Just Creepy: Scary Stories - TERRIFYING Encounters With The Rake

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

The Rake is a nightmare in human shape, pale skin, spider-long limbs, black, empty eyes, and too many teeth. It crawls on all fours, watching you sleep from the edge of the bed or the window, waiting for you to wake up and realize you’re not alone. Born from internet horror, it’s become a modern monster people swear they’ve seen in the dark.These are 3 TERRIFYING Encounters With The Rake.Linktree: https://linktr.ee/its_just_creepyStory Credits:►Sent in to https://www.justcreepy.net/Timestamps:00:00 Intro00:00:18 Story 100:36:54 Story 200:53:37 Story 3Music by:►'Decoherence' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.auhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM_AjpJL5I4&t=0s► Myuu's channel http://bit.ly/1k1g4ey ►CO.AG Music http://bit.ly/2f9WQpeBusiness inquiries: ►[e-mail]#scarystories #horrorstories #therake 💀As always, thanks for watching! 💀

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corner and calling it a nightmare. I know how this is going to sound. I know what the rake is supposed to be. Some internet monster, a creepypasta thing teenagers whisper about its sleepovers. Before this, I had heard the name a few times on YouTube and read it, same as anybody. I don't care what you think it is. I know what I saw. I live in Erie, Pennsylvania. If you've never been here, it's a lake town. Snowy winters, gray water, tourists in the summer, Presk Isle beaches, a lot of quiet neighborhoods and old houses. My place is on the edge of town, near some woods that run behind a couple of streets,

and then stretch out toward I-90. I'm not a hunter. I'm not some seasoned outdoorsman. I like hiking, sure. I like going up to Allegheny National Forest with friends sometimes, camping by the Allegheny Reservoir, doing the Rimrock Overlook Trail, that kind of thing. But I wouldn't call myself Wilderness Tough or anything like that. I'm just a regular guy.

I'm 30. I work in IT for a logistics company. I play games at night, and I walk my dog Max around the block after dinner. This started as a normal week. It was late September, the kind of week when the air starts getting sharp at night, and you can smell the leaves starting to go. I remember the exact day, a Thursday. I worked from home.

We had some server update that went way too long, and I didn't shut my laptop until almost nine at night. I almost skipped Max's walk that night. I wish I had. The neighborhood I live in is nothing special, small two-story houses, porches with old chairs, a couple of street lights that flicker more than they should. My street ends at a dead end,

and behind that dead end is a cut in. a rusted chain link fence that everyone uses to get into the trees. It's just a strip of woods, maybe a few hundred yards wide, but it's a handy little shortcut if you're walking to the gas station on the other side near the interstate. I've cut through that strip of woods a hundred times. That night, the sky was clear. You know how the stars look brighter on cold nights? It was like that.

I could see my breath when I stepped off the porch. Max trotted beside me, his leash in my right hand, my phone in my left. I remember checking the time, 9.14 p.m. We did our usual loop around the block first. The houses were quiet. One TV flickered blue behind closed curtains. A porch light buzzed. Somewhere a dog barked, sharp and quick, like it had seen something and then thought better of it. When we got back near my place, Mack started pulling toward the dead end. He likes the woods. There are squirrels and those small little trails where neighborhood kids have warned down the weeds with their bikes. I usually don't take him back there at night, but I felt guilty

about working late and thought fine, just a quick walk through to the gas station and back. I wanted a gatorade anyway. The dead end street was lit by one orange street light. The chain link fence at the end sagged inward, cut open at the bottom with the wire bent back. There was a muddy path, a little shoot leading into the trees. Mack started forward, nose down, tail up. I followed. The smell changed as soon as we stepped into the trees, damp dirt, old leaves, that heavy plant smell you only get under a canopy. I could still hear the distant hum of I-90 and the occasional car, but it was muffled. The trail was dark, but not pitch black. The streetlight behind us, and the lights from the gas station ahead cast a kind of dim glow.

About halfway through the strip, Max froze. He planted his paws and leaned hard on the leash. nose up in the air. The fur along his spine rose. What's up, buddy? I said quietly. I looked around trying to adjust my eyes to the dark. Deer? Sometimes they cut through the trees there, heading toward the fields beyond the highway. But I didn't see a deer. I didn't see anything. Just the dark trunks of trees, the black shapes of branches, a few patches of sky. Max made a noise I had never heard from him before, a low, shaking wine that vibrated like he was trying not to bark. His body trembled under my hand when I reached

down to calm him. Then everything went quiet. I mean everything. If you've spent time outside at night, you know there's always some kind of noise, insects, wind in the trees, distant cars, a dog somewhere down the block. It's never truly silent. But right then, in that strip of woods behind my neighborhood in Erie, it was like someone hit a mute button on the world. No crickets, No rustle. No distant hum. Even my own breathing sounded too loud. Hey, I whispered more to myself than to Max. It's okay. Come on, let's just... There was a sound behind us, a scraping sound, like skin sliding on bark. Slow, dragging. I turned around so fast I nearly tripped. My phone light came on by instinct.

My thumb hitting the screen. The white cone of light swung over bushes, trunks, roots, nothing. My heart pounded hard enough that I could hear it. I swallowed, tasted metal in the back of my throat, maybe a raccoon, maybe a stray cat, maybe I'd brushed against a branch and scared myself. I pointed the light around again, tree, tree, bush, empty path. Then I made my first mistake. I looked up. Something pale moved against the trunk of a tree, just at the edge of my light. At first I thought it was a patch of birch bark or a weird trick of the flashlight beam. Then it shifted. It peeled away from the trunk in one fluid, horrible motion,

like it had been pressed flat against the bark and was now unfolding itself. Two arms, long and thin, swung down. Two legs, or what I thought were legs, unbent beneath it. It was naked. That was the first thing that hit me, not animal fur, not feathers, not clothes. Just skin, pale, almost gray, stretched too tight over a body that was wrong. Its limbs were too long. Its hands, if they were hands, hung close to the ground even when it straightened.

Its fingers were thin and bony, bending the wrong way at the knuckles. Its head was wrong too, too smooth, no hair. The eyes were big and dark and glassy, reflecting my phone's light with a strange dull shine, like there was nothing behind them. The mouth was just a slit too wide with no lips. It stared at me. I stared back frozen. The thing cocked its head in a slow, jerky motion,

like it was trying to figure out what I was. Its shoulders rose and fell once, like a silent breath. Max lost it. He bolted backward, nearly yanking the leash out of my hand. He barked once, panicked and high-pitched. The sound shattered the silence around us. The thing reacted. It dropped.

