Creepy - Day 25 - The Phone in the Woods & Evergreens in an Endless Autumn

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

The Phone in the Woods***https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/***Evergreens in an Endless Autumn***Written by: MakRalston and Narrated by: Jimmy Ferrer***Link: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Evergreens_in_an_Endless_Autumn***Content is available under CC BY-SA Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepypastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. listener discretion is advised. It's midnight, it's October, and that means KREP is on the air and ready to guide you through this most magical time of year.

It's day 25 of the 31 days of horror, a time of cool winds, pumpkins, and falling leaves, the pain in the silence, the horrible, horrible silence. You'd give anything not to feel it. You want it, though, didn't you? Wanted to get away with it. Wanted freedom and peace.

But you don't know what that is. And when you get it, it's not what you wanted at all. You're alone. Alone. Alone. Well, not completely alone. Not tonight, because you're listening to KREP and I'm your host, The Creep. You know, each day we hear from you all and it must feel antiquated to some, making a phone call, that is.

I know it's why half our stories come in via email. Times they are a changing. Technology advances. The world keeps spinning. But we remember, don't we? We remember how things used to be, and it feels It was like, I don't know, like something's disconnected. Speaking of which, this listener wants to tell us about the time he found, the phone in the woods. The older I get, the why I start to see things that people feel like are universal experiences. What's the strangest thing you ever found in the woods? I know that doesn't apply to everyone. But when you grow up near woods, or anything for that matter, you assume everyone does.

Everyone has an ocean to swim in, everyone has a mountain to climb, everyone has snow to ski in, everyone has a forest to play in. It might be personal bias, but I'd take the forest any day if given the chance. Not get me wrong, I like the ocean and skiing and all that, but it's not the same. same. It just doesn't allow for the same imaginary world. Sure, there are adventures to be had in the water and on mountains, but it's always in one direction, up or down. Forests are whatever you want them to be. The ultimate playground for hide and seek. Endless possibilities for building forts, searching caves, climbing trees, reenacting fairy tales and ghost stories.

camping, bonfires, all at once the scariest and most wonderful places, an ocean all its own. Going back to my original question, what's the strangest thing you ever found in the woods? Strangest might not be the best word, but you know what I mean. Sorry, I guess I'm not finding the right leading words. I mean porn. You ever find porn in the woods? Dirty magazines, videos, stuff like that. I never did.

But holy hell does that seem to be a common story. Some friend or their brother or something would find a random stash somewhere, probably in a paper bag hidden in a log or close approximation. I can't tell you how many times I've heard tales about stuff like that, both when I was a kid and even as an adult. never made any sense to me. How did this particular event become so strangely universal? And how often did it actually happen for it to become an urban legend?

Like I said, I never did. Didn't mean to make you think this was going to be some story about a mysterious tape or package or something I found in the woods. It wasn't anything so sinister as that. I'm not cursed or looking to pass on a curse. Just tell a story about what I found and in the process find some understanding. Possibly even someone else who's seen the same thing or knows what or why it was. No, I didn't find porn or treasure or anything like that.

I found a phone. It was deep in the woods, deeper than we usually played. It was a hot day and I think we liked being in the shade. So we lost track of time and how far away we were from the housing development we all grew up in. It was just a simple black rotary phone like anyone would have in their house at the time. Or that you'd seen an antique shop today. Sitting there on a rotted out tree stump. There was no plug or antenna or anything.

It just looked like someone had walked a phone deep out into the woods and left it there for no particular reason. One of us picked up the receiver out of curiosity, but obviously the line was dead. It was strange, but not worth remembering. And I wouldn't have remembered if the man in a tuxedo hadn't walked out there. And when I say he was wearing a tux, I mean the biggest version that you can think of. Walking stick, top hat, tails, whole nine yards. Like he was going to some ceremony at a palace instead of a strong. Roll through the woods in high gloss leather shoes.

We heard him coming before we saw him. At first it seemed like it might have been a bird because of the whistling. But the sounds of walking through the woods caused us a scatter and hide, most likely thinking it was an animal. Most likely a deer. But we probably leapt right to bear. So you can imagine what we must have thought when we saw Dapper Dan walk in through the woods.

