it as Bill fell, lunched for his face. I swung the splittered edge of the firewood against the poor beast's skull. He was like us, starving, skittish mutt made savage by the cold. Bill was dazed, scrapping for purchase in the snow behind me, trying in vain to stand. The dog cowered away from me, and it seemed cruel to swing a second time, so I screamed instead. The top of my lungs shouted at the dog to run, and he did. He turned, he lowered his body and went slowly towards the woods close by, cowering deeper like he didn't

want to go back into the trees. But I was full of adrenaline now and yelled a second time so loud that my voice echoed off the houses. Something answered me. It was a strange roar, a rumble like a rock slide mixed with an animal scream, like a panther. Came from the woods where I had driven the dog, and now I heard the mutt whimpering, the screaming and the whimpering and Bill's muddled murmuring behind me, and I found myself backing toward him through the snow almost senselessly until a new sound erupted and overcame the others. The whistlers. Their voices rose, familiar now, surrounded us until I couldn't hear the shrieking roar. The whimpering dog couldn't hear Bill's exhausted breathing or my own beating heart. I turned, suddenly focused and grabbed his hand. He had been holding his pistol, aiming it unsettly towards the woods.

I took it now and heaved him upright. He was woozy, bleeding freely in the snow. Gary Law's khaki pantlet was soak red. There was blood on his head, too, scrape from a bolt on the van's bumper, not deep. His eyes were half closed. Stay awake. I said, grabbing Bill's chin more roughly than I met to,

yanking him toward the lodge. The whistleer's cries were harrowing, but helpful now. They seemed to propel us onward, made us focus on the fear of the imperative of flight. The dog had bitten Bill's back. bad leg, the one already weakened by his twisted ankle. He could walk, but he was shaking. I helped him across the street, helped him up the porch and into the Lodges dining area. He collapsed into a chair, leaned his body against a table. He was grimacing horribly, and we were losing

daylight fast. I cut away his pant leg with my knife. You're going to need stitches. The dog bite was an arc of puncture wounds with a deep gash torn near his shin. The wound on his head was bloody, but not horribly deep, not as bad as it looked, a scrape only, a shock, and now the blood was seeping slower. I set an electric lantern on the table. It still wasn't enough light. Headlamps in the lounge. When I went for it, I remembered the bottle of cheap gin. Find it? He called to me. There was pain in his voice. Made myself hurry. There was alcohol, hand sanitizer in my pack, and a spool of surgical silk and still needles. Ira had put the first aid kit together with his own skill set in mind.

I poured water on the wounds, washed the blood away, and watched more take its place. Are you okay? I don't know what I'm doing. Wipe sanitizer on a needle and then douse the gash on his leg with it. He reeled where he said as the alcohol burned. I'm sorry. Shug his head. You're doing fine.

I added him the gin bottle before I started stitching. It was half full and Bill took grateful swigs before nodding at me to get on with it. Skin was harder to pierce than I expected, but Bill seemed able to center himself amid the pain. He closed his eyes and only grunted a little each time I pulled the thread through. He kept saying it was okay that I was doing fine. Finally, I tied off the thread and taped a square of gauze over my work. I sat at the table afterward, sweating inexplicably exhausted, feeling there was more I should do, replaying the noises in my head, the sequence of events, the whistlers and the thing that had answered my shouts. Bill walking towards the woods, the sound, the dog,

what came first? It was jumbled already, the memory. I've recorded it here the way that makes the most sense. The moon was rising and we leaned into each other. Both of us looking away at the deepening shadows, looking through the windows for signs of life, finding the night remarkably, horribly quiet. He drank from the gym bottle again and then handed it to me. It was harsh and cheap, but it took more than one burning gulp. Suppose the dog was running from it.

Bill asked. I shrugged, something dreadful was welling up inside of me. stood up and turned in a useless circle and felt hot tears falling, felt the desperation and spoiled hopes at the past weeks rolling over me. I was collapsing and leaned towards the table to steady myself. Bill caught me before I could. He stood and held me against his chest, one easy movement, one hand against the back of my head. He was breathing in the same uncontrolled gasp that had overtaken him on the trail before he saw Red Hill. When he was balancing between despair and a kind of jovial release, pulled my hand.

hair down, smoothing it between his hands, so my head tipped back. So I had no choice but to look up at him. My vision cleared, tears stopped, and then we were breathing together. Her eyes locked and bodies reacting like two leaves tugged down by the same current, deciding what came next. Shook while I lifted my shirt over my head. He kissed me then so I couldn't speak and he was right to. There's nothing whatsoever to say. I followed him to the lounge, to the bed. He sat back and pulled me on top of him, wintzing as he leaned against the cushions, but still holding me with a tense grip, still saying yes. It didn't seem to stove was pumping out much heat, but I took everything off, wanting him to see me and the body so much walking in hunger and feared

made, wanting to feel tangible and whole on this night when our existence was impossible to take for granted. Kissed my neck while he made love to me, whispered that he would make it, make it through the winter make it to the coast make it home i had to believe him so it sounds like that's the end of that entry it sounds like the dog attacked and then her yelling attracted the deep growl the real monster out there and then the whistlers come in for defense right yeah i mean still vague but yeah that's kind of what i'm getting at yeah there's something whatever makes the deep roar is the thing the whistlers are protecting them from i think right December 17th. Bill was pale the next morning, week, but he wouldn't stay in bed when I asked

him to. He hobbled around the lodge, gathering more gear, hauling it out to the Jeep, dragging the gas can up from where we had abandoned it into the road. I made him some broth, but he wouldn't eat. And in the afternoon, he walked away towards the woods, towards the place where the dog ran and the roar sounded. He walked toward the trees and stopped and stared when I hollered from the porch and look back at me. I tried to follow to fetch him, but it seemed even limping. He took two steps onward for every one of mine.

He went on until he was in the trees. I decided, and as much as I wanted to, could it make myself follow? He stood in the frozen road and shouted for him. I didn't have it in me to enter the woods. I lay in bed through the night with open eyes, hearing the whistlers, soft, far away, like a lullaby. I heard Catherine on the wind.

The tears come much. easier when I'm alone. I found him this morning, sitting on the porch steps, facing out, the ice in his beard. I touched his neck and he yelled my arm. He seemed alert. He looked into my eyes. What happened to you? I was nearly crying, but he didn't respond. Just rubbed my arm and let me lead him inside, watch me through sad and eyes. Later, once he was warm, he said he had gone to the woods to listen to the whistlers. He said he could understand them now. Don't say that bill cried into his shoulder pressed my fingers to his lips it was calm it's okay ruth we'll go to the coast tomorrow you'll be safe we'll be safe he nodded held me tighter December 18th it was sad pulling out

of red hill watching a shrink behind us until it was closed off by a ridge of granite and a curtain of trees it felt momentous almost like this was the beginning of our journey again like we were grad students me with my love of reading and him with his lust for the outdoors. I had married his brother, and he always wanted to get closer, and one late night in the office, grading papers, we had a crazy idea. I wrote the grand application. He planned logistics. Ira took a sabbatical, volunteered, met Lillian at a conference. All we saw was how our interest aligned.

We went out for drinks, the whole group, all together, talked about how much fun it would be. We were barely in the Jeep 40 minutes before we were. ran out of road. Our path terminated in a wide lot. I love, gosh, that was cool. I love how quickly it transitions from them getting ready for the trip to them right now driving in the Jeep. Our path terminated

in a wide lot of pale brown gravel. There was no air strip, just a rutted lot with puddles that had turned to slush, a floating docks slick with ice, and a boathouse with two broken canoes inside and a rusted hole in its roof. I was driving because Bill was ill,

leaning against the window. His leg, It's bad like bruised and the scrape on his head isn't healing. He stared straight ahead. Once we were parked, stared through the windshield with tears forming in his eyes. I don't know what he was expecting. It was hard to see that we were at the edge of the earth now. Out of options. You know, in the olden days, people would, they would walk into the sea, kill themselves.

There's something poetic about it. Not in real life. I don't suppose. I've never seen anything poetic in a dead body. He reached for my hand across the gear shift. I'm not going back to Red Hill Ruth. I can't. Not now.

I can't look at Iris Grave again. I can't walk to the kitchen and pretend there isn't a corpse in the freezer. I can't. What else is there? He shook his head. There's the rub. I pulled my hand away and got out of the Jeep. It was impossible holding my thoughts together.

I want to stop struggling, but not to die. I want Bill to stop feeling pain, but not to be alone. Wanted to end both our suffering. Wish I had said yes days ago. Bill laid Ira in his grave when he asked if we should lie down too. It was windy at the coast, so cold my cheeks burned. I walked down toward the dock, but I couldn't go far without risking my footing on the ice. Bill was watching me from inside the Jeep, waiting, I suppose.