One second it was standing, all wrong and tall and stretched, and the next second it was on all fours, its limbs folding unnaturally as it flowed down to the ground. It didn't make a sound when it moved, no crunch of leaves, no snap of twigs, just a smooth, horrible glide. It crawled toward us. I don't remember making the decision to run. One moment I was rooted to the spot. The next I spun around, yanked Max's leash so hard he yelped and sprinted for the cut in the fence. My brain wasn't thinking in words. It was only screaming, go, go, go. Behind us, I heard

something. Not footsteps, not breathing. A soft rapid scraping like nails dragging lightly over dirt at impossible speed. It was fast, too fast. I hit the chain link gap shoulder first, scraping my arm, almost falling, dragging Max through after me. We spilled out onto the dead end street under the orange light. My lungs burned, my legs shook, and still I didn't stop. I ran all the way to my front porch, fumbled my keys, and slammed the door behind us. I stood there, back pressed to the door, heart hammering, listening. Nothing. Just the ticking of my wall clock. The faint hum of the refrigerator. I peeked through the front window blinds. The street was empty. The trees at the dead end were still. I told myself it was just some creepy sick animal, a starving coyote with

mange, a weird lighting illusion, anything but what I thought I saw. But Max didn't move from the front hall for almost an hour. He sat there, staring at the door, growling under his breath. You'd think that would have been enough to make me leave town, or at least call somebody. But what was I going to say? High 911, I saw a long pale monster in the three acres of scrub forest behind my house? No. So I did what everybody does with things that don't make sense. I tried to shove it away.

I double-checked my locks. I closed all the blinds. I left a couple lights on. That night, I lay in bed with my phone, scrolling through search results for the rake. Half hoping I'd see something that looked exactly like what I'd seen, half hoping I wouldn't. I saw sketches from old creepy pasta posts, stories about people waking up with something crouched at the foot of their bed, or hunched over them on the sheets, big black eyes, pale skin, long limbs. Every time I saw a drawing, my chest tightened. It looked like them. It looked like that. I didn't sleep much.

The next day I told myself it had to be stress. I had been working late all week. Maybe I'd had some kind of panic attack. Maybe I'd misjudged sighs and shape in the dark. The brain is good at filling in gaps, that sort of thing. By Saturday I had almost convinced myself. Then things got worse. Saturday afternoon, my friend Nate called. He and I had been talking for weeks about taking one last camping trip before the real cold hit.

Somewhere not too far, a quick overnight. He had a new tent he wanted to try. Dude, he said, you still in for Allegheny this weekend? Weather's perfect. I checked the forecast for the Kinsua area. It's clear and cold. No rain. My first reaction was no.

Every part of me wanted to say, Actually, let's just grab beers and watch a game. But then I remembered what I'd been telling myself. That I needed to get out of my own head. That I was being stupid. That it was just a weird animal behind the house in Erie. and that I couldn't let one creepy nightwalk scare me out of going into actual woods. Yeah, I said, I'm in.

We met up at his place in Meadville the next morning. Then we drove east on Route 6, through Warren, into the rolling hills and heavy forests of northwestern Pennsylvania. It was beautiful out there. The trees were just starting to turn yellow and red. The sky was a high, hard blue. We were headed toward the Allegheny National Forest, planning to camp somewhere near the Allegheny Reservoir. It's a real place. You can look it up. Long, dark lake in a valley,

pine ridges on both sides, scattered campgrounds and backcountry sites. We stopped for gas and snacks in the small town of Warren, then kept driving north. As we got deeper into the forest, my chest got heavier, like something was sitting on it. The trees leaned in closer to the road. The sun felt colder. You good, Nate asked at one point, glancing over. You look like you're about to puke. Didn't sleep great, I said. Just tired. We got to the trailhead mid-afternoon.

It was a little pull-off, just a dirt lot with a faded sign and a bulletin board stapled with old warnings about bare activity and Lyme disease. The trail led down through thick woods toward the lake. Look at this place, Nate said, stretching his arms. Dude, this is going to be sick. Clear sky, no bugs, nobody else out here.

Perfect. I forced a smile and helped him shoulder his pack. The hike in wasn't long, maybe two miles, mostly downhill. The trail wound through a mix of pine and hardwood. Sunlight slanted through the branches. We joked about work, about stupid things people had said, about football. By the time we reached the lake, I was almost relaxed. Our campsite was on a small finger of land that jutted out into the reservoir.

Someone had used it before. There was an old fire ring made a fire. rocks and a flat spot for a tent. The water was dark and still, reflecting the trees like a mirror. Across the lake, the opposite ridge rose in shades of green and gold. No other campers, no boats, just us and the forest. We set up the tent, gathered some fallen branches, and got a small fire going before sunset. The air got colder fast as the sun dipped below the ridge.

We put on our jackets, sat close to the fire, and listened to the pot. tops and cracks of the burning wood. Man, Nate said, staring at the flames. This is so much better than my apartment. No neighbors stomping around upstairs. No sirens, just quiet. Quiet. The word sat strangely in my chest.

I realized then that I'd been listening for something without knowing it, waiting for the woods to go silent the way they had behind my house. But here, the forest sounded alive. Crickets chirped. Some small animal rustled in the underbrush nearby. A faint breeze moved through the branches. Across the lake, a bird called once, twice. I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.

We ate instant noodles out of camp mugs, told dumb college stories, and talked about maybe doing a longer backpacking trip next summer, maybe down to West Virginia, the Monongahela National Forest, or out to the Adirondacks in New York. By full dark, the stars were huge above us. The Milky Way smeared across the sky like powdered sugar. The fire burned low, glowing red in the ring of rocks.

Yo, Nate said suddenly, staring into the trees behind me. Did you hear that? I froze. My back was to the woods. My whole body went cold. What? I asked. He squinted.

Thought I heard something up there on the hill. Like a, I don't know. Maybe a deer. Forget it. But I was already turning. The trees behind our camp rose up the slope in layers. dark trunks and darker gaps between them. My eyes played tricks on me, making shapes where there were none.

I saw a hundred pale patches of bark, a hundred possible movements. Nothing stood out. Probably a raccoon, I said, trying to sound normal, or a branch falling. We waited. The fire popped. Somewhere across the lake a fish splashed. We're fine, dude, Nate said eventually. Come on, let's crash. Big hike out tomorrow.

He yawned, I'm beat. We put out the fire with lake water, stirred the ashes, made sure everything was out. Then we crawled into the tent, each of us into our sleeping bags. The nylon rustled. The smell of smoke clung to my hair and clothes. The night pressed close around us. The last thing I saw before Nate turned off his headlamp was the shadow of the trees, swaying slightly against the thin tent wall.

