Encounter With Urban Legend- Nighttime Stories

When Amanda Haynes decided to share her spine-chilling encounters in the Cascade Mountains, she took us on a gripping journey that blurred the lines between myth and reality. As we gathered in the eerie setting of an abandoned warehouse, Amanda's initial reluctance unfolded into a tale that gripped us with its intensity. Each chapter of her story, from the discovery of an abandoned cabin to the unsettling presence of mysterious entities, paints a vivid picture of isolation and survival against the unknown. Amanda, alongside her friend Rachel, navigates through fear and mistrust, highlighting the struggle between skepticism and belief in the supernatural.As the narrative unfolds, the atmosphere thickens with tension, especially when Amanda recounts the terrifying encounter with the callous man. This monstrous entity, with its grotesque features and haunting presence, becomes the catalyst for a heart-stopping chase through the rain-soaked forest. The emotional turmoil Amanda experiences, driven by guilt and the desperate need to protect her friend, offers a human element to this otherworldly confrontation. The story not only captures the harrowing moments of the chase but also delves into themes of courage and the unshakeable resolve to confront such enigmatic creatures.With every revelation, the stakes rise, culminating in a confrontation that tests the limits of courage and survival. As Amanda and I prepare to face the callous man, the narrative shifts into a battle of wills against cosmic forces. The impending arrival of eldritch abominations looms as a dark shadow over humanity, urging listeners to brace themselves for the unknown. This episode stands as a testament to the power of storytelling, where supernatural encounters are more than just legends—they are reminders of the mysteries that lurk beyond our understanding. Join us in this chilling exploration where every moment is charged with fear, suspense, and the relentless pursuit of truth.


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Welcome to another episode of the Nighttime Scary Tales Podcast, where we explore the dark side of storytelling. Tonight, prepare for spine-chilling tales featuring original horror stories, eerie supernatural encounters, and real-life crime that reveals the darker aspects of human nature. Each story is designed to keep you on the edge of your seat long after it ends. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Share your most chilling moments by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. More haunting stories are coming, so keep your lights on and your doors locked. Sweet dreams… if you can find them!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
I sit down, pop a piece of spearman gum and
watch the woman across from me. She's nervous, her hands
are fretting in her lap, and her eyes are bloodshot
long night, I ask. She looks up timidly. Her face
is a wash in anxiety. She doesn't understand what's going on.
She doesn't understand what she's doing here, sitting inside an

(00:33):
abandoned warehouse with a grizzled ass whole twice a rage.
It's fine. I've seen it before, look, I say, loosening
the tie around my neck. It's just like I said.
I only want to ask you a few questions, then
you can go. Why here, she says, in a small voice,

(00:54):
This looks like the kind of place you'd take me to.
I don't know, murder me. I crack a smile. She
isn't wrong. You don't like it. It's private. Besides that,
it's probably the safest place in the world for you.
Why do you have snipers on the rafters? There's sarcasm

(01:16):
in her voice, but her eyes still flick to the
dimly lit steel walkways lining the walls. She pulls her
sweater tighter around her, shivering at the draft or is
this some secret government fortress? No, and no. I lean
back in the wooden chair and it groans under my weight.

(01:37):
I'm not as slim as I used to be. It's
much simpler. I say this warehouse is the safest place
for you, because I'm inside of it. It's not a lie,
at least not entirely. Still, she gives me an incredulous look.
It's the sort of look one reserves for blowhards and narcissists,

(01:58):
and I probably deserve it. Time to change gears. Tell
me about the event. She studies me for several moments,
and then shakes her head. On second thought, she says,
picking up her purse, I think I'd prefer talking to
the police. She stands up, makes to leave, and I

(02:19):
don't stop her. Her footfalls echo across the empty warehouse,
the haphazard lighting casting her shadow in every direction. I
hear her mutter something beneath her breath, but I can't
make out the words. I probably don't want to. Then
she stops. They always do. What's an event? She asks quietly.

(02:43):
I click my pen and reach down from my clipboard
with a groan. My last job really did a number
on my ribs. An event, I explain, is a paranormal
phenomenon most commonly characterized by contact with a sentient entity.
To use more common turn of phrase, it means you
stumbled across an urban legend, she swallows. At this distance,

(03:07):
I can just barely make out her expression, but I
already know I have her. I bring my pen to
my clipboard and clear my throat. You said your name
was Amanda Haynes. Correct. Yes, I scribble it down on
my form and the event occurred two nights ago, just
outside city limits in the Cascade Mountains. Her sneakers patter

(03:31):
across the concrete floor. As she returns to her chair.
Her expression shifts. Gone is the nervous shyness, the small posture,
and the darting eyes. She's staring at me. Now she's
deciding whether she's in or out. Yes, she says at length.
It was in the woods we were camping. I check

(03:53):
three more boxes on my clipboard. Stupendous so far the
location matches up with pre yes sightings of the beast.
I sigh, resting the clipboard on my lap and placed
my pen on top of it. Why don't we start
from the top before we do, she says, narrowing her eyes.
How do I know I can trust you? This feels

(04:16):
so bizarre, I offer dramatic, like I'm in an episode
of The X Files. Fair point, you've seen my badge?
That just can be faked. I bring a hand in
my face, tracing along deep scars. How about these? You
don't get these working for television. She's quiet, skeptical, and

(04:38):
her eyes drift down to the clipboard on my lap.
She's analyzing it, determining if it's real government form or not.
All things I've seen before she wants to believe, determining
if it's a real government form or not. All things
I've seen before. She wants to believe, but she isn't
ready yet. Let me ask you this, I say, handing

(05:03):
her the clipboard. She begins looking it over. When you
told the search and rescue team a monster attacked you?
Did they believe you? Her eyes met mine, and I
see it the surrender. She knows as well as I
do that I'm her only shot. What she doesn't know
is she's my only shot too. I've been looking for

(05:23):
this legend for close to forty years now. One might
say it's been my life's work. I see your point,
she concedes, let's get this over with. She passes the
clipboard back to me, and I clicked my pen, bringing
it to the box labeled encounter. All right, you said
that you were camping. Who is with you? Just Rachel?

(05:47):
She says, Her eyes are filled with something guilt. Maybe
we've been friends since elementary school. We hike together pretty often, ah,
I say, noting her name on my clipboard. Rachel tully
correct The victim, Amanda nods. We went up to get
a break from the doldrums of city life. Rachel just

(06:10):
got out of a pretty serious relationship, and I didn't
want her cooped up in that apartment, stuck with all
those memories. Her voice cracks, the emotion spills into her words.
I suggested we take the weekend and go for a
hike into the cascades. There's an old trail we spotted
the last time we were up there, just off the
main path. I said we could follow that see where

(06:33):
it leads us. She brings a sleeve to her face,
wiping at forming tears. Rachel didn't want to, she said,
she was too depressed to shop for groceries, much less
go on such a big hike. I convinced her eventually, though,
I say quietly, how long was the hike? I don't

(06:55):
know it was really it was a really old trail,
overgrown in parts. There weren't any mile markings. Ballpark it
eight miles maybe. We left early that morning, and it
took us seven hours to get up there. I whistle,
scratching up my gut. That's quite the walk. It's not

(07:16):
that bad. Honestly, we'd both no longer hikes on harder trails.
We actually didn't go as far as we intended. Why
is that? We came across an old cabin. It was
run down with shattered windows, and it looked like it
hadn't been lived in for decades. My heart pounds in
my chest. I swallowed the excitement before it has a

(07:36):
chance to leak into my voice. I'd gone looking for
that cabin a hundred times. It was never there a cabin.
She nods, her eyes leave mine. They're gazing off at
some distant point on the ground. Transfixed, she's replaying the memory.
We figured it must have been an old ranger cabin,
which would explain the overgrown trail that led us there.