Not that it was any less scary, and this was a long time before the bear or man in the woods debate. I'll tell you this much. I don't care for either option. We stayed hiding in our respective spots as he walked past us and directly toward the phone. He stopped once he was within arm's reach and took out a gold pocket watch, checking the time. He stood there, staring at the watch for a while before clicking its shot and picking up the phone. Later, my friend told me his swatch showed 3 p.m. exactly when the man finally picked up the

receiver. The strange man stood there with the receiver to his ear for about a minute, foreseen something I couldn't hear in hanging up the phone and walking past the stump toward the bush. He knelt down at an angle I couldn't quite see. And not long after I heard a sound that didn't make any sense. It sounded like a computer printer. An old one, or would have been new for us. With that thumping sound of the printer ribbon moving back and forth with a squeal at that matrix paper. Not the sheet stuff we have today, but that perforated stuff with the edges that looked whole-punched that you tear away. And when he stood up, I saw that my ears hadn't lied.

He was holding a single piece of printer paper. He looked it up and down, folded it, and put it into his inner jacket pocket. and he checked his watch again before adjusting his hat and turning back to walk out the way he came. As he walked past our positions, he stopped walking and paused and looked back. I know he couldn't see me from where I was crouching down, but I swear he looked directly into my eyes. Then his eyes went to the other two places where my friends had hidden. I can't imagine you could see them either, but somehow he knew.

knew we were there. That's when he took the piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. This time, along with a pair of reading glasses, he perched on the tip of his nose as he scanned whatever was on it. He inspected it for a long time before shrugging, taking off his glasses, folding up to paper, and putting them both away. Before he turned to leave, he chuckled to himself and said in what sounded like an English accent, none of you are named Teddy, are you? When none of us spoke up, he said, Don't worry, lads, your names aren't on it.

He touched the brim of his hat and turned to walk away before looking over his shoulder and adding with a smile. Yet. Good evening. And then he left. When he had disappeared from view, we all came out of our respective hiding spots and just sort of looked at each other,

before rushing over to the bush to see that there was actually a printer sitting out there. But there was no power cord. No lights were on. It just looked like discarded junk. Like the phone. I was the one to check the phone. This time, when I held the receiver up to my ear, I heard the blare of what anyone would have known to be the sound of dial-up internet.

That high-pitched whine of phone lines. But there was something else there. moaning, screaming. I could hear voices in pain through the artificial sounds before I suddenly got nauseous and threw up on the groaned at my feet. Next thing I knew I was back home. I didn't and still don't remember getting there. My friend said that I walked but didn't say anything the entire time and looked like a zombie. All I knew was that my head was killing me and I had a hard time remembering anything.

from the moment we went into the woods. It was only with the help of my friends that I pieced it all back together. That wasn't until the next day. I'll always regret not remembering sooner. Not talking about it with an adult, any adult. My friends have been too far away to really hear what the man had said before he disappeared. But it came back to me like a punch in the face. Teddy

His parents had been frantic since that morning looking for him They said he went to bed like usual And when he wasn't up by 9 a.m., his mom went to check on him only to find him gone There were no clues The windows and doors have been locked No witnesses or fingerprints I told the police about what I saw They are best to make a sketch with their artist and generally accepted that

No one believed us. Sure, they went to that spa in the woods, and sure enough, saw the phone and the printer sitting out there, attached to nothing, completely inoperative. But I don't understand how they couldn't believe us, especially since they'd found a single thing that wasn't supposed to be in Teddy's room. The torn off, discarded, sprocket edge of a piece of dot matrix printer paper. And now a word from our sponsors. Welcome back.

You ever get that feeling of loss before you lose something? I tend to get that this time of year. I know we still have another week before all the fun is over, but I can't help myself. It just feels like it goes by too fast. Like all good things, I suppose. Speaking of good things, let's take a call. Caller, you're on with... the creep.

I was listening to what you just said, and I think I know what you mean. Thank you, caller. I appreciate the support. But I also think you're wrong. Well, then I withdraw my previous statement. I didn't mean it as an insult or anything. It's just that, I mean, not everything comes to an end. Interesting. Tell me more. Do you have an example? Yeah, I do.

It's about Evergreens in an endless autumn. Six months have passed since the cool winds of September raked through the brittle grass of Valley Glen like fingers in an old woolen blanket. Yet the fall has not since ended. That same cold breeze,

as sharp and as bitter as a dagger at midnight, still cuts through the pie. of shriveled brown bodies that lie in the streets. And the deep blue hue of the sky has saturated to a shade beyond what any of us could ever dare to comprehend. It's an eternal blue. The fall started just as most often do, after a hot, wet summer that crescendoed into a clangy, thunderous lightning storm.

