Just an author of horror who’s looking to get something published in the next few years. You can check out my work on DailyPrompt, and TikTok for more horror stories. Hope you all enjoy my work!
The Shadowbrook Woman
“Did you hear that?” Hissed Ivan.
I did my best to ignore him, I was in dire need of sleep and now I was wide awake. I never realized how loud of a snorer Ivan was until this evening. He’d been my best friend since the third grade, and I came to this horrific realization while spending the night with him in a tiny camping tent.
I also realized that I hated camping. I hated the plethora of bugs; I hated the fresh bites all over my arms and legs. I hated this tent for being too small for two grown-ass men. I hated that we brought too little ice and that our beer was warm. I hated cooking shish kabobs over the fire, seeing as the first one was undercooked and the second one was overcooked.
I closed my eyes and threw out a fake snore to drive the point home.
“Dave? Are you awake did you hear that?” Ivan questioned obliviously. He tapped my shoulder like an annoying little brother.
“Ugh…Dude no. I didn’t hear anything,” I growled, frustration pulsating through my veins.
It was Ivan’s idea to go camping in the Shadowbrook Forest. Prior to this, I hadn’t seen him in well over a year, I missed the hell out of him, and I loved him like a brother. But at this exact moment, he was driving me insane, and I was on the verge of either sleeping in my truck or driving home and leaving him in the woods.
“Dude it’s loud as shit, how can you not hear that?”
I rolled over and sneered at him. “Did you ever think that maybe you were woken up by your own loud ass snoring??”
Ivan rolled his eyes. “Oh wow, nice. How mature of you. I know what I heard you jerk.”
“Do you? Because it sounds like I’m sharing a tent with a motorboat.” I snapped, rolling away from him.
“Oh!? Like you’re any better with your excessive moving. How the hell does Katie sleep in the same bed as you?”
“Stop! Shut up! I’m fucking exhausted. Seriously, you’re driving home tomorrow. There’s no way in hell I’m enduring that three-hour drive back to…”
And then I heard it. It was faint, but in the distance, I could hear the sound of a woman choking. The shuddered breaths, the sporadic gasps for air. After a bit of scrutiny, it sounded like she was being…
“Dude, it sounds like a woman’s being strangled,” Ivan whispered.
“Where is it coming from though?” I asked.
Now that I’d heard the sound, I couldn’t unhear it. It wasn’t exactly loud, but it felt as though the rest of the forest had fallen deathly silent.
“Dave, we have to do something,” Ivan said as he unzipped the tent. The flap fell to the floor and a sea of fog washed into our tent.
“Wait hold on. Ivan, we have no idea how many people are out there, and beyond that, we don’t exactly have any weapons to defend ourselves. We need to play this smart.”
Ivan rummaged through his backpack and pulled out a switchblade. His eyes met mine and he gave a reluctant shrug. I reached for the flashlight I’d brought. The thing was just over a foot long and made of pure metal, and beyond that, it was heavy as shit. I gave him a nod and we exited the tent.
The fog outside was thick. When had it become so foggy? When we entered the tent for the evening the sky was beautiful, with an array of stars and a full moon that shone down on us.
All of that was gone, I couldn’t see my truck or the picnic table at our campsite. I could barely make out the surrounding trees.
“Why is it so foggy?” Whispered Ivan.
“I don’t know. Stay close. Be on the lookout,” I replied.
I clicked the flashlight on, the enormous beam shooting out and hitting a wall of fog that reflected into my eyes. I saw a wave of stars that had nothing to do with the sky above. I switched off the flashlight and flipped it around in my hands with the intention of using it as a bludgeoning weapon.
I could hear her as clear as day, those same shuttered gasps as she struggled to pull in air. It was coming from behind us. We made our way around the tent, our shoes crunching over the dry leaves that littered the campsite. The sounds of the woman getting louder and louder.
Why was she the only thing that I could hear? That we could hear? I heard no signs of an attacker, I couldn’t hear the swaying of the trees overhead, or the wildlife that surrounded us, it felt as though Ivan and I were the only ones with the gasping woman…
And then we saw her.
Through the fog, I could see the silhouette of a body hanging from one of the tree’s branches. I could see her outline as she swayed with the wind, listlessly from left to right. I watched with stunned silence as her hair blew to the right, before gently resting on her shoulders. The branch that she hung from creaked and groaned in the silent night, I could hear the tips of her sneakers as they brushed across the earth beneath her.
“What the fuck,” Ivan whispered.