(08:00):
She pauses, her mouth hanging open words struggling to break free.
Rachel suggests, instead of using our tents, we could just
stay inside of it. I remind her the windows are
busted and it's the middle of November. Plus it's probably
filled with spiders. She says, all the better, let's set
up our tents inside the cabin, double the protection. I

(08:24):
made a nose on her bottom lip, her voice growing
smaller and smaller with each passing sentence. There's dark clouds
above us. It was supposed to rain, but it looks
worse than that, now a lot worse. It looks like
a storm's coming. So I agree, and we head inside
to check the place out. What did it look like

(08:45):
on the inside, I asked quietly. It looks like a nest.
We spend some time walking around it. It isn't very big.
There's only a handful of rooms, but there's branches and
leaves all over the floor. Every step we take there's
a snap of a twig. The entrance leads through a

(09:07):
small kitchen alcove with a wooden stove and a dining table.
Past that, it opens up to a living area with
some rotting chairs, and at the very end there is
a bedroom filled with splinters from a broken bedframe. The
place is a mess. The layout sounds familiar. I can
almost smell the cedar and feel the toasty warmth of

(09:29):
the wood stove burning during cold December evenings. I check
out the bedroom first, she says. I spot a couple
of shattered picture frames. Call it the millennial blogger in me,
or call it dumb curiosity, but I'm drawn to them.
One is old, yellowed and faded. It looks like it

(09:49):
could be from the thirties. It's a picture of a
young man and woman dressed to the nines, probably their
wedding day. She smacks her lips and then looks up
at Do you have anything to drink? I nod, of course.
I reach down and unclasp my briefcase, opening it up
to reveal three of flurry of documents and three water bottles,

(10:13):
two filled with water, one filled with a black grime.
I grab the two filled with water, crack them both,
and pass one to her. We both take a sip. Thanks,
she says, wiping her lips. All this talking workscept a thirst.
Not surprised so far. It's an interesting account. I'd like
to hear more. She nods. The other picture is more recent.

(10:38):
I mean, still old, but not ancient. She laughs, but
it's a nervous, self conscious laugh. It's a photo of
an older guy and a young kid with this mess
of black hair. The two of them are standing outside
the cabin holding rifles. Interesting. Yeah, I figure it's probably

(10:58):
the ranger that lived there back when the cabin was operational.
Before I can check out anything else, though, I hear
a snap. It sounds like wood cracking in half, and
then a crash. I dropped the picture frame and Rachel
starts screaming from the other room, screaming. I lean forward.
My pen's scratching at the clipboard. It feels too early

(11:20):
for the callous man to appear. Certain criteria haven't been met. Still,
if the work of my late colleagues has taught me anything,
it's that legends can evolve. I keep an open mind.
Amanda nods. Yeah, she's screaming, bloody murder. I storm in
there my bear Mason hand, expecting to see a wolf

(11:41):
or cougar or bear. But I don't see crap. I
don't even see Rachel. I'll call out to her and
she calls back, but she's whimpering. The sound is coming
from the pantry just outside the kitchen alcove. I look
into it, but I don't see her there. I jog
over and wondering what the hell is going on when
I catch sight of the floorboards inside of it. They're busted, splintered,

(12:05):
and shattered. There's a dark hole in the ground, one
big enough for a man to fit through. I almost
have a heart attack when her arm reaches out of
the blackness. Amanda closes her eyes, takes a deep breath.
She shouts at me to get her out of there.
I tell her to give me a second, and I
take my jacket off and put it over the jutting

(12:26):
pieces of broken floorboards because I don't want her getting
impaled on the things. And then I reach down and
pull her up. She's bawling her eyes out, hyperventilating, and
once she's firmly out of the pit, she's pointing to
her foot. I ask her if she's hurt, and she
tells me she thinks she twisted her ankle. Pieces of

(12:47):
Amanda's event are beginning to connect in my mind. The
twisted ankle, the panicked friend. They're all familiar ingredients, and
the end dish is anything but delicious. She keeps talking.
Rachel says, we need to get help right now, and
I'm a little thrown off by her panic. I mean,
it's a twisted ankle, not a death sentence. Right still,

(13:09):
I pull out my phone and check for service. Predictably,
there isn't any. I ask Rachel for hers, and she
can hardly speak. She's still pointing, but this time it
isn't at her foot. It's at the hole in the
cabin floor. She keeps wondering about dead things, over and over,
dead things, dead things, dead things. I'm wondering if I

(13:29):
just became a party to my best friend having a
psychotic break. But I gave her the benefit of the
doubt and check out the hole. It's dark enough that
I can't see the bottom, so I flick on my
phone's light. Her fingers play at the tips of her hair,
tugging at it. It takes me a bit for my
eyes to adjust, but once they do, my blood goes cold.

(13:51):
There's bones littering the ground, dear bones, rabbit bones. Then there,
at the edge of my vision, I catch sight of it,
human skull. I'm swearing up a storm, and my imagination's
going haywire. Rachel's hysterical, and I'm feeding into it, both
of us repeating the same words, what the hell like?
It's a personal mantra. Amanda takes a breath, holding it

(14:16):
for a few moments. There's goosebumps on her arms. Even
reciting the account is beginning to work her up. She exhales.
Then I remember I'm not living inside of a horror movie.
I remember what I thought Rachel was screaming about in
the first place. I tell her to relax that it's
probably just a mountain lion or grizzlies dumping ground in

(14:38):
the basement. I ask, sorry, she says hastily. I probably
should have mentioned it earlier. But the cabins raised off
the ground on these wooden stilts where I'm at. It
helps things avoid getting trapped beneath the snow. There's a
crawl space beneath it. I figure an animal was probably
using the crawl space as some sort of shelter. I

(15:00):
check a box on my form. The story matches up
so far. At least the cabin is identical to the
one of my memories. The question is, did she really
encounter the callous man or some rabbit wolf. A human
skull is a promising detail. But it's not like predators
don't occasionally snack on hikers, A logical conclusion to draw.

(15:22):
I say, does it calm your friend down? Yeah, Amanda
says with a nod. Rachel starts to breathe a little slower.
She relaxes a little. Eventually she's ready to try standing,
and she can, but just barely. She limps over to
a dusty wooden chair near the fireplace and sits down
in it. Permising, She tells me she doesn't think she

(15:44):
can make it back down the mountain. There's a crack
of thunder in the distance. I walk over to the
windows and see the sun turning of blood red setting
over the tree line. Storm clouds are rolling in. Rain
starts pitter pattering on the cabin roof. Rachel's groaning and pain,
and she shows me her phone. It doesn't have service either.

(16:06):
You weren't picked up by a search and rescue team,
weren't you? Yes? How's that if you had no way
of contacting them, you weren't gone longer than anticipated? Amanda
sighe I was just about to get to that. Actually,
there's an undercurrent of annoyance in her tone. She clearly
doesn't care for interruptions. Once she gets going, I lean

(16:27):
back in my chair. All the better for me, Like
I said, Rachel and I go on these sort of
hikes pretty often, me more than her, but still I
come prepared, all weather clothing, bear, mace, flint, and steel,
you name it, I got it. I don't cut corners,
so I made sure to pack my GPS locator beacon.

(16:48):
It sends a one way to stress signal, Ah, I say,
noting it in the report a survivalist. The fire in
her eyes falters as she pauses. A moment of silence
stretches between us, and when she starts talking again, her
voice cracks. Not as much of a survivalist as I
should have been. Rachel wants me to use it, but

(17:10):
I tell her, no Ah, hear me out. Amanda's eyes
connect with mine, and there's a pleading expression on her face,
a desperation to be understood. Rachel wasn't in any immediate danger,
not then, neither of us were. Plus a storm was
rolling in and it looked like a big one. She

(17:31):
takes a shuddering breath. I know the look. Memories are
clawing on her mind. My father was a search and
rescue technician. He was killed trying to rescue a couple
of teenagers who got themselves trapped in a cave. Ah.
There it is the tragic backstory. I was wondering why

(17:53):
it'd squirm its way out of her mouth. Somehow, all
the human stupidity in the world can be traced back
to our emotions overriding our wilder survive. I scratch her
reasoning down on the clipboard. I didn't want anybody risking
their lives when we had food, shelter and weren't in danger.
I told her, no, no way. I couldn't have that

(18:13):
blood on my hands if something went wrong, and she
trails off and Rachel understood a Manda gets quiet. She's
staring at me, and there's some look I've seen a
thousand times before. I want to roll my eyes. I
want to spit in her face for being such a
naive idealist, but I hold it down Instead. I plaster

(18:36):
her an understanding smile on my lips and nod my
head sagely, you made the right choice. It was the
only choice you could have made, knowing what you knew.
In that moment, it works, She perks up. Yeah, I
suppose so. The two of you decide to stay in
the cabin, then you're not worried about the bear or