Good night, man, he mumbled. Night, I said. I lay there, eyes open in the dark, listening. At first the sounds of the forest were comforting. Crickets. A frog somewhere near the water. The soft movement of branches. Then slowly they faded.

It wasn't sudden, like someone cutting off a switch this time. It was more like the volume being turned down, step by step, until the crickets were gone, the frog was gone, the wind was gone. All that remained was the sound of my own breathing. and Nate's soft snore. My skin prickled. I checked my watch. 1.37 a.m.

The silence outside the tent felt heavy, like a weight draped over the campsite. I tried to tell myself it was normal. Animals go quiet sometimes if there's a predator around. Maybe a bear was moving through nearby. Maybe a coyote pack. Then I heard it. A soft scrape and another, slow, steady, circling.

Something was moving around our tent. Not walking. Not trotting. crawling. The hairs on my arms and neck stood up. The sound was so light it barely registered, but now that I'd heard it once, I couldn't unhear it. It was like nails sliding gently over dry leaves, a body being pulled along the ground by limbs that didn't quite bend right. It made a full circle around us. My heart hammered. I held my breath. Nate, I whispered. You awake? His snore cut off with a snort. Huh? What? Do you hear?

hear that? He listened, Scrape, scrape, scrape. It stopped near the door of the tent. For a long, thin moment, nothing moved. Then something pressed down lightly on the fabric. I watched the shape bulge inward. A hand, too big, too long, splayed five thin fingers against the nylon.

The fingers bent, testing, like they were feeling the give of the material, the thin barrier between us and it. Nate sat up fast, his sleeping bag rustling. What the... Don't move, I hissed. The hand dragged slowly down the tent wall, leaving faint streaks of dirt. The pressure was so light it didn't quite collapse the fabric, but you could see the outline of each joint.

Then it was gone. The crawling sound moved again, around the tent, toward the back, near where our heads were. I had never felt so exposed. The thin nylon felt like nothing at all, a suggestion of safety. A lie. I could hear it breathing then. Not a normal breath, not steady inhales and exhales. It was more like something remembering to breathe. A sudden sharp intake held too long, then let out in a slow, broken hiss. My stomach twisted. There was a small mesh window on the side of the tent above my head. My face was only a few inches away from it in the dark. I stared at it,

telling myself over and over, don't look, don't look, don't look, don't look, I looked. Two eyes stared back at me through the mesh. They were huge and dark and too close. They reflected no light in all the light at once. They were like holes burned into the night. The skin around them was pale and smooth. No eyebrows, no lashes, just those bottomless dead eyes.

I jerked backwards, slamming into Nate, he cursed. What is it? he whispered. It's here, I choked. It's right outside. Something dragged its nails slowly over the mesh, right where my face had been. The scraping sound shrieked in my skull. Every horror story I'd ever read about the rake flashed through my mind. People waking up to it crouched over them.

It whispering. It's smiling. It's speaking in their voices. Dude, Nate whispered, his voice shaking now. Is it a bear? What do we do? That's not a bear, I said. The thing moved again.

We heard it crawl along the side of the tent toward the door. The zipper pull jangled softly when its fingers brushed against it. It tugged, just once, lightly. The zipper moved a quarter of an inch, teeth parting with a tiny, impossibly loud sound. It was testing it. My mind snapped. Nope, I muttered. I grabbed my flashlight and the folding knife I kept in my boot.

We're leaving. Now? Nate hissed. Are you insane? You want to stay? I rasped. The zipper moved again. We didn't wait. On three, I whispered. We grab our boots and run for the trail. Don't look back. Don't stop. Just run. Ready? We counted under our breath. One. The zipper inched down another half an inch. A pale fingertip pushed through the gap, seeking.

Two, something wet hit the fabric. A drop. Then another. Drul. Or something worse. Three, I tore the tent zipper up from the inside, slashed my knife through the cord loop, and kicked the door flap open. Cold night air slammed into my face. The flashlight beam swung wildly, slicing across the campsite. For a split second, I saw it clearly. It crouched a few feet away, as if it had just flinched back from the door opening. It was taller than I'd thought, even hunched. Its skin gleamed faintly in the light, almost slick, stretched too tight over joints that stuck out like knots in wood. Its arms were long, hands dragging in the needle-covered dirt. Its mouth hung open. There were teeth. Too many. Thin and jagged and all the same size,

like someone had taken broken glass and pressed it in a row. No lips, just a split in the skin. The worst part wasn't the teeth, or the hands, or the eyes. It was the way it moved. When the light hit it, its head snapped toward us so fast I heard the vertebrae crack. It jerked forward an inch, then froze again like some horrible stop-motion puppet. Its limbs twitched in short, unnatural bursts. And the eyes. The eyes seemed to widen somehow, even though they were already huge. Then it lunged.

We ran. I don't remember getting my boots fully on. I think I just shoved my feet in and hoped I wouldn't twist an ankle. Nate grabbed his pack by one strap and dragged it. I left mine completely. The tent sagged behind us, half collapsed, the door gaping. We shot up the trail into the trees, flashlight beam bouncing wildly over roots and rocks.

Behind us there was no roar, no growl, just that awful scraping sound as it accelerated after us, fingers clawing into the dirt, bones digging in, propelling it forward faster than anything that shape had a right to move. Nate, go, I yelled. He didn't answer. but I heard him panting, feet pounding the trail.

The forest flew past in a blur of trunks and shadows. Branches whipped at my face. Once I stumbled and went to one knee, but I was up again before I could think about it. The scraping grew louder. It wasn't just behind us, it was above us too. I could hear something moving along a low rock outcrop to our right, parallel to the trail, keeping pace.

I risked a glance. In the corner of my vision, I saw it. The rake was no longer on the ground. It was climbing along the rocks on all fours, sideways like an insect, fingers and toes digging into cracks that barely seemed wide enough to hold them. Its head was twisted toward us from an impossible angle, eyes locked on us. It was playing with us, hurting us, driving us up the trail, away from the lake, deeper into the trees.

Shortcut! Nate gasped ahead of me. There's a logging road that cuts back to the car. I saw it on the map. He veered left at a faint junction in the trail, almost invisible in the dark. I followed, trusting him, praying he was right. The new path was wider and less steep, but more open. No dense undergrowth, just tall trees and patches of moonlight on packed dirt. My lungs burned.

My legs felt like they were filling with concrete. I could hear Nate stumbling, cursing, dragging his pack. The scraping behind us faded for a moment. That almost made it worse. Maybe it gave up, Nate gasped. I wanted to believe that. Instead, the forest went silent again. Not just quiet, dead.