To hear me say I was ready to give up to, but I wasn't ready. I closed my eyes, felt the embrace of the wind, and deep within the hush of it, I heard the cry again. My little Catherine's cry, and a voice, a man's voice, Iras, singing to her. Bill got out of the Jeep and looked towards the sound. Whistlers, is that what you hear? I walked toward it. Where are you going? I waved that I was okay and walked around the useless boathouse, a below hill of sliding gravel.

at the top the wind was stronger swirling with tiny snowflakes and I could see more gray water up the coast I could see distant glimpses of shorelines segmented by trees and low surf and a bobbing shape white and blue

lodged against a split of dark sand I rushed back down the hill towards the Jeep sliding in the gravel panting hard what is it there's a boat get your pack man oh god so good feeling

like the gray water and like them walking in the desolation almost feels like the road like the end chapters of that where the father and son are walking down the dark coast and it's all great but I love how so many horror stories come back to there's

a boat on the coast like we can get out that way you know it feels like a classic I don't know why I haven't heard of this before is impossible to take the Jeep directly up the beach there's too much loose gravel too many jetting black rocks in our path. We had to wind in and out of patches of forest, had to boost each other over boulders, had to trudge around coarse sand. I was relentless forcing myself

onward, climbing every dune to confirm the boat was still in sight. Still a small blue and white catch with bare mast and an enclosed cabin. The sound led me onward all the while, the sound of iron, Catherine. The sound Bill kept pausing to warn me up. The sound he said was whistlers, lowering us into a trap. It looks abandoned. Bill said once we were near, he was clutching his leg, holding the place where I was sure his bite wound had opened. I never offered a stop, to slow down, to do anything but press onward. I felt certain about the boat that it was waiting for us, destined for us, our salvation. We slid down a final scree slope and reached the gray pebbled beach where the boat was moored.

Or not moored, exactly, but stuck. It was surrounded with driftwood and other debris. Bill looked exhausted, unimpressed. To death trap, Ruth The tide's coming in Come on, help me get inside The tide will take us out And the Coast Guard will find us

The Coast Guard will not find us This area will be iced over in a month It's suicidal Do you know anything about sailing? My dad owned a kinch We didn't go out much, I wish As I spoke Bill turned away from the boat And stared into the trees

He was flexing his hands Trembling Do you hear that? I did hear it snapping twigs the moaning bend of a branch then the whistling deep in the trees coming closer bill was breathing hard backing toward the boat keeping me behind him as the whistling rose in front of us so the whaling rose behind crying singing summoning me backward summoning me into the boat the tide was already rising the boat bobbing in water that was almost deep enough to whisk it away i hear ira what bill gave me a bewildered almost angry look i hear him I'm singing. Here, Catherine. He looked sad for me and reached for me, but I backed away into the water.

It rose over my shoes and soaked my socks, icy cold. Don't, Ruth. I'm getting on the boat, Bill. There's a ladder down one side of the hole. I could wade to it and pull myself inside. I didn't need his help. You said you wouldn't go back to Red Hill. This is what's left.

This is the other choice. Whistling in the trees grew louder, and every second the beach felt smaller, more like a trap. His face changed. The wind rustled his hair. Yes. Yeah. You're right. Get on the boat, Ruth. He's pushing her off for sure. Yeah. Yeah, he's pushing her off. He's going to stay behind. Yep. I turned and waited toward the ladder, telling myself he would follow, telling myself all would be well. Why can't you hear it, Bill? He said as I reached the ladder as I pulled myself up onto the weather deck. Why can't you hear Iris sing? But when I turned around, Bill was halfway up the beach. Looking small, facing away from me, his skin white and his arms rigid.

Bill! The boat was creaking in the deepening tide and the wind was rushing across the sand. The boat jolted beneath me. Something dark appeared beyond the tree trunk, something I could barely see. It was a moving, shadow independent of the shifting needles and swaying branches, a shape, a being taller than a man and deliberate in its movements. I raised my revolver and shaking hands. I fired more than once.

There was no reaction. The sound was lost among all the others, the screaming and gnashing the howl of the whistlers. Bill was close to the woods now. He had to see it, but he was paralyzed, as straight and immovable as the trees. I screamed for him, wishing he would look at me, but he didn't move. And beneath me, the boat shifted again. I fell at my head on the icy railing. Once I had scrambled upright again, Bill had fallen.

He was collapsed on the sand, and the creature was looming. closer to him coming through the trees crouching down whistling hushed suddenly almost completely even the wind seemed to ease takes its prey one at a time i couldn't hear katherine anymore or irea but i could hear the whistlers the softest warning tone intelligible now almost like words telling me to close my eyes there's always one survivor always someone spared the wind pushed the catch away from the shore in the darkness closed over bill i don't remember anything else oh dude that in part there's always one survivor always there's always one to tell the story oh gosh december 22nd my name is ruth gattiger please bring my body back to organ if you can my driver's license is in my wallet this

account of events is for the families of the deceased for the helicopter pilot and lillian and jeff for Bill and I was mother and the chef we found in Red Hill. I don't want it published. I don't want to be one more link in the chain of juvenile curiosity. Another mystery in the big book of stories that sends people like us to places like this to die. We had so many opportunities over the years to drop the question, to live with the unknown. We called ourselves folklorist, but we imagined we were adventurers, righteous explorers exposing a mystery. We imagined we had the right. I never thought the Whistlers were real before coming here. I thought they were a dark side of the human psyche, just one of many predictable byproducts of human life and cold, isolated, untenable conditions.

I wanted to sit around a fire with shifty-eyed fur trappers and remote homesteaders and listen to their spooky stories like a tourist. We didn't satisfy our curiosity coming here, didn't pick apart the tangled lore. We only satisfied the hunger of the thing that stalks this place. It's been here a long time, the chef thought. at war with the Whistlers. How long have they kept it a bay? It doesn't even have a name. This late hour, I find I can't put a description into words,

and I don't want to, because I realize now there's some things we don't deserve to know. There are stories we shouldn't tell, unknowns that should remain unknown. I should have done this in the Jeep with Bill. It would have been better, but not necessarily easier. Die in the backseat and his arms warm, staring out of the ocean.

The boat ran aground on a sandbar, not far from where I lost Bill. I've been wandering down the coast. I made it back to the Jeep. There are no whistles to follow me now. Nothing watching from beyond the trees. The snow is deep, and the land has gone quiet. For how long? I don't know.

I don't know if I was spared, or if the evil that lives here is merely biting its time again. If you found this, the backpack, thank you. whoever you are I'm out of gas, out of food and at night matter where I look there are no lights

in any direction it's cold I'll close my eyes for a little while there's still one round in the revolver and I haven't made up my mind and a fruice account

God damn I think this can be taken it a bunch of different ways like I don't know how literal everything is supposed to be versus like the way the story unfolds it almost feels like this is this whole story is like um almost

like a it kind of reminds me of like I don't know like the ending kind of had that the same vibe I don't know why I got the same vibe is like the ending of the left right game with the road yeah the road just keeps going on and on and on yeah it feels like you could interpret the story in a lot of different ways like I was saying like I feel like you could probably even do like uh i don't know like it's just it feels so much like someone processing grief like all these kinds of different things like guilt grief and like the way that uh relationships kind of fade and contort and twist and like i don't i i just don't know i mean like my mind it's all here obviously there's a whole town that was supposed to be there but i mean i don't know

to me it just feels like uh all from the perspective of ruth and then her like almost like leading up to a suicide or even like someone dying like it just feels very uh it all felt so uh surreal i think you can even get rid of the like the thing too is we never really ever see the whistlers we don't know what they are but even as just a story of someone who is lost and trying to like find civilization again very captivating but the but the whistler's angle to it that's what brought it into this like almost surrealist interpretation of somebody like dealing with the loss of a child dealing with a failing marriage, make with a potential love triangle kind of thing as well

that led to their death. At least that's kind of like on the first gut reaction, that's what I'm feeling. Yeah. I agree. I think it's interesting how the whistlers are the monster at the beginning of the story, but as you read, it's like they're just the harbinger. They're just the thing that tries to warn people of the monsters.

I think that's fascinating. This, gosh, this has been such a good story so far. also I'm looking so I looked it up I'm looking at the website sorry I found the original story it was posted to R slash no sleep before it went to creepypasta.com the username is just the Whistlers

and this is all it's posted just this account Bruce account and Bill's account and yes it was posted 11 years ago so early 2015 or 2014 the first part so one of the it's been a while since the characters

have really grabbed me this way though I don't know like just a lot of I just really like the dynamic between Bill and Ruth and just I don't know it doesn't dwell on like the kind of like very tropey horror stuff to make it scary a lot of the horror like I said I mean I really just to me it just feels so much like uh god yeah just like just a fucking it felt like the personification of like guilt and grief just I don't know it just because you never all of their interactions feel so natural to yeah the whistlers i mean and like what are they protecting this where are they protecting you from besides like potentially

these like even like that when she was shooting out and she saw thought that she saw like the monster at first i thought it was just going to be she she shot bill too or something you know are they really seeing these things is the is the madness of the whistlers and stuff is that just like repress shit coming up and manifesting itself to you i don't know you know like everybody kind of has their own versions of what it is. It's just very interesting. Bill's account. The person who brought Bill's journal to my attention has asked not to be identified.