Mama and I were out rocking on the porch stem. We had exhausted the day plucking our small orchard nearly bare of fresh apples, when the air began to taste of oncoming rain, and the song of the cicadas swiftly stopped like a spinning record without a needle. We watched and waited until the pitter-patter on the tin roof began, and then the crack of gods whipped licked the sky with a scab of light, and down came down the rest of the water. It was a heavy rain. Heavier than any other that summer. Yet from where we perched, Mom and I were dry as bones. The cattle, however, were not as fortunate.

While the pigs might have had a field day in the fresh mud, all the other critters of the night were hunkered down, as we were, including the chickens and their coop and the dog from the yard. old Betsy had found her way under Mama's chair after I had spoiled her with the rest of my half-chewed honeycrisp and continued in that position until we called it a night. Thus ended the last day of summer, when we awoke in the morning, a fresh September morning. Neither Mama nor myself expected the harsh transition into the fall equinox that awaited us outside. The sky was now a bright cherry blue.

Every drop of rain, six feet under the dew covered browning grass, and the trees radiated the same yellow as the sunlight, spun with hints of red-like Gala apples. We moseyed on down the steps and into the yard, taking Betsy with us, and there wasn't a trace of humidity in the air to be found. It was a crisp air, nearly as crinkled as the leaves beneath our brucey. boots, and as cool and nippy as we had hope for after the dog days had ended. The dog and the other animals felt the same. Old Betsy was frolicing, the cows are grazing on what little green grass remain, and the chickens were out of their coop. The mud had dried,

but that didn't stop the pegs from their play. Scattered across our land all throughout the valley glen, or shed the leaves of maple. and ash. Same as the ones that snapped as we strutted. The children kicked them down empty blocks and rode them to school as passengers in their spokes. Despite the breeze that stung like a bumblebee, there was a certain warmth throughout our little town, and as soon as I had bundled myself in that gifted jacket from Mama

that hung in the closet since Christmas passed, I could feel it too. Thus ended the first day of autumn. The sight that beheld us the following morning was nothing shy of disorienting. In fact, I had mistakenly assumed myself to be drunk on rum when I had first noticed the color coming through the window blinds. A blue, nearly purple, shade that stretched across the room like a rug. I had hopped from my slumber and thinking I had slept with warm. Well past the morning due, but the still-clicking clock swore to me that it was only a quarter past six. Paring through the window only furthered my suspicions.

The sky was a near black, and the rising sun appeared to be setting already. The shrubbery along the window sill was also alarming, nearly kissed brown with splotches of bare branches. The entire landscape looked as if God had laden his brush heavy with the idyllic colors of an Auburn twilight. Only the day had just begun. Thus, in the same way it had started, ended the second day of autumn. On the third day, just as all the days since, the darkness of night was broken by the unrelenting gaze of blue that swept throughout our land. only day by day increasing in its saturation. It's as if a sponge has been left to soak in a bucket of paint.

And day by day, what little hint of orange or yellow remained in the sky slowly rots back into a blackish blue. It's as if a sponge has been left to soak in a bucket of paint. And day by day, what little hint of orange or yellow remained in the sky slowly rots into blackish-blue. It is not only the sky that rots, however, but the trees, the grasses, and the rest of the summer's flora. In their places, laced across the front and backyards alike, wrapped the gangling vines

of gourds and pumpkins that grow far beyond what God himself had intended. One such, a great squash of the Connecticut fields, had by that point, eclips the tire of my 68 Chevy like it were the moon. It has since engulfed it. That afternoon, as the last of the summer's warm breezes clashed against the howling winds of autumn's birthing pains, there was a great storm that rattled the house and shook the trees, dumping a great many leaves into the yard and scattering them about. The continued gusts of cold air stuck to the windows and rolled some of the gourds down the hills like oblong bowling balls.

