Creepy - In a Paper Birch Forest

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Written by: Anne Woods and Narrated by: Michelle Kane***Bonus Episodes: "Galapagos" written by: B.A. Ries***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy Presents In a Paper Birch Forest Written by Anne Woods And narrated by Michelle Kane I grew up in Washington State, nestled right at the base of Mount Rainier And I left the moment I turned 18.

I hate when people ask me where I'm from. Not because of the inevitable comments about rain or jokes about twilight, but because the next thing they always ask is, So why did you leave? As if no one could imagine leaving the green forests and coffee-soaked streets behind for the dry air of Phoenix. I used to lie about the answer. I'd medder something about college or wanting a change of scenery.

Or maybe I'd make some lame joke about needing to dry off for a little while, see the sun more than once or twice a year. But lately, I've started to tell the truth, or some version of it anyway. I've heard that the best lies are the ones grounded in reality, and I've found it's easier this way, if I only lie a little. I don't have to think so hard about what I've told to whom. I left because of a church, I tell them, which is as close to the truth as I'm willing to get. When I was growing up, I was a kid obsessed with the woods.

A lot of the kids in my neighborhood were. The thousand or so acres behind our little cul-de-sac was owned by a power company, and it was allowed to grow wild and free in a way that a lot of land up there is not. There were no perfectly manicured trails running through it, no parking lots with bulletin boards, with posted warnings about swimmer's ear or invasive wildlife, like you find at most park entrances. No, this land was feral, logged in a few places years ago, but mostly left whole and abandoned to the tall firs and blackberry bushes that grew between them. People didn't go down there.

It was hard to get to and hard to get back from, and most of the town was content hanging out on their groomed lawns or exploring the well-traveled paths of one of the many local state parks. Having this space right out of our back door gave us a sense of freedom that I think a lot of other kids lacked. Even in those days. Just behind my backyard was a steep bank, a sharp drop-off that descended, 50 feet or so to the valley below. If you were brave enough to scoot down it, grabbing gnarled roots and edges of boulders to slow you along the way,

you'd be rewarded with all the best sights and sounds of Washington Forest could offer a kid. That first summer when I turned 12, and my parents finally deemed me old enough to stay out of the kind of trouble that would kill you, the neighborhood kids and I spent just about every day down there. We called it the Barons, just like the kids in It. Jimmy had found a copy of the novel and read it aloud to us the previous summer. He kept a flashlight under his chin while he read

and went through a chapter a night, huddled in the tent we kept up in his backyard until Labor Day weekend. When his mom made us take it down because she said we were killing the grass, we saw all sorts of things on our adventures down there. Big, grassy swathes where a local herd of elk bedded down at night. A fish skeleton on the rocks of the river that we decided was definitely certainly caught and eaten by a bear, even though we had never seen sign of one in the barons before. One time, Jimmy and I took my black lap bark down there with us. After we headed back home, we found big cat prints following our trail the whole way to the river, probably one of the cougars that occasionally made its way into the neighborhood and ate someone's little dog.

Jimmy had started carrying a slingshot after that, practicing on old soda cans and bottles he stole from the trash, a row of them all lined up on his back fence. We didn't take Bart again. He was pretty mad about it, to say the least. He'd sit in the backyard and howl through the old chain-leak fence like his world was ending every time we left. But somehow,

I knew that the barons didn't want him down there. We never found tracks like that again. I didn't tell my mom about the palprins either, of course. I thought I was old enough to make choices for myself. I also still felt invincible, young enough to be safe from the kind of danger that put you on the five o'clock news and made people lock their doors at night. I could take care of myself, I thought.

though I still slept with an old stuffed giraffe at night and couldn't go down the long dark hallway to the kitchen without turning the light on. Yes, there were dangerous things down in the barons. But it wasn't until a hot and lazy August day that we found the thing that stole our childhood away forever. Until the church appeared and drove me out of the forests I loved and onto the hot plains of Phoenix.