He insisted on giving me transcripts, not originals. So in this case, what I'm showing you is exactly what I received. As before, neither I nor my source makes any claims about the veracity of these documents. I'm sure many of you will want to know more about the documents themselves, but unfortunately, my source was not forthcoming. And I asked him how he acquired Bill's accounts. I did so many times The only response was

I didn't I wish I had more insight to offer you I'm afraid these new passages raise at least as many questions as they answer First entry December 7th I've got calluses on my hands from burying my brother If we're rescued today

I'll have to explain that to someone Some search and rescue trooper Some forest ranger will hold my palms To the light of a chopper window And want to know how I managed to rub the heel of my hand raw I practice sometimes. I practice what I'll say to people when we get back home. Dr. Harmon, the department head,

will need to know how I got Jeff and Lily and Kill doing what was supposed to be straightforward field research. There were both as students, handpicked for great things, led astray by the man who wrote his dissertation on the Russian Yeti, who taught a cryptozoology class disguised as a folklore survey. I got bumped off the tenure track for that. Harmon talked over me in meetings like I wasn't there.

Ruth was on the floor with Ira for days after he died, wouldn't speak. She was holding his dead fingers and fussing to wash all the blood away, crying soundlessly with her mouth open, more like a wheeze. I had to do something, so I picked up her journal, flipped through all the way back to that night in the dark, full moon rising and Ira down in a hole. She isn't documenting the Whistlers anymore. I'll see her in the corner by the stove sometimes at their notebook open

and the pen just hovering over a page, not actually making words. she's thin as a scarecrow now and her lips are cracking I wonder about the things that she doesn't write down their entire day she didn't see fit to take note of and there are other things little details that I don't remember at all things I don't remember saying this is a whole problem with the work we do

in completeness hearsay to tonight to the north for about an hour after sunset they separated seemed to be approaching the lodge from either end of town and then abruptly move further away. Nothing concrete, but the tracks outside and the marks on Ira. They don't seem willing to bother us inside, but we know that's temporary. I took Sam, the helicopter pilot, right out of the lighthouse kitchen.

Something broke the window above the sink. It was pitch black and he yelled like a cap. Ira had the rifle ready. It was dark and rainy and he aimed for the pilot with the back of the head. Still no reception. who listened to static long enough and it starts to sound like something so we keep the lounge radio off

food running low so that gives again I like how we get little bits to what happened at the lighthouse the idea of the pilot just got ripped through the window yeah December 8th mom will be at the airport when we're rescued she'll ask about Ira

before she asks about me I have that hanging over me for the rest of my life that the wrong brother made it out of the wilderness canaan able but he was the marked one. I can already see the disappointment in her eyes, hear the weepy sign. I'm sorry he's dead.

Not as sorry as I should be. He didn't scream the way Jeff did, didn't scratch and bite like Lillian. He just stared up at me through the blue darkness, stared as if to and see that the order of things didn't matter, that it could be either of us in the hole, and the outcome would stay the same. The day we're rescued, I'll have to find some way

to keep the truth under wraps. Those eyes. Ruth isn't on her feet yet. And I got back from scavenging today. She was at the freezer door again, crying. There's a woman in there, a chef, dead. We saw the evidence we have about what happened at Red Hill. Not enough.

We should dig a second grave, but the ground is even harder now. Our bodies are broken, little wounds, cuts, and scrapes, twisted joints and tight muscles. Nothing gets a chance to heal. Just pain on top of pain and hunger beneath it all. I went back through the houses today, looking for anything we can use. Pointless to write an inventory down. Nobody had supplies to overwinter in Red Hill.

Seems even the chef was planning to head south once the weather came in. Three, maybe four whistlers around a night. Very distant north of us. We've got every lantern gathered in the lounge, all of them hanging from the antler chandelier around the tendrils of dust. It's bright enough to read by, almost enough to feel truly safe. they'll pick their night soon i imagine only heard them briefly but clears a bell so it was disturbing when i commented on it and ruth said she didn't hear them lillian's research centered on self-delusion

no two descriptions of the whistlers are exactly alike there's similarities between accounts sure but she thought every victim was complicit somehow that you would go so long fearing something you can't see and eventually you decide what it looks like you decide what you believe and then you see what you want to see. Ruth woke me up later to say she heard the baby. She kept saying my name and begging me to listen, her nails digging into my arm, her face not an inch away from mine.

Catherine's birthday's tomorrow. I didn't say anything. I was afraid of making her cry. Instead, I held her like she was mine. I lips to her forehead. She went back to sleep. Not sure how much more of this we can take. Think of the survivor theory all the time.

the different permutations of it. If I shoot myself, will they leave Ruth alone? I remember Kirk or Farley, the first trapper ever interviewed, said the whistling stopped altogether once his last companion was dead. Said he walked out of the woods, unmolested, and found help. I want to walk for at least a day first. Make sure she wasn't hassled with burying me. That's how Ira said he would do it.

Take the gun and go for a walk. What did he tell her? Rock Tarmigan. he was never supposed to come back that day because he never really did no I could see the logic say the words but you can't do it

or wasn't the only coward in these woods so that's interesting so Ira according to Bill here was going to kill himself in the woods right and then

but that's when he came to the revelation that it's a warning and he decided to come back to tell them that's the only thing that Kevin from killing himself interesting it's interesting to get another person's it's interesting in another person's perspective too of how the other person's not necessarily acting crazy but like how from Bill's perspective he's like the more rational one

or you know he's like yeah yeah yeah December 9th Ephraim Defoe was the first Whistler scholar to describe the survivor theory wrote a paper about it the idea that the whistlers are in some way dependent on humans and so will always leave one alive A living human begets more humans.

Survivor tells a story, excites curiosity, leads to more expeditions, more idiots in the woods. It applies long-term thinking on the part of the Whistlers, planning, cycle of sewing and harvest. Ruth doesn't believe this part of the mythology. Obviously, every story has a survivor. The incidence without survivors don't become the stories. They don't make it into the record. But I think about Kirk or Farley, gray mutton chops and a crumpled Stetson, Knuckles, like oak bark. He was a Korea vet who retired to the wilderness once he got home.

Took about poverty. It's been a winter stranded in snowbound with six other people, all ex-military, all skilled and tough as nails. The Whistlers picked the group apart one man at a time over the space of a month. Finally, Kirkor was left alone with his best friend, and that man started to lose his mind, started howling at the moon. Kerker killed him, his best friend, knife while he slept. Generalist can be. one I've ever told the story to said that that's the answer right there. Kirkor's just a murderer with the story to cover up his own wrongdoing. Maybe his case really is that simple.

At the beginning, Ruth suspected all cases were that simple. I asked Kirkor, though, when we sat down together. Knowing they only take one at a time, why would they kill your partner and isolate yourself? Why don't just stay together? Why wouldn't the whole group stay together? Arms locked. One impenetrable unit. He smiled, the strangest smile, and he said,

Whistler ain't a hound chasing a fox. He's an angler waiting for a shark. Patient, patient, patient. Oh. This gives a different idea of the whistlers. It's not necessarily protecting the humans. It's using the humans as bait. Maybe.

Interesting. We've been out here for months now, and I still don't know what he meant. I do know I didn't have the nerve to follow my own logic. I couldn't sit idle and let the whistlers dictate terms. No whistlers tonight. when they come back they'll come in force they'll be insistent made my brother a promise and I'll keep that promise but not today not yet there's still the coast

so him and bill had a conversation that he that Ira needs to kill himself right yeah so that we we should both kill ourselves so that she can get out of here it's like a pack they made yeah because there's always one survivor yeah that's internet that explains so much more about Bill's decision at the end to not get on the boat to walk away. December 10th.

Today we found Gary Law's luggage in a cabin behind the lodge. It's nice knowing this is where he came from. It helps put a date on whatever scattered the population of Redhill. The man brought enough pleaded slacks out here to start a catering company. Navy and khaki cufflinks and polo shirts. He got bare torch brochures and a receipt for a seaplane charter. It's as if this was his first time outside an office. He got the look of someone they'd send search and rescue for,

but we haven't heard anyone flying over. I've heard that's something the whistlers can do. They can change what you hear, when. Ask what's true and plant what isn't. Lillian tried to record the whistles one night, but didn't pick anything up. All we get is static on the radio. I wonder.