And the surges of power they caused by snapped power lines throughout the valley glean. And the surges of power they caused by snap power louse throughout the valley glen rendered my CPAP breathing machine useless. I dared not sleep that night. without it. And thus ended, the third day of autumn. The morning that followed, I had awoken with a strain in my eyes, though the blinds were all closed and the doors all shut. The house was bathed in a vivid hue of a vibrant blue and the cold nip of the outside air. I checked the thermostat. It was nearly 40 degrees. In a place like Valley Glen, a temperature that chilly was only seen around Christmas time. Never that early in the year. My wife had felt it too. She had awoken

with a cough, a cold. And I fared my best remedy or symptoms with a piping warm mug of coffee drizzled with honey from the comb. She thanked me and sat before the foggy window, bundled in a blanket until calling me over to make a note of the outstretched vines that have traveled down the lonesome road towards the Valley Glens Square. The gorts were now the size of terracotta clay jars, and the pumpkins were as wide as hay bales, bent over them like crooked, jagged guardian angels, where the borkers. were the barren trees that spread their leaves far and wide,

so far and wide that not even a blade of browning grass saw the sun. And that yellow spectre too. Despite having only just arisen, reared his glistening head for what seemed to be only moments before ducking beneath the horizon again and shading the land in pitch black darkness. Thus ended the fourth short day of autumn. The fifth had began as the fourth had, with the sheer sheen of the cloudless autumn sky, and

the rasping coughing of my wife beside me. She had been gasping for breath all night, and when we both finally tuckered out from the restlessness, it seemed that the rest was only a short reprieve. When we had both awoken to the brightness through the window blinds, I had wrongfully assumed her complexion to be a result of the strange colors that emitted from the outside. I was wrong. Her skin was now the shade of a duckling, as if she were ill from jaundice, and her sunken eyes were the deeper, richer tint of the same color, nearly orange.

Her hair was falling out in clumps, and she had lost a tooth in the night. She gripped me with one hand, coughed into her other, and as it trembled, extended the sprinkled red along her yellowed fingers to my eyes. I'd called Dr. Sampson not five minutes later, after bringing poor mama a glass of cold water, nearly frozen despite being left on the kitchen counter the night before. Dr. Sampson answered abruptly, as if expected, and informed me over symptoms before I even uttered a word. My life, it seems, was not alone to suffer her illness in Valley Glen. However, just as for the others, not much was there to change, but to let whatever it was simply run its course.

For the remainder of the day, Mama sat silently. except for the whimpers of Betsy beneath the rocker, and watched as the foul, deep blue of empty air, void of any foul that must have migrated south prematurely, seeping into every corner of the sky above. And the orange and brown crept across the ground below. The only hint of greenery to be seen were those few select trees, that for whatever God's reasons,

never seemed to shed their leaves, the evergreens. It was that ever so green that was a comfort in some strange way to the both of us. Through the companionship of that tinge was only shortly lived. Before long, the screeching sunset, even earlier on arrival than the day before, burned every color of the earth and deep blue sky above into a molten shade of orange. Like a courier in Ives' print, if the colors began to bleed out onto the floor. Thus ended, the fifth day of autumn. There was a great squealing that had awoken me from my slumber the morning of the sixth day.

And immediately, I had clutched the cold hand of Mama to make sure she was all right. It wasn't her. The screaming instead had come from outside. beyond the window which rich blue light seemed to ooze into our farmhouse. I had taken my coat from the rack and made it a step down the creaking porch stairs, when my slipper slipped in a thick bundling of dried out leaves, a pile of crackling orange and brown whose colors were far deeper than my foot. I lifted my shoe from its depth spine as I surveyed the rest of the yard.

I realized rather quickly that there was no alternate footing. The entirety of our land was coated in fallen leaves, a layer of rustling litter at least a foot deep. Then the squealing came again. This time louder and seemingly closer. I trudged through the browning colors in my pajamas and jacking until I reached the splintering fence, which beyond it held in the likes of those chickens and their coop, and the cattle and the pays. No such creatures stirred anymore. Instead, the wailing of a hog which had awoken me

came from beneath a dense pile of leaves. I brushed them aside to see Claribel, our pot belly, sputter a gurgle of blood and fall limp against the dead grass beneath her. There was a fungus and a great many toadstools protruding from her skin and all around her. Along the patch of earth were bunning mushrooms that stuck out from between mounds of leaves and carcasses of the cattle had grazed the grasses bare. Claire Bell was always Mama's pig, and I had taken the bell around her neck with me as I plodded back up to her home, reverently holding it in my shivering hands and wondering how to break the news to my wife.

that all the livestock, including her prized pig, were now dead. But there were bigger problems inside. Mama was sitting at the table, the steam from a piping cup of Joe rising from her grip. She turned to me with a faded, cracked smile, and I stopped cold in my tracks. My wife was orange, and the thin skin that surrounded her beady. Sunkin eyes was a sickly brown. They were the same saturated tones as the leaves that fluttered across the lawn. Immediately I tried to hoist her to her feet, but her weight nearly snapped between my arms.

