The Wood-Thing

By D. E. Norris

It was a warm, July night in the Minnesota woods. The moon hung high in the air,
looking down at the earth below. Crickets were chirping in the bushes; the glow of
fireflies hung in the air.
In the middle of a clearing, three small tents were pitched in triangular
formation, with a blazing campfire in the center. Three youths, all of them around the
age of fifteen, sat on stones surrounding the fire. Two of them, George and Alexander,
held sticks in their hands, roasting marshmallows over the fire. Brian, the third youth,
started to talk.
‘So, do you guys want to hear a scary story?’ He asked the other two. They both
nodded with interest. ‘Sure, has long has it is actually scary.’ George replied. ‘Of course it
will be!’ Brian heartily assured. After rummaging through his bag for a flashlight and
illuminating his face for effect, Brian started to tell his tale.
‘In these very forests, a creature is said to roam around, slaying anybody for
food. Earliest descriptions came from the Indians who lived in this area. In their
artworks, and their own tales, it was depicted has a humanoid being, with green,
camouflaged skin, glowing red eyes, and long, stalk like fingers. They also said it had
great agility and speed. The Indians believed it was some kind of malevolent spirit, of
what purpose was never found out. They claimed that it hunted whoever was near or
within its territory.
‘While something like this normally would be chalked up to myths and legend,
other people besides the natives have claimed to seen it too, and also witnessed its
activity. Settlers and explorers has far back has the 1700s reported being stalked by an
unseen entity. They all told of a remarkably similar story: they would be either camping
or on the move, when the ambient noise of the forest would cease; the crickets halted
chirping, frogs silenced their croaking. It even seemed that the wind refused to rustle
the leaves, out of sheer terror. They would then hear rustling of branches and shrubs,
along with quick, almost human sounding footsteps. Then the forest would come back to
life, and the crickets and frogs began sounding of again. And while it was uncommon,
sometimes a settler would vanish (whether it was during these silences is still
undetermined), without a single trace. No blood, no nothing. No bodies were ever
recovered. The only concrete proof of hunter thing was a footprint, imprinted in the
moist forest dirt. The footprint was brought to various naturalists and other scientists
all around the country and even overseas in order to pinpoint the exact creature that
was stalking and abducting them. Every single person who investigated the print came
up with nothing. Not only was it unfamiliar, it was considered absolutely mind blowing
within the scientific community. They described it has a sort of quasi-human footprint. It
resembled some features of a human footprint (the shape of the toes, for example, were
pretty much the same), but it was different in many ways- this creature had only four
digits, and it walked on the balls of it’s feet, rather in the more human heel-toe pattern.
Also, (and this was considered the weirdest) it had claws. Close inspection of the
footprint revealed that it had very sharp, hook shaped, albeit small, claws protruding
from its toes. It was declared a fake and a hoax by many scientists, and by much of the
public, on the grounds that it was simply too out there, but no one could see any
empirical reasons to doubt it’s validity.
‘Anyways, a little while after the first encounters, a man finally was able to catch
a glimpse of the creature. Jim Paddock, a 30 something year old explorer, saw the thing
in the flesh. It was a cool night in 1826, and the party he was leading decided to make
camp. At the campsite, he was going to the tent of one of his friends, Arthur Dowell to
share a drink. When he opened the tent flap, however, he saw something that turned
him into to stone. It was his friend, chalk white lying on the bed, with the creature
crouched over him. Paddock stood in horror, gazing at the dreaded spectacle before him.
The creature was hoisting his friend, kidnapping him. Paddock shook out of his
paralysis, and ran out of the tent screaming, telling everybody he saw it. Everyone
gathered around him, and Paddock led them to the tent of Dowell. But when they
opened the tent flaps, they saw nothing inside. The party searched the woods for a few
hours before giving up, declaring Paddock’s poor friend dead.
Next morning, he told the people what he saw. He told of a grotesque monster; it
was of gigantic stature, easily seven to eight feet tall. It had blood red eyes. Its skin was
covered with thick growth- fungus, tree moss, and various other molds, making it
invisible in the greenery of the woods. And the visible skin was brown and thick, and
resembled bark from a decaying tree. It had long, clawed fingers, with twice as much
joints has a human finger. But most horrifying, it had what is seemed like a scolex, but
twisted nightmarishly. It’s “mouth” was a kind of like three holes; the outer one with
four three inch long hook appendages, the middle one with about fifty quarter inch teeth
like things circling the circumference, and the inner most one was just a muscular hole
with no teeth. Regarding Dowell, Paddock claimed he was still alive when he saw him
being kidnapped. Paddock, and many others too, speculated that the creature “bit” his
friend, the bite giving him a drug that made him seem pale and rigid, almost corpse like.
Paddock claimed he saw his friend’s eyes; they weren’t dead, they looked at Paddock for
help, to save him from being abducted by this ghastly being.
‘Paddock’s story about this “Moss-man” gained a lot of attention, especially
among the settlers, but also with everybody else, from the eastern coast to the Midwest.
They discussed it without end (the prevailing theory on its nature was it was some kind
of parasitic primate, paralyzing his victims with a venom and bringing them to it’s “nest”
for consumption); they drew up sketches and paintings of it, and some even tried to
catch, without success of course. After a while, interest in the subject started to wane,
and attacks occurred less frequently as urban centers started to be constructed. And in a
few months, it became an obscure discussion subject only talked about by the old
settlers.
Then far later, in the late 1920s, something turned the public’s eyes to it again. A
young man and aspiring naturalist of 18, named Ryan Chester was trekking through the
woods when he discovered something absolutely shocking embedded among the rot and
decay of the forest ground. He had just found the first body.’

‘Now, there still remains some debate as to whether this person died of natural
causes or was a victim of the thing. Because only the skeleton and no tissue remained
due to decomposition, determining the exact cause of death was very challenging, and
many questions surrounded the body. However, deep analysis reveled a slew of
disturbing answers. For one, comparisons between the skull and photographs from the
victims revealed that it was Paddocks friend, Dowell. Even stranger yet was that traces
of venom were found in Dowell’s bones, and the strangest yet was that claw marks of an
unknown variety clashed all over the ribcage. Some say that these markings aren’t from
claws, but from oral appendages described by Paddock.
‘But the autopsy didn’t yield the most bizarre results. When removing the body
from the ground, the excavation crew discovered much more corpses: almost 60. This
discovery, and the autopsy of Dowell, reignited discussion about-‘
Brian suddenly stopped talking. He stood up and looked around, starting to
sweat. He noticed that a deathly hush fell over the forest; not even the crickets were
chirping. He suddenly twisted to his left, staring at a bush at the edge of the clearing. He
could’ve sworn he heard footsteps in that direction.
‘Stop kidding around!’ George moaned, ‘C’mon, finish your story!’
‘Shh!’ Brian ordered, with a finger over his lips. ‘Did you hear that?’ His voice was
only a whisper now.
‘No, neither of us heard anythi-‘
A twig snapped, and the other two jumped up, staring at the edge of the wood, their
hearts pounding in the chests, sweat dripping of their chins. Brian anxiously scanned the
edge with his flashlight, trying to spot what was making those noises. After seeing
nothing he turned to the other two.
‘Um, guys?’ he shakily said, pausing for a nervous laughter, ‘I think it was
nothing, so, wait…OH G-‘
A full sweep of the woods was conducted by the police the following morning for
the three missing boys, but was cancelled after two weeks of searching. Nothing was
found regarding their disappearance, not a single speck of evidence. The police have
assumed that they are dead, being victims of an animal attack or perhaps they were
kidnapped. Both hypotheses are technically right, though no one will ever know.