No idea how Gary Law made it so far north by himself on foot. Why on earth he picked that direction to begin with. Ruth gathered up his plane tickets and put it with his ID. His documents. worthless documents we don't have anything of iras but we've got a whole damn library on gary law i never actually saw the man's body strange timing came back to ruth burying a man hours after i had left ira to die but he didn't die didn't speak except to say that we were wrong it was a warning just a warning he said to kill anybody neither to die i guess september 11th there's a book in the

lounge on traps and snares. I know exactly two traps from scouts, the one where you make something heavy fall on your prey, a deadfall, and the one where you funnel your prey down into a hole. They've each got their drawbacks. There are knots and nooses in this book. Diagrams for cornering bigger game. Ira was the damned eagle scout. Ruth likes to remind us of the things he knew that we're both useless for. Today I left her washing the bed sheets and water so hot it termed her arms red. She saw a tick on the carpet, she said. I probably brought it in on my socks. I would help, but I get the feeling she doesn't want me around the lodge. There's a good rope in the Jeep. I made three different leg snares and one neck snare that I don't have high

hopes for. Books got instructions for small elk, boar, bear, and porcupine. I'd be glad to have any of these for dinner, but what I'm more interested in is what might happen if a whistler stumbles across a trap, what they might do to a tethered animal in distress. The academic part of me hasn't frozen to death yet. Unlike Ruth, I haven't forgotten why we're here. I found a pair of pole climbers in the forest. I stopped halfway up with mossy spruce and watched the forest for a good long time once the snares were set.

I picked a little clearing where the ground is spongy, not a quarter mile behind the houses across from the lodge, but well hidden. Half the noises of the woods come from the trees themselves, creaking and swirking. swaying and whispering like they do. From my perch I could see the roofline of the lodge, smoke from the stove, and endless green in every direction. There are hills between here and the coast. I heard something just as I was returning to the lodge, a low rumble growl. I looked back and saw what looked like a dog streaking away from behind the houses and disappearing into the woods. We freed a brindle mutt from one of the houses. He's been following me in and out of the woods.

doesn't like me getting too close to his house. It's a gray shack right on the edge of the opening and the trees where I usually hike in. He runs with low shoulders and a mean little snarl. I'm sure he's starving. He finds himself in one of my traps I may put him down. If I brought him home, Ruth would want to feed him, name him. Can't afford that.

After dark, there had to be 20 whistlers around the lodge. It was deafening the sound of them, all in the direction of that gap between the houses, the place where the forest opens, up where I set my snares. I didn't tell Ruth this. Maybe it occurs her anyway that their activity might have something to do with my time alone out there. I piled wood into the stove and made her put on a pair of socks. She's been biting her nails down to nothing and talking in her sleep. I listened to her through the night. I don't sleep much myself. I love having this

different perspective. So it's like, while Ruth seemed the same one and Bill was crazy in the first account now bill seems the same one and ruth is crazy in this account yeah exactly it's just everybody thinks that they're you know of a right mind you know and now the other person's crazier acting stranger yeah like the basically the person writing has to be brave for both of them you know it's just kind of it's i always like these back and forth yeah the second perspective adds a lot i like it yeah December 12th ruth isn't eating she thinks i don't know how little food there is thanks i don't notice her pretending to chew an empty spoonful of that yellowish fruit cocktail. When she's rescued, people at work will make a fuss over how thin she is.

How hard her arms and legs are now sickens me, the way we take our bodies for granted. The way we would set at desks and count calories and deny ourselves a beer after work. Breach. Damn, I'd like a beer tonight. I said it to Ruth just now. She's between me and the stove, braiding her damp hair. She laughed a little. She's pitying my lack of imagination, maybe, or maybe she's hoping I won't ask her for the other thing

I want. Check the snares today. Caught some kind of fox. Dispashed it with Ruth's hatchet. It was gaming and tough as shoe leather, but we ate it anyway. She'd like jackals till our jaws were sore. There's plenty of salt and pepper, which didn't help as much as you think. Nothing in the other traps. The next snare looked disturbed, but the wind might have pulled it off the branches. Hard to tell. Ruth keeps telling me to take it easy. Rest in bed. Get off my bad leg. I can't bring myself to tell her that keeping still sounds like a death sentence to me. If she had heard way, we'd curl up under the blankets together and wait for spring. Spring would come, but we wouldn't see it. The only way any of this matters is if Ruth makes it out alive. When she sees me go into the

front door, she asks me to stay where she can see me, stay within shouting distance, across the lounge, give her a kiss before I go, but there's no give, no return. She's my sister when she chooses to be, when they come to rescue her that's what she'll say that I was her brother-in-law and I looked after her that I was a decent help to her in Ira's absence

that I tried there's almost like a bitterness to him too you know she's my sister when she chooses to be you know kind of making her out

to be ungrateful December 13th it's hours after dark I just made it back Ruth saw me limping and chewed me out saying I'm walking too far I'm too much weight

on my bad leg too soon She doesn't know what I do all day. She assumes I'm still going through houses, finding matchbooks and hard candies lost behind sofa cushions. I'm trying to finish it, but I didn't even get the damn noose around my neck. Oh. Oh, that's what he was doing.

Possible to reach a good branch on these evergreens. It had to be high up so they could see me. So she could see me, so she know it was over. It's how we did Jeff, Ira and I. Took him hunting, tied him to a tree, waited until we heard them closing in until the screams were drowned out by the whistling and the other thing

screeching and deep growling and the snapping of bones. Okay. That's all right. Well, that is a revelation that all the way back then they killed Jeff. That's what happened to him. So do you think they went insane or they just

so quickly decided that there has to be a sole survivor? I'm just wondering if that was the plan all along they brought people that they maybe not not really didn't care for but newer I don't know like I'm wondering if it was always a part of the plan well he says that's how we did Jeff Ira and I uh so it almost but Benny is losing his mind downstairs and it is not helping my current state I'm I've already knew where the door was I was already aware that I'm home alone right now. Dog freaking out does not help that.

Penny just runs inside and just mauls my leg. Oh my gosh. So, but sounds like Jeff wasn't willing. It sounds like they tied him up and he was screaming and all that against his will. So it sounds like Ira and Bill made a pact that she would be the sole survivor and decide to kill everyone else off or at least Jeff in themselves. I'd ever get intention of watching them take him.

But in the end, I didn't have the nerve. I sprinting away at Iris' side, deciding the horrific din meant only that we done our jobs well. The Whistlers deemed the transaction acceptable. They would leave us alone for a few more nights. Got back to camp, I told Lillian, we saw the Whistlers attack him. She believed us because they were silent for a long time after that, almost two weeks. Ira didn't know the stories well, but he was convinced I did the right thing. The lighthouse keeper was certifiable, but he pointed out rightly,

that the only way to survive the Whistlers is to play by their rules. They take one at a time. He said the night the chopper crashed, we were all around his hearth with him, nodding. We all knew it was true. They take one at a time, and they leave one alive. That one alive was going to be Ruth. We agreed, Ira and I, spread the plan together.

It had been years since we agreed about anything, but our decision about Ruth was mutual and urgent. He didn't hate me for loving her then. He needed my help. Whistlers make the rules, but we decide the order. Interesting. Man, this bill account does make this. It's tying in a lot of the context.

Yeah. We heard them closing in that night and dragged the lighthouse keeper from his bed. He was an old man, no trouble. We didn't wake the others. In the morning, we told them we saw him walking off on his own, babbling about sparing the rest of us. We all remember the pilots screaming about his wife and kids. We were all spooked by then.

all willing to believe anything. Jeff marked an empty grave with the broomstick, and Lillian cried and called the man a hero, camped in the woods the next night. Thought we might hike out of Whistler territory before anybody else had to die. But we gave them Jeff next, then Lillian,

and then we were down to just us three, just us three. And suddenly, all I had in common with my brother was that I wanted to live, wanted Ruth to live, fell out of the damn tree before I even found a branch, banged my leg up good. Patient, patient, patient, that's what I keep hearing, kept hearing.

As I scraped away the soil and deep in the hole as I grabbed roots and hauled away stones. It was already there, collapsed burrow of some kind, so convenient, or receptacle for my darkest instincts. Ira had poor night vision, war contacts. He was easy in the dark to get him where I wanted him to scare him into the trap. My hands were freezing. He was a sacrifice and unaccepted. he was mute when he came back to camp and even when he could accuse me he didn't why why did they march him back to our door he opened his mouth to say something before ruth fired in my dreams i give him words an accusation

condemnation a warning interesting man so the trap that he fell into like i was already there Klappsboro, so convenient a receptacle for my instincts. It wasn't the Whistlers that hauled him into a trap. It was Ira falling into Bill's trap, the one he had set up. Man. And then he comes back, but he doesn't snitch on him. Like, perhaps he understands it's a part of it. And he was going to kill himself with the rifle before he decided to tell them it was a warning.

