It began with whispers in the woods.
Eli had chosen the secluded life, retreating to the edge of the forest to escape the chaos of the city. His cabin, a simple structure of weathered wood and warm hearths, was a sanctuary. The towering pines that surrounded it swayed like silent sentinels, their needles hushing the world beyond.
But something in the forest was stirring.
One cold November evening, as Eli sat by the fire with a book in hand, he heard it—a faint rustling from the woods. It was rhythmic, deliberate, far too calculated to be the wind or an animal. He rose, peering out the window, but saw nothing but shadow and moonlight.
The sound came again the following night, closer this time. The rustling was accompanied by an almost imperceptible murmur, as if the forest itself were trying to speak.
By the third night, the noise had escalated into scratching. Long, deliberate strokes against the walls of his cabin.
Eli, heart pounding, grabbed the shotgun he kept by the door and ventured outside. The air was crisp, and the forest was unnervingly still. He swept the beam of his flashlight across the trees, but they revealed nothing.
"Who's there?" he called, his voice swallowed by the darkness.
Silence answered him. Then, faintly, a whisper:
"Eli…"
His blood turned to ice.
The days passed in uneasy tension. Eli found no tracks, no signs of trespassers, but the sounds persisted. Each night, they grew louder, more intrusive—scratches, whispers, knocks that echoed through the cabin. He began locking the doors, closing the shutters, and sleeping with his shotgun within arm's reach.
Then, one night, there was a knock at the door.
It was a soft, measured tap—almost polite.
Eli froze, gripping the shotgun so tightly his knuckles turned white. He approached the door, his breath hitching in his throat.
"Who is it?"
A voice answered, one that made his knees buckle.
"It's me, Eli. Open the door."
It was his mother's voice.
His mother had been dead for ten years.
Eli backed away, his heart hammering against his ribs. The voice came again, insistent.
"Eli, please. Let me in. It's so cold out here."
"No," he whispered, shaking his head. "You're not her."
The voice changed. It became his own.
"Eli, open the door. You can't hide forever."
The following morning, Eli found claw marks gouged deep into the wooden door. He spent the day reinforcing the cabin, nailing planks over the windows, setting traps around the perimeter, and praying to gods he hadn't thought of in years.
That night, the knocking returned, more forceful now. It moved from door to window, a relentless barrage of sound.
"Let me in!" the voices demanded. They shifted and blended—his mother, his father, his childhood friend, all long dead.
Eli huddled in the center of the cabin, trembling. Then came the scratching again, slow and deliberate, carving words into the wood.
He lit a lantern and approached the wall. In jagged letters, the words read:
"I AM HERE."
Eli tried to leave the cabin the next morning, but the forest seemed different, unfamiliar. Paths he had walked a hundred times now looped back to the cabin, no matter how far he went. The trees seemed to shift when he wasn't looking, their branches closing in.
By the time night fell, he was back where he started, trapped.
That evening, he heard a new sound.
Footsteps.
Heavy, deliberate, circling the cabin. Something large was walking just beyond the walls, and its shadow occasionally passed by the windows. Eli's breath caught as he realized it wasn't walking on two legs—it was crawling, dragging itself unnaturally.
"Eli…" the voice whispered, now coming from all sides. "Let me in. I just want to talk."
The footsteps stopped, and for a moment, there was silence. Then came the laugh—a low, guttural sound that didn't belong to anything human.
The final night was the worst.
Eli awoke to find his bedroom door ajar. He knew he had locked it. From the hallway, he heard the faint creak of footsteps, growing closer.
He gripped the shotgun, his heart pounding, and aimed it at the doorway.
"Stay back!" he shouted.
A shadow appeared in the doorway. At first, it looked human, but as it stepped into the dim light of his lantern, Eli's grip faltered.
It was him.
Or rather, it wore his face.
The creature smiled, its lips stretching too far, revealing rows of jagged teeth. Its eyes were black voids, and its skin rippled unnaturally, as if something underneath were trying to break free.
"You can't run," it said in his voice.
Eli fired, the shotgun blast deafening in the small room. The creature staggered but didn't fall. Instead, it grinned wider, tilting its head.
"You can't kill what you created."
It lunged, faster than anything Eli had ever seen, and the last thing he felt was the cold grip of its hands.
In the weeks that followed, the townsfolk began noticing strange behavior in Eli.
He was seen wandering the streets at odd hours, his movements stiff and unnatural. When people tried to talk to him, his responses were hollow, his once-warm smile now a lifeless stretch of lips.
Then, one day, he vanished entirely.
The cabin remains, but no one dares to enter. At night, the townsfolk claim they can hear the whispers, growing louder, calling for someone new.