(18:56):
cougar using it as a snack bar might swing by.
At that point, we don't really have another choice. I'm
the outdoorsy type. I've seen storms, and I know that
the one coming our way is going to be a
big one. We decide the cabin's our best bet, but
we take precautions. I keep my bear mace close by,
and we close all the doors. A cougar isn't going

(19:17):
to open a door, and a bear might break it down,
but only if it feels it needs to. It's far
more likely to wander into the crawl space safely away
from us. Sure makes sense. I decide to put an
extra layer between us and the front door, though, just
in case. I clear out the bust of bed frame
and sweep the splinters from the bedroom floor. Then I

(19:39):
get to work. Sitting up with a ten her voice dies.
Memories are calling to her again, difficult memories. What happened?
I ask, the hairs on my arms rising, did you
see something? She nods, yes. Animals were running through the
clearing outside of the window. They were running past the

(20:01):
cabin deers, rabbits. Then a whole flock of birds burst
through the tree tops and start of flying over us.
I licked my lips. Yes, this is very promising. My
pen scratches at the clipboard in excitement. The callous Man
has a defining characteristic, one unique to him and the

(20:21):
realm of legends. He always comes from the same direction,
always which way were the animals running? Her voice is small, brittle.
I barely hear it over the sound of my pounding heart. South,
she says. I write the word and underline it three times.

(20:42):
My fingers are shaking with excitement. My mind's racing. After
so many dead ends and broken threads, so many killed
and missing, it's finally coming together. I found one a survivor,
and not only that, but one that might still have
the link. How many animals were running? I ask. I
know the answer, but I need to hear her say it.

(21:05):
It takes her a second to get the words out.
They're uncomfortable for her, disturbing all of them. She whispers,
it was like an exodus of life. My heart hammers,
my breath quickens, all of it. Each detail of her
story means one thing. The Callous Man is coming I

(21:30):
take a breath and stand up from the chair, stretching
my legs. My back feels like it's been crushed between
two boulders, and sitting for any length of time always
turns it into a pincushion. Still, I couldn't be happier.
Everything all right, she asks Peachey. I pick up the
clipboard and clear my throat. What happens after the animals

(21:51):
flee the tree line? She opens her mouth to speak,
but stops her eyes glanced down to my open briefcase,
staring at the Manila folders in the crinkled old water
bottle filled with grimy black fluid. Why do you have that,
she says, wrinkling her nose. Its label is yellow. It

(22:12):
looks like it's twenty years old. What's that gunk inside?
I scowl, kicking my briefcase closed. An experiment. It's nothing
to concern yourself with now. Then, if you wouldn't mind continuing,
I'd like to hear what happened following the exodus. There's
a moment of shared disdain between us. She feels like

(22:32):
I'm hiding something from her, and I feel like she's
putting her nose in places it doesn't belong. Thankfully, it
doesn't last long, and she continues her account. Rachel calls
my name from the main area. Then she limps into
the bedroom, leaning against the doorway. She looks really shaken up.
She asks if I saw all the animals taking off,

(22:53):
and I tell her I did. Her eyes are getting wide,
and I can tell she's throwing herself into another panic attacks.
So I tell her that they're probably just running from
the storm. Do you believe it? I don't know. Maybe
it seems like the only logical reason, But at the

(23:13):
same time, the whole scene felt so eerie, so wrong.
She opens her water bottle and takes a drink. Either way,
it's not like I'm going to start feeding into Rachel's paranoia.
One of us has to be calm, right, I shrug. Sure.
You said the sun was setting when the animals made
a run for it. Is it dark yet? She nods mostly.

(23:38):
I mean the last rays of sunlight are just barely
peeking over the tree tops. The storm's making it worse,
the clouds, they are blocking a lot of the light.
I get a move on with finishing setting up the tent,
and we set up this led lantern that Rachel brought.
It feels weird in one way. The silence. She pauses,

(24:00):
shaking her head, and then mutters something, sorry, that's the
wrong word. It isn't silent. The wind is howling and
the rains coming down pretty hard. But there's no sounds
of life, no crows kying, no squirrels chattering. I don't
even see any bugs in the cabin, despite a whole
crapload of spiderwebs. I brush it off, though, I keep

(24:23):
telling myself. One of us has to be calm, So
we close the bedroom door and settle ourselves into the tent.
Neither of us have much of an appetite, so we
eat a couple of protein bars for supper and pull
out our books. We don't talk. I don't even know
if we actually read. I know I didn't. I stare
at the words, but my mind's a million miles away,

(24:43):
two wrapped up in the feeling that something is wrong
with this place, something's wrong with this scenario. She sighs,
running a hand through her blond hair. I chalk it
up to the darkness. Things always seem scarier in the dark,
you know, I nod. The dark always had a powerful
effect on human beings. It makes it more difficult for

(25:05):
us to see our enemies, and in my line of work,
easier for them to see you. It's a lose to
lose environment. Unfortunately, it's often a necessary one. You don't
talk at all, I ask, sitting back down in my chair,
not at first. After ten, maybe twenty minutes, Rachel breaks

(25:27):
the silence. She asks if we should use my rescue
beacon since it's getting pretty bad outside. I know that's
not why she wants to use it, though not the
real reason. I remind her that we can weather the
storm in here and call for help in the morning
once the storm clears. Amanda screws up her face like
she's holding back a wave of emotions. I manipulate her.

(25:50):
I remind her my dad was killed during a botched
search and rescue job, all because some teenagers couldn't exercise
a little common sense. I study her. Perhaps she's more
cunning than I thought. Naive, though still so naive, Rachel
lets up. She agrees we can call in the morning.

(26:11):
I can tell she's scared, and honestly so am I
and I know what we're both thinking, so I blurt
out that there's no such thing as monsters. I tell her,
we're friggin' adults, and we'll deal with this. Amanda chuckles.
It's a small thing, full of disbelief and regret. I
promise her we'll laugh about it in the morning. The

(26:34):
woman's not bad with a story. I idly wonder how
popular her blog is. Unlike the gum in my mouth,
her words have flavor. I dig in my jacket pocket
and pull out my pack, popping a fresh peace free.
It's not a cigarette, but it's the next best thing
famous last words, I say, with a grim smile, what's

(26:56):
Rachel think of your pep talk? She she's fine with it.
At first, I think she might even be on board.
She doesn't want to spend the night terrified anymore than
I do, so anything that makes that fear a little
smaller is a welcome distraction. Amanda swallows and her expression

(27:18):
goes blank. It seems like everything's going to be just fine,
like it's just another overnight hike, at least until we
hear the footsteps outside. Here we go. There's a creaking sound,
like old wood straining under something's weight. It's hard to

(27:40):
hear over the roaring wind, but given our mental states,
it's practically unmissible. Something's outside. The footsteps are slow, gradual.
Whatever's out there is taking its time, and both of
us are frozen in fear. Rachel grabs the lamp and
turns it off, and I suddenly realized just how dark
it really is. It's pitch. I can barely see Rachel,

(28:03):
and she's sitting close enough that we're touching. It's just us,
the storm and the sound of footsteps. Now, I whisper
to her that it's probably a deer, or maybe a
mountain ion, or just some kind of animal looking for
shelter from the storm. Amanda's eyes are glazed, her hands
picking at the fabric of her genes. She's lost in

(28:25):
the memory. I don't believe it myself. Something inside of
me is rioting and telling me that we're not safe.
We haven't been safe since the moment we walked into
that cabin, and we won't be safe until we're far away. Still,
I take a breath, I repeat that stupid internal mantra
that one of us needs to be an adult, one

(28:45):
of us needs to be rational, So we wait. I
whisper to her that all the doors are closed. No
animals are going to get inside. We're safe. I keep
repeating it, like if I say it enough, I'll start
believing it too. I do my best to reassure her
and stave off another panic attack. Amanda uncaps her water

(29:07):
bottle and takes a quick swig. Her hands grip it, squeezing,
and the plastic crinkles. It works. Maybe I can't see her,
but I can't hear her either. She's not screaming. It's good.
She swallows. Then I realize things are bad, really bad.