Even our own footsteps seemed muffled, like the trees were swallowing the sound. We came around a bend in the logging road and saw something move in the middle of the path ahead. I skidded to a stop my boots sliding. It was there, crouched in the road like it had been waiting for us. Its limbs were folded awkwardly beneath it, spine curved like a side. curved like a spider. Its head hung low, those black eyes staring up through the pale mask of its face. It had gone around. It was in front of us. Nate crashed into my back. Why'd you stop? Oh my God. The thing slowly straightened, rising up and up, until it towered over us, even though it was

still hunched. Its arms dangled almost to its knees. It took one step toward us, foot barely making a sound on the dirt. Back, I whispered. Back, slowly. We, we're just to be. We're not. We We took a few steps backward, not turning around, hearts beating against our ribs so hard they hurt. The rake mirrored us. It took a few steps forward, matching our pace, head tilted to one side. Then it paused, like it was listening to something. Without warning, it opened its mouth wide. Wider than it should have been able to.

Its jaw unhinged, the skin around it stretching, cracking in places. That row of small broken glass teeth gleamed. And then it spoke. The voice that came out wasn't its own. Hey man, it said in Nate's exact voice. You okay? The world tilted. Hearing my friend's voice come out of that monster's mouth broke something in my brain.

It didn't match. It didn't belong. It was like watching your own reflection move wrong in the mirror. Stop, Nate whispered. Stop. That's not funny. The thing's jaw worked again, skin twitching, like it was having trouble shaping the sounds. Hey man, it repeated.

Same tone, same cadence. You okay? This time the words glitched. The okay stretched too long, the middle of the word turning into a drawn-out wet hiss. Then it tried a different voice, my voice. Dude, this is insane, it said, in a rough copy of how I'd sounded earlier. We're leaving, we're leaving, we're leaving. The words overlapped, the last few repeating in a weird echo as its mouth flapped.

like it was rehearsing different versions and couldn't pick one. Something inside me snapped from terror to anger. Shut up, I snarled. It tilted its head studying me. Shut up, it repeated. This time in a high, distorted version of my voice, like a recording played too fast. Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Nate grabbed my arm. We can't go past it, he whispered. We have to go around. Into the trees, I asked. He swallowed. We don't have a choice. We moved sideways slowly toward the slope on the right side of the logging road. The ground dropped away steeply, but there were trees and rocks we could use.

If we could just get past it and back onto the road behind it. The rake watched us. Its eyes didn't blink. Its neck twitched once, twice. Then it did something I still see when I close my eyes. It smiled. Not a normal smile. The skin around its mouth cracked and split, peeling back like torn teeth.

paper. Those tiny jagged teeth all showed at once, stripes of dark gum in between. Its lips, what little there were, stretched too far almost up to its eyes. It smiled at us like it understood exactly what we were trying to do. Then it dropped to all fours again. Run, I yelled. We went off the road and down the slope, half sliding, half falling. Dirt and rocks gave way under our boots. branches whipped at our faces. I heard Nate Yelp as he tripped and rolled, his pack dragging him sideways. I grabbed at a sapling to keep from going head first.

Behind us, the scraping sound exploded into full, frantic volume. It came off the road after us. It moved through the trees like they weren't even there, slipping between trunks, hands digging into the ground, fingers leaving small holes in the soil. We weren't going to outrun it. We weren't going to out-clime it. We were, just meat in a maze.

I spotted a gap between two big boulders ahead, a narrow shoot leading down into thicker brush. There, I shouted, through there. We squeezed through one after the other, shoulder blades scraping rock. I heard the rake skid to a stop on the slope behind us, its claws scratching stone. It couldn't quite fit between the rocks as easily as we could. It shrieked then. The sound was so high and sharp that it felt like a physical thing, stabbing through my ears into my brain.

I dropped to my knees, hands over my head, teeth clenching. Nate screamed, go, go, go. We burst out of the chute into a lower, flatter area. Through the trees ahead, I could see a faint band of gray, the road back to the trailhead. If we could just reach it, maybe there'd be a car, another hiker, a ranger, something. We ran.

The forest behind us exploded as the rake forced its way between the boulders, stone cracking under its grip. It was coming again, faster than before, enraged now. My lungs felt like they were filled with fire. My legs were jelly. I could taste blood in my mouth. But somehow, we made it. We broke out of the tree line onto the narrow paved road

that led back to the parking area. The dawn sky was just barely starting to lighten on the horizon, a thin gray band. The parking lot was empty. Our car was there, alone. keys. Nate gasped. I fumbled in my pocket, fingers numb, dropped them on the asphalt, snatched them up again.

The scraping sound burst out of the trees behind us closer than ever. We dove into the car. I jammed the keys into the ignition with shaking hands, turned them. For one awful second the engine whined without catching. Come on, I begged. The engine roared to life. As I slammed the car into drive, something hit the side of it. Metal shrieked.

The car rocked on its suspension. A long, pale hand slapped against the windshield, leaving streaks of dirt and something dark. Fingers spayed like spider legs, nails scratching glass. The rake's face pressed up against the glass. Up close, it was worse under the harsh glare of the car's dome light. Its skin was paper thin, veins like dark threads beneath it. Its eyes were sunk deep, but still huge, still hungry. Its teeth chattered against the glass in a weird, stuttering cliff.

It opened its mouth and spoke again, through the windshield, like the barrier meant nothing. Don't leave, it said in my voice. Then Nates. Then my voice again, overlapping, glitching. Don't leave, don't leave, don't. I slammed my foot on the gas. The car lurched forward. The hand slid off the glass, nail screeching.

The rake stumbled, its claws scraping the hood, and then it vanished from view as we shot up the road. tire squealing on the cold pavement. We didn't look back. We drove all the way to warn without speaking. Not a word. Outside, the wood slid past in a blur of trees and mist. Inside, the car smelled like sweat and fear, and the coppery tang of blood. I think Nate had bitten his tongue.

We finally pulled into a Walmart parking lot on the edge of town and just sat there, breathing. Nate stared straight ahead, hands white-knuckled on his knees. You saw it too, I said hoarsely. Tell me you saw it too. He swallowed hard, then nodded once. Yeah, he whispered. I saw it. We didn't go to the police.

