Within Shadows Of Oaks: Rewritten

(Authors note: This is a rewrite of my first ever pasta from the creepypasta wiki. I hope you all enjoy!)

There’s lots of rumors going around our town here, rumors that there’s something or someone in the woods, watching, waiting for people to lose themselves in the oaks and pines before they strike. I’ve heard all the stories, sightings of things in the woods that don’t belong, a man with a goat skull, little grey men, and many other supposed “sightings” of creatures that can’t exist. I remember that the rumors started with the disappearance of Ian Kladaki, way back in 1989 when he went on a hiking and camping  trip with his friends, and although they weren’t the first to go missing, this was the first case that people had been found. Everybody has their own different story about what happened, but the most common, and most widely believed parts of the story are as follows.

It happened one Friday in November, when Ian, who was 19 at the time, and his four friends decided to take a hike through the woods and go camping for a bit. Their parents knew of course, but they only expected their children would be gone for about a week or two, but then the days turned to weeks, and then the weeks turned into a month, and then the parents began to worry. Finally, after a while, they started a search party. The police found Ian’s friends first, frantic and traumatized, muttering about things in the trees, and about a man with a goat skull for his head. They were admitted into a mental ward for a couple of months while the police kept searching for Ian, and yet, after a year of searching, the case went cold. They were going to interrogate Ian’s friends, they were going to figure out what happened, but before they could, they received a call from the psychiatric ward; 3 of the 4 had killed themselves, and the fourth clawed out his ears and eyes during an episode, saying he didn’t want to see or hear the screaming faces anymore. 

That was when the rumors started. Something happened to those kids, something that left them completely scarred. Some believed that the kids had just succumbed to the wilderness, but most believed that there really was a figure in the woods with them. Perhaps the most interesting part of this story was the evidence that since November, 1989, missing persons cases related to the forest had skyrocketed, and for every 3-4 that went in, only one or two ever came back out, each one too traumatized to speak. It got so bad that we had to restrict access to the woods until law enforcement learned what was going on, and us park rangers were left to take care of any vandals and intruders. 

We got missing posters, too, in case we saw any of the people who were still missing, although we almost never did. I used to hear the other rangers telling stories of spotting something in the woods, and it always made me chuckle. I used to be a skeptic, I was the kind of person who would always scoff at the mentions of ghosts and cryptids, but seeing one up close, seeing something too twisted and broken to be of this world can change somebody. 

I remember it was a warm summer day in January. The police were overworked, and needed some people to help with the searches, and seeing as how me and some of the other rangers used to be officers before deciding to work as rangers, we were the perfect candidates to help. And so, we devised a plan to try and find some of the missing people. There were ten cabins, each within their own little nooks of the woods, too close to not be seen from one another, but too far to walk. This meant we could have two rangers per cabin, one to search during one day, and one to search the other while their partners rested, that way, if one of the rangers found anything, they could easily get someone to come to their location on radio. We had around 30 people, which meant even with those of us going out to search, we still had people to make sure nobody broke in.  

Personally, I saw this as a win-win situation; the cops could focus on other things, and we all got to hang around in the woods for once instead of just having to keep people out. I remember how I brought my dog, who I had jokingly named Ranger, with me, after somehow successfully convincing the head warden that he could help with the search. Ranger wasn’t a big dog, but he wasn’t small either, and he had white paws that clashed with the rest of his black fur, and a big old pair of soft green eyes.  I remember my partner, Charles Verde, who volunteered for the search, and I remember those four nights in that damned cabin. 

The cabin itself was pretty modestly sized, it had one bedroom with a bunk bed, a bathroom, and a kitchen, and each room had a window so people could see the view outside, and there was a wooden deck in the back that had a small table and a set of wooden stools. There were also two lounging chairs, the kind that stretched out so that you could lay down, and there was a set of stairs that led up to the porch.

The first night was strange, neither I nor Charles could sleep, and something out in the woods was wailing every few seconds. At first, I thought it was some sick animal in the woods, a deer or a sick bird, but the more I listened to it, the more human it sounded, loud and muffled, an almost unnatural sound that echoed through the little wooden cabin. Charles went out to search, but came back after a few minutes, saying he saw nothing. Eventually, the wailing stopped, and finally we were able to get a few hours of rest until morning. 

On the first day the thing made its presence known. Charles was out looking with the others, and I was left to cook breakfast. I wasn’t the best cook, but I was good enough to know how to make a plate of eggs and bacon, so I went to the fridge, grabbed an egg, and cracked it on the pan, that was when I heard it.

