My name is Andy. Er, well, was Andy. Now I’m just an old newspaper clipping yellowing with age in a Cold Case file somewhere. Not that it was always like that. I used to be a kid, a teenager, like anyone else. I don’t think you’d believe my story if you heard it, but what should I care anymore?

I always loved the outdoors. Loved as in I’d stay out past midnight, wandering the woods out back. My parents told me not to go too far, not past the bridge, which they assumed to have been built around fifty years before we moved there... I’d go to the ravine, and stare across to the other side. I’d heard campers went there, and stayed out of trouble or harm’s way. So I never really understood why my parents didn’t want me crossing the bridge. Of course, like all these stories start out, I did. How stupid of me to wait until evening to do it, but I was armed with a flashlight and backpack with a few energy bars and water bottles.

The bridge was... less than sturdy. It took a lot of energy just to stay upright along those fifty-year-old boards. They creaked and cracked, and one snapped under my weight, but I managed to get to the other side, and took off through the woods. It was like... freedom. Like I’d breached the walls of my prison and found everything I’d been missing out on.

They seemed to be the same trees. Nothing especially different about them. I just didn’t expect to run into someone else so late at night. When my flashlight caught the glow of a pair of eyes I had to stop, curiosity and a bit of fear fueling my first stupid decision. An old man. He carried a rake, with rusted metal teeth, and looked as if he’d just crawled from a grave. He just smiled at me, creepily. His teeth were yellow and some were missing, and one even had a dark hole in it. “Ought not be here.” He hissed, in a voice that was reminiscent of a very heavy smoker. “Bad place to come. At night, ‘n all. Don’t turn around.”

With that... threat... he disregarded his own advice and turned his back to me, crawling away through an especially dark area between a series of overgrown bushes. A blade of ice was sliding down my spine, making the hair stand up on my arms. Don’t turn around? Why not? Of course I did with this bit of advice what I had with my parents’ warnings, and turned, slowly, with gritted teeth. My heart leapt in my chest at---

---Nothing.

Nothing was there. I sighed in relief, blaming my nerves at the way I reacted at the creepy grave-robber type forest-man. I turned to continue on, and found the trees had... changed. They’d spread out, and within the trees, hanging from the limbs, giant cocoons. The thread looked to be made of fishing wire and rope, but didn’t hide the half-decayed and skeletal remains of humans within, falling apart. I gasped, not realizing where I was going when I stumbled back and ran into another tree, shuddering a lower limb that seemed to have impaled another unfortunate soul. Its skull was staring eyelessly at me, a permanent toothy smile forced through the light crowning of ivy and muscle and sinew.

I went forward, abandoning my poor backpack for its own destiny and tried to remember which way I’d come. But the place seemed... rearranged. I busted through what I assumed were the same bushes as that old man had gone through to leave the scene behind, taking off with my flashlight waving wildly in my hand, forcing the shadows to jump and plant a seed of paranoia in the back of my mind. I found it almost lucky that through the trees I could see fire, a small thing, with a few actually living shadows around it, sitting on coolers, their voices obvious.

“Hey!” My voice was oddly... muted, but there, as though it didn’t really have an echo, which was impossible. Nonetheless, it got the attention of the group around the fire. I saw them still, look around. “Hey, get outta here! There’s some crazy shi---”

I skidded to a stop just as I managed to get into seeing range. They looked... off. They weren’t dressed warmly, and it was pretty cool even around the fire. Their eyes actually glowed with the fire, something like a cat’s would do in a semi-lit area. Their arms and legs... too long and thin. And they were way too still. Though no one’s ever run at me from the dark of the woods before, I’d assume I’d react with confusion, questions, at least to stand and defend myself in case they were crazy. But nothing.

Then they stood.

It was immediate. One, it looked like a man, older than me, lunged forward and grabbed my jacket. I gasped, struggled back, ripping my arm away and flying past one of the girls, who leapt for me with a gurgling screech. At that point my lungs were burning with cold air and my jacket sleeve was wet, but I didn’t want to see what had been transferred from the shadowy figure to me. Bushes and weeds were being trampled behind me, and I didn’t dare look back. Until, of course, I reached some kind of cliff. It was a long way down, anyway, and I managed to skid to a halt just in time, grabbing onto the low branch of a dead tree to my left.

Panting, shivering, afraid, my thoughts raced. I was paralyzed for a moment. When I forced myself to look back, I was jerked to the side and thrown into the tree that had saved me, but before I could tell what was happening, I was pinned there by a pitchfork at my neck. The old man had returned with his rake traded off, and when he got close to me, I almost gagged at his rotting breath. “Told ‘ye not to look back.” He breathed.

My legs gave out. The pitchfork’s prongs caught me under the chin, but I knew what he was talking about. When I turned back to look at my home, the bridge I’d just come from, I should have just left. I should have left. I should have gone home.

The shadowy forms of my pursuers hung from the trees like hairless monkeys, screeching in laughter at me.

…

I don’t... remember much more than the pain of the pitchfork stabbing through my stomach. I’d been lifted that way, carried back to the clearing of human cocoons.

Now I can see all the others. All the others stupid enough not to take the advice of the dead man.