What were we supposed to tell them? That a legendary internet monster had chased us out of Allegheny National Forest and tried to talk through our windshield? We told people we'd run into a bear, that we'd panicked and left our gear behind, that we were embarrassed about it. That part was true at least We never went back for the tent

That was months ago You'd think it would fade That time would file down the edges of what happened It hasn't Every night I lock my doors twice I pull the blinds tight I check the windows I moved out of my house on the edge of the woods

In Erie and rented an apartment closer to downtown Where the streetlights are bright And there's more concrete than trees It doesn't help as much as you'd think Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, sure that I heard something scratching at my bedroom window. Sometimes Max will sit up in the dark, stare at the corner of the room, and growl at nothing. Nate moved too.

He left Pennsylvania completely. He lives with his brother in Columbus, Ohio now. Of course, there are parks and trees there too. You can't really get away from them in this part of the country. We still talk, but not about that night. The one time I brought it up, he shut down. Don't, he said. Just don't, please.

I let it go, but I never stopped thinking about it. Here's the part that keeps me awake, though. The part that crawls back into my head every time I think I'm okay. It's not that it chased us at the reservoir, or that it found us in deep forest miles from my neighborhood. It's not even that it mimicked our voices or learned how to speak in a few hours. It's something smaller, a detail. When I was packing for that camping trip with Nate, I remember tossing my hoodie into my bag.

It was the same hoodie I had worn that Thursday night when I walked Max through the strip of woods behind my house in Erie, the night I first saw it. When I bent down to touch the torn fabric of that hoodie at home, a couple of days later, I saw something on the sleeve. Tiny dark streaks. Dirt, I told myself. Just dirt from the woods. I brushed it off without thinking. But the more I think about it, the less I'm sure it was dirt. I keep going back to the way it touched the tent.

The way it touched the windshield. The way it touched me. That first night. When I ran past it in the dark with Max pulling at his leash. I don't think Allegheny was a chance encounter. The woods behind my house in Erie and the woods near the Allegheny Reservoir are miles apart. Different counties. Different landscapes.

But they're still connected in a way. strips of trees, creeks, culverts, storm drains under the highways. We think of them as separate bits of forest because we're the ones drawing the maps. Things like the rake don't care about our maps. It saw me behind my house. It watched me. It learned me. It followed me.

And if it followed me from some scrubby little patch of trees in Erie all the way to Allegheny National Forest, to a completely different place with completely different woods. What makes you think something like that can't follow you too? It's out there, in real places you can point to on a map. In the narrow strip of trees behind a Walmart in Ohio. In the small city park near your apartment in Buffalo. In the ravine behind the high school in Pittsburgh. In the forest by the campgrounds in Allegheny,

Menongahela, Shenandoah, the Adirondacks, the Smokies. Anywhere there are trees and shadows and places where the world goes just a little too quiet at night. You tell yourself, the rake is just an internet story, just a drawing, just some made-up monster in a post. I used to think that too. Now, when I take Max out for a walk in downtown Erie, I stay on the sidewalks under the brightest streetlights. I never cut through the vacant lot with the couple of scrub trees. I never walk past the little stand of bushes near the railroad tracks, and if the night suddenly goes quiet, if the sound of the city seems to dim, like someone is slowly turning a volume knob down. I turn around and go home,

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My name is Mark, and I need to tell someone what happened. I can't go to the police. They'd lock me up in a psych ward. I'm pretty sure I'm sane, but after what I saw, I'm not 100% sure of anything anymore. But I have to get this out. I have to warn someone. It all started because I was burned out. I mean completely soul-scorchingly fried.

I work a tech job in New York City, one of those jobs where you're basically staring at lines of code for 12 hours a day, fueled by bad coffee, the hum of a server rack, and the constant pressure of a deadline that was yesterday. The city itself was a non-stop assault. The sirens, the smells, the sheer crush of people. I felt like a cog and a machine that was grinding me down. I needed a break.

I needed real actual silence. So I rented a cabin. It was a small, isolated place on the edge of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. The pictures on the rental site looked perfect, wood-paneled walls, a big stone fireplace, and nothing but trees for miles. The reviews all said the same thing, so quiet. The stars are amazing. Didn't see another person the whole time.

That's what I wanted. Total isolation. I'm an idiot. I drove up on a Friday in late October. The peak of the leaf peeping season was over, and the woods had that beautiful, empty, skeletal look. The drive itself should have been a warning. My cell service died about 40 minutes from the cabin. The last 10 miles were on a winding, unpaved dirt road that was more like a logging trail. My car's suspension was crying. It got dark fast, around 5.30 p.m. and the trees pressed in so close, they blotted out what little sky was left. The cabin was at the absolute end of that road. By the time I got there and unpacked, it was pitch black.

I mean, a deep, heavy blackness I'd never experienced in the city. I flipped on the big porch light, and it cut a perfect yellow circle into the darkness, but it didn't push the shadows back. It just made them seem deeper, more solid. I made a fire, cooked a simple dinner, and sat in an old armchair, just listening. And that's the first thing I noticed. It wasn't just quiet. It was silent.

Unnaturally silent. No crickets, no owls hooting, not even the rustle of a squirrel or a mouse. It was like the entire woods was holding its breath. I told myself it was just the cold, that all the animals were smarter than me and already bunkered down. I went to bed early, feeling a little uneasy but telling myself this was the relaxation I'd paid for. I woke up around 3 a.m. I wasn't sure why. There was no sound, but I was instantly terribly awake, and my heart was hammering. I felt wrong. There's no other word for it, a primal animal dread.

I felt like something was deeply, fundamentally wrong. I lay there for a minute, listening. Nothing, just the faint tick of the fireplace cooling down. Then I heard it, a scrape. It was coming from outside, on the side of the cabin. The side where my bedroom was. It was a slow dragging sound like someone pulling a heavy garden rake over the wooden siding. Scrape. Pause.

Scrape. I sat bolt upright. My first thought was a bear. The rental instruction said to keep all food locked up, which I had. But maybe I dropped something? The sound stopped. I held my breath, straining my ears. The silence rushed back in, heavier this time, suffocating.

I told myself it was a tree branch, a big one, scraping against the wall and the wind. But there was no wind. The air was dead still. I forced myself to lie back down, but I didn't sleep. I just stared at the ceiling, my eyes burning, until the first weak gray light. light of dawn crept through the blinds. The next day, I had to know. I got dressed, gulped down some coffee, and went outside. The air was cold and sharp, smelling of pine and damp earth. I walked around to the side of the cabin where I'd heard the sound. There were marks, three long, deep

gauges running vertically down the wood siding. They started way too high up for a person, maybe seven or eight feet off the ground, and went all the way down to the foundation. They were deep, splintering the wood. This wasn't a bear. A bear's claws would be grouped together, and the marks would be curved. These were three distinct lines, perfectly parallel, about four inches apart, as if drawn by a giant, three-pronged tool. My blood ran cold. I touched one of the grooves.