End up dying anyway. And hi again, this will be my last update for a while. And to clarify for audio listeners, this isn't Bill talking. This is the person posting these stories again. I think I owe you all a recap of what's been happening for me in real time since I began posting these journals. When I first met the man who gave me Bill's entries, let's call him Mr. H. I was struck by his stoic, resigned way of sharing them. Even though he was a bit territorial about the originals, to date I have not seen them.

He was determined about the idea of sharing the story with a broader audience. I felt silly for the way I'd personalized the narrative earlier on. Talking to him, I stopped feeling like I had harmed anyone by posting Ruth's journal. I didn't feel as conflicted about it as I did at the beginning. I had one last meeting with Mr. H before posting the first transcript of Bill's Journal online. Yes, the man lived near me. He was grizzled, older but not elderly. Used a wheelchair but could walk short distances.

I found his company a little frightening at first. He wasn't a creepyposter reader, as you might guess. The backpack I bought from the estate cell actually belonged to him. He was a family friend of the grandmother who died, and she had been keeping a handful of his old things in store. The granddaughter sold his belongings without realizing what she was doing. I returned the backpack and ruse pages to him, though he wouldn't tell me how he came by them or why he'd given them to the grandmother for safekeeping.

This was on Sunday before I posted the first half of the transcripts. It seemed like the right thing to do. Yesterday, I went back to Mr. H's house. I went to ask if I could have some final pictures, both of the journals together and the backpack. I know I told you I wasn't interested in proving anything, but. but it seemed the final record would be more complete if I could offer at least one photo that encapsulated all of the material.

Even comparing the age and the color of the paper would be edifying. When I arrived, there's no answer at the door. He was unlocked, though. We lived in a small town. I knock loudly before letting myself in. I found him in his living room, hanging from a beam. Toppled step-ladder on the floor.

I made tears as I write this. I'd never seen a dead body before. reading about the horrors Ruth and Bill faced I think none of it was real to me until now I don't know what he did with the two journals in the backpack I didn't see them in his house while I waited for the police to arrive do I suspect that Mr. H's bill

a few of you have applied as much I'm afraid I can't answer the question now I never asked him point blank all I can do is leave you with Bill's version of events it began on the 14th of December the morning after Bill attempted suicide in the woods beyond the lodge. December 14th, final set of entries.

I've talked to a few eyewitnesses over the years who swear whistlers look just like people, little paler maybe, dead behind the eyes. I spoke to an old woman, Wilma Darren, a goat herder, who said they can look however they want to look, like a goose or a sheep or a human being. It's when they open their mouths that you hear the truth.

And when they change back to their natural form, which you want to describe what that was. so this is again very wind to go but it's also very rake and that's like a little humanoid figure scampering around you think maybe the dog was a whistler then I think so right right before they leave

it runs out of the woods and cripples him before running back into the woods you know yeah she was convinced because it because as that one guy said the trapper it's not that the whistlers want people it's that they need the people around to catch something else for something bigger she was convinced she'd seen one

walking across her field one night all alone, looking like a young man with torn clothes. She brought him inside, fed him dinner, and he didn't speak a word to her. She turned away from him for a moment when she was clearing plates, and when she looked again, he had gone from the table, sprinted silently through the front door. That night, the whistlers came. They trampled her fences in the dark, and she lost half her herd.

Found a dough torn to pieces by something. The Rangers dismissed her story out of hand. Game warden had some explanation for her about bears. there's no sign of a bear though no prince nothing interesting about the dead dough I wonder now if they weren't half right Bruce has said she thinks

the whistlers could be protecting us that were not sharks but more like sheep sheep of the mercy of wolves and the whistlers are shepherds I don't know now I don't know what to believe the dog's house was the best angle

on the woods I went in through the kitchen door and looked through the back windows I wonder if they're out there now, having a laugh about my abandoned noose. I'm brave inside my own head, brave on paper, but I haven't checked the snares today and likely won't. I'm thinking, actually, that it's about time we made our way to the coast. It's our last option now, and I'm sick over it. Dead if we do, dead if we don't. The leg is killing me.

I'm eating Tylenol and aspirin like candy. We have more medicine than food left, but nothing else. helps much. The worst pain doesn't come from the leg anyway. It comes from the ticking clock, the whistlers at night, Ruth's face, from knowing I'm a coward and a failure, knowing she knows. Tonight she drew me a bath set on the tub's edge to wash my hair, her legs against my back, her feet in the hot water. We didn't talk, but I rested my head against her thigh, and she sort of stroked the back of my ear. It's enough for now. December 15th. Damn dog came for me today while I was siphoning fuel from the van out of nowhere, but luckily Ruth saw and came running.

She tried to scare the little bastard back into the woods, but he wouldn't go, just stood whining at the trees, backing away from the swing of her stick, whimpering but refusing to flee. Jeff had a theory. He called it the symbiosis hypothesis. He didn't study Whistler's much, but he was big on cryptids in general. People always ask, given that ecosystem's only function because every organism plays a cooperative role, how is it possible that a tertiary predator could go unnoticed? Population of any sustainable size has a measurable appetite. His answer was that there must be larger blind spots to account for elusive species.

He thought cryptids must exist in pairs like a clownfish in an anemone. The anemonee shields the clownfish from the outside world, protects it with poison that the clownfish is immune to. The clownfish helps the anemone by maintaining it, giving nitrogen, managing parasites, luring and prey in this way they operate at a remove from the rest of the ecosystem they cooperate and might survive when logic says they shouldn't ruth was man stuff like that uh normally when we read a sequel to his story it's like well you could have done without this it didn't really had a ton but this is a case where it's like it changes so much give so much more insight to

the whistlers themselves but like putting you in bill's mindset that he was thinking of all of this and there was so many different options and he kept seeing the only option is like taking himself out, man. Ruth was shouting at the dog, shouting towards the woods, back up to me, to shield me. We heard something out there as her voice echoed.

Something called back to her. A scream. I heard it before. I thought it was a different part of the Whistler's repertoire, a screech, a new inflection that comes over them when they go from stalking to attacking.

So we heard the night, Chef died. Same gnashing, shrieking. It echoed out of the cave Where we left Lillian Okay So in his series of events

She's shouting As her voice echoed Something called back to her scream And he had heard it the night before A different part of the Whistler's repertoire Okay so same order of events She says that she saw the dog She screamed the loud war happened

Then the whistle started right Yeah The same like outcome basically Lillian Lillian with long red hair And adorian eyes for Jeff She almost got away from us She thought

Oh man, so menacing She fought Ira shot her in the leg Jesus We told Ruth we were firing on the whistlers When she asked about the sound Said we could see him Like hard shadows moving in the depths of the cave

Lillian wore the night vision goggles I imagine she saw them more clearly than anyone ever has before We didn't see anything Only heard him we did hear this sound a shriek like a wildcat like a deranged woman

the whistling came after came second came from a different part of the woods and closed in now the dog was whining and it cowered out of sight and Ruth turned to raise me into my feet man this back and forth is so good

oh gosh we were urgent to move but we weren't pursued I can't explain the shift like a drop in temperature a slackening of the wind the whistlers were not there for us but there for it The whistling overtook the shrieking

And then everything hushed at once It left us alone Ira said it Said it in a clear voice in the days After I thought he'd lost his mind It's a warning The whistlers didn't kill anyone What did he see from down in the hole

Said he saw tool marks He said it to Ruth But looked at me Wanted to make sure I knew it wasn't forgiven I used a folding spade I thought we were a day's walk From Red Hill then maybe two We have to give them

something if you want to get away it's what the lighthouse keeper said it's what the story say play by their rules you live or you have a chance i gave them ira i would do it again i kept thinking i should have told ruth everything here she was standing in the street with a stick of firewood and no idea what's out there i hit my head wasn't much of use but i heard it again the shrieking sound and a rumble beneath it, atmospheric, eerie like thunder, and the whistling. The dog was gone by then, but I can't help thinking he's part of it too. Hair was spiked on his neck, eyes wide. We humans, we've got a way of personalizing things of signing motives, emotions, help or harm, patient, patient, patient. Ruth took me inside and cleaned my wounds, stitched up my leg. I bruised

everywhere from my fall from the tree. She didn't ask about that. Maybe she assumed it was old bruising still or just more evidence that I've been pushing myself where I shouldn't. We shared the last of the gin. It's battery acid, but somehow I couldn't get enough. I could see it getting to her as the evening got dark.

Not the gin, but the fear. Screech we heard, the anxiety in the dog's eyes. The feeling that the longer we're out here, the less we know. A very final sort of despair. Like she might collapse and never get back up again. even after everything we've done I couldn't have that

so I rose and took her in my arms held her and I realized there was no way to tell her it would be all right I kissed her and she let me I heard her sign and felt the weight of her against me letting go there was something tied in her face more like desperate resignation than love maybe that was my own pain getting in the way

my need I brought her to the lounge and pulled her down with me on the bed hurting everywhere, not caring. She undressed us both. I wonder now that she's asleep. She's dreaming of me or him. It's funny. I'm not afraid of death tonight.