“We have to get her down.”
We made our way through the fog toward her, and then we stopped. I felt my blood run cold; I felt the air exit my body. At that moment I’d wished we’d stayed in our tent. I wish we’d gotten in my truck and gone home. I wished we’d never gone camping.
Dry and brittle black hair covered most of her face, but I could still see what horrified me. Her skin was whiter than the fog that surrounded us, I could see the dead veins that ran along her neck and up her chin. Her eyes bulged so far out from her skull that I thought they’d fall from their sockets. Her mouth was open, and her tongue was out, it went past her neck, swaying lazily across her chest.
“We need to get the fuck out of here,” Ivan said, his voice hoarse.
I could see Ivan turn around for the tent through my peripherals, his hand wrapped around my wrist as he pulled me with him. I was about to turn around, my brain screaming for me to focus on the path back to the tent.
And then I saw her blink.
Her head snapped to the left; her eyes locked onto mine as the branch groaned with feeble protest. I could feel her bulging eyes as they peered into my soul, making every inch of my skin crawl with imaginary maggots. She watched my every move as I backed away from her, and then her mouth curved into a smile.
“Fucking Run!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
I grabbed Ivan’s arm, and we made a mad dash for the tent, running blindly through the fog. I could hear the branch snap from behind me, in the silence of the forest it sounded like a human bone being broken in two.
I heard the woman’s sneakers as they made contact with the dirt, and then I heard her rampant footsteps as she raced toward us. I could hear her chokes and pulls for air, they were louder than ever, she was right behind us.
We ran blindly through the fog, in a direction that I believed would take us back to our tent, back to my truck. But I wasn’t sure, in the fog I wasn’t sure of anything, I only knew that she was chasing us. And then I heard Ivan grunt, and then I heard his scream.
He had tripped over something and since I was holding him, he brought me down with him.
I collapsed to the ground, a flurry of leaves and dirt spinning around us. I grabbed Ivan’s arms to pull him up and then I heard him scream again, but this time it was a scream of pain. His arms tightened around mine, as I felt him being pulled away from me.
My heart began to race, I felt like I was going to throw up, I tried to strengthen my hold around Ivan, but I was losing him. My eyes fell onto his right ankle, and that’s when I saw her tongue. It was gray, devoid of any color or life, wrapped around his ankle like a snake, pulling him away from me.
“Dave, it hurts! It fucking hurts!” Ivan howled into the night.
I watched in horror as she pulled Ivan into the fog, deeper into the woods. I raced after him, unsure of what I was going to do, adrenaline pumping through my veins.
My hands tightened around the flashlight, palms throbbing in pain. I followed Ivan’s screams, and through the fog I could see the silhouette of her dragging my him through the woods. I ran as fast as I could, I ran until my legs burned, until I felt like I was going to collapse. And then I saw them.
Ivan lying on his back screaming at the top of his lungs.
I could see the woman’s tongue still wrapped around his ankle, and dripping from her tongue was Ivan’s blood with chunks of his flesh. Her tongue was eating through his ankle. I made a mad dash for her and swung the butt of the metal flashlight across her jaw.
A sickening crack erupted through the night sky, as the woman toppled off to the side. I slid across the dirt and brought the flashlight down across her skull, repeatedly. The woman howled in pain, as black crimson seeped through her wounds, raining down across the pale skin of her face.
From the corner of my eye, I could see her tongue retract into her mouth. I brought the flashlight down across her skull once more, the contact causing the top of her skull to cave in.
She trembled feebly in a bed of leaves and dirt. A pool of blood formed around her body that came from the damage to her skull. I slowly helped Ivan to his feet, but he couldn’t stand, not with the ravaged right ankle.
“We need to get out of here.” I whispered.
Ivan said nothing, he only nodded.
I didn’t ask about the ankle. I didn’t ask if he could walk. I knew the answer just by looking at him. We made our way blindly through the fog, in the direction that I believed was right, and thankfully I was.
I would peer over my shoulder to see if we were being followed, and we weren’t. When we got back to the campsite we gathered the essentials, pretty much just our wallets and my keys, and headed for my truck.
I quickly helped Ivan into the passenger seat and scanned my surroundings one more time before getting in. I turned the car on, put the truck in drive, and exited the campsite. I looked into the rearview mirror as we were leaving, and through the fog I could see her.
The Shadowbrook Woman.
Melody’s Melody
Last Friday, Melody called me in a frenzy.