(29:29):
Why we hear this sharp whining sound like rusty hinges,
and we recognize it. It's the front door of the cabin.
Something opened it. The next second, the sharp whining is
followed by dull thuds like heavy footsteps. The floorboards groan,
and we hear it, whatever it is, moving through the

(29:50):
kitchen and into the main area. I remind myself to
keep writing, but it's hard. This is the moment I've
been waiting for, the moment when I can finally determine
whether or not she's actually encountered the monster I've been
chasing my entire life. I'm clutching my can of bear
mace to my chest, and Rachel's whimpering beside me. I'm

(30:11):
hissing at her to be quiet, to shut the hell up,
but because I know that if whatever's out there hears us,
it's going to come in here. And she listens. Neither
of us move. We just listen for the footsteps, thunders
crashing outside, and the weathers screaming through the busted window.
But somehow, in spite of it, all those footsteps are

(30:33):
clear as today. I couldn't tune them out if I tried.
Her fingers find the arm rests of her chair and
she grips them. They scratch against the tattered wood. I
pull the safety tab on my bear mace, ready to
blast something if that's what it takes. Rachel grabs my
arm and I feel her hand trembling. Her whole body

(30:53):
is something smells like piss, and I realize it's her.
She's losing it. The footsteps get closer. They're halfway through
the living area now and they're approaching the bedroom door.
Whatever's out there is close enough that we can hear
this snickering sound like really fast short breaths. It doesn't

(31:17):
sound human, but it doesn't sound like any animal I've
heart either. It sounds like a nightmare. I circle a
box on my clipboard, identifying the sound as correct. According
to more recent eyewitness encounters, the callous man snickers before
engaging with this prey and evolution of his mythology. In
my memories, I recall only the screaming. Amanda keeps talking,

(31:43):
Rachel squeezing my arm so hard that it hurts. Her
nails are digging into me, and I can feel her
warm piss on the bottom of the tent. It's soaking
through my genes. But I don't care. I don't do
a damn thing. I can't because as soon as I
make in sound or a move, those footsteps are going
to get found, and something's going to open the bedroom door,

(32:03):
and then I don't know what happens. She stops talking.
Tears are forming in the corners of her eyes, and
she grips her sweater sleeve and dabs at them. Rachel,
Rachel can't take it anymore, though. She reaches across me,
hissing at me to give her the rescue beacon. She's
begging me to activate it, and I'm trying to get

(32:24):
my hand over her mouth and shut her up, but
she's desperate and she's fighting me. The footsteps pick up
their pace. They're walking towards us, these heavy thumps on
the creaking floor. I whispered to Rachel, if we send
the distress call, the beacon's going to start beeping. Tears
slipped down her cheeks, and Amanda stares transfixed at the

(32:47):
concrete floor. There's something swimming in her eyes, and I
think it's self loathing, but I can't be sure. All
I know is it's familiar. Continue, I say. Rachel gets
hold of it. She hammers at its buttons and it works.
It starts beeping. The signal scent. Amanda's voice trembles, her

(33:10):
lips quiver with the onset of her next words. The
bedroom door opens. It's this long, drawn out screech, and
both of us freeze. It's just the rusty hinges and
the beacon beeping. I want to scream. I want to run.
I think we both do, but we're too afraid. We're paralyzed.

(33:33):
She swallows. I get my finger ready on the trigger
of the bear mace. I don't want to use it
inside it'll probably mess us up just as bad as
whatever's standing in the doorway. But I'm ready to if
I have to. Moments pass and all we hears the
beacon beeping, and the rain and the thunder outside. And
then there's that snickering again, fast and raspy. It's followed

(33:55):
by footsteps, and now that it's in the room with us,
it sounds big. The tent shakes, the whole room shakes.
It's dark enough that we can't see so much as
a shadow through the canvas of the tent, but soon
we don't need to. The footsteps starts circling us, and
then a finger presses to the wall of the tent

(34:15):
and begins tracing around it. Whatever it is starts sniffing,
softly at first, then louder and with more intensity. I
realize it isn't a man. It's some kind of animal,
and sounds a beast like, feral and hungry. Amanda closes
her eyes, putting her head in her hands. She takes

(34:38):
a moment and groans. When she looks up again, her
eyes are hollow. Rachel can't stand it, she screams, She
screams to leave us alone. She screams, we have a gun.
She turns on the lantern and tells it to screw off,
go to hell, dine a fire, you name it. I'm

(34:59):
going to assume that didn't go over well. She rubs
her arm anxiously. I don't know. It seems like it
went just fine. The thing left. Excuse me, I say,
lowering my clipboard onto my lap. It left, that's it.
My hand grips my pen hard enough that my knuckles

(35:20):
turn white. That can't be it. She didn't even get
a look at the thing. It left the room, Amanda says,
in a quiet voice. It walked into the living area,
but then it stopped. It didn't leave the cabin. Her
voice trembles. It waited, It waited until it didn't, and

(35:42):
then the real horror began. I let out a sigh
of relief. This story sounded so promising that I knew
it couldn't have ended there. It wasn't possible, not if
this truly was the callous man clear my throat what
happened after he after it walked into the living area.

(36:07):
Rachel hisses at me that we should run, Amanda says.
I remind her that her ankle's messed up. She barely
limped into the bedroom. How far does she think she's
going to get into the woods over uneven ground? That's
slick with rain. She tells me, if we stay here,
we're both going to die. Amanda shivers. I know she's right,

(36:30):
I know it, but I can't bring myself to leave.
It feels like the tense the only thing keeping that
thing away from us. Like as long as the canvas
is in between us, I can't see us and we
can't see it, it doesn't exist. It takes everything I
have not to roll my eyes. Still, I flip a
page on the clipboard and keep a neutral expression. Her

(36:53):
perspective is not unlike a child's, and people often approach
terror with irrational and sometimes on sensical methods of survival.
Of course, there's nothing magical about her tent. There's nothing
about it that will save their lives. Continue, I say.
It starts with a creak of a floorboard. We hear

(37:14):
it walking again, but it's not coming toward us. It's
pacing back and forth out there in the living area,
and it's snickering faster than before. Soon the snickering gets
heavier violent. It starts grunting than growling. She takes a
breath and chokes back. A sob tears race down her cheeks,

(37:37):
and her eyes are a light with terror. Then it
goes silent, no movement, no grunting, no weird snickering, just
the thunder outside, the howling wind, the rain on the roof.
I'm sitting there clutching the bear mace, and Rachel's crying,
and both of us are praying it's gone. We're praying

(37:58):
it's just given up, decided to move on. And and
what my press? She meets my gaze with her own,
and a hopeless horror swims in her eyes, and then
the entire cabin shakes. Footsteps pound on the floor, and
there's this hateful, agonizing sound, like a like a hundred

(38:20):
human screams mixed together, and pour it out of a
single voice. Rachel and I lose it. We're screaming, crawling
over each other, trying to unzip the door of the
tent and get the hell out of there. And then
our world turns upside down. It's like we've been thrown
in a washing machine. My head cracks off her knee,
and we're rolling around, bouncing in this cacophony of sound

(38:44):
and fabric. Then I realized the tent's been lifted off
the ground above me. In the light of the led lantern,
I see two crooked, broken antlers piercing through the canvas.
That monster's throwing us around, bucking like a damned Soon
the tent canvas tears and you fall free, crumpling to

(39:05):
the ground in a painful heap. Rachel scrambling over me,
holding the lantern in her hand, and in the madness
of it all, I see her make a break for
toward the window. As she does, the light passes over
that that damn monster. Amanda chokes back, tears and sniffles.

(39:26):
I'm sorry, she says, I just need one second, of course.
I reach into my jacket pocket and retrieve a set
of tissues. I pass them to her. Here, blow your nose,
she does. When she's finished, both of us sit in
silence for a moment. Her lip quivers. It must have

(39:47):
been eight feet tall. It was crouched over humanoid, except
its chest was covered in fur, and its legs were
scaly like a bird's headed a long tangle of black hair,
and and its antlers jutted out from its eye sockets.
I marked the details down in excitement. Yes, good, it's

(40:07):
a near perfect description. It's missing only a few key things.
The antlers I press. Can you describe them. Uh, they
were crooked, she says slowly. They came out at odd angles,
both different, and around them was a halo of eyes,

(40:28):
tiny black ones. She closes her own eyes and swallows.
I almost miss them, except they all blinked in unison,
And I remember thinking it was the most terrifying thing
I'd ever seen, the fact that all of them blinked.
I asked, no, the fact that all of them were
looking at me. Did it attack you? I have to

(40:52):
know the defining characteristic of the callous man is his
method of attack. If she nails it, then I've got her.
I've got my link, and I've got him. She shakes
her head. No, I thought he might eat. But then
Rachel makes a racket. She's throwing herself up onto the
window ledge and then she falls over the other side.

