Something In The Woods

Author's Note: I don't profess to be an expert on a creature that may or may not even exist. Some of the things you'll read in this story have been read, watched, and listened to online by me (the Ohio howls for example). On the other hand, some of the things in this story are from my imagination. So please don't be upset if certain "facts" are inaccurate. Also, please be aware, this is a longer story where the sex happens much later.

Editing thanks go to Todger65.

Chapter 1

There it was again. A faint, yet clearly recognizable "whoop" sound followed by three quick knocks against wood. It sounded like someone hit a large tree trunk with a baseball bat. But it wasn't a person, it couldn't be. Why would it be? It was 2 am on a Saturday morning in northern Oregon near Mt Hood National Forest. Rich sat on his back porch; wide awake on his small, secluded, home and farm he inherited three years ago shortly after graduating from college. He just completed a huge project for the software engineering firm he works for remotely and decided to have a few beers and enjoy the cool August night air.

Rich had been hearing these sounds with increasing frequency. He didn't know how far away they were, but he guessed within a range of a quarter mile to one mile. The three wood knocks he just heard sounded pretty close.

Several times within the past few months Rich would be woken in the middle of the night by "whoops," knocks, and the always eerie, howls. He'd lay awake in bed listening and trying to figure out the source. It wasn't a moose, or a deer, and there's no way a bear would make a "whoop" sound or howl out like that. He thought it might be a coyote or a barred owl. However, some of the howls were long, labored moans out into the night air. They sounded slightly deeper in pitch than a coyote howl and lasted longer too. Then one evening he heard the knocks after a howl.

It sounded like something was banging against a tree with another piece of wood. To hold an object and do that, one would need hands and opposable thumbs. Rich thought about campers - people out there in the nature preserve. Camping wasn't allowed there and why would a person bang a limb up against a tree in the middle of the night after making a howling or "whoop" sound? Over the next few weeks he'd often go out on his back porch, sitting there in the darkness staring out into the forest that bordered his property, listening carefully.

In August the activity really picked up. Four times a week he'd hear sounds that he couldn't explain, coming from something he was unfamiliar with. This particular night in August, the "whoop" sound seemed very close -- 300 yards. He'd heard it before and could easily imitate it, but never this close to his property. He took a swig of beer and decided to be brave. After the third knock Rich whooped back. It wasn't as loud or as powerful as whatever made the sound, but it sounded almost the same. "Maybe it is a person out there. But why?" he thought.

After about 30 seconds Rich heard it again. It was slightly closer this time. Rich paused then whooped back. No response. He waited several minutes and after he took one last swallow of his beer he got up to go inside. Just as he turned to enter his home he heard another whoop call. It was much closer this time, maybe 100 yards. With his eyes open wide and any sort of buzz his beer may have given him extinguished, he crept down on the floor, peeking over the railing of the porch. He whooped again and giggled a bit at the excitement. "Was it some dumb, drunk, teenager out there screwing around? If so, I'll have a little fun," he thought.

Rich, peering out to his dark backyard, with only the light of the full moon and stars to illuminate the tree line where the forest began about 20 yards away, watched and waited. After several minutes, he chuckled at himself and started to stand, when he heard a whistle. It wasn't a bird, or coyote, but it sounded like a whistle a person can make. "Ok, I see, some dumb kid or homeless person out there, maybe high on meth or shrooms," he smirked and thought to himself. He decided to whistle back. It was exactly like the one he heard; a simple, quick whistle one might use to tell their dog to come as they patted their leg.

"I wonder if I should call the police? I'm pretty sure this person is trespassing on nature reserve property," he thought as he watched the tree line and listened for a response. "Any second he'll stumble out of the woods there and I'll see him in the moon light."

He was picturing a young guy, maybe a drifter, limping and stumbling out of the woods high on who knows what. Rich shook his head at the image in his mind and rolled his eyes. He watched and waited and waited. Nothing. It was at this point that he noticed the insects were quiet. No crickets were chirping; there wasn't any night time sounds at all for some reason. He wondered how long it had been quiet. Perhaps in his slightly buzzed state he didn't noticed the lack of night time noises. He reached down to grab his flash light.