The urban sprawl around me feeling safe with its predictable copy-and-paced neighborhoods and tidy golf courses. Jimmy saw it first. He was always in front, usually followed by Kathy and then Tom, and me in the back. I hated being back there, with nothing but the forest pressing close behind me. But I was trying to prove to everyone that summer how cool I was, and the easiest way to do it, seemed to be through faking bravado. I was jealous that Kathy was planted firmly in the middle and appeared to have no qualms about it. She had just moved to town that year and was still considered the new kid by the rest of us. I am a little shame to admit that I had been hesitant about including another girl in the group at first. I was at the age where I wanted the boys to myself,

but I didn't understand why yet. And I always... I also thought Kathy might be lame and stop us from playing pirates in the river or explorers out by the fallen log. My fears were unfounded, though. Kathy, as it turned out, had the best pirate voice of anyone. And the four of us had spent an idyllic summer roaming every square inch of the woods that we could get to. That day, we were headed down to the river single file, talking about who was the best at skipping rocks across it. There was a part where the water ran slow and flat that was absolutely perfect, although you didn't want to swim in there. Just underneath the surface was an overhanging rock, and if you dropped a stick or a leaf or something in the water just upriver, it would disappear and tumble around for several minutes, reappearing downstream all tattered and broken.

I was the best at rock skipping, for the record. took the same path each time, down the bank and through the brambles, then skirting the marshy area that would pull your shoes right off your feet. Along our path was an old stand of birches. If you wanted to get to the river, it was quickest to cut through, but all of us avoided it by unspoken agreement. We took the long way around each time, sometimes needing to force our way through the underbrush, if everything was growing like crazy, like it did sometimes in July. We hated that stand of trees and had only ventured in there once in the early days of our explorations. I had nightmares about it for two weeks after.

I'd wake up gasping at 2 a.m. like I'd been held underwater. I could never remember the dreams exactly, but I knew there were shadows creeping between the trees and something breathing hot and wet on my shoulder. We weren't sure if it was the trees themselves or just the whole area in general that gave us the creeps. While most of the barons were thick and lush, the birches always looked like autumn was just about to begin inside of them. There were big empty spaces between each tree,

which themselves were thin and ghostly. To me, they look like skeleton, bones poking right up out of the dirt. The trees weren't the only difference. Instead of an ocean of sword and brack and fern underneath them, like everywhere else down there, there was only a soft bed of orange fur needles that muted every noise. Even the scent of it was all wrong. Instead of the light perfume of furs and that distant, clean scent of the river, the birchus smelled heavy, like rot. If you went inside, the forest there left you sad. It was a feeling that sat heavy on your shoulders and was tough to shake off afterwards,

no matter what neat treasure you had discovered that day. We never played in there and would have avoided it on this day, too, but Jimmy pointed and yelled that he saw something peeking out from between the trees, a structure that we had never seen before. All our prior feelings about the birches were disregarded in an instant. The four of us set off to investigate. This was the type of mystery we longed for, and here it was in our forest, just waiting for us. We walked up the little slope and stepped between the trees.

It was as if a curtain fell about us. The birds calling and the sound of wind rustling through the branches, stock. But I only had a moment to notice it before I saw what Jimmy was so excited about. Inexplicably, there was an old white church planted dead in the middle of the birches. One I was certain had not been there a few days ago. The whole structure was undergoing the sort of decay you find after spending years in the Washington rains. Moisture was peeling the paint off the boards in thick strips, and the floor itself was spongy, sinking a little under my sneakers with an alarming, rubbery feeling as I stepped inside. The church itself was little more than a single

room, with a few broken-down pews and a pulpit up front. But the four of us split up and investigated every corner of it anyway. Jimmy found an old plaid jacket, looking more like something a Hunter would wear and not something anyone would bring to a Sunday service. Kathy found a gold lipstick tube, the bright red lipstick inside broken off halfway down. She put it on and we all laughed at the way it smeared around her mouth. Tom found a brand new shoe, a loafer that looked like the ones I saw in the front window of Sears on Maine when I was shopping with my mom the week before. I found blood splashed all over the floor. behind the pulpit.