She fell back into the seat with another tired cough and shook her head a silent no. I clutched her cold hands in mine, still holding the bell. She took in a breath, which was increasingly harder to do as the fall continued, and gazed up at me tearfully, her lips cracking audibly. I began to weep as she fell into herself, thus ended the sixth day of autumn. I failed to rest all night. Merely sat up in bed and watched as the blackness brightened into blue outside, but was awoken from whatever stupor may have. have clutched me by the hideous odor that penetrated my nostrils. The air was thin enough already, but when the stretch had seized me, I gasped and burst into a fit of coughing and nearly

vomited out on the floor. I grabbed the nearby CPAP machine resting against the bed and pressed it to my lips as if it were a gas mask from the Great War had huffed and puffed. I could for once and many days breathe again. Downstairs, my wife, or rather, the husk that had been my now dearly departed had left behind, was rotten, withered in that chair in the kitchen. Old Betsy had smelled her too. Only the soft white fur from her coat was now the shade of cinnamon, as she whined at mama's shriveled feet.

The mug of coffee was. was still placed beside her on the table, frozen over as the temperature only grew chiller. And I reached out and touched her brown skin. Her finger snapped upon the lightest brush of my hand and crumbled to the floor. I gagged in my mask. I ran to the other side of the room, where the only comfort to be found was the basket of apples that never made their way into one of Mama's pies. They were all putrid brown and writhing with worms.

That afternoon I had called Dr. Sampson again, after covering all the doors and windows. Whatever that blue light leaked through, it now hurt to stare at it for long periods. And the mere color dug into my jaw and rang out the drums of my ears. When the doctor finally did answer, he sounded both excitable and terrified all in the same breath. He begged me not to go outside, not to dare smell it. And I questioned him why, but he never gave a cohesive answer. He rambled on about leaves and lungs and the mutual exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide and how earth itself was shedding.

Then I asked him, why then? of us were still breathing what little air we had. But he didn't know. I did. We were the evergreens. Unfortunately for old Betsy, though, she was not. Before the day was through, that cinnamon-colored fur had completely fallen off like needles from a larch, leaving behind only the wrinkly skin of a now-balden birch, until at last.

That had fallen off too. Thus ended the first week of autumn. Before long, despite how grueling it might have seemed, that week became weeks. Halloween came and went. A most frightening of them all by mere virtue of the season. Then those weeks became months. Six terrible months.

So much as I can tell. Those of us who dared to step outside, perhaps with no alternative, our eyes covered, and bodies wrapped in what warmth we had, took to throwing as many bodies as we could manage into the warming bonfires that crackle now. Day and night along the hills to rid Valley glen of the smell that keeps many of us awake. The ones that remain, left on curbs of which children no longer walk nor ride their bicycle. merely seep back into the earth, keep the corn stalks and gourd and pumpkins ever growing.

They're sense so potent that a whiff of the wind tastes of one of Mama's pies goads me to gag and cry every time, every autumnal meal. Same squash day in and day out elicits the same reaction. Everything outside of our windows remain. frozen in place, just as the fall has been. And we often collectively contemplate whether or not the strange season of the valley lingers beyond its borders, especially where it's not yet autumn. The clocks, however, have lost all purpose of their ticking, and therefore we cannot tell

with any certainty whether or not we have even reached the winter months as we suspect. All we know is that the day grows ever shorter, some seemingly less than mere hours, well, what used to be ours. Father Briggs now raves on at the pulpit, foaming at the lips. About the end of days we have found ourselves in, he swears that death's harvest will be plentiful, and that perchance the colors of hell have fallen onto earth as shades of shades of fire and brimstone. It seems that even Dr.

Samson believes his rantings. We pray daily that the warmth of the radiant spring will thaw the once lively town of Valley Glen and end this endless fall. I only fear if an impending spring buds what fauna and flora lie in the wake of the autumn and winter's chill back to life. Perhaps this eternal autumn is something. Sparing us from whatever, whomever, else may spring along with it. You know, I think that caller may have been more right than he realizes.

About things not always coming to an end, I mean. Some things don't end, at least like how we expect them to. Some people are just caught in an endless loop, doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past over and over and over again. Fortunately, none of us have to worry about that now, do we? That's all from us tonight. This is a creep and you're listening to KREP today, tomorrow, and forever. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration,

please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at creepypod, on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through creative commons share-a-like licensing, or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the creepy podcast production team and the stories author.