She’d insisted that I meet her for coffee because she had to ask me something. I told her I was busy, and I was, I was backed up at work and I was determined to finish as much as I could before the weekend. But she didn’t sound well, her words were short and frantic, and she seemed to be out of breath.
I could hear the stress in her voice. I saw her with frenzied hair, wide eyes that lacked sleep, and a physique that lacked any nutrients. I eventually agreed to meet her at a coffee shop that was at a good halfway point between us.
I arrived on time, but it was clear that Melody had been there for a while. She wore a faded old hoodie that I hadn’t seen her wear in years, she didn’t wear make-up, and she had prominent circles around her eyes.
To her left was an abundance of scrunched-up straw wrappers, to her right was a plethora of chewed-up straws. She was gnawing away at a straw, saliva dripping down her forearm, her eyes looking frantically around the coffee shop. Eventually, our eyes met. I walked over to her and sat down across from her. Cautiously.
“Melody… are you okay?”
She removed the mangled straw from her lips, a thin line of saliva following it to the chewed-up straw pile.
“Rachel…Rachel, I’m so glad you decided to meet me. Thank you for meeting me. Thank you so much,” she whispered.
“Sweetie, are you okay. You don’t look well,” I said calmly.
She laughed and wrapped her arms around her head. She clenched up her left fist and banged it on the table repeatedly.
“Melody. What’s wrong?” I questioned. I scanned around the coffee shop. I was thankful that it was relatively empty, but people were staring.
Melody’s bloodshot eyes met mine. She wiped a dribble of snot from her nose.
“You don’t hear it, do you?”
I narrowed my eyes. I could hear the generic coffee shop music that was playing softly over the speakers but that was it.
“Hear what exactly? That music?” I pointed upwards to the speakers above us.
Melody frantically shook her head. “Rachel that melody.”
“What melody…Melody?” I joked.
Melody reached over to her pile of chewed-up straws with shaky hands, retrieved one, and continued to gnaw away.
“I didn’t think you’d hear it. No one can hear it.”
“Hear what Melody? You’re starting to scare me.”
“Rachel. For the last week, I’ve been hearing a melody. Non-stop. I hear it as I’m going to bed, as I’m at work, as I’m eating as I’m showering. I hear it while I’m asleep. Everywhere. Non-fucking-stop for the past week. Rachel, I’m losing my fucking mind,” she said frantically, her hands jutting out in sporadic motions with certain words.
She was drawing attention. The baristas were looking at us with concern.
I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to ask. I paused and cleared my throat. Flashing a nervous smile at the baristas.
“What kind of melody is it?”
She shrugged and started giggling to herself. “I don’t know! I don’t fucking know. It’s just a melody. It’s like the same few beats over and over again, it’s never too loud, never too quiet. I can’t get it out of my head!”
“Can you replicate it?”
She frantically shook her head.
I shrugged my shoulders. Struggling to find something to say that was comforting. “I mean, is it from a band?”
She frantically shook her head again.
“Have you gone to the doctor? Or an ear specialist?”
“And tell them what Rachel?? That I keep hearing a song that I can’t identify??!” She shouted.
One of the baristas, possibly the manager, came walking around the front counter. I gave a nervous smile and held up both hands, mouthing the words “It’s okay.” He gave me a nervous look, eyes wide from beneath his glasses. He cautiously backed up behind the counter.
“Melody. Umm…What would you like me to do?” I asked.
She shook her head. Tears ran down her cheeks. “There’s nothing you can do. I didn’t think there was anything you could do. This was a mistake. Rachel, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have never called you.”
Melody pushed herself up from the table and ran out of the coffee shop. The little bell on the door went back and forth in a frenzy due to how hard she pushed the door open. I snatched my purse from the floor and followed her.
But I couldn’t find her. I repeatedly tried her cell; I even drove around the area looking for her or her car. Nothing.
I tried calling her for the next couple of days, but I never got a response. I tried her social media pages and still got nothing.
Melody’s mom called me yesterday. I’d only met her a handful of times, with nothing more than a simple hello. But right off the bat, I knew something was wrong. I knew that something bad had happened.
She told me that they’d found Melody’s body in her apartment. The neighbor was the one to inquire about a smell. When she didn’t get a response from Melody, she got concerned and called the authorities. They entered her apartment and found her in the kitchen. There were no signs of forced entry, no signs of self-inflicted harm.
I gave her mom my condolences and asked her to call me if she needed anything. I told her I’d be there for the services.
This morning I woke up, and it wasn’t because of my alarm…
But because of a distant melody.