(41:13):
The creature turns to her, snickers and launches itself at
the window. It seems like it should be too big
to fit whatever it is, but it isn't. It's like
a snake the way it's a body contorts to fit
itself into the window frame it purchased there. And I
see at the bottom of its scaly feet are these
thick claws and the hands it uses to grip the

(41:35):
window have thin, impossibly long fingers. It drums them on
the wall before it launches itself after Rachel. My pen
races across the form, filling in details and circling boxes
as the information presents itself. This is very good. I've
waited my entire life for this moment. I sit there

(41:56):
for a second, in too much shock to move, and
then I realize my friend is out there, being chased
by some damn monster. I get to my feet and
turn my phone's light on. In the distance, through the
rain and swaying trees, I can see Rachel's light bobbing
in the darkness. I call out to her. I showed

(42:17):
her name, but she either doesn't hear me or she
doesn't care. I scan the area for the monster, but
I don't see a thing, and lean out the window,
looking around the cabin, using my phone's light to illuminate
as much as I can. But it's not there. The
monster's vanished. I'm surprised you didn't take your opportunity and run,

(42:38):
I say. The creature was clearly more interested in Rachel.
Amanda glares at me. There's a stubborn defiance in her eyes,
and I have to remind myself that most humans have
a perverse obsession with self sacrifice. Maybe it's the Hollywood brainwashing.
Maybe it's the fact that they just haven't suffered enough,
but they can't get enough of it. Before she even speaks,

(43:01):
I see it in her too. I couldn't leave her,
Amanda snaps. I was the one who dragged her out
there on that hike. I was the one who suggested
we follow that stupid, overgrown trail. I was the one
who refused to use my locator beacon before it was
too late. All of this was my fault. If I
walked away from her, then I could never forgive myself.

(43:22):
Her voice breaks, I still can't time to get a
move on. You went after her? Then? Yeah. I clambered
through the window and took off, following her light as
best I could. I had the bear mason one hand
of my phone in the other. The light from my
phone wasn't much, but it was enough to keep me
from tripping on roots or running into trees. I kept

(43:44):
calling Rachel's name, kept telling her I was coming. She
couldn't have gotten far with a twisted ankle. I say,
then again, adrenaline can do incredible things. Amanda shakes her head.
She wasn't moving that fast, at least compared to me.
I was gaining on her. I could just barely see
her silhouette ahead of me, and the led lantern bobbing

(44:07):
up and down as she limped away. Then the light drops.
Rachel's silhouette vanishes, and I hear her scream. I double over,
running with everything I have. My lungs are burning and
my feet are slipping on the mud, but I don't care.
I'm not thinking anymore. I'm acting on pure instinct. Then
my instincts are telling me that if I don't get

(44:28):
to Rachel soon, that creature's going to kill her. The
words stop. Amanda's body trembles and she breaks down. She
can't hold it in anymore. The torrent falls out of
her and her face gets ugly as she sobs into
her hands. It doesn't take long before her palms are
glistening with wetness, but to the girl's credit, she forces

(44:51):
herself to keep going. She doesn't quit. Rachel's screams stop.
I can't see anything, really. The lantern's on its side,
far ahead of me, and I can just barely make
out a shape in the darkness. It's the sound that
still haunts me, though I think it always will. What
sound this wet, tearing sound like skin being torn and

(45:15):
blood splattering the ground. It's followed by a dull crunch,
and then I hear slurping, swallowing. I charge forward, and
I'm basically just adrenaline at this point. I hold my
phone up as I close the distance, and I see,
I see it. She takes a sobbing breath. I see

(45:36):
the man with the antlers for eyes. He's crouched over
Rachel's corpse, and one of her arms has been torn
in half, dangling by a thin strip of flesh. It's
missing her hand let us everywhere, and it's still spurting
out of her torn limb. Too stunned a move, too
shocked at seeing my friend dead on the ground in

(45:57):
front of me, being eaten by this, Her voice trembles
and she launches into another fit of tears. She brings
a tissue to her nose and blows a thick wad
of mucus into it before throwing it unceremoniously onto the
warehouse floor. She wipes her face with the back of
her sleeve. Then the thing rears back its head and

(46:21):
it tears what's left of Rachel's arm off. It starts
to chew it. It's it's more gruesome than anything I've
ever seen. I don't think we're wired to deal with
seeing that crap as human beings, you know, like nothing
in my programming knew how to deal with that. Once

(46:41):
it finishes chewing, it swallows the arm and opens its
mouth again. Its bottom jaw falls all the way to
the forest floor. It's gaping maw, large enough for a
grown man to walk straight into. It sits there in
front of her corpse for a second, and then that
cacophony of screaming starts again, like a hundred anguished voices

(47:01):
stitch together. A flurry of human arms reach out of
its mouth, clawing toward Rachel's limp body. They clutch at
what's left of her torn limb, her hair, her jacket,
They clutch at anything they can reach. Then they start
dragging her into the monster's mouth. There it is exactly

(47:22):
what I've been waiting for. There can no longer be
any doubt. This is the callous man. It's just as
I remember, Amanda loudly blows into the tissue again. Then
I hear Rachel whimper, and my blood goes cold. I realize,
the entire time I've been standing there watching this thing

(47:43):
eat her, she's been alive. I was watching her get
eaten alive. My mind goes blank. I point the bear mason,
let loose the blast toward the monster, shouting at it
to get the hell away from her. It recoils, howling
in that symphony of screams, and shuffling back into the bushes.

(48:04):
I take my chance, and I press the lantern into
Rachel's hand. I tell her she needs to hold onto
that for us, and she nods weakly. Her face has
lost all of its color, and I know she's not
long for this world. I get her good arm over
my shoulder and keeping a grip on the bear mace,
begin putting some distance between us and that monster. She's groaning.

(48:25):
She keeps saying my name, Mandy, over and over again,
but I tell her to be quiet. She needs to
save her energy, and I need to hear that thing.
She listens to me. We don't get far before I
hear its thunderous footfalls pound against the forest floor. It's
running at us, I wheel around in Rachel's lantern, illuminates

(48:45):
the monster for only a split second for I let
loose another round of the mace. It snickers in pain
and brings those long fingered hands to its eyes. I
don't wait around for it to recover. I keep going.
I don't know where. All I know is I need
to get away from this thing, because it isn't going
to stop until it finishes what it started. Again, I

(49:09):
hear its footsteps pound in the dirt, and again I
wheel around and blast the monster. It shrieks in pain
and shies away, but only a few moments later it
charges again. Amanda keels over and starts bawling. She grips
her hair, then starts pulling on it so hard I
half expect her to tear a chunk from her scalp.

(49:31):
I realize, she says, choking out the words between sobs.
I realize Rachel's too heavy. I can't carry her. I
can't get away from this thing because I can feel
the can of mace is almost empty, and every time
I hit it with the mace, it affects it less.
She shakes her head. Her eyes are bloodshot, her cheeks

(49:52):
tears stained. She sniffles and wipes mucus onto her sleeve.
I have to leave, Rachel. I have to. If I don't,
it's going to kill us both. You understand, right, for
the first time, in her desperate recollection of the event,
I do understand. Yes, I say, life isn't easy. There

(50:14):
aren't any real heroes, just people who pretend to be.
You made a difficult choice, but a necessary one. Amanda
stares at me. She stares at me for a long while,
like she's searching my expression for something. Finally, she nods slowly, yeah,
she says, wiping more snot onto her sleeve. Her voice

(50:37):
evens out. The tears are no longer coming. In Torrents,
I did what I had to do. I put her down, apologizing.
I apologize over and over again. And I heard that
thing coming, and I took off. I ran full tilt
into the woods behind me. I heard the cacophony of screams.

