The Huntsman Lives

Look, I already told you. It was a pretty quiet night, as it always was in the woods. My shift at the tower was going by at a snail's pace and no radio transmissions had come in since the one from my buddy, Rob, which I’d received at the beginning of my shift. “Good luck, kid,” he’d said. “Something seems off in the air tonight. Keep your friends close and your shells closer.”

At the time, I had rolled my eyes and only glanced over at the shotgun in the corner of the room. Rob always gave some ominous message like this at the beginning of almost all my shifts. I blamed his source of paranoia from being an ex-war veteran. “Alright, Rob. Have a good night.” I’d replied with a smirk.

“I hope you do too, kid. And a peaceful one. Look, call me after your shift. Just to help me sleep at night. Gotta make sure the team is safe, y’know.”

He seemed really worried so I tried my best to comfort him. “I gotcha, Rob. I’ll be fine. Gotta start my watch, okay.” I heard the radio fizzle out after his reply and I leaned back in my chair, ready for a pretty easy night.

It was around one thirty-ish and nothing had happened all night. Not even the case of an unattended bonfire or anything like that. I figured that nothing eventful was really going to happen so I took out my Walkman and, keeping one ear open, pressed play. However, it wasn’t that long after when the radio fizzled to life once again.

“H- hello? Hello? Is there anyone there?” A girl’s voice came from within the faint static. “There’s… something or… someone… out here with us. W- we’re bunked out at the cabins. Please. Send someone.” The voice over the radio began to break into tears. “I don’t want to- ” The line went dead.

“Hello? Anyone there?” I yelled into the receiver. Nothing. “Dammit,” I muttered, slamming the receiver onto the desk and grabbing the shotgun from the corner of the room, along with my flashlight from atop the desk. “So much for a quiet night.”

The woods were always a bit eerie, but I feel like that was the reason a lot of people decided to come here in the first place. Self proclaimed “cryptid hunters” weren’t a rare sight, each one claiming that a different monster resided within the nights of the woods. As you’re probably guessing, I’m definitely a skeptic, each one of these stories never having any ounce of truth behind them, no matter how much the desperate theorist rants. Did I think there was some sort of monster in the woods? Hell no! Regardless, I was required to check it out, no matter what I thought. Probably just some punk kids.

I got to the cabin in little less than an hour. The cabins on the grounds of the woods all looked the same, every single one with splintery outer walls and dusty windows that hadn’t been cleaned in years. It was quiet. No sign of people or a supposed monster. I stepped slowly and quietly, the leaves crunching softly under my feet.

I crept towards the front door of the cabin and stood to the side of it, racking the shotgun with a K-CHACK. Slowly pushing the door open, I stepped inside, ready to take a shot at anything that moved. The cabin was ramshackle, torn up, and empty. The few pieces of furniture within were each cleaved into with some sort of a bladed weapon, probably an axe now that I look back on it, and the windows on the left side were shattered, the remains of the glass scattered across the wooden plank floor

“What the hell happened?” I muttered to myself, brushing the broken glass to a far corner of the room with my foot. I looked out the shattered window, spotting the groundskeeper’s booth in the center of the circle of cabins. “Ricky probably saw something,” I muttered again, making my way towards the small booth.

Ricky was the groundskeeper of the campgrounds. Pretty much the eyes and ears of anything and everything that happened on the ground. I knocked on the door. Nothing. I felt a rush of fear. He couldn’t be dead. “Dammit… Ricky, open up!” I kicked down the door a second later. What else was I supposed to do? Sue me!

The inside of the booth was even smaller than the outside. A single clunky monitor sat atop a desk, a brown, faded swivel chair in front of it. A scrap of paper sat next to the computer, filled with Ricky’s untidy handwriting. Out for my break. If you need anything, the password is Sawyer1027. I looked towards the monitor, its screen flickering and requesting a password.

I scrambled over to the keyboard and slammed the password in, which granted me access to the security feed of the campgrounds. I flicked through the different camera feeds from an hour ago, finding nothing. At least not until I reached the camera near the pillaged cabin. The feed was static for a moment, just showing the cabin from the front. I went forwards in time a bit until I reached about thirty minutes before I got there, and that’s when I struck gold.

The front door of the cabin slammed open and out walked a strange, tall figure, an axe clutched in one hand and over their shoulder was… a body? I couldn’t tell from the grainy footage if they were alive and unconscious or dead, their identity masked by black cloth sack on their head. The figure was wearing a mask over their face, a mask which resembled a grizzled old man. Kinda looked like one of those voodoo masks I saw when I went to New Orleans. Or like that shop downtown in the town circle. They also wore a torn up wide brimmed hat, like the ones pilgrims wear.