A fresh splinter of wood stuck in my finger. I felt that watched feeling again, stronger than ever. a prickle on the back of my neck. I scanned the tree line, a dense wall of dark pines and bare maples. Nothing, just trees. I should have left. Right then, I should have packed my bags, gotten in my car, and driven back to the city. But I didn't.

I paid for a week, and I was going to get my week of relaxation, even if it killed me. I was a stupid, stubborn city kid who thought the world ran on logic. I decided to go for a hike to clear my head. It's a poacher, I told myself, a local trying to scare tourists. I grabbed a map, a bottle of water, and started down a marked trail. The woods were just as silent as the night before. The only sound was the crunch, crunch, crunch of my own boots on the leafy trail. It was unnerving.

After about 30 minutes, the watched feeling came back. so strong I stopped and turned around. Nothing. Just the trail winding back through the trees. I kept walking, but faster. After about an hour, I came to a small clearing, and in the middle of it, a deer, or what was left of one. I've seen nature documentaries. I know what a coyote or a bear kill looks like. This was not that. It was torn. Not eaten, just torn apart. It was a mess. But the thing that made me want to throw up was the way it was pulled apart. It looked like it had been done by something with incredible, brutal strength. Legs were ripped from sockets, but there were no tracks.

The ground was covered in leaves, but they were barely disturbed, aside from the area right around the deer. I backed away, slowly. I didn't run. I just turned around and walked fast back the way I came. The whole time I felt its eyes on my back. I knew as clearly as I know my own name that I was being watched, that I was being allowed to leave. I got back to the cabin by 2 p.m. and locked the door. I bolted it. I went around and checked every single window, making sure they were locked. I closed all the curtains. I turned on every single light in the

house, even though it was broad daylight. I sat at the kitchen table, my heart doing a drum solo against my ribs. I was trying to rationalize it. It had to be a poacher, a weird sick poacher who liked to scare tourists. That's what I told myself, over and over. Dusk came again, painting the sky a sickly purple gray before it faded to black. I was in the living room, in front of the fireplace. I had the heavy iron poker in my hand. I wasn't making a fire.

I was just holding it. Around 9 p.m. the tapping started. It wasn't the scraping from last night. It was a tap, tap, tap. the living room window, the big picture window that looked out onto the dark woods. I froze. Tap, tap, tap. It was light, almost delicate, like a long fingernail tapping on the glass.

I didn't move. I just stared at the curtain, which I had pulled shut hours ago. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Faster now. Impatient. Go away, I whispered. I don't know why. The tapping stopped.

A second later a thud from the kitchen. I jumped yelping and gripped the fireplace poker so hard my knuckles were white. I crept toward the kitchen. The kitchen had a window over the sink and a back door. Both were dark. Thud. It was at the back door. Something was bumping against it. Not hard. Just testing it. Thud, thud, thud, then a new sound, a low, wet snuffling right at the bottom of the door, like a dog sniffing. And then, a sound that I will hear in my nightmares until the day I die. It was a high-pitched chittering, a clicking, chattering, wet sound that sounded like a bat and a person trying to scream at the same time. I backed away, right into the living room. I looked at

the front door. My keys were in a bowl on the table next to it. The car was right outside. I could make a run for it. Before I could take a step, the porch light, the one at the front of the house, went out. Not the bulb popping. It just clicked off. I was in total dark. light, lit only by the faint glow of the kitchen light I'd left on, and then I saw it. In the living room, I had left a small gap in the curtains, just a sliver. I hadn't noticed it, but now I saw something move past that sliver, a pale, grayish white, something. It was at the window. The tapping started again, tap, tap, tap. I was paralyzed. I couldn't move, couldn't breathe. My entire world had shrunk to that window and the sound of that tapping.

And then it stopped tapping. There was a new sound. A shh, a whisper. No, not a whisper. It was breathing. It was fogging up the glass. I had to see. I don't know why.

It was the stupidest, most human thing I could have done. The need to know was stronger than the fear. I had to know what was looking at me. I crept forward, one slow motion step at a time. The poker was useless, but I held it up like a sword. I got to the edge of the window, next to the curtain. I could smell it. It smelled awful, like spoiled milk and damp earth.

I pulled the curtain back an inch. It was right there. Its face was two inches from the glass, staring straight at me. I've seen the pictures online. They're all terrible drawings. They don't do it justice. They don't capture the horror of it. It was pale, the color of dead.

fish. It had no hair, no nose, just two dark jagged slits. Its skin was stretched so tight over its skull you could see the bone. But the eyes. Oh God, the eyes. They were huge, huge and black like oily pits. They weren't animal eyes. They weren't human eyes. They were just empty. Sockets of pure, hungry blackness. And it was staring at me. It knew I was there. It had been waiting for me to look. We were frozen like that for a second that lasted a thousand years. It opened its mouth. It wasn't a mouth. It was a rip in its face, full of teeth that were long and thin and broken, like shattered needles. The chittering sound started again, louder now, coming from that awful mouth. It was so loud it hurt my ears, and then it did something. It smiled. It raised a hand,

a long, thin, gray arm that seemed to have too many joints. At the end of the end of the end of of it were claws, not fingernails, claws, long, dirty, yellowed. The same claws that had dug into the side of the cabin. It pressed its hand against the glass. I finally broke. I screamed. I don't even think a sound came out. I just dropped the poker and fell backward scrambling away. The creature roared, not a chitter, a full-on, ear-splitting shriek of rage, and it slammed its fist into the window. The glass didn't break, but it shuddered in the frame. Crash. This time, it was the kitchen. It had given up on the window and gone back to the kitchen door. I heard wood splintering. It was breaking through. That was it. Fight or flight. And I was not built for

fighting this thing. I grabbed my keys from the bowl. I didn't bother with my jacket or my wallet or my phone. Just the keys. I ran to the front door, the one I had bolted. As I fumbled with the deadbolt, my hands shaking violently. I heard it enter the cabin. I heard its claws click, click, click on the kitchen's tile floor. A wet snuffling sound. It was inside. I got the bolt undone and ripped the door open.

The cold night air hit me like a slap. My car was 15 feet away. It felt like a mile. I ran. I didn't look back. I just ran. I heard it behind me. It burst out of the cabin, not through the door, but through the living room window.

crash, glass exploding everywhere. It wasn't running. It was loping, moving on all fours, and it was impossibly fast. The sound of its claws on the gravel driveway, skitter, skitter, skitter. I got to the car, jammed the key into the door and threw myself inside. I slammed the lock button just as a pale, thin body slammed into the driver's side window. It was on the car. It shrieked again, that awful sound, and I could feel the car rocking with its weight. It climbed onto the hood, fast as a spider, until it was crouched there staring at me through the windshield. Those black eyes, those horrible, empty eyes.