(50:59):
She swallows in her voice stutters. I listen to that
familiar sound of tearing flesh and then the dull crunch
of snapping bone. I listened to the creature chew on Rachel.
I tried not to. I tried to just focus on
running on the sound of the rain or the thunder
or the wind. But I couldn't. All I could hear

(51:21):
was my friend being eaten alive. Silent stretches between us.
I clear my throat. Is that it You got away,
ran into the Star team on your way down the mountain? No,
she says, closing her eyes. There's a look of resigned
regret in her features. I hear another sound. I hear

(51:42):
a helicopter. A moment later, I catch sight of its
searchlight beaming over the forest. I know this might be
my only chance, so I start waving around my phone's light,
trying to make as much of a scene as I can,
and it works. The helicopter swings over and it lowers
the ladder with a rest technician. He straps me to
a line and asks me if I'm alone. I'm hysterical,

(52:05):
shouting a mile a minute. I shrieked that a monster
attacked my friend, and I point toward Rachel's lantern, faintly
visible in the distance. I tell him it killed her.
Amanda swallows, wiping at her eyes. He radioes in to
have me brought up and says he'll go look for Rachel.
I tell him not to. I know if he does,

(52:25):
he'll die too. It'll kill him just like it killed her.
But over the wind and rain, he either doesn't hear
me or doesn't care. I'm pulled into the helicopter, and
a few minutes later I hear the man's voice over
the radio. It's desperate, full of grief. He says he
needs a stretcher down there. He says he found the
other woman and that she's still alive. Have you spoken

(52:48):
to Rachel since? I asked quietly. She shakes her head. No,
she uh. She's in a coma. Both of our arms
are missing, the wounds are in affected, and she's developed
serious pneumonia. Doctors aren't sure if she's going to make it.
She brings a hand to her mouth and chokes back
a sob. Her eyes are wide and her body quakes.

(53:12):
I I left her there to die. If I had
just stayed with her a couple minutes longer, then the
rescue chopper would have found us. It would have scared
that thing away and Rachel would still be gravely injured.
I finished. You can't blame yourself. You didn't know the
chopper was around the corner. All that you knew was

(53:33):
something wanted to kill you, and it was winning the
battle for your life. Her shoulders rack with silent sobs.
I could have stayed with her. She breaks down all
over again, and this time I give her all the
time she needs. I've scarcely seen somebody so grief stricken
in all my years of doing this, and it's almost

(53:54):
as bizarre to me as the anomalies I've spent my
life hunting. To hate yourself for something as simple as
wanting to live, It's inhuman. I'm sorry, she says, Finally,
that's everything. Can I go now? I lean back in
my chair, frowning. It's not that I don't empathize with her,

(54:17):
but such messy reactions only serve to get in the
way of actually fixing problems, in her case, getting revenge
for Rachel. She stands up, sniffling, then answers her own question.
I'm gonna go, thank you for listening. Her feet make
for the exit. Wait, I say, She stops in her tracks.

(54:40):
Why I leaned forward in my chair. Can you take
me there? Excuse me the cabin I mean, I reach
for my briefcase. Can you take me to the callous man?
I've never been a fan of the woods. Call it
a bad childhood experience. Call it being an out of

(55:02):
shape asshole. I'm even less of a fan when I'm
stuck hiking through them for work. And yet it seems
like work has a sick sense of humor, because I
find myself in these fortresses of crap and sticks more
often than i'd like, which, for the record, is never well,
except for today. It's a long time before we reach
the cabin. The girl said it took her in her

(55:24):
friend eight hours. Well, it takes us twelve. My best
days are behind me, unfortunately, but luckily I don't need
to be very fit for what I'm about to do.
I still don't understand why you couldn't have just followed
the map, Amanda says, I told you exactly how to
get to because I say, still breathless from the hike,

(55:44):
the cabin doesn't exist on a map. You can point
it out to me all you want in your iPhone,
but unless you're right beside me, I'll never see it.
It's just the way the callous man works. She narrows
herries at me. You keep saying that name. Why do
you call him the callous man? I pull open the
door of the cabin and instantly it smells like crap
in dead animals. Great. I call him the Callous Man,

(56:08):
I say, strolling across the creaky floorboards, because that's his name.
It's the name the first person that ever encountered him
coindom with, and so it is the name with which
I refer to him the first person. Yeah, I say,
stepping into the bedroom me. The floor is a mess,
covered in what's left of Amanda's tent. A small device

(56:31):
lays a few feet away, and I figure it's probably
her locator beacon. Hang on, she says, appearing in the
doorway behind me. You're the first person who saw the
Callous Man. I nod, bending down and picking up one
of the shattered frames she had mentioned, dusting it off,
I hold it up to her. This is my grandpa

(56:52):
and I showing off our rifles before going deer hunting.
She looks shocked, stunned, her eyes a gaze at the picture,
then back at me on second glance. You two really
do share a resemblance. You and he looks so much alike. Yeah,
I suppose we do. I tossed the frame onto the ground.

(57:14):
You lived here, visited my grandpa lived here. What the hell,
she says, her voice trailing off. This whole thing feels
so bizarre it has to be a nightmare. It can't
be real. I flipped the water bottle full of black
grime in my hands, catching it with a smile. You're
preaching to the choir lady. If I had to guess,

(57:35):
I probably hope I wake up from this even more
than you do. Unlike you, she says with a glare,
I don't have any secret agent training or whatever. Unlike me,
you've got my gun. The only training you need is
to point and shoot and not hit me with the bullets.
She taps my revolver strapped to her thigh. It was

(57:56):
the sole condition of her joining me in this little
woodland excursion that she gets to be the one who
carries the gun. I told her that's fine with one stipulation. Remember,
I say, don't touch that thing unless the callous man's
already pulling you into his big mouth. I don't need
you shooting me before I finish my business. What if

(58:16):
he's attacking you, she says, I'll deal with him. You'll
deal with an eight foot tall monster with nothing but
your bare hands. The water bottle crinkles in my grip.
Just trust me on this. I'm a professional. I place
my hand on the window sill and look over the
clearing out past the tree line. The sun's turned to
golden red. Soon it'll be night. Nervous, I ask her,

(58:42):
what do you think? She says, you better be as
good as you say you are. The way she moves,
the way she speaks, and the way she keeps touching
the revolver on her thigh tell me everything I need
to know. She's terrified. Relax, I say, save the anxiety
from when our dear friend shows up. I chuckle at

(59:05):
my joke, but it goes clear over her head. She
pulls one of the chairs from the living room into
the bedroom with me. She sits down on it, rigid
and straight. I'm almost proud of her. Sure she was
only willing to accompany me with a magnum strap to
her thigh, but she still chose to do it. She
chose to get revenge for what that thing did to her,

(59:25):
what it did to her friend. Almost there, I mutter.
My eyes follow the sun as it slips behind the
tree line. Shadows stretch out, engulfing the cabin in the
strips of darkness. He'll be here soon. Seconds pass, and
then minutes, and then things begin to change. It starts
with a crow taking flight, and I already know he's coming.

(59:48):
I can feel him. A family of rabbits follow, bounding
through the clearing. Soon the entire forest is fleeing past us,
far away from the callous man and the death he represents.
I pop a piece of spearmen gum and start chewing.
It helps me focus. You ready, why, she says, shooting

(01:00:08):
up from the chair is here, doesn't make a difference.
You're either ready or you're not. She scowls at me,
but her body relaxes. I'm ready. Are you sure you
can kill him? A mad mixture of impatience and nervousness
flutters in my stomach. I toy with the idea of
lying it put her at ease. Then I decide it

(01:00:30):
doesn't matter anymore. Both of us are in too deep. No, no,
she repeats incredulously. She rises from her chair, rounding on me.
You says you are a professional. I am. You told
me you've dealt with a hundred different monsters. I have.
Her mouth opens, but no words come out. She stares

(01:00:51):
at me with something between stunned disbelief and absolute loathing.
She thinks I've signed our death warrants. I'm not going
to lie to you. I say, I've dealt with a
lot of creatures, some bad, some worse. I know this
job inside and out, and I don't plan on dying today.
But the Callous Man is different. How he's I cash myself.