There were also deep cut marks in the wood there, divots in the ground made by something heavy and something sharp. Drops of blood ran up the wall, ending in a series of splatters, a few feet above the floor. A bit of torn white cloth was lying crumpled in the corner. I picked it up and dropped it again when I saw the crusty red splash right on the the edge of the fabric. It looked fresh, like it had dried only minutes ago. Kathy had said it was probably paint, but she whispered it, and I knew she was lying, so she didn't start to cry. Kathy cried really easily. She told me at our last sleepover that it was the thing she hated most

about herself. I said that I hated my knees, which felt empty and childish in comparison, and I had regretted it since. She whispered again about the paint, but took a step back and bumped against the wall behind her, startling at it and looking at me with wide eyes and her mouth hanging open a little. Next to her, Tom shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He had a rock in his hand, something shiny he had found down at the river at the start of the summer, and he was turning it over and over again in his palm, running his fingers over it. I could see it was slick with his sweat. Jimmy stared at the blood for a long time,

kneeling down next to it like he was some kind of detective on an important case. For a moment, I thought he was going to wipe his fingers through it, and I thought, please, no. But instead he stood and brushed his hands on his pants and told us in a shaky voice that he thought it was time to go. There was no argument from us. The three of us fell single file behind him, ready to continue on to the river

and talk about the church and hushed voices that evening when we were back in the safety of Jimmy's tent. Except we couldn't find our way out of the birches now. I would have sworn that stand of trees was no more than half a football field or so across. Raised up on a little hill so you could see pretty well around it wherever you looked. In the spring, when the river ran high, the water would overflow the banks and run down toward the ditch on one side of the birches, creating a little island out of them. But now there was no ditch and no river. The birches stretched as far as we could see, no matter what direction we churned.

We went this way and then that. We tried backtracking to the church and heading toward where the bank of the valley should be, with our houses waiting to be. with our houses waiting safely at the top. But wherever we went, it was the same type of forest just paper-white birches jabbed into the earth. Eventually, the sun started to get low in the sky, casting that gray-blue look to everything

that happens just before twilight sets in. It had even started to look a little hazy around us. Mists weren't uncommon down there, but they were usually reserved for the chilly days of fall, when the fog would sink low into the valley and cling to the branches of the maples in place of their missing leaves. We began to panic and snap at one another,

arguing about where home was and who had gotten us into this mess, and who would be in the most trouble when we finally made it back. Mostly unimportant things that weren't helping this situation. Kathy couldn't hold it back anymore, more and started to cry. Great sobs that caused her whole body to shudder. She gasped for breath between each one, sucking air in with a little whistling noise. And I panicked remembering her

asthma. I had just started to ask her about her inhaler when we heard it. In the distance, hidden by the thickening fog, something cried with her, a mocking noise that ended in a woman's laugh. drawn out and hysterical. It took only this little moment to send the four of us into a true panic, the first we had felt that day. Not the unease of the church or the worry of getting lost, but the kind of blind moment where your vision narrows and your ears roar and your body takes over so it can focus only on survival and nothing else.

Jimmy bolted. I grabbed Kathy's hand and ran and tried to follow Jimmy as he tore through the forest in front of us. But he disappeared between the trees, and I could only catch occasional glimpses of his blue t-shirt appearing through the fog. I'm not sure where Tom got off to it first, but Kathy and I must have turned in a circle because we eventually ran into a clearing and there he was, looking pale and distraught. I asked him if he'd seen Jimmy, and he could only show him. his head over and over again. And now he was crying too. I heard a noise in the distance, only this time it was a little boy's voice, shrieking and crying himself. Tom dropped his rock and curled up in a little ball on the ground. The noise rose in pitch and volume until I dropped

Kathy's hand and put my own fists over my ears, but it died off suddenly. Without the laughter this time, I noticed. We're not old enough for this, I thought, as I watched Tom wipe his nose with his flannel shirt. I wanted my mom and my bed and the feeling of four solid walls around me. Or even Jimmy. Someone to fill the leadership role we were missing. Someone to make decisions right now that wasn't me because I couldn't handle it. I was so mad.

him for running off like that. And the thought became a ball of fury that lit off in my chest and sunk down to my stomach. The three of us huddled together in that clearing until it got well and truly dark down there. We normally returned by dinner time from the barons and didn't bring unnecessary things like flashlights with us. I felt suffocated by the night that had settled between the trees. It was like a heavy cloak across my face, and occasionally I'd reach out and touch my nose and cheeks to reassure myself nothing was there, taking big gulps of air when I did. We shared a small bottle of water that Kathy had brought in her fanny pack. When I took a drink, I could taste her lipstick around the rim. The water was stale, and my mouth still felt dry and sour afterwards.

