It Wasn’t Until the Dog Walkers Started Disappearing…
I don’t know if anyone else on here has experienced anything like this. The police think I panicked and fell over in the woods, and my neighbours think I’ve had some kind of breakdown. Maybe they’re right. But after what happened yesterday, I don’t think I can stay in this village much longer.
I live in a small hamlet by the sea. It’s one of those places where everyone waves, everyone knows everyone else’s business, and the biggest excitement is usually someone’s wheelie bin blowing over in the wind. Our cul-de-sac backs onto an old cemetery, and beyond the gravestones, there’s a line of dense woodland separating the village from miles of open countryside. It just sits quietly behind us, weathered and forgotten, as though everyone had simply agreed to stop using it.
On normal days, it’s a perfectly ordinary coastal life. You hear the low rumble of the Tesco delivery van navigating the narrow streets, see kids kicking a football on the green, and pass pensioners gossiping by the bus stop. But some nights, helicopters circle low over the trees. They never use their searchlights; they just hover for twenty minutes or so before disappearing back towards the coast. Whenever you ask, someone shrugs and says, “Probably Coastguard training,” before changing the subject.
Other nights we hear foxes screaming. It sounds disturbingly human, like someone crying for help just out of sight. The first time I heard it, I nearly called the police, but now nobody even pauses the television. You get used to strange things when they’ve always been there.
The real horror isn’t the forest; it’s the fact that the entire village has quietly adapted to living beside it. They don’t fight it, they don’t investigate it, they simply change their routines, ignore the smell of salt and rotting earth in the air, and carry on.
It wasn’t until the dog walkers started disappearing that I began paying attention.
The first to vanish was Mr. Richardson from two doors down. Every morning at quarter past seven, he’d walk his labradoodle Burt along the cemetery path, nodding at everyone he passed. One Tuesday, he never came home. Burt did, though. Someone found him sitting perfectly still beside the cemetery gates—no lead, no collar, just staring into the trees as if waiting.
The police searched for days, but nothing was found. The very next morning, Mrs. Smith was back outside putting seed out for the birds, completely unbothered. Life just carried on.
Then another dog walker disappeared. Then another. Without anyone saying a word, people just stopped walking their dogs there, taking the long way around instead. Nobody questioned it.
Around the same time, the bodies started washing ashore on the beach. They were always strangers, and the only remarkable thing about them were the wounds carved across their chests—branching lines like roots growing beneath the skin. The police would close the beach for a day, and by the following afternoon, families were back eating ice cream and building sandcastles as though nothing had happened.
The complicity of the village drove me mad. A week ago, determined to find a logical explanation, I decided to walk the cemetery path myself. I set off just after dawn. The cemetery gate was already open, though I distinctly remembered locking it the evening before. The deeper I walked into the trees, the quieter everything became. The birds stopped singing, the distant sea mist rolled over the gravestones, and the wind entirely died.
Then, the entire woodland seemed to move at once. Every tree around me creaked at exactly the same time, a synchronized, agonizing groan of ancient timber. I froze, looking down at the damp earth. There were no footprints in front of me anymore. There were only my own tracks leading forward, and another, heavier set of impressions appearing directly behind mine. I hadn’t heard a single footstep.
Panic set in, but I forced myself to keep walking, refusing to turn around. That’s when the breathing started—slow, deep, and wet, as though something enormous was drawing air through hollow wood right against the back of my neck.
A massive branch snapped to my left, but I kept my eyes locked forward, picking up my pace into a brisk walk, then a jog. Just as the cemetery gates came back into view, something brushed the back of my hand. It wasn’t a claw or a branch; the touch was strangely soft, like damp moss dragged across bare skin.
I bolted out of the woods and didn’t stop until I slammed my kitchen door shut.
The pain didn’t come immediately. By the time I sat down at the table, my hand had begun to itch intensely. Within minutes, the skin was blistering in branching red lines that spread up my wrist like ivy creeping over brickwork. The doctor later told me it looked like a severe allergic reaction to nettles or poison ivy, but I’ve never seen a plant leave marks that looked so perfectly like subterranean roots.
I’ve been marked by whatever is living in those woods, and the village knows it. When I passed the bus stop this morning, the gossiping pensioners suddenly went dead silent, looking right at my bandaged wrist before quickly turning their heads away.
Last night, the situation escalated. I finally broke down and called the police, telling them someone was stalking my property. Two officers arrived, searched the garden with their torches, and found absolutely nothing.
As they were packing up to leave, one of the officers paused by the back door, shining his light toward the garden gate. He frowned, looking back at me.
“Do you own a dog, sir?” he asked.
I told him no, I didn’t.
“Then why is there a lead tied to your back gate?”
I walked outside, my heart dropping into my stomach.
Hanging from the latch of my garden gate was a muddy, heavy-duty dog lead. One end was neatly clipped shut, dangling emptily in the sea wind. The other end—the loop where the walker would hold it—had been torn clean through with unimaginable force.
The police shrugged it off as a prank, but I know exactly what it means.
It’s a calling card.
The forest isn’t coming to break my doors down; it’s just waiting for me to follow the routine, pick up the lead, and walk back into the trees. I feel it’s eyes on me even now.