There's a bitterness in all these, like from Bill's perspective of all these sexual altercations, right? Where it's like she owes him or like some, she gets to be my sister when she wants to be instead of like, you know, the object of romance. And like she's not so much to say that, he feels like she's using her, but he feels like if he's going to die for her, he's owed something, you know?

Yeah. I think there's a giant jealousy as well with his brother, which is also why I think that he was so willing to sacrifice him. And it seems like he's always been into her because she said that when the baby was born or when the baby died, he was like that should have been mine. And then like earlier, he said when they made the decision that Ruth needs to live, Ira said Ira didn't care

that I loved her this time like he's known for a while but now he needs to use that to keep Ruth alive right and he's almost bitter about the whole thing better he couldn't have her before better he has to die for her now

instead of back then yeah it's a very interesting character dynamic that he's determined to die for her but he's like upset with her upset that she didn't get to be his and like the real world you know yeah in a different life yeah yeah

It's a fascinating character set up. It's very, it's not one-dimensional. It's very layered because he's also killing people, but he sees it as being the right thing because it's for her, you know? December 16th, I'm going to get Ruth to the coast. I decided this morning. Red Hill's a death trap. Slow or fast.

We'll die here if we stay. And we have the Jeep. Maybe we'll go fast enough that the screeching thing won't follow us. Maybe the whistlers will close in on it once we're gone. They'll kill it. That's what Ruth thinks. she thinks it's a monster something old and unspeakable

some of the people of this region have been inflating with the whistler since time immemorial she thinks the whistlers are on our side and they're keeping it at pay time's a factor my leg's in bad shape the bite needs antibiotics

we don't have them she tried to get me to stay in bed but I won't there's too much work to do I got the fuel and gear loaded into the Jeep in the mid afternoon I decided to walk back out towards the snares I heard her yelling for me not to go too far, but she doesn't understand.

I can hear the whistlers all the time now. It isn't just at night, and it isn't just when they're putting on a show. I can hear them talking through the day, hear their conversations out under the trees, get clear and clear every minute. Soon, I think the whistle tones might turn into words, something I can parse. It's a relief to be inside my brother's mind like this. Ira wasn't afraid of them. That night it held.

I have nightmares about that night they marked him out for understanding and how they've marked me and I'm grateful to leave Ruth alone I went back out to the snares because I was ready at last to give them their opportunity I'm limping

easy pickings if I'm wrong I went as far as the hanging tree and got the pistol ready hope feels like madness I want to see them the whistlers the shrieking thing I want to see them for myself before I die. It's not too much to ask, is it? The murmurs become chatter, came whistling.

They were calling me out of the clearing where I'd set my snares away into the trees. I followed them with measured trusting steps. Somehow I knew they wouldn't leave me behind. They were leading, not fleeing. Snow had an icy crust. But soon, I wasn't just following the sound and emptiness. I was following tracks.

dog prints, I looked ahead and I saw the dog, the same one, standing in a treeless space where the woods ended. It was the edge of a cliff, snowing granite and scraggly trees. I could hear moving water, and the dog was staring at me, into my eyes like he was possessed of a human mind. Are you one of them? He said, and the dog turned his back to me. The actor's tail once and ran straight ahead, ran straight off the face of the cliff. And the Whistlers, who were closer than I knew, their voices erupting behind me in the head, ripped down in the gully and right at my back.

And what I don't know, what I can't know, is whether he jumped for me or for them, whether they were making noise over his death or my witnessing it. Whether Ruth and I matter any more or less to the whistlers and the hares and foxes and birds we've hunted along the way. I walked to the cliff's edge as a matter of reflex.

It was a very long way down. A sheer granite face with icy lines of runoff. I didn't see the dog. I saw cars. A dozen? Maybe fewer? Cars and trucks driven clear off this cliff face, crashed and mangled, blackened where they'd burned.

It happened before we reached Red Hill, but not long before. It was a graveyard, fresh one. Here lies the whole population of Red Hill, the sign might say. It's one thing to be. backed against an edge it's another thing to drive clear off it there weren't many bodies in view but the ones i could see were removed from the vehicles rhone dragged it's hard to say that is cool that is the the whole town was compelled by like the same inclination that now ira and uh bill have like they have to they have to take their own life so that someone else can be

saved perhaps or like the woman in the meat locker was it's like maybe there isn't even a greater thing that growls maybe the whistlers just compel you to take your own life to give in to the woods like it did to the dog right yeah and there's just there like everyone got in their cars and drove off this cliff that is so sick yeah i'm really am wondering if it's just manifestations in your mind and it represents something different to each person yeah like like her like ruth hearing katherine right like hearing the baby yeah it's just like it puts things in your mind to drive you mad. Man, the whole town,

everything, every reveal in this story makes it more in-depth, makes it cooler. That's such a neat revelation. Ruth's got a paper published in a good journal a few years ago on the subject of mass hysteria. When a group of people panics all at once, they become like a single organism. They might see things that were never there.

Remember events that never occurred. Everybody defers to the loudest voice and suddenly the whole herd is spiraling to some terrible end at once. There's a Whistler story that takes place after a shipwreck. Gosh, this is so good. Oh, oh.

20 people get stuck together on the same beach. It's a fishing boat, so they're orderly people. They've got a hierarchy. Everyone's got a job. But they realize they're a whistlers near. The captain starts telling them stories from when he was a boy. Stories of how the whistlers will take the group down one at a time. How their minds will be compromised.

They'll turn against each other. So they draw straws and choose an order. With great efficiency every night, they send one man out in the woods with a torch and nothing else. They assume they'll be rescued in a matter of days that each sacrifice is for the greater good. Bind the group just a little more time. Chose a man never comes back. The group never gets attacked by the whistlers. Confirmation bias, Ruth said.

Rescue boat never comes. They continue in this way until the captain is the only man standing. Haven like clockwork. Each man thinking his sacrifice was keeping the other safe. that it was all a matter of practicality and fairness and maybe that their own strengths would keep them alive when it was their turn in the wild. Who knows what they saw in the darkness?

Maybe the whistlers called them onward, showed them paradise. Maybe the people who drove off this cliff saw a road, a neat suspension bridge. Something happens in the mind. Ruth hears her baby at night. Captain did the talk show circuit for a few years and killed himself. Bruce says this is the most damning part.

The captain knew it was just a story. He knew the whistlers weren't real. A little sleight of hand. He picked the order. I picked the order. I think it was a message. The dog, the whistling. There's no shrieking sound.

No sign of danger. Just me and the fallen bodies in the cliff's edge. The whistlers were daring me to take matters into my own hands. Keep my promise. Gosh. Oh, this one for me, like just how cool this. setting is and this revelation from Bill is quickly working its way

up the ranks of stories we've read. I'm like just, just from the folklore elements to the cryptid elements to how well the tension's been built so far and now seen like the other side of the coin. I am about it.

The two stories merged beautifully. It's very compelling. Yeah. It does such a good job at mirroring what was in the first part. December 18th. Ruth's driving us to the coast. Things changed for me this morning when I realized we were really going. Weather was good, foggy, but not snowing. When we get there, it's over. Coast is the last place we can go where we

might get help, where we find someone living who can get us out of here. She looks tired. Her hands are tied on the will when she'll wipe her squeaking as they clear the condensing mist. I've thought so much over the years about what she deserves. Not me. Not this. She knows how I feel. She knows since the night Catherine died. It was just mom and me in the hospital waiting room late, drinking scorched coffee and pretending to read magazines.

Doctor came to say the baby had passed away, and then they wouldn't let me into the room with Ruth. Only the father's allowed. Wait until visiting hours. The nurse said. I raised the woman with her pinback hair and sickly pink scrubs. Mom kept asking what had gotten into me. I told the truth

broke down crying and said I was in love with Ira's wife and realized until that moment that I was jealous of him jealous and angry he was the only person allowed in that room with her and he wasn't there

he vanished to Tuscaloosa or somewhere to listen to drug reps lecture about catheters two chicken shit to be a man when it mattered right up until the end I told that nurse I was the father Ira Douglas Gattager

I said poking my finger into her clipboard. We all knew I was lying, but Ruth said to let me in. So late at night, and I held her in the hospital bed with all the tape and gauze and an IV in her arm. Catherine came by emergency C-section, so it was a double trauma. She was stuck in her recovery bed for Catherine's entire week of life. There was so little I could do.