The night noises of the forest, the crickets and the frogs and the owls and the crunch of leaves and twigs under the hoods of deer, none of it came. Instead, everything was silent and muffled. Even the little sounds that should have happened when we shifted our weight or when Tom stifled a cough. Even Kathy's wheezing, her chest pumping up and down in the air going out of her with little whistle, sounded so quiet. I could barely hear it. The sounds were trapped all around us with nowhere to echo to. Occasionally a woman in the distance called out with the questioning, Hello? Or a man laughed and cried and screamed. The three sounds blending together until it was impossible to tell where one ended and another began. They seemed to circle us, moving a

little closer each time. We didn't know what was making those noises, but we knew enough to stay quiet and not answer it back. Maybe my mom hadn't been wrong about us. We were smart enough to know one type of trouble from the next, and smart enough to believe what was happening around us. Eventually, we saw flashlight beams from up above. Kathy in a panicked voice said it was aliens and I started to giggle, then cackled uncontrollably as the other two remained silent and stared at me. I tried to stop it, but I felt out of control, more wild than the forest around me. Kathy put out her hand and grabbed me around the wrist, her short nails digging into my skin. And then I only felt ashamed and alone, like I had let her and tom down and they would never

forgive me, although I couldn't tell you about what. It wasn't my choice to come here and look at the church, I thought. It wasn't me. The flashlights scanned the forest floor and we heard something moving in the darkness toward us. The quiet rattle of branches and snapping of undergrowth that something big and unafraid makes when it moves through the night. But it went away again when we heard people calling out and saw the lights begin to descend slowly. It was our parents, standing at the top of the bank and searching for us down below. We had paused into clearing only 10 or 15 feet away from where we normally climbed the hillside back up. And they were working their way down to us. Kathy cried again, but this time there was no answer from the forest around us. This time I cried too. After we found our way

back and told them Jimmy was lost, the neighborhood exploded with activity. Men with barking dogs, towered searchlights, volunteers looking cold and unsure as they were handed maps and walkie-talkies. All of them gathered in our street to look for Jimmy. We told them of the birches and the church that we had heard something in the woods laughing and calling. Tom's dad said there was nothing like that down there. No one had ever built anything on the valley floor. My dad didn't look too sure, but agreed with the other adults anyway. And I felt a little of that anger in my belly flare up again. It felt kind of good. The rest of me was numb and shaking, but getting angry warmed me up quick. After they searched for a few hours, they came to us again, asked us to repeat the story,

please tell it one more time and can you answer just one less question about we answered everything we could told them that we stayed away from the birches most of the time and had never seen the church before that day told them that something was wrong down there in the barons we knew they wouldn't find him they were looking for something too real, a stranger or some kidnapper who might have grabbed Jimmy from the woods. Or they thought maybe there was an abandoned mine shaft he had tumbled down unaware. If they had listened to us, they would have realized that whatever had got him couldn't be placed in handcuffs or sniffed out by a dog's nose. What took Jimmy was the woods itself. A little piece of it that the forest breathed in and out of existence whenever it needed.

They asked us the questions again and again, and we gave them the right answers as only children could do. But they didn't listen anyway. They didn't believe what we told them. Eventually, they called off the search, although Jimmy's parents never stopped posting his picture at the community Center and on the telephone poles around town. The three of us were no longer allowed in the woods alone. We didn't argue one bit when that moratorium was placed. We did sneak back one final time, though. On a Friday afternoon just before school started for the year, the three of us were silent as we climbed down the bank together. Our parents thought we were riding bikes down to the old fish hatchery, but really we had filled Kathy's Fanny Pack with food, water, and flashlights, and tied a rope between each of us around our waists,

thinking it would be harder to grab three of us than one of us alone. We descended the bank and found the birches just as they were before, a small stand of trees that were quiet and still, and too empty between. There was no church inside them, but we searched the ground anyway, Tom and Kathy found nothing. I found a slingshot, all covered in blood. I hope he went out fighting. No, I don't go back to Washington anymore, despite my mom and dad begging me to come home for holidays or even a weekend visit.