It raised its clawed hand and brought it down. Smash. The windshield spider webbed. It didn't break through, but it was shattered. I screamed and finally, finally my hands worked. I jammed the key into the ignition and twisted. The engine roared to life. The headlights flashed on, illuminating the creature in a blast of white light.

It hissed and reeled back, shielding its eyes with one long arm. That was all I needed. I slammed the car into reverse and hit the gas. The tires spun on the gravel and the car shot backward. The creature was thrown off the hood, rolling onto the ground. I didn't wait. I put the car in drive and stomped on the accelerator. I aimed the car right at the dirt road, my tires spitting gravel.

The car bouncing so hard I thought it would break. I looked in my rearview mirror. It was already up. It was standing in the driveway, a tall, impossibly thin silhouette against the light of the cabin I'd left on. It just stood there, watching me go. I drove. I don't think I've ever driven that fast.

I took that 10-mile dirt road in two minutes, my car slamming into potholes. I was crying, or screaming, or both. I kept checking the mirror, half expecting to see it loping behind me. keeping pace. I hit the main road in a spray of dirt and didn't slow down. I didn't stop until I hit a 24-hour gas station in a town 50 miles south, the sun just starting to paint the sky in weak, watery colors. I sat there in my car, shaking. The engine was ticking. The attendant, a kid in a red vest, came out and just stared at me. I must have looked like a ghost. I looked at my windshield.

It was shattered, and stuck in one of the cracks, was a single, long, broken, yellowish claw, like a piece of jagged bone. I quit my job the next day, by email. I sold my apartment in Brooklyn. I couldn't be in a big, empty place anymore. I live in Las Vegas now, in a high-rise condo on the sixth floor. I like it here. There are no trees.

There are no quiet nights. The lights from the casinos turn the sky a permanent, hazy orange. You can't even see the stars. It's the brightest, loudest place I could find. I'm safe. But sometimes, when I'm working late and the building is quiet, I'll hear a sound, a faint scrape in the ventilation shaft, or a tap, tap, tap, on my sixth floor window,

even when I know nothing could possibly be out there. And I remember those black eyes. And I know deep in my bones that it's still out there. And it remembers me. I've spent the last 48 hours staring at the lock on my apartment door. I have a chair wedged under the handle. I have the lights on, all of them, even the little bulb inside the oven. My name is Mason.

I'm 32. I live in upstate New York, and for the last decade, I've considered myself an expert outdoorsman. I don't say that to brag. I say it so you understand that I know what a bear sounds like when it's foraging. I know the scream of a bobcat. I know the difference between the wind snapping a dead branch and a heavy footstep breaking a green one. I know the woods, or I thought I did.

What I saw three days ago in the High Peak's wilderness wasn't an animal. It wasn't a man. And if I stopped typing, my hands start shaking so bad I can't hold a glass of water. So I'm going to write this all down. I need to get it out of my head. It started as a solo dispersed camping trip. For those who don't know, dispersed camping means you aren't in a designated campsite.

no fire rings, no rangers, no neighbors, just you and the brush. I wanted to test out some new gear, a lightweight trekking pole tent, and a zero-degree quilt before winter fully set in. I chose a spot near the Dick's Mountain Wilderness, its rugged terrain, dense with spruce and fir, the kind of woods that feel ancient and judgmental. I parked my truck at the trailhead around 6 a.m. on Thursday, intending to hike about eight miles in, off trail, to a ridge I'd scouted on Google Earth. The hike in was perfect. The air was crisp, smelling of pine needles and damp earth. The leaves were past peak, forming a wet copper carpet that dampened my footsteps. By 2 p.m., I found the spot. It was a small clearing naturally sheltered by a rock overhang, overlooking a deep valley.

I set up camp. I hung my bear bag. I filled the filtered water from a nearby stream, standard procedure. The first sign that something was wrong happened around dusk. I was sitting on a log, heating up some dehydrated chili, when the woods went silent. You hear people say that in stories all the time. The woods went quiet. But until you experience it, you don't understand the weight of it. It's not just that the birds stop singing. The wind seems to die. The squirrels, the insects, the rustle of leaves, it all just ceases. It felt like the forest was holding its breath, like it was waiting for a blow to land. Then came the smell. It drifted up from the valley floor on a sudden updraft. It hit me like a

physical slap. It smelled like wet dog, stagnant pond water and something else, something distinct and metallic. Copper. Blood. Old dry blood. I stood up, hand instinctively going to the knife on my belt. Hey, I shouted. My voice sounded small, swallowed instantly by the the trees. Anyone out there? Nothing. The smell lingered for ten minutes, then vanished as the wind shifted. I told myself it was a dead carcass nearby, maybe a deer that had fallen and rotted in a ravine. I forced myself to eat my chili, put out my small fire, and crawled into my tent. I didn't sleep well. I kept waking up, convinced I heard something brushing against the nylon of my tent. A soft swish, swish, like fabric against fabric.

But every time I unzipped the fly and shined my headlamp, there was nothing but the dark trunks of the pines staring back at me. Day two. I woke up groggy. The sun was up, but the light was weak, filtered through a heavy gray overcast. When I stepped out of the tent to pee, I saw it. About 20 feet from my campsite, near the base of a massive hemlock tree, the moss had been torn up. It wasn't like a deer scraping for mast or a bear digging.

for grubs. These were gouges. Three distinct parallel lines ripped into the earth, roughly two feet long and inches deep. I walked over and placed my hand next to them. My hand is pretty big. I wear XL gloves, but these marks dwarfed my fingers. The spacing between the claws. It had to be a hand span of at least 10 or 12 inches. Bear, I told myself. A big, angry black bear. But black bear claws are and blunt, made for digging. These cuts were razor thin, surgical. I should have packed up right then. I know that now. But pride is a dangerous thing. I reasoned that bears are generally skittish. I had bear spray. I had a knife. I wasn't going to let a scratch in the dirt chase me out of the woods. I spent the day exploring the ridge. I found a game trail and followed it down toward the valley floor.

About a mile down, the atmosphere changed. The trees grew closer together, their branches interlocking to block out the sky. The temperature dropped 10 degrees. I found the deer in a clearing near the creek. It was a buck, a decent-sized one. It was lying on its side. It wasn't eaten. That was the first thing that struck me.