Maybe I was taking advantage. I don't know. My mom looked in on us that night, saw us. she'll have her own ideas about this once Ruth is rescued she'll be fascinated to know why I let my brother die gosh man just it goes from painting Bill

as like this heroic guy who was like yeah maybe he wanted to feel something but she did too in the last moments and it was her idea as much as it was his for the two of them to embrace and like he's just making the hero play to save her but then like all of this plotting on his end man

yeah selfish dude for sure yeah yeah the drive was short i closed my eyes against the window and opened them we'd arrived gray sand and the pale sun in the sky an icy dock there's a boathouse a shack and enough trash in the bushes to say people have been here but not recently not since the corruption came to red hill the corruption that's what kirker called it as he told me the story it was a separate thing something the whistlers brought with them the corruption in the heart of men. Was he talking about fear? The ordinary fear of the unknown and what it does to a person. Ruth saw me crying and walked out to the dock. She can't look at me. I think she knows how badly I've failed. She knows this could be over for her if I was man enough to be steady with a noose.

No. She doesn't know. Doesn't expect me to be the one who dies. Doesn't know what I've done to keep us safe this long. She's a good woman, virtuous like the long-suffering mother in a fairy tale. If I told her the truth, we'd have an argument about whether it was necessary, whether I'm not just as bad as whatever lurks under the trees. I might be. I have my reasons, but now she's run out of hope. She doesn't think either of us will make it out alive.

She turned her face into the wind, sharp, started walking up the beach. Do you hear that? She said, I listened. It was faint, but there. Whistlers. Whistler's coming for me The man who picks the prey But they didn't want Ira

Didn't take him Or it took his mind But on his body What about Lillian? What about Jeff? What was really happening Beneath all the screaming? Don't go Ruth

I said She was walking up the sand Going to where she could see Across the beach But she wasn't hearing whistlers She was hearing the baby again I don't remember Catherine crying She was too small, too weak

There's a boat Ruth said looking winded Maybe happy It was something to do An option to try I told her I couldn't go back to Red Hill I intended that she should go back Keep warm, wait for rescue

She could make it once I was gone Any of the stories She would make it But we dragged ourselves towards the boat On the unforgiving coastline Sam became craggy, basalt Came forest reading and thorny and near impenetrable

she clamped onward almost like an animal and all fours up boulders always moving forward always towards the boat every step brought us closer to the whistlers I could hear them growing louder hiding in the trees dozens least hollow howling

everything else too clicking of teeth the shifting of weight yes there are bodies beneath the voices strange corporo reality something I may never succeed in defining. She stood at the edge of the shallow, gently laughing water. Suddenly, she was an expert on boats and tides. It was a mistake coming so far.

The boat was a weathered shell of itself, flimsy, and with tattered sails and frayed lines, it wouldn't take her as far as she needed to go. She insisted. She said she didn't hear the whistlers. She heard the baby, and Ira. Ira's singing, a fray so far and I couldn't even imagine it. She heard them behind her, on the boat, calling her to the false safety of the water. All I could hear was ahead of us in the woods.

I heard whistlers in their waiting jaws. I heard the danger that they were protecting her from. It occurred to me that maybe the whistlers were offering another bargain. Put Ruth on the boat. Let her go. They were offering me a chance to die on my feet, pistol in hand. Yes, I was willing. I was willing if it meant somehow that Ruth would be safe.

I told her to get on the boat, moved like it was right behind her, stopped, turned. I walked up the beach towards the whistlers, towards the edge of the trees where they hid, where they called for me. Soon Ruth saw what I'd done. She saw I didn't follow her under the sailboat, that I was away and the tide was rising, that I was facing the whistlers, facing the end. She was screaming over the whistlers so she could hear them now. She was screaming behind me, screaming about something I should see.

Run, Bill. did you see it bill i saw it the dog gray and brown sharp forward ears dabbled dark on the sides i fell to my knees thinking like a fool that i had them figured out i was supposed to follow the dog i thought supposed to give myself up so i did my legs weren't working and i crawled i crawled over sharp stone and weedy gravel stared the dog in the eye it was silent like Oma Durman's young man Whistler I decided

Shade of the woods recalled for the north Whistler in the shape of a dog It was coming toward me tentatively I heard Ruth's voice A complaint high in her throat Harsh

My name screaming my name But the whistlers drowned her out Their voices rose Screeching to a den And they descended on the dog right in front of my eyes. The dog, that was not a dog, not a whistler, something else.

Something that died with a moan like an earthquake. They tore it apart. The effort went on for many long minutes, long enough for me to realize the dying thing looked nothing like a dog, not in the least. It had long, black limbs, sharp, angular, with joints protruding,

short, coarse hair that shone. It bled the same deep red of any mammal, long toes curled with black claws, flickering nerve impulses. Part of my mind says it was a bear. Black fur, enormous stature in that low, growl, dark and strong in a way that grips your heart. Could have been a bear. It could have been any number of completely familiar things. There's another part of me that knows it wasn't a bear.

Knows it isn't something I've ever seen before. Isn't something I can describe. And the whistlers took it down. Okay, fascinating. So he sees the dog, a real dog at some point. And then the thing come, it's, it's, that explains why when she hit it, it runs into the woods and then makes a growl and then the whistlers appear around it. This is some other entity. This is the symbiosis, something else in the woods that hunts people that the whistlers hunt it. So it needs people to be around so that they can find it wherever it goes. And it takes the form of things that have died, like the dog that he saw run off the cliff. Interesting. What a cool idea for a monster. And like,

she, while she was on the boat, she saw it for what it was, a giant thing, taller than a man crawling on all fours, but to him, it gives the perception that it is a dog, right? So this thing gives people illusions, probably, like he said, maybe the people that drove off the cliff thought they were driving on a suspension bridge, who knows? It gives people illusion so it can lure them away, and then it tears their bodies from the car to devour them, and the whistlers hunt that. That's such a cool idea for a monster. And what did he call it the shade of the woods?

that's such a cool name okay i got back on my feet swayed once before falling again the last thing i heard was the snapping of bones and in my fevered mind they were jeff's bones and lillians and iras and ruths there were catherine's tiny bones and the whole misadventure was my fault it is isn't it i pick the order all falls to me i didn't wake up until the following morning by then the woods were silent ruth and the boat were gone man gosh that's so neat okay so he's he's saying that like the boat captain he picked the order because it was always going to be him that survives because from the letter we see at the end of ruth's account seems ruth dies and this guy's probably the sole survivor if he's the old man who had ruth's letter and then like invites the

boy who's posting this online over and then ends up hanging himself right um so if that's all him it was always going to be he was always going to be the sole survivor he just picked the order all this was even if he didn't know it his own design December 19th when did the dog Stop being a dog. I don't know. The wound on my leg refuses to heal. I can feel the pain of it in my entire body. An ache in time with my heartbeat.

Wilma wouldn't tell me what the whistlers really look like. There's a reason for that. Good reason. They were drawing curtains in our minds, letting Ruth hear her daughter again. Join me another pitiful creature alone in the woods. I don't know, but have my suspicions. I think we personalize the story

when we shouldn't. They're not protecting us. That much is obvious now. Should have been obvious a long time ago. Anglers waiting for sharks. Ruth and I were not sharks. Patient, patient, patient. We're bait.

I see that now. We're bait for something bigger. Is that what they were doing with Ira? Keeping him on the hook? Something took his arm, but the whistlers kept him on his feet. Kept him walking, marked him. Now they've marked me. put my sin on the wind

I couldn't walk back to the Jeep tonight I got halfway was hobbling it's like it's close to useless I imagine Ruth's hands on it telling me to stay awake to stare down the pain when I find her

I won't let us be separated again we'll fight our way out of this back to back keep moving down the coast they want one of us they'll have to take us both that was her mindset the right mindset

we're not the prey I see that now. Human beings are collateral damage. No, I'm not certain. There are too many stories, memories told by people with polluted minds, corrupted. I don't see the boat. No lights or fires. I had to move further inland than I'd like to find a trail.

She's safe. She has to be safe. Safe in the boat and the water. Safe because she's a terrific shot and the toughest person I know. But is her mind safe? Is she safe when she closes her eyes? The whistlers were getting to her, planning lies. Couldn't make a fire, but there's no snow out here under the dense trees.