(01:01:16):
We're on the precipice and there's no going back, but
there's still words that can upset the operation. I exercise
some tact. He's powerful. He can distort this world and
manipulate dimensions. It's why I needed you here, It's why
I needed your link. He chose you. The Callous Man
gave you the key to his world, and only you.
But he never said you couldn't bring visitors. She shakes

(01:01:39):
her head. She's trying to piece it together. Bless her heart.
She's trying her best, but there's not enough pieces to
make sense of it. And that's intentional. It's by design.
I need her obedient, not unruly. Everything hinges on her
co operation. I don't understand why did he choose me?
The sun finishes its descent. It's red orange rays fading

(01:02:02):
to darkness. I flick my flashlight on, holding it up
to the window and watching the clearing with bated breath.
The callous man is coming, He shows you because of
the life you live. I explain the values you represent.
It means something to him. Values I represent? What? Like
honesty and integrity? She snorts like it's a joke. What

(01:02:25):
could they mean to a monster like that? I smirk.
They mean you taste delicious. The night is still silent,
just as she earlier described. There's no sounds of life,
except this time there's no storm either. It's a cloudless
sky without so much as a breeze, and I can
almost hear Amanda's heart beating out of her chest. Ha ha,

(01:02:49):
she says sarcastically. She's close enough behind me now that
I can feel her breath on my neck. She really
is terrified. What do those values actually mean to it?
To him? I correct, believe it or not. That monster
really is a man. When you become as powerful as
he is, though, food stops meaning what it means to
you and I. It's less about calories and more about

(01:03:12):
feeling a void. It's trying to supplement its diet with
concepts ideas that it's missing. Why to become better, to
cure itself. There's movement in the clearing, and my breath
catches as I see it. A set of crooked antlers.
They rise from the bramble, soon revealing a face covered

(01:03:33):
by matted black hair, one with a tiny snout and
a halo of dark, beady eyes. The dot's glimmer in
the beam of my flashlight. The dot's glimmer in the
beam of my flashlight. It wants to stop being a monster,
she asks, her voice thick with disbelief. It's eating people
to save itself. Sh I hiss. My eyes are wide

(01:03:57):
and my mouth is split into the largest grinite worn
in years. He's here. I sense her tense up behind me,
but to her credit, she doesn't unholster the revolver on
her thigh. She keeps her cool. I grip the water
bottle tighter, reaching a hand to its cap. No, I

(01:04:18):
pull my hand away, reminding myself that I need to
keep my cool too. It's still too soon. The callous
man can still escape, fade away. I need him committed.
At the edge of the clearing, the man rises to
his full height. I can see clearly now his dark
fur chest and his long, thin fingers resting on the ground.

(01:04:38):
His bird like legs begin a slow march forward. They're
closetinging at the loamy earth. He's coming, I say, taking
a step back, stay behind me, directly behind me. She
doesn't speak, but I know she's nodding. I hear her
feet crack on the floorboards and concert with my own.
My fingers play at the cap of the water bottle.

(01:05:00):
Everything comes down to this. Forty years of horror and
misery have led me to this moment. A snickering sound
pierces the air. The man's moving faster now, each footstep
coming at a pace of a light jog. There's hardly
any time left. But still I wait. He's coming. Amanda
hisses from behind me. She's panicking. Her hand clutches at

(01:05:22):
my shoulder, and a grunt shaking her off. Don't I
tell her relax, We're almost done here. My heart races,
seeing the monster again after all these years, as dredging
up old memories, and the little boy threatens to take
hold inside of me. My palms are thick with sweat.
It doubles over, sprinting on all fours. It's armada of

(01:05:44):
eyes connect with my own, while its crooked antlers sway
in concert with its powerful body. Clouds of earth burst
out from behind it, its long fingers tearing at the
ground with each stride. Nyeah, Nyah, nyah, its snickers nia niah.
At least at the window. For a moment, time seems
to stop. I stare transfixed at the creature I used

(01:06:07):
to know so well. Its horrifying inhuman face gazes back
at me, and inside of it, I see an insatiable
hunger I need to feed. My body freezes, my blood
goes cold. Terror grips me as its fingers reach outward,
passing through the window, while its vocal cords chitter in anticipation.

(01:06:28):
It wants me. I lunched to the side, it collides
with Amanda, its antlers piercing her stomach and showering the
bedroom and blood. Her body crashes against the wall with
a sickening crunch and lays there in a broken, whimpering heap.
I stay as quiet as I can. The callous man
shakes his tangle of black hair and looks around, reorienting

(01:06:51):
himself first to me, then to her, then back to me.
Damn it, my fingers begin untwisting the cap of the
water bottle. It's too soon. I need him distracted, I
need him feeding and committed. But I don't think I
have an option anymore. It steps towards me. The floor groans,
My mouth feels dry, my limbs twitchy. Fear takes root

(01:07:15):
in my chest, and the little boy inside threatens to
take hold. No, I have to hang on. I open
the water bottle and my mouth begins stuttering the words
the thugh val no lhar. The catless man lowers himself,
His back arches, and his tiny snow begins to open,
growing larger and larger. Screams of a hundred souls echo

(01:07:37):
from the void inside of them, their arms reaching toward me,
desperate to draw another into their nightmare. Gal nush Alza.
I continue the words, but there's no time. They're so close.
He's so close. I press myself as far against the
corner as I can, but still I feel their cold

(01:07:58):
grip on my leg. They pull, They're strong. My balance
goes out from under me and I fall on my ass. Yes,
val culna, it wasn't supposed to happen like this. She
held the values. He needed her, not me. I keep
speaking the incantation. I keep moving my lips, but now

(01:08:18):
my body's acting on instinct, on learned behavior. I can't
so much as think as I slip further and further
into the abyssal darkness of the callous man's jaws. I
keep speaking the words, but my voice is drowned by
the pleas of the dead, screaming, howling, begging. The incantation
is all I have left. It's not enough, it's taking

(01:08:40):
too long. A deafening bang rings out, interrupting the chorus
of screaming souls. The callous man recoils. It's just sliding
across the floor, and its body writhing in agony. It
stumbles to the side, and then two more gunshots pierce
the night. It falls to its knees. I can see
behind him now, I can see a mana's bloody, mangled heap.

(01:09:02):
One of her legs is snapped backwards, and her white
shirt is torn at her stomach, with pieces of her
falling out of the hole. Blood spills from her mouth
like a fountain, and in her trembling hands she holds
the revolver. Thank you, I breathe, rising to my feet
on shaky legs. Thank you. Am another blast of the handgun,

(01:09:22):
and this time my ears are ringing like church bells.
I stumbled to the side, and in the dim light
of my lantern, I see a bullet hole in the
wall beside me. I barely have time to look back
at her before agony rips through my thigh and I
collapse onto the bedroom floor. Damn it. My hands clutch
the wound instinctively. I don't need to look at it

(01:09:43):
to feel the warm, wetness of blood seeping through my fingers.
I gaze up at her, and she studies the magnum
at me. I was so close, so damn close. Forty
years of this crap, and I'm undone by a blogger.
Do it? I growl. Death by a bullet isn't a
bad way to go, all things considered. Do it before

(01:10:04):
he takes both of us. She lowers the revolver and
tears fall from her eyes. She's choking on a word,
but all that's coming out is a torrent of blood.
It's fine, I know what she wants to say. I
did it because it's the only way, I explained through
gritted teeth. One of us always had to die. But

(01:10:25):
if it was me, then it meant we both did.
Her body's twitching and shock. She's still moving her mouth,
but it's just blood now, no words, only blood. Her
face is pale and glassy eye, but I only see
it for another moment before the callous man begins to rise. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:10:45):
he's snickering, but it's violent, angry. His eyes gaze at me.
The antlers are casting twisted shadows in the light of
my lantern, and it's making him seem even more unnatural,
more inhuman. Yeah yeah. He turns away from me, turns
to Amanda bell guz ree, I whisper morath and greshon

(01:11:11):
his footsteps, groaning on the rotting cabin floor boards. I
don't see Amanda, but I hear the gurgle of blood.
I hear the desperate shuffle of her body pushing itself
against the wall. I hear a gun shot ring out,
then another. The footsteps march forward, and so does my incantation.
The water bottles shaking in my grip. Now, the grimy

(01:11:32):
fluid swirling in a murky maelstrom, Gria null yulia. Another
shot fell rodua riatha, A cacophony of screams set kill
ona box loa. Amanda lets loose on the handgun twice more,
and then the firearm clicks impotently. She's burned through every

(01:11:54):
round that it has. It wasn't enough, It never could be.
My lips moving even as I hear her body being
dragged across the floor. The ancient language flows out of me,
and I'm deaf to the sounds of her flesh being
ripped and torn, her limbs being devoured inch by inch.
She needs to hang on. Her role isn't over yet.