"Might as well let him know I'm here and he's not scaring me," he thought, reaching for the large flash light he had set on the table earlier in case whatever it was making the sounds showed up in his yard.

Rich stood, shinning the light toward the tree line, adding to the light from the moon. He scanned from the left to the right. "I know you're out there pal. If you're gonna trespass, you better be careful, there's a lot of trigger happy residents in this county. Including me." he said fairly loudly, his voice echoing off the tree line; the only sound he was hearing in the cool night air. He scanned back and forth, and saw nothing in the flashlight.

"Alright? Got it?" he asked once more as he made another pass of his flash light to the right. Then he saw something that made his heart stop.

"Oh shit!" he exclaimed as he saw a pair of large, yellow, glowing eyes move behind one of the larger trees. It seemed like a split second. He shone his light on them and they must've reflected it.

"Nope, not a person, not a person!" Rich quickly turned off the flashlight and moved back inside, locking the door behind him. He went to his bedroom and grabbed his 9mm from the top drawer in his bedside table. He sat on his bed in his darkened room, looking out the window to the tree line, using only the moon light shining on his yard to try to see something -- or it, whatever "it" was.

"Was it a bear? Was it a moose? It was watching me, it was peeping around that tree," he thought. There was something in the woods. After an hour and no visuals, he was struggling to stay awake. Finally sleep overtook him. He fell asleep in his clothes, loosely clutching his 9mm.

Chapter 2

Several hours later Rich woke up. He placed his gun gently back into the drawer on his bedside table and got up. He showered, shaved, and ate some breakfast. He kept thinking about the early morning hours and decided to go outside and have a look around.

Rich went to the tree that he thought he saw the eyes dart behind. He also went to a few of the trees around that one. He looked on the ground for signs of scat or maybe foot or paw prints. He looked on the tree's bark to see if any fur had rubbed off or any scratch marks were made, thinking it was a bear; but he saw nothing. If there were signs of whatever that was, they were not easily found. Rich then tried to guess how far the eyes were off the ground. This would help him rule out certain possibilities. He focused on the split second from the early morning hours and tried to recall how far off the ground the glowing eyes appeared. With his 12 foot tape measure, he was able to deduce the eyes height from the ground was at around 6 feet -- his height. He immediately thought of a human again, but human eyes don't have eye shine like that.

Rich shook his head and sighed as he walked back into his house. He spent the next few hours online researching various topics like: strange howls, eye shine, whoops, and wood knocks. To his amusement all these topics led to information websites and testimonial websites about Bigfoot -- or Sasquatch. He laughed a little in an attempt to hide his anxiety. "No way; no way that's a Bigfoot. That crap can't be real."

Rich kept researching and reading stories of supposed encounters. These were stories about hunters all across the nation claiming they heard bone-chilling howls or saw large biped creatures out in the woods. He listened to recorded audio from Ohio that sounded almost exactly like the howls he's heard. He watched a few episodes of a certain TV show where a team goes out in the woods to attempt to find a Bigfoot. Realizing the show was probably scripted and just for entertainment, he searched for other, seemingly more legit researchers. He found a show online which featured one person in the woods, alone, with an audio recorder. The various episodes consisted of this person digitally enhancing the audio with software to make it easier to hear. Rich could hear the "whoops" and wood knocks clearly. He also heard faint voices in this guy's videos, but shook his head thinking that it was probably some sort of electronic voice phenomena (EVP). The creator of the video insists that they are "people" and not animals, and they talk to him. He had considered buying an audio recorder to record the sounds but figured that was pointless -- he did not want to share them with some "researcher" or website. Frustrated and annoyed Rich closed his laptop and stood outside on his back porch.

"This is dumb," he said aloud looking into his backyard at the tree line.

During Rich's routine Sunday afternoon grocery shopping, he found himself staring at the produce section. He rolled his eyes and grabbed three packages of a dozen apples.