That loud, resounding thump coming from the window. At first, I tried to ignore it, I thought it was probably one of the other rangers pulling a prank on me, but then I turned around, and stared at the window as the thumping continued. I stared in horror. It was a severed human hand, jammed into a mess of sticks and rocks, swinging and bumping onto the glass, each time harder than the last. I ran out, desperately turning the corner to the window, only to see nothing. I thought I had imagined it until I noticed something sticking to the window. It looked like blood, but it was dark and gritty. I was about to examine it when suddenly, I saw the smoke, billowing from inside the window. In my hurry, I forgot about the eggs in the pan, and although the cabin was fine, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me the rest of the day.

That night, the wailing was so much louder, as if whatever was causing it was waiting, just outside the cabin. I was able to bear it and fall asleep, and in the morning, I woke to Charles calling for me, just outside the cabin.

someone had vandalized our cabin. It was just above the bedroom window, painted in what looked like fake blood, some of it was even still dripping. I only wish it was a joke, but the crude message read 

“YOU’RE ALL DAMNED”

That was the day I went searching, and while I found almost nothing, I eventually wandered across a dead deer. It was horribly disfigured, its bones were broken and snapped out at odd angles, and its jaw was smashed in on itself. It looked like it had fallen off of the cliff nearby, but it also just looked deliberate. Like it was running from something, and didn’t notice the cliff. When I got back to the cabin just as the sun set, I heard Charles calling out for Ranger. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me he had let Ranger out to do his business, and then the dog just ran off, and he’d been looking for him since. I shrugged it off, Ranger was a loyal dog and he was surprisingly good at finding me when he wanted to, so I just told Charles that he would turn up, and just wait till morning.

That third night was when I knew Ranger  wasn’t coming back. At first I thought it was just that animalistic groaning from the nights before, but then I heard the tearing, the snapping, and the whimpering. 

I wanted to run, I wanted to get away from these woods and go home, but I had a duty to fulfill. Besides, who would believe me? A monster in the pines killed my dog? I couldn’t get out if I wanted to.

I remember that Charles and I went searching on that last day, only to find ourselves lost in the twisted branches and rotted wood coated with mushrooms as the sun set, every step getting us more lost in the wild, untamed land. Eventually we saw it in the distance, the impossibly large human moving through the forest as the last light of the sunset faded, and I can still picture the sight of Charles, running after it, tripping over before the figure dragged him off. I chased after him, I had too. There was no time to alert anyone, I only had myself and the light of a flashlight as I dashed through the gnarled roots and rotted leaves, a thousand wailing faces in the corners of my eye as I turned to face the beast as it mutilated the corpse that had once been Charles Verde. It was large, almost like a bear, and its body was made up of twisted sticks and rocks, I could see bones and gore mixed in with the figures twisted frame, a disconnected pair of rotting, human hands and feet jammed on the awkward frame as it twisted towards me, still holding Charles by the neck. 

I watched in horror as the thing gazed at me, the severed head jammed on the barely humanoid figure moving impossibly. its face was pale and puffy, like someone who drowned, and its mouth was twisted into an impossibly wide smile. I could see maggots and worms, wriggling throughout its rotted, moldy face, and even one crawling out of its empty eye sockets. I recognized the face immediately, despite the damage and rot, it was the face that started this all. The face of the infamous Ian Kladaki. I watched on in horror, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe as the figure moved, its hand grasping onto Charles’ jaw before ripping him open.

I watched it laugh, its mouth gasping with that twisted smile as it pulled out his tongue excitedly, before jamming it into the mess of sticks in its mouth. Its rotten teeth stretched impossibly far apart as maggots and viscera dripped from its jaws.

It dropped the corpse before suddenly lunging at me, its joints cracking and snapping unnaturally as it lunged, bits of human parts falling from its gross, rotted frame.

I can’t even imagine how lucky I was to make it back to the cabin, to make it through the night as the thing pounded on the doors and windows, shrieking with its rotted throat until the sun rose.

I was transferred to another cabin after that, apparently I wasn’t the only one to lose their searching partner in the last few days. I remember that last day when I was entering that creaking, old cabin only to see a limp, hanging body in the bedroom, a note waiting by the window. It was a crude piece of notebook paper, hurriedly torn from the rest and covered in a scribbled humanoid shape, its head was white and its sockets were dark. 

Below the drawing were the words I still remember to this day.

”I found them.

I found ALL of them.”

I didn’t care about duties after that. I got the hell out of there and moved out to the city. I can’t even look at any groups of trees without seeing that rotted, twisted face in the back of my mind. I know that people still go missing, I know that they’re still searching. I used to worry for the people who were never found. now, I don’t worry about how long it would take until someone would find those who went missing in the forest, now I worry about how long it takes until the missing and damned find those who dare search for them.