(01:12:16):
I speak the final words set rindas the water bottle
jolts from my grip, the murky fluid inside exploding into
a dark cloud, twisting around the room like a tornado
of smoke. I hear the screaming falter. Then I hear
the callous man lurch around, snickering in confusion. I hear
Amanda groan She's a fighter good. It takes the cloud

(01:12:39):
only a handful of seconds to coalesce into the greatest
monster I've ever seen, But in that moment, it feels
like a lifetime. Its form snaps and cracks with bolts
of electricity. Its twelve eyes glow an impossible blue upon
its six muscled arms are heavy chains linking to a
choker on its neck, and its face roars and fury.

(01:13:00):
This time, I'll have your soul, little man. I'll enjoy
it over a glass of your misery. I let a
grin slip across my lips. For the first time since
the callous Man appeared, I feel my sense of humor returning.
Sorry to disappoint Dragar, but I summon you by means
of an offering. The Genie's brow furrows and his mouth

(01:13:21):
opens to reveal a row of jagged teeth. I see
no living humans here save for one. He's smiling. He
reaches an arm out to grab me, but as soon
as his fingers brush my throat, they hiss and steam.
He recoils, snarling. She's your offering, I say, pointing past
the callous Man to a manda's mangled body. Now obey

(01:13:44):
my command. A cacophony of screams interrupt us. The callous
Man's jaws have opened, and once more a hundred arms
reach from the maw, this time toward the newcomer. They
grasp at the genie. Phasing through the gaseous image are scowls,
his voice dropping to a low howl. Very well. The

(01:14:05):
words are spoken, a soul for a soul. His body
split in two, circumventing the callous man and reforming in
front of Amanda. She's nearly dead. She's confused. She doesn't
understand what's happening. I've given her a mercy. Draygar will
treat her soul better than the callous man everwood. The

(01:14:25):
Genie's hand reaches out to touch her, and in the
next instant, her body is gone. Only the blood stains remain.
The callous man looks back to me. It's jaw scraping
along the floor. It recognizes there's nothing in the genie
to consume. It wants what's inside of me, though it
wants the memories of its humanity. It wants revenge. It

(01:14:49):
takes a heavy step toward me, then another. The screams
are deafening, but I know I don't need my voice
to be heard. A command is a command or her soul.
I want his. The pale hands reach out from the
abyssal maw, grasping my legs, and I let them. My
body falls to the floor. It inches toward the jaws
of the beasts, toward damnation. The knight fills the room,

(01:15:13):
and the cabin shakes with a low base of eternity itself.
The screaming fades to a whimper, then after a loud pop,
it's gone, everything's gone, the callous man the cabin. I'm alone,
lying in a dark field, my lantern illuminating a clearing
of grass with tall trees surrounding it. My thigh aches,

(01:15:33):
my mouth is parched, and my conscience is in tatters.
But I'm alive. I'm always alive. Soon you'll have fulfilled
our contract, says a hissing voice, scraping along my inner ear.
It's everywhere and nowhere. I've taken ninety three souls for you,
only seven more to go. Yeah, yeah, I've heard it before,

(01:15:55):
I say, with a groan. Now, hand over my soul.
There's a swirl of smoke, and the frowning Genie appears
before me. He snaps a finger on one of his
six arms and produces a vial filled with murky purple fluid.
The man never deserved this, he says, he was your
own blood. Don't acture me, I say, reaching for the vial.

(01:16:16):
You and I both know he was never supposed to
turn into that. The Genie pulls back, gazing at the vial.
What is meant to be? And what comes to pass?
Or two different things? You shield yourself in the delusion
of intention. He encircles me in a snaking ribbon of smoke,
his face materializing near my ear. You force that destiny

(01:16:37):
on the man. He had no desire to participate in
your war. Yeah, well, none of us do, and yet
it's coming anyway. Something takes a seat in my gut, Regret,
maybe remorse. It's an ugly feeling. Whatever it is, I
blame it on the woman. Why didn't you just kill me? No,
I think to myself, Shake it off. I've got more

(01:16:59):
important things to worry about. The vial, I growl, holding
my hand out. I think I may have miscalculated. Dryguar mutters,
staring at the vial with curiosity. A soul for a soul,
such as the terms of our contract. And yet I
swallow when it feels like sandpaper. Whence the last time

(01:17:19):
I had something to drink? You got your soul, Now
give me mine. My voice cracks. Damn it, my voice cracks.
The genies' twelve eyes swovel their gaze to me. A
smile slips across its lips. When he speaks, his voice
is quiet, unsettling. I count over a hundred souls in

(01:17:40):
this vial. My heart slams against my rib cage. Damn it,
that's not fair. I shout, trying to rise to my feet,
but my thigh screams in pain, and I fall back
to earth. I only asked for his soul. I never
asked for the souls he devoured, and yet there's still
a part of him. Please it can't end here. Be reasonable. Reasonable.

(01:18:06):
The genie roars and his form becomes massive. Lightning sparks
around him, and the wind whips into a gale, threatening
to unseat me from the ground. You chain me to
this earth for decades, turn me into a common reaper
for your own ends, and you can find me to
a water bottle. You speak of reason to me. I
did what I had to do. I bellow. A war

(01:18:29):
is coming, and we need these souls. We need an army.
Your petty war means nothing to me. Dry Guard points
a long finger toward me, and a red ara swirls
around it, Sparks crackle at its tips, then slowly, reluctantly,
he curls it back into a fist. I am however,
a reasonable being. My breath hitches in my chest as

(01:18:53):
I hang on the monsters every word. You have broken
the terms of our contract, but I have also willingly
fulfilled your wish. For that, I will give you a compromise,
little human compromise. That's good. It's better than nothing. What
Draguar's eyes glint. One month, one month, settle your affairs,

(01:19:16):
prepare for your war. One month from now, I'll take
the soul I've dreamed of for decades. I'll spend the
next century picking you out of my teeth. I sigh,
falling back onto the grass. It's better than I could expect,
all things considered, I'm surprised the cosmic asshole didn't just
scoop me up right then and there. Damn fine print, fine,

(01:19:39):
I say, can you get me out of here? He smirks,
turning into formless smoke. A soul for a soul, no more,
no less. It begins swirling like a mad tornado of shadow,
howling and roaring, and a moment later he's gone vacuumed
back into the water bottle. Asshole. Looks like I'm finding

(01:20:01):
my own way down once more. I try to rise
to my feet and once more, I wins in pain
and fall to the earth. Damn that revolver did good
work on my thigh. No, no, she did. The woman
tugs at my thoughts, her resolve, her strength, her blog.
She could tell a story, Amanda Haynes. She's gone now,

(01:20:24):
but there's still a story that needs to be told,
and I'm running out of time to tell it. I
spot a mess in the corner of my eye, a
pile of canvas torn in bloody with tent poles poking out.
That should do. I crawled toward it, and a moment
later I find what I'm looking for, a black device
laying a few feet away, just like it'd been in

(01:20:44):
the cabin of the beacon. I reach out and grab
it and click the button. It beeps. Good, it beeps.
You don't need me to tell you that the search
team located me. You don't need me to tell you
that they had a lot of questions, but that the
facility stepped in and took care of it. You also

(01:21:05):
don't need me to tell you that I'll be walking
with crutches for the rest of my short life. What
you need me to tell you is why I'm posting this.
You need to know why I'm telling you this story
and why I need you to tell it to others,
your friends, your family, everybody. The reality is a war
is coming. It's a war that humanity isn't outfitted for.

(01:21:27):
But we're doing the best we can. Strictly speaking, everything
I've just said is classified, and yet it's crucial this
information be spread far and wide. What's coming for us
can't be stopped by missiles and guns. It can't be
overcome by men and women. It has to be through
other means, legendary means. The folks at the top don't

(01:21:48):
want to admit that. They don't want to sow chaos,
an uncertainty and admit our hour glasses dangerously low on sand.
But it is, and chaos is coming one way or another.
What we can at the facility, but it isn't enough,
not even close. They'd skin me Ali for posting this,
but my time's already up, so screw them. I'm asking you,

(01:22:12):
all of you, if you see a creature that defies explanation,
or a certain something that goes bump in the night,
share your experience, make it known against the eldritch abominations
coming our way. Those monsters might be our only chance,
and honestly we need all the help we can get