Later that evening, he ate a light dinner, and ate three apples for a desert of sorts. He threw the leftover apple cores out into the woods, watching them bounce off trees. He retrieved three more apples and instead of eating them, he threw them as hard as he could out into the woods. Unsatisfied, he hurriedly retrieved one of the dozen apple plastic bags he bought and went outside to his backyard near, what he thought, was the tree he saw the eye shine. He chucked a few apples in the woods from that location, and then decided to just dump the remaining six right there on the ground at the edge of his yard. "There, we'll see how this goes tonight."

Rich barely slept at all that night. He thought he heard rustling outside his window and got up to look several times and saw nothing. Then on the edge of sleep he thought he heard a whistle or knock, but again, he looked and saw nothing in the moon lit backyard. He finally went to sleep for good around 3 am. The next morning he woke and check his emails, ate some breakfast, then walked around his backyard to inspect the area. He found no apples.

"They could've been eaten by deer, or a raccoon, or rats, or rabbits," he thought to himself.

That evening Rich did the same thing, except this time he dumped some apples in the yard a bit further away from the edge of the woods; closer to his house. The next day they were gone as well. He kept repeating this every night for weeks. The cashier at the grocery store in town must've thought he was some sort of apple addict. On a few occasions he threw out leftovers from dinner directly into his back yard. Various things like: small of amounts of pasta, pieces of bread, half eaten corn on the cob, a few green beans that were left, and so on. Every morning all food he had thrown out was gone. For the next month he did this, only occasionally hearing the eerie sounds. Maybe whatever was making the noise stopped because they didn't want to draw attention to this food source that was found -- they wanted the food all to themselves.

In September, Rich would leave apples right near the steps of his back porch. He also started leaving dirty clothes out there at night. He would take them in and wash them the next day. He also started spraying small amounts of his cologne on a few trees at the tree line and on the steps of his porch. Whatever it was, bear, deer, moose, or something else, might get used to his scent. "Maybe," he thought, "I can get a good look at it during the day. Who knows."

Every morning for the next month, all the food was gone. He also noticed some of the dirty underwear and shirts he had left out were slightly moved. They weren't hanging off the railing of his porch, but were on the ground in front of it or moved a few feet away from the porch entirely. Rich thought that either an animal took the clothes in its mouth and moved it, maybe tasting it, or something picked it up and sniffed it and then casually dropped it on the ground. He wanted to get a thermal imager and record it whatever was approaching his house at night to take the food, but he was almost too scared to do this. It's like he knew, deep down, what it was. Plus he found they were fairly expensive. He was already spending more on groceries as it is.

During his lunch breaks Rich took more walks than usual. He would walk in the woods leaving apples, his dirty clothes, or various leftovers from the previous night. He would look for signs of something, anything, but never found evidence of any kind. On one particularly cold day in October, he was standing next to a creek bed looking down at a small sandy area. He saw something that could've been a foot print, but he wasn't sure. As he crouched down to study it a little more he heard a twig snap. All the birds and insects in the area had gone quiet. He felt his heart rate pick up. He slowly took a deep breath. There was something behind him about 15 feet to his right, up on a small embankment near the creek. He didn't know what it was, but didn't turn around to look either. Instead, he slowly stood to his feet, turning to his right just slightly so that whatever was there could see the apple in his hand. He leaned down and placed the apple on the ground in the sand and calmly walked away back toward the house. He didn't hear anything else after the initial twig snap. The next morning he went back to the creek to find the apple was gone and the depression in the sand that might've been a foot print had been covered up. It was as if something deliberately moved sand over top of it with the side of their hand or forearm. Similar looking patterns of pushed sand were all around the area where the apple was. Something was covering its tracks, literally.

