The Forest Whispers To Me (DammitMax)

CoyoteJester

Classy Bastard
Original poster
LURKER MEMBER
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Invitation Status
Posting Speed
  1. 1-3 posts per day
  2. 1-3 posts per week
Writing Levels
  1. Give-No-Fucks
  2. Beginner
  3. Elementary
  4. Intermediate
  5. Adept
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Male
Genres
Horror,fantasy,scifi,modern
It had been a long drive, and Thomas tiredly looked over at the woman in the car with him. A smile played across his lips as he turned his attention from her back to the road. They had finally made it to Vermont, and they were looking forward to a relaxing few days of hiking and camping in the woods.
Keeping his eyes on the road, he gave the woman, who he affectionately called "Jax", a soft push against her arm. "Hey, wake up. We're here. It won't be long now, and we can finally stop for the night."
 
Jax had been resting her head on the window of the car door, wouldn't have been a stretch to say she was probably drooling a little. Jerking a bit as she woke up, she looked around outside the car and over to the driver. Groaning a little she rubbed her eyes and face, "About time." she yawned, wanting nothing more to get up, walk around, and stretch for a bit. With all the past traveling she's done she still didn't like long car rides much, thankfully it was easy for her to fall asleep.
 
"Just about ten more minutes, and we can check into a hotel for the night. So either tomorrow or the day after, we can get started on our hike." Thomas slowed down to the town's speed limit of 30mph and began to look around for the hotel that the GPS said was near by. It wasn't long after that, that he pulled into the parking lot of it. The hotel was a small and quaint little place, but nevertheless, it still looked nice and comfy. "Come on sweetheart, let's go." He said as he opened the door and stepped out. Stretching, much to the relief of his muscles, he let out a noise, then let his arms slap against his body.
 
Jax sluggishly got out of the car, stretching and yawning, hearing a few of her bones crack and pop. She walked around to the back of the car and opened the trunk to grab a couple duffle bags. Closing the trunk Jax walked to the lobby with Thomas, wanting nothing more than to just turn in for the night. A cheerful looking woman in her forties greeted them from the front desk. "What brings you two this way?" she asked as she typed away on her keyboard getting their room information, her name tag read 'Sharon'.
"Gonna be doing some hiking, camping, stuff like that." Jax answered. The woman's face dropped a bit "Oh this area really isn't the best for hiking, forests aren't that nice." she commented handing them their room key "You might want to try some place else." Jax took the key looking over towards Thomas "Why's that?" she asked curiously. "Just a lot of superstitions about the woods around here, there tends to be a lot of bad luck tied to them."
 
Thomas' ears perked up, and he leaned against the counter. "Go on. Please tell us about these.... superstitions." He was actually quite curious, and the woman's reticence only further piqued his curiosity. Besides, they had come her for hiking and camping, there wasn't a chance in hell they were going to turn around and go back just because of some local superstition. In hindsight, maybe he should have read into the local superstition, but, then again, where was the fun in that? No discovery or nothing.
 
"Well most outsiders find it to a bit silly sounding," the woman began nervously, her hands playing with a pen in her hand "For as long as I've been living here, there have been stories of people inhabiting the forests. Children to be exact, but they've lived out there for so long they've become feral. There's many versions of the children supposedly are, saying their ghosts or some type of spirit, others saying they're monsters," she trailed off a bit not looking at either Thomas or Jax. "Most people who just moved here or haven't been here long just brush it off as a tale to tell the children so they don't go venturing off, but with all the years there have been disturbing events to come from those woods." she looked back up, her eyes moving from Jax to Thomas "I think it'd just be