Not yet. December 21st. It's been a few days, I think three nights since I saw Ruth. I reached the boat house, but the jeep's gone. Your tire tracks to follow down the beach through the mud. I slept half the day yesterday. Pain is blind. landing. I was lost in the woods, turned around. It was further than I thought, and the trees all

looked the same once you're off, of course, and every step cost so much. Excuses, excuses, excuses. What will I do if she doesn't make it? What have I done? I froze overnight, buried myself with moss. This morning, I realized I could just stay down. I regretted ever leaving Red Hill, stove, and blankets. We were going to die anyway. Why not? die together. I was so sure she'd have a chance at the coast. When I find her, she'll tell me what an idiot I was. She'll tell me she loves me. She said it that night, after the dog bit me. She was falling asleep, her cheek on my shoulder, my hand and her hair. I love you, Bill, she said, and she closed her eyes. I just smiled. Figured she already knew

how I felt. I wish I'd set it back. I wish in the darkness I had more of that moment to remember. I love you, Ruth Gattiger. It's the greatest pain in my life, but I do. December 24th. I made it to the Jeep. It's parked, skew in a marshy area where the mud would be deadly if it wasn't freezing over. Out of gas. She didn't get far. I wonder if she was running the engine for heat. I'm going to blame her. It's raining a little, freezing mist. I'm inside the Jeep and she isn't here. her backpack is slumped in the back seat her pins and journals stuffed inside a plastic bag right at the top of the pack the revolver's here empty found it a good five yards from the jeep on the ice but no roof we've got three in the pistol so does that mean she killed herself

and now like her body's been drug off yeah yeah so now i think bill's gonna live so i think he is mr h yeah i think so he was the sole survivor yeah Her last journal entry is a suicide note, or that's how it seems. She figured I was dead and tried to drive south and ran out of fuel. If she killed herself, she'd be here beside me. I suppose an animal might have dragged her away if she wasn't in the vehicle. It says here, take my body back to Oregon. She wouldn't have been so careless as to do it out in the open.

Not when she had the option. Not when she knew what was lurking close by. It's too dark to go looking now. I'm exhausted in a way that feels almost soft, welcome. That's a cold getting into me. It's steep now, the chill, setting into my bones. Maybe I'll see Ruth tonight. Maybe I won't wake up.

December 25th. Christmas day. Her body was dragged. It was easy to see in the light of morning. I stuffed her pack into mine and went looking. There are footsteps in the mud, hers, leading towards where I found the revolver. No blood on the ice. a disturbance where she might have fallen and then a smear in the mud where she was taken away

up across the ice and through gravel through sand inland into the woods again i followed the path without weighing the idea first it seemed we're worth more to them alive ira and kept ira going for more than a month he had a rifle the day he saw their true faces the day the corruption got a hold of him if i hadn't finished it sooner ruth would be safe now she'd be one walking south, wouldn't she? Free to go. We're worth too much to them, the Whistler's too useful. That's why they never finish us off. A survivor with a good story keeps the cycle going, keeps the humans coming. Ruth understood that. Mystery is a hunting tactic. Our curiosity is what kills us in the end. That and our companions, December 26th. Twice I thought I'd lost the

trail, but I didn't. The trail changed. Crossed the road from Red Hill and led through a brushy field, through snow. Almost turned to walk to the lodge, pros and cons. Another day or two of this, and I might drop, but turning away can mean losing the trail. Here in the field, the drag marks turned into footsteps. Uneven, like she's dragging her feet, bare feet. Her shoes come off along the way.

I found them, tied them to my pack. If she's walking, maybe she got away. So I'll follow. I won't stop. The tracks are obvious now in the snow. As long as I can keep ahead of the weather, this will all be over soon. South. She's leading me south. So it sounds to me like she did kill herself and then she was dragged by the creatures

and then similar to maybe the dog, the like, or maybe whatever. That I have to Ira. Ira was. Yeah, yeah. Like they become one or they keep them going or makes them to some in between some possessed state. That's probably, we'll have in her. And now she is leading him to safely so he can tell the story.

September 29th. The trail, the tracks, they ended today. I was walking in Ruth's barefoot steps, the dragging strides, and suddenly they weren't just hers. There was a second set of the same steps, and a third, all dragging and running together. I was so fixed on my feet on the tracks, on picking Ruth's tracks apart from the others. I didn't realize I was walking in a circle, a circle high on a ridge exposed, and the tracks leading me around and around a boulder, big and gray, marked with the vein of white quartz. There's no path away from here, just a continuous loop of footprints, so many of the snow is cleared,

leaving mud and dead plant matter, leaving a ring like the one we found encircling the lodge on our first morning in Red Hill. Then my instinct was to flee. To get Ruth the hell out of that ring if I could manage it, or feed myself to the Whistlers, give them what I thought they wanted. Now the circle didn't mean as much to me. I had no energy for fear. Ruth is walking among the Ristlers? For how long? Or however long she can stay on her feet. It's not symbiosis. Whatever it is, it starts in the mind, in the head. Maybe they were all like us once, like Ira and Ruth. Maybe that's why they always let one person go. Tell her Rixon, folklorist. That was his theory. He thought there was no cryptid in the woods, no separate

predator species, that the Whistlers themselves were just people, corrupted, pushed so far by the harshness of the wilderness that they transformed into something else to survive. Pure need and fear, hunting in a pack. Maybe deep down they have human hearts. Maybe part of them wants to see us survive. Climmed up onto the boulder, stayed inside the ring. It was late evening, and I figured they'd come for me. Maybe I'd see Ruth among them.

That and the stars. Set on the boulder and could see across the valley. The snow and the distant gray ridges, the sky turning purple and the opening eyes of the stars. The whispers never spoke up around me. They never came. The longer I looked, the more I saw across that valley. I saw a hard, a natural line, a road. Before long, there was a light on it, a moving light, headlights winding up a neighboring ridge.

and there were other lights, Christmas lights, window lights, the spangled glow of a small town, another red hill, but this one populated, this one alive. Ruth left me her flint steel, paper. I started a fire and they came for me the next morning. They came for me the way they would have come for Ruth if I hadn't failed in a chopper, blankets with oint for my cuts and a splint for my leg. I might lose it someone said they might take it off at the knee what happened

Ranger hollered over the chopper blades the whistlers I said garnering myself a look of mixed pity and disbelief what are the whistlers there's no explaining what's actually out there and I see that this is by design the ineffability is the trap I shook my head the way Wilman Darren shook her head at me

all those years ago and said the only thing that made sense at the time. Patient. Patient. And that's the end. Wow, dude. It's fun.

It's fun having a multi-part series that like cohesively comes together in a great way. I like at the end of part one where you expect Bill to die, that kind of thing, only to have this be like almost a I mean, Dante's Inferno

kind of experience for Bill who was just kind of a selfish, very petty. bitter man full of jealousy and this is kind of his own hell i really don't know i still kind of feel the same way after i read after we read uh ruth's uh journal entry to where i don't know how realistic it is or as much as it's like just a complete descendant to madness yeah yeah you've heard the stories so once you're out there and you get stuck i guess i guess there had to be some initial thing because they were at the lighthouse and something ripped the guy out of the window and that seems to be the catalyst for everything that went wrong.

But how much of it's them actually doing stuff and how much of it's just in your head, you know? I also love like the story it told so much and like, oh, well, Bill met this and Ruth met this and stuff like that. But it was also so restrained. And like it didn't tell us too much about the Whistlers or the other thing they're hunting. They don't even have a name.

It just looks like a dog, to him at least. Like it leaves so much up to the imagination by, but also gives you so many pieces to play with. It's like it sets just like the story does right on that border of folklore where it's like we know enough about it to speculate but we don't know everything about it.

There's so many stories like the boat captain and people get in the trapper and stuff. There's so much extra lore added to it in such a casual way. Such a juggernaut of creativity and mystique that was built around this. It's just a lot of fun and I think

it works the best because it's just an amazing character piece you know like we never we don't ever ever see the whistlers ever you barely even hear what they sound like i mean you hear that you know oh there's the whistlers again but it's just so much about these characters and like the very unconventional storytelling of like how the narrative narrative isn't just straight ahead you kind of get pieces from the past as we push forward through the story and you just get to reveal more more of these people and intentions and plans and and everything else. It's just, uh, extremely strong read, man. This is, this was, this was a sick one. I don't like hardly any jokes just because, yeah, it was just locked in. Honestly, it was great.

It was so good. It was just written so well. It's one of the best things. It's one of the best things we read in a while, I think. Yeah. I think so. Man, gosh, that went hard. And it's, it's a shame that again, the Amity Argo, this is the only thing I can find by them. I would love to find more of their stuff, but I'm not seen it anywhere. There's, hold on. So, was a no sleep podcast episode about it. Interestingly, Amity Argoe has not put out

any other stories in one point was remembered it was a pin name, throwaway account for one of the more popular no sleep authors. So I could, I mean, that would make sense to me. But there was an audio thing they did

and it says by Amity Argo and then it's got like a bunch of voice actor stuff, but now I'm still not seeing any names. It's starring like Jessica. McInvoy and David Cummings, but there's nothing specifically about who wrote it. Man, I wish I could find out more stuff from this author because it was so well done. Please go upvote.

Like, we'll leave the Reddit link and the creepypasta story. Please go upvote it. Give it high ratings. It deserves it. Man, I want to know more from this author. This was so good. It was amazing. Guys, thanks for listening.

This is a nice big old fat episode this week. So I hope you liked it. And we'll catch you in the next one. Bye. we'll catch you in the next one amity if you're out there uh please give me your name i would like to give you money and um my wife she's not going to watch the episode this far but if you if you reach out you can have her that should do it bye I don't know

I don't know I'm a I don't know I don't know. I don't know I don't know. I don't know I don't know

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