Chapter 3

Rich made it back to his home a quarter mile away. He decided to try a new experiment. He would put food out during the day. He'd leave apples around his back yard and a few on the steps of his porch. Rich knew what was watching him in the woods; he knew it had to be a Bigfoot. He wanted to see the creature for himself, but felt as though he should take a more respectable approach. He wasn't going to buy a bunch of surveillance cameras and mount them all around his property. He figured that the creature would catch on and not feel comfortable with him anymore. The fact that it covered its foot print indicated it was intelligent and didn't want to be seen. Rich wanted to seem as least threatening as possible. So putting apples and leftover food out during the day was his next plan.

Rich got up the next morning and after breakfast he put a few leftovers out in the back yard. He went to work in his office he had set up in the basement. There are no windows there so he couldn't exactly see what was going on in the backyard. This didn't bother him because he felt the Bigfoot would know if he was sitting at a window looking out into the backyard. All he would do is occasionally look out the back porch every few hours to see if the food was still scattered in his yard. He saw no change for most of the day. However, at 6pm, as it was starting to get dark, he looked out into the backyard and didn't see the few apples he had randomly scattered in his yard. He walked outside to make sure the setting sun wasn't playing tricks with shadows. He saw no apples or leftover bits of food from the night before. He looked around for hoof prints or scat that may indicate deer or some other animal, but saw nothing. Rich repeated this process every day until Halloween. He would leave food in the yard during the day and it would be gone by night fall. He would leave food out at night and it would be gone by morning.

On the afternoon of October 31st, he was outside in his backyard casually throwing a few grapes and pieces of bread. After a few moments he had a feeling he was being watched. He tried to ignore it and continued to toss pieces of food on the ground. When he got to the steps of his back porch he paused and slowly turned around toward the woods. He didn't see anything. He took a deep breath, inhaling the cool autumn air and looked upward and to the left slightly. That's when his peripheral vision picked something up. It was maybe 15 feet away at the corner of the house. Rich didn't look directly at whatever it was, but could tell something was there, and it was a dark, tall shape. He took a deep breath, turning his head in that direction as naturally as possible. His eyes widened as he saw a large, furry, black mass quickly dart around the corner of his home. He gulped and slowly walked to that corner, his eyes not moving from the part of the wall where the mass was. When he got to the corner he stopped and held his breath. He slowly inched forward so that his toes were peeping around the corner, then he leaned forward, exposing his nose, then his eyes. In his peripheral vision of his left eye he saw the same black mass, except this time it was around the corner leading to the front of his house. He remained still, darting his eyes to its direction. There was definitely something there. It was large and unmoving. He stepped forward, watching it as best he could without turning his head to face it.

Rich slowly continued to take small steps so that he was several feet away from the corner. He looked forward and kept moving his eyes in its direction. He dropped several pieces of bread on the ground. He walked to all the way to his truck parked in the gravel driveway. It was about 20 feet away. Rich stood, looking into the passenger side window. He saw his slightly distorted reflection on the glass, along with the side of his home, and trees in the distance. He saw something else too. Something in the lower left corner of the reflection. It was tall, black, and watching him. He could make out a hand resting on the siding of the wall. He couldn't make out any facial details in the reflection, but he could see a nose and mouth area. The coloring wasn't as dark as the rest of it; he wondered if there was no fur there.

Rich didn't know what to do so he just stood there watching it watch him. It was crouched down slightly with its left hand holding on the corner of the wall to its right. He took a deep breath and let out a short, sharp, whistle. He waited and watched. He few seconds later the figure in the reflection let out a whistle that was nearly identical to his. He whistled again, and it whistled back. Rich slowly moved his hand to his car. He watched the creature in the reflection crouch down lower as if it was expecting Rich to turn around, but he didn't. Instead, he knocked on the roof of his car three times. To his surprise the figure in the reflecting knocked on the side paneling of his home exactly three times in response.

"Ok this is enough for today," he thought, not wanting to push his luck. He slowly turned to his right and walked down to the edge of the woods where he threw the remaining grapes. Turning around to walk indoors, he never saw anything peep around that corner. He sat on his sofa looking out window facing the front yard. He saw nothing out there. "Whatever it was, Bigfoot, or something else, it's not going to hurt me and knows I leave out the food scraps. I have to keep building trust," he thought.