The damn freak looked at me. Or, more specifically, at the camera, I guess. And I could swear they were grinning under that mask. I can feel those kinds of things, y’know. They looked like they were having a grand old time as they walked out.

“Mr. Morris, why don’t you calm down and tell us the rest of your story.”

“Right, right. Sorry. There’ve been way too many disappearances lately. Anyways…”

I watched the figure walk off screen, and I started flicking through the cameras to try to find where they went. Gone without a trace. It was around that time when I heard something. The crunching of leaves which sounded like it was getting closer and closer to the booth. “Ricky? That you?” No answer.

I grabbed the shotgun from the corner in which I left it, readying it towards the door. “I’m warning you right now… I’m armed,” I growled at whoever was at the door. Nothing again. No crinkling of leaves or the rattling of trying to open the door. I slowly reached for the doorknob, wrenching it open. As the silence suggested, nobody was there. I crept out, looking left and right.

No sooner had I stepped out when I heard the THUNK of a wooden object, felt a blunt pain in my head, and I blacked out. The room around me was strange. I was inside of what looked to be an office building. Desks each with a computer much like the one on Ricky’s met my eyes, these ones each with their screens broken, along with a long table in the center. However, the walls were strange. Unlike an office building, they were made out of logs, kinda like the cabins I was investigating. “Where the hell…” I muttered groggily.

I stood, grabbing onto the wall for support. I felt like I was drunk. A pounding head and echoing noises that weren’t even there. I started shambling over to the long table in the center, trying to get a bearing for my surroundings. That was a mistake. My eyes met a horrifying sight.

Atop the table was a body, a black cloth sack masking their face. The body from the footage. I scrambled over, almost falling over, and ripped off the cloth sack. It was a teenage girl, probably the girl who called on the radio in the first place, with a bloody slash through her head. I scrambled back, definitely more than startled, my hand falling onto a bloodstained axe on the floor. I reached for the radio at my hip. Except there wasn’t a radio. The shotgun and my radio were both missing.

I leaned against the nearest wall. This couldn’t be happening, I thought. It couldn’t. Just then, the door at the front of the room creaked open. Idiot, I thought again. I didn’t check the door. In the doorway was a towering figure, a wide brimmed hat atop their head and a grizzled mask of a crazed old man covering their face. In their hands was the shotgun.

“All you had to do was stay out of it,” the eerie figure growled, their voice low and menacing. “If you’d stayed out of it, you would’ve lived.” They readied the shotgun, eyes through the mask flashing. “But before I make another missing person’s case, answer me one question.”

Now that I think about it, their voice sounded strange. Almost like they were speaking gruffly on purpose or using a voice changer of some sort. “What the hell do you want?”

“What do you know about the cryptid that resides in these here woods?” The question caught me off guard.

“You’re just another one of those crazy monster hunters, aren’t ya…” I muttered. “I’ve seen plenty of your type, but not nearly anyone as insane.”

“ANSWER THE QUESTION,” they barked, gesturing towards me with the shotgun.

“No, I don’t know anything about the Hollowbone Horror. A little old to be believing in monsters, don't ya think?”

“Useless. Just like everyone else in this accursed gas station rest stop hell,” they muttered to themselves, turning for a second to think. I looked down at the axe my hand had fallen onto. I took a deep breath and took my chance.

I leapt towards the masked figure, swinging the wooden handle of the axe at the back of their head, which came in contact with a loud, dull THWACK. They gave a sound grunt of pain and crumpled to the ground, definitely dazed if not unconscious. I swept up the shotgun and kicked open the front door, finding myself in a part of the woods I had never seen before. Lost, but definitely not dead.

“Is there anything more you can tell us? Any other traits of this supposed killer?”

“You don’t believe me.”

“It’s not that we don’t just… there’s not nearly enough evidence. And, like you said yourself, it could just be some crazed fan of cryptids who got a bit too obsessed.”

“Not enough evidence my ass! You have a whole reel of footage showing what I described to you. Not to mention the axe at the scene!”

“I can assure you, there was nothing on the footage we received from the grounds and Miss Wolfe is alive and well. As for the axe, the only fingerprints we found on the axe were yours from when you “scrambled back," and when you used the handle as a weapon."

“B- but I saw her. An axe straight through her skull. That’s what happened. She was dead! SHE WAS DEAD!”

“Sullivan, cut the recorder.”

END OF INTERVIEW