My job allows me to work from home online, so I didn’t have to live so close to the hustle and bustle of the city where my office was. If I was gonna be home all day I would rather hear the music of nature and not the screeching of semi trucks and blasting of car horns. I was lucky enough to find a perfect house after just a few days of searching.

The sounds of nature are some of the most beautiful things you can experience in life. Just being able to stick your head out of a door or window and getting to hear a chorus of mother natures children sing is just amazing. So when I was looking for my first house that was one of my number one priorities.

Be near the woods.

My job allows me to work from home online, so I didn’t have to live so close to the hustle and bustle of the city where my office was. If I was gonna be home all day I would rather hear the music of nature and not the screeching of semi trucks and blasting of car horns. I was lucky enough to find a perfect house after just a few days of searching.

It was tucked away off a side road heading out of the city limits. Good space between the house and trees so I didn’t have to worry about any falling debris during storms and the only man made noise I would hear is the sound of the amazon driver pulling up my driveway.

After a few months of living there I started my own after work routine. Log off for the day, pour myself a drink, grab a book and sit outside on the back porch. I don’t think I ever fully finished a book out there cause I would just get enveloped by the sounds that surrounded me. I guess that’s why I was able to notice it all so quickly, why I noticed when the woods got quiet.

It was a normal Thursday evening. I had just finished typing up my last email and shut the monitor off. I poured myself a glass of wine and grabbed my book off the kitchen table. I think it was some biography but I can’t really remember. Not like it really mattered because I didn’t even open the book that night. I sat down in my chair and just sat there looking up at the trees.

The sun was setting and you could hear the woods start to wake up for the night. The sounds of birds getting into they nest, crickets testing they wings as they prepared for the evenings songs, the nocturnal creatures just waking up and greeting each other as they got themselves ready for the day. Just as I picked up my book and the sun went fully down-

Silence

I cocked my head a bit as I listened closely. It was dead silent. Not even the wind could fill the vacuum that was left in the air by the lack of noise. I just kinda sat there looking out into the woods, waiting to hear the noises start back up. But it never did, the night stayed silent. So I picked up my book and drink and heading back inside. I didn’t really know what to think about it but I assumed it was just a “one night thing” and that tomorrow would be normal. It wasn’t.

In fact that’s how the rest of the nights were, quiet. During the day business continued like normal in the woods. Birds chirped, squirrels did squirrel things and bees buzzed. But once the sun went down, it all went silent. After a week or two I got used to it. Sure I was upset about my personal nature orchestra shutting down but what was I gonna do? I would just have to learn how to read in silence. At least that’s what I thought.

It was about 3 weeks after the silence. I finished my work and went outside. I didn’t take in nature anymore, I just went straight to reading. I guess that’s why it took a bit for me to hear the dragging. It was distant but close enough to be known. Just a low dragging sound. If you had ever pulled a box that was too heavy out of a room across carpet you can get a guess of what it sounded like. But it wasn’t constant, it took breaks. Very long breaks. For every 10 seconds of dragging, there was 20 minutes of silence. It went on like that for the whole night until the sun rose, then I would be met with the sounds of birds. The first few nights it was easy to sleep through. But when it started to thud is when I started to get worried.

The first time I heard the thud I was genuinely scared. I had zoned the dragging out and was just interrupted by a loud-

THUD

It sounded close, in fact even the dragging sounded closer. If you have ever stood in the woods you can tell how hard it is to definitively tell which way a sound is coming. So while I assumed the sound was coming from behind my house it could have very well been the front that it was from. I just sat in my chair and listened to it.

Drag, THUD, Silence, Drag, THUD, Silence

I’m not sure really what I thought it was. I never heard any of the trees rustle while it went on so I guess I never thought I was in danger. I wish I could have told myself how naive I was being. But I later realized how much danger I was in when it started to scream.

It had been about two days after the thuds. Those were definitely harder to zone out then the dragging because they started to become more random. During the silence I would just be met with thuds until it went quiet again but then the dragging would start back up. It also started to get so loud I resorted to sitting inside after work. But one night after the sun set and the silence started, there was no dragging or thuds. Just a loud scream. I’m not sure what I could even compare it too. Maybe like a child’s scream but it was mixed with an animals. It caught me so off guard when I heard it that I thought I was imagining it. But no, it was constant. No random times or timed out spaces, it was always screaming. Even when the dragging and thuds happened it was still screaming.

I didn’t sleep that night, I just sat on the couch and listened to it. I called off that day to try and figure out what I was doing. Was I just gonna sit here and be tormented by something in the woods every night? I knew I had to do something but after I sat back down on the couch I never got the chance.

My eyes had closed and by the time I opened them the sun was already setting. I didn’t even have time to fully wake up when I noticed. I slowly sat up from the couch and looked out my back window and listened. It was silent again but there was no dragging, thuds or screams. I got up and went to the back door, looking out the window of it as my hand was on the door knob. I’m always glad I never actually opened it cause I’m not sure I could be writing this if I did.

There by the tree line behind my house, was it. The thing that had been making all the sounds. The thing that made my woods go quiet. I don’t really have words for “what” it was. It looked human but it wasn’t. It had slightly animal like features but it also didn’t. It was just a large thing, covered in the shadows of the trees. Only reason I could see it was because of its eyes. Deep yellow eyes staring at my house, staring at my door, staring at me.

I watched as it slowly raised its arm. Its arm had to have been 5 feet long cause it just keep raising and raising. I watched as it brought it down to the ground, making a loud thud sound. I watched it dragged itself forward. Then I watched it open its mouth and scream.

That was all I needed to shake me out of what ever trance I was in. I grabbed my keys, ran out the front door, got in my car and drove so fast out of my driveway I could see the dirt behind me kick up from my wheels. That was the last time I was in that house at night.

I asked a friend who lived not far if I could stay with them for a bit while I figured some stuff out with my house. I explained to them almost everything that had happened minus the eldritch horror I had seen the night before. I went back in the morning and picked up some of my things. I did, like an idiot, look out the back window. The thing wasn’t there but I could see in the grass long indents and deep hand marks. It got real close after I left and I knew I couldn’t risk being here when it did.

Iv been with my friend for about two months since that night. I’m in the middle of selling the old house right now and I drive past it everynow and then when I run into the city for stuff. It breaks my heart a little that my own little forest hide away was taken from me but I have to move on, especially now. I was lucky enough that my friends house is by the woods as well and while we were sitting out they the other night talking about life, I could have sworn I heard the crickets stop singing and the woods go quiet.