A Night in the Woods

I’ve always been a country boy. I live in the sticks of Kentucky. Near a pretty thick forest, that was around two miles from my house. I always liked to spend all day outside, and sometimes camp outside just for fun. I loved nature and the outdoors. I went hunting and fishing in the fall and could spend hours hiking in the woods. Name’s Chris by the way. Particularly I liked to do these activities with my cousin Jake, who lived just five minutes away. And it was on THAT night...that night, I think in my seventh grade year, that me and my cousin may have been driven away from anything of the sort for a very long time.
It was not the first time something like this happened. Actually just a week prior to this, my family took a trip to Pennsylvania, where me and Jake saw, I swear to god in heaven a, god damn Not Deer. My dad just said Not Deer are a myth, and that sometimes deer just stand on their hind legs. And I did believe him. I mean, nothing like that could actually exist right? Anyway, it was this night that has really stuck with me though. And no, it's not because my cousin was heart wrenchingly killed or some creepypasta shit like that. No, it was mostly just like a normal camp trip. Well, one of my trips which was just for fun. And that, well...well you’ll see. We didn't go too far from the house, but at the same time, we were far enough to where we could only see the lights from the house.
We took a fairly large bright green tent, an electronic lantern and a couple of sleeping bags and that was really it. We weren't going all out, making a fire and everything, we were just gonna you know, sleep under the stars. That was the plan. We got a decent amount of distance away and decided to set up shop. We hitched our tents fairly quickly at around midnight and settled in. We chatted about pretty straightforward things. The same kind of stuff you’d talk about when camping. Hunting, nature, and our favorite thing, urban legends. Jake told me this one story about how his family went camping in a camper and in the middle of the night there was a bunch of scratching at the door. He said it was a skinwalker, but right after said he made it up. Skinwalkers. The concept of them always kinda creeped me out.
But at the same time, not a lot really scares me. One time when we were in 6th grade me and Jake did a Bloody Mary ritual on a swing set. The worst thing that happened was when Jake fell off the swing and almost broke his pelvis. And we did other shit like playing a game called Don’t get struck by lighting. Where during a thunderstorm we would run outside waving shovels in the air and well, try not to get struck by lightning. Anyway after chatting for a bit we finally went to sleep. I slept pretty well until Jake woke me up half awake. 
“Hey dude get up,” he said. I rubbed my eyes as I hesitatingly sat up. 
“Ah, what is it?” I asked him.
“Don’t ya hear that?” he asked.
I did hear something. Faintly. It sounded like something whistling. Not like a bird, singing a happy tune in the orange sky, but real whistling. HUMAN whistling. I went out of the tent with the lantern, my hand shaking slightly, to see where it was coming from. I looked forward. My house's lights were getting nowhere near where we were. I looked to the left. Nothing but grass and trees in the distance. I looked to the right. It got slightly louder. I shined the light in that direction. I saw nothing but trees and grass. I thought I could slightly see the outline of some sort of animal near the trees. The woods were at least two hundred meters away so I couldn't tell what it was. All I saw was that it was on four legs.
For some reason I decided to whistle back. I whistled a simple, very short tune and just stood there...waiting for something to happen. And sure enough as soon as I started to go back in the tent, I heard the thing answer. And it wasn't random. It mimicked the sound perfectly. There was no fucking way it echoed. It was too far away to echo. 
“What the hell?” Jake said quietly.
Slightly unnerved, I decided to go see what the thing was. Jake followed me too. With nothing but our lantern, we went to our backyard, since that was where I saw the figure. Eventually we made it to this fort we had in my yard. It was a small shed we built a year ago out of scrap metal. The walls are made of old street signs and sheet metal. And it was pretty damn durable, able to take multiple shots from a BB gun. I thought I heard something move around inside the shed, so I opened the door and headed inside. I looked around with the light for a little bit and said something bright on the ground.
“W-what is that?” Jake asked, pointing at the strange thing on the ground. I picked it up and it had bright, white hair...just...like our cat.
“What the hell is this?” I said.
“Did that come...from Snowball?” Jake asked, with slight worry in his voice. I hadn't seen him worried like that in a long time. Next to the clumps of cat hair were these brown clumps of hair. We didn't have any more animals besides Snowball, our cat, so I have no idea what it was. Things were starting to get a bit too R.L. Stein for us, so we made our way back to our tents. When we made it back, we saw that the fence that surrounded the property was completely torn in half near where our tents were. That fence was wire metal, barbed on the top. There was no way some coyote or deer could’ve torn it so easily.
We went back into our tent and tried to go back to sleep. We closed our eyes and began to drift off. Right before another anomaly occurred. Footsteps. HUMAN footsteps. All around our tent. We were petrified. I wanted to tell whoever was pranking us to cut it out, but something in me knew this wouldn't be a prank. Who would go this far? For a couple of 8th graders. They started out tame and slow. They slowly picked up in pace. Whatever was out there made no sound, aside from its thundering steps, splitting our souls in dread, as if any minute it would stop and come into the tent. Even with that, we somehow fell asleep, whether it be from exhaustion or passing out from fear (the latter being unlikely for us but it was terrifying nonetheless). 
I woke up from a dreamless slumber at around six in the morning, to the sound of REAL birds whistling. I immediately went out to see if that THING was gone. I wish I hadn't though. Right outside our tent were footprints surrounding the tent. DEEP footprints, behind, next to, and even right where I stepped out. They looked like a dog or wolf, but they were far too big to be that. Jake came out a few seconds later, and he could not hide his shock. I looked around to see the fence even more mangled, and a large, thick tree with three deep slashes in it. Jake and I quickly got to taking down our tent and grabbed our things and began a slow, tried walk home. I can’t begin to try to understand what the hell just happened to us that day. The only evidence being those footprints and the scratches. And...that on our way home...I noticed a coyote walking into a field in the distance, and that Snowball was lying on the front porch, whining, with a small bald spot and cut on her hind leg.
Category:Beings
Category:Nature