Predators kill to eat. Wolves, coyotes, bears. They tear out the stomach, the hams. This deer looked like it had been put through a shredder. The skin was flayed in long, precise ribbons, exposing the muscle underneath. Its throat had been torn out but not chewed, just removed. The eyes were wide open, glazed over in terror, and there was no blood. The ground around it was dry.

The carcass was pale, drained completely white. I backed away, the bile rising in my throat. The smell was there again. that wet, sulfurous, metallic stench. It was stronger here. I turned and scrambled back up the ridge, not caring about noise anymore. I wanted to be back at my camp.

I wanted to grab my gear and get the hell back to my truck. By the time I reached my tent, the sun was setting. It was too late to hike the eight miles back to the trailhead safely in the dark, especially with that terrain. I made a decision. I would stay one more night, keep a fire going, and leave at first light. I gathered enough wood to burn a small city. I built the fire high.

I didn't bother with dinner. I sat on the log, my knife in my hand, the canister of bear spray on the log next to me. Night fell like a hammer. The darkness in the Adirondacks is absolute. Without the moon, you can't see your hand in front of your face. The fire was my only world. Outside that ring of orange light,

there was nothing but the abyss. Around 11 p.m., the fire was dying. down. I leaned forward to throw another log on. Snap. It came from directly behind me, close. Within 10 feet. I spun around kicking the log, sending sparks flying. I grabbed my high-lum flashlight and swept the beam across the tree line. Get out of here, I roared. I see you. The beam cut through the darkness, trees, bushes, rocks. Then two points of light, reflective eyes. Animal eyes reflect light because of the tap and Lusidum, deer reflect green, bears reflect red orange.

These eyes were white, like two full moons, and they were high up, too high for a wolf, too high for a bear on all fours. They were about six feet off the ground. I froze. My brain tried to categorize what I was seeing. Owl sitting on a branch. No, the spacing was too wide. Person standing there?

The eyes blinked. One. Then the other. When the creature stepped into the periphery of my flashlight beam, I stopped breathing. It was humanoid, but it wasn't human. It was terrifyingly thin, emaciated to the point where I could see the individual vertebrae of its spine pressing against its skin. And the skin, it was gray, almost translucent, slick looking, like the belly of a dead

fish. It was completely hairless. It was crouched on two legs that looked like a dog's hind legs, inverted at the knees. arms were impossibly long, hanging down past its knees, ending in hands that were just claws, long, black, curved daggers. It stood there, leaning against a birch tree, watching me. It didn't look aggressive. It looked curious. My bladder let go. I didn't even feel it happen. I just felt the warmth spreading down my leg. What are you? I whispered. The thing cocked its head, the movement

was twitchy, unnatural, like a bird. It opened its mouth. It didn't have lips, just a dark, gaping maw filled with needle-like teeth. And then it spoke. It wasn't a voice. It sounded like dry leaves skittering on pavement. A high-pitched wheezing rasp. Ish awake. I dropped the flashlight. The darkness rushed back in. I scrambled backward, falling over the log, landing in the dirt. I frantically groped for the light. My finger brushing against the cold metal cylinder. I grabbed it and swung it back up, empty space. The birch tree was there. The creature was gone. I didn't wait. I didn't pack my tent. I didn't put out the fire. I grabbed my car keys from my pack, clutched my knife in one hand and the flashlight in the

other, and I ran. I ran through the pitch black woods. Branches whipped my face, cutting my cheeks. I tripped over roots, slamming my knees into rocks, getting up and running again before the pain could register. I could hear it. I could hear it pacing me. To my left, then my right. A heavy, wet, thump, thump, of quadrupedal running. It was toying with me. It was hurting me. I scrambled down a ravine, sliding on loose shale, tearing the palms of my hands open. I hit the creek at the bottom and splashed through, the icy water numbing my feet. As I climbed the bank on the other side, I heard a sound that will haunt me until I die. It was a scream, but it sounded like a human trying to scream while drowning.

A gurgling, high-pitched shriek that echoed off the mountains. It was close, right behind me. I didn't look back. I sprinted. My heart felt like it was going to explode. My lungs were burning. I hit the main trail about an hour later. The packed dirt felt like salvation.

I knew the trailhead was two miles south. I put my head down and ran until my legs gave out. When I saw the reflection of my truck's taillights in the flashlight beam, I started crying, loud, ugly, sobbing. I fumbled with the keys dropping them twice. I could hear the rustling in the brush at the edge of the parking lot. Scritch, scratch. I got the door open, threw myself inside, and locked it.

I jammed the key in the ignition and turned it. The engine roared to life. I threw on the high beams. There, standing in the middle of the parking lot, right in front of my bumper, was the rake. It was fully illuminated now. It was worse than I thought. Its eyes were hollow pits. Its rib cage expanded and contracted rapidly.

It raised one of those long, clawed hands and placed it gently on the hood of my truck. It stared at me through the windshield. I saw intelligence in those dead eyes. It wasn't an animal. It was hate. Pure, ancient, hate. It tapped the glass. Tink, tink, tink.

Then it smiled. A wide, impossible grin that stretched too far across its face. I slammed the truck into reverse, tires squealing on the gravel. I spun the wheel, threw it into drive, and floored it. I didn't look in the rearview mirror until I hit the paved road of Route 73. The aftermath. I drove straight to the police station in Keene Valley. I sat in the parking lot for an hour, shaking, trying to compose myself. What was I going to tell them? A monster chased me. They'd lock me up for a psyche valve or drug test. I told them a bear chased me off my sight.

I told them I left my gear. They looked at me with pity, a city boy spooked by nature, and told me to go retrieve it in the morning. I didn't go back. I left a third, thousand dollars worth of ultralight gear in those woods. Whoever finds it can keep it. I drove home. I haven't slept since. But here is the part that scares me the most. Here is why I'm writing this.

Last night I was sitting in my living room, trying to watch TV to drown out the silence. I live on the second floor of an apartment complex. My bedroom window faces the backyard, which borders a small patch of woods. Around 3 a.m., I heard it. It was faint, but distinct. Tink, tink, tink,

against the glass of my bedroom window. I grabbed my handgun and ran into the room flipping the lights on. The window was empty, but there, on the outside of the glass, in the condensation, was a single, long streak, a smear of grayish slime, and three long scratches etched into the glass. It knows where I am. It followed me. I don't know what it wants.

I don't know if locks can stop it. But I know one thing for sure. If you're hiking in the high peaks and the woods go silent, don't wait. Don't look for the source. Just run. Update. It's been three hours since I started typing this. The power just went out in my building.

The hallway lights are dead. I can hear something in the ventilation ducts. It sounds like wet leather sliding on metal. Scritch. Scritch. Scratch. It's inside. God help me.