It's too close to the barons, and I know the forest doesn't want us down there. Maybe it got tired of us playing. laying too loud and invading all its secret places, or maybe the stand of birches, the feral part of it, was hungry and angry at anyone who ventured in. I don't know, and I don't believe it's my responsibility to find out. Whatever the reason, I knew it wouldn't be safe to go back. Even after us kids stopped going into the woods,

I could sometimes hear the sound of a young boy, laughing and screaming and crying out my name. It would wake me up just before dawn. On those nights, I dreamt of the shadows between the birches and something just behind my shoulder. I knew if I went down that bank, I'd find him standing just at the bottom, waiting for me. From their red eyes and tired faces,

I knew that some nights Kathy and Tom heard him too. They were gone now as well, spread across the country as far from the woods as they can get. Yes, a church drove me out of Washington and keeps me out still. I don't go into the woods anymore. Too afraid of what will be waiting for me there if I do. For your bonus episode, Creepy Presents, Galapagos. written by B.A. Rise. In the depths of sleep, I drift again to Angel's coffin. Just before the wooden lid closes, I glimpse the gather crowd dressed in black. I descend. I hear the soft duds of rain.

At first, I find comfort in the white crate fabric that lines the walls of my new home. Then, the claustrophobia kicks in. I want out. Heaven, hell, I don't care. care. Just anywhere but here. I wake up, whimpering and cold. My sheets lay on the floor from flinging my arms and legs against the imagined walls. I shower, dress formally, and pass the empty room where my sister once lived as I head downstairs to the kitchen. My mother smiles as she pours coffee. I know what she's thinking. At least something good came out of her daughter's death. Her may be under-employed and destined to spend his 20s in his childhood home, but in his grief he found God.

At church, I half listen to the scripture Pastor Jones reads. When I join the others in singing the hymnals, my voice carries an empty timber. I couldn't care less about the nuances of my faith. I'm under no illusions that, in a different environment, I'd be a Muslim or a Buddhist or whatever of the predominant culture steered me toward, just anything that promises that there's more to existence than the tangible reality around me. When I first saw the sign, the next two miles adopted by Lincoln County Freethinkers, that horrible feeling crept down my spine of a question I hated to ponder.

How many years do I have left before my only fate is to rot under the weight of six feet to the same worm-filled soil under which Angela decays. That's all that the denial of the supernatural, or anything beyond our immediate physical existence, boils down to. Miles have pristinely maintained highway heading nowhere. My exchange slide glances with my ex-girlfriend, Bethany, and her cousin Seth as Pastor Jones chastises those responsible. Surely, Pastor Jones proclaims,

Those responsible were not from our community. No, our community, he insists, is one of love, acceptance, and compassion. Beth, Seth, and I felt little of those emotions as we ram the sign, stood over where it fell, and sprayed neon green over the sponsor's name. The way I saw it, they were snuffing out Angel's soul. I had to act. Yet the congregation nods along to the messages of coexistence and tolerance. I shake my head.

Did they really believe what they claim to believe? That evening I bring to Bethany and Sessa attention a column on the second page of the Sunday paper. Those secularists are coming to our hometown. We arrive at the Coney Natural History Museum a few minutes after midnight. Bethany uses the key her sister kept from when she used to run the gift shop. It still works. We sneak inside a side door that I leave propped open as we make our way to the new exhibit. Darwin and the Origin of Species reads the banner over the entrance.

Fine print underneath confirms the name of a familiar sponsor. We shine our flashlights over what we find inside, a miniature of the HMS beagle, a selection of artificial trees and cacti, and mock tortoises, finches, iguanas, and armadillos scattered throughout the artificial formations of rocks and beaches. In the center of it all is a mannequin of the man himself. He wears a hefty overcoat and contemplatively holds a hand under his chin.

Seth removes a small metal hammer from his jacket, while Bethany sprays pink across an informational display about natural selection. Before I join them, a component to the exhibit catches my eye. I approach where a small prop penguin presides over a stone nest of three eggs. Nails through its extended left and right flaps keep it fixed against the wall. A sign informs me that Darwin encountered male penguins fiercely protective of their rookery. Penguins are not afraid of humans. It continues.

Darwin once blocked one from entering the ocean to see its response. It charged at him, pushing him aside before continuing on its way. I reach into the nest and remove the eggs. The speckled bits of blue made them surprisingly detailed recreations, and their weight suggests they are not hollow. I throw one at the mannequin. The egg shatters on impact. sending its viscous contents running across Darwin's thick sideburns.

What was that? asked Seth, taking a break from destroying the mini-sloop. These eggs, they're real, Seth asks where I found them, when I motioned to the penguin. I find that it looks different from how I remembered. Its head is bent backwards, and its beak, which had been closed before, is open. It also appears substantially larger than I remembered it to be. Bethany asks for one.

I toss her an egg, which he hurls at Darwin's chest. Seth sends a third flying into his forehead. As the contents oozed down his face, a pained cry from Bethany distracts me. She holds her gloved hand over her right chin. She claimed something bitter. I shine my flashlight over the wound. Something had, in fact, cut through her pants and into her flesh, leaving a small trail of blood dripping down her leg.

Seth reassures her that nothing could have bitten her. After all, it's not like there's a guard dog on duty. She must have scraped her leg against broken glass. We don't want to leave any blood for the police to find, I say. Let's get out of here. As I leave, I kick the mannequins, sending you crashing to the floor. I look behind it and noticed that the penguin is missing.

We approach the open door we use to enter. Wait! I whisper, spotting a large silhouette looming over the path outside. Someone's out there! Bethany guides us as we tiptoe toward a different exit. We find ourselves in an empty. parking lot. And before long we've climbed into the van we left a few blocks away. As we drive away, Seth asks who I'd spotted.

I didn't get a good look, I reply. Someone, maybe a night guard, probably saw how I left the door propped open. But as I say that, I recall the shadow's daunting shape, like a cloaked figure of death awaiting this outside that door. It's not until two days later that an article in the newspaper my mother keeps us subscribed to finally covers our stunt. Are you seeing this? I text Seth and Bethany alongside a picture of its third paragraph. In addition to destroying much of the exhibit, the vandals appear to have made off with a prop Galapagos

penguin. I hadn't taken a prop penguin, and I would have seen if Seth or Bethany had done so. the break-in is the talk of the town. The police offer a reward for the hoodlums responsible for desecrating the public museum. Only one letter to the editor expresses sympathy. At the next church service, I brace myself for a new round of sanctimonious gestures.

The sermon is worse than I expected. Pastor Jones not only speaks at length about the tragedy of, quote, a few bad apples, tarnishing the names of true believers through their reckless defacement, but also announces a fundraiser to repair the damage. I storm out and disgust, slamming the doors behind me. In the lobby, I find Bethany. She's pale and holds her hands over her face.

At first I think she's as upset as I am over Pastor Jones's sermon, but she tells me that's not the issue. She motions at the stairs to the basement. She tells me that it's down there. What's down there? She wants to leave. I follow her to the steps outside. The penguin from the other night.

What? Have you lost your mind? She maintains that she's telling the truth that has been following her, that she's been seeing it and hearing it. everywhere. It's a prop, Bethany. You really think an artificial recreation of an animal Darwin met 200 years ago is somehow, what, alive? And out for, what, revenge? She tells me that Seth hadn't believed her, but that she hopes I will. As we speak, she keeps her eyes trained on the church entrance.

You need help, Bethany. And even if some magical penguin was somehow stalking us, what would we have to fear? It would be practically harmless. She motions to her right shin. It's hurt her already, she says. She insists that it's huge, aggressive, and dangerous. I remember the shadow that lurked outside the door. at the museum.

Whatever a cast that had to have been a significant size, but I find what Bethany is seeing impossible to believe. It was just some broken glass that cut you, I insist. She ignores me. Her eyes wide and as the doors behind me swing open. Her nerves appear to settle when only the departing congregation passes through them. But a wariness still underlines her voice as she informs me that she doesn't play. plan on coming back to this church.

I tell her I won't be either. My dreams at night return me to the funeral. For a change, I'm not in the coffin. Instead, I'm watching as the last bits of dirt fill my sister's grave. The ground rumbles. The earth before me fragments as a dark figure bursts through it. The penguin shakes off a layer of dirt and clans. It's once white stomach is browned and decayed.

Worms spill out of it with each step it takes. My mother and other relatives flee as the giant bird waddles forward. I make the sign of the cross and kneel. Angela? I whisper, Don't you recognize me? It eyes me blankly, tilts its head back and charges and it. angrily. I wake up on my stomach with my pillows soaked by tears. My phone rings. It's Bethany.

Yeah? She informs me in a desperate, panicked voice, that Seth is dead. What? What the hell happened? According to Bethany, Seth had been out camping. This morning, a hiker had found his tent ripped open. with a maimed body inside. The police had brought Bethany in to confirm the body's identity. What she'd found had shocked her. He'd been mangled, ripped apart to the point that what remained was barely recognizable.

The pressure builds inside me until my whole body is trembling. Were there any signs of what did it? Tracks from a black bear or a mountain lion or something like that? It's an empty, perfunctory question. I know what had happened even before Bethany describes the oversized web tracks left in the mud outside Seth's tent. Bethany declares that she's going to confess.

Not just a breaking into the Darwin exhibit, but all the other destructive acts we committed. Bethany, you need to think about the implications of what you're saying. She interrupts to tell me that she's written it all down and assigned confession that she's about to take with her to the police. This infuriates me to no end. Bethany, if you do that, that's just a year behind bars for you. Maybe less. But you have any idea what that'll do to me? I'm not going back.

No way. Maddeningly, she responds not by backing down, but by instructing me to confess too. Bethany, you sit tight now, you hear me? Sit tight now. I'm coming over. We'll figure this out. I hang up before she can respond, and I ignore her when she calls me back. I need to get to her before she does anything stupid.

The road to Bethany's house takes me on the highway and by the billboard. The unkempt grass has covered the marks in my tires once left beneath it. It's obnoxious aquarium had has long gone, replaced with a simple. It's your choice. heaven or hell who calls the number underneath and in which place does the phone ring my heart drops at the gashes that extend through the open front door at bethany's house i think about calling the authorities but i don't want them showing up and finding whatever bethany's guilty conscious compelled her to write i climb out of my car and approach cautiously i slipped through the door and tiptoe down a hallway littered with shattered glass from broken picture frames and books strewn around dented, collapsed furniture. A shadow extends onto the wall before me.

I discern its sharp beak and two dots of light that mark where nails once punctured its flippers. The figure leans down, jabs violently, and pulls up. A limb dangles from its mouth. I hear it crunch, then swallow as it absorbs the outline of a foot, As I back up, a book slips out from under me. I stumble awkwardly, loudly. It growls like an old motor engine sputtering to life. The outline of its head turns toward the hallway.

I dive into the nearest room and close the doors as quietly as I can. I look around. No windows, no other exits. A violent throb confirms that I know where I am. Wood splinters. It won't hold for long. I put my body weight against the couch. I've shoved against the door as I sit there, postponing the inevitable.

A sense of relief washes through me. My blood runs with a vigor that I haven't experienced since before the night I told Angela that I hadn't had too much to drink, that I was safe to drive, that we'd be home in no time, since before I'd left her lifeless form amidst the car's smoky ruins underneath the mocking gaze of the stupid flightless bird that stretched across the billboard's canvas. It burst through the barricade, sending me sprawling onto the floor, but I ignore the pain. I smile and my laughter as hysterical as its approaching shadow slowly engulfs me, because

for this creature, this instrument of my torture to exist, something I'd have created it, and whatever that creator is, Angela is too. Our long-awaited reunion approaches. See you soon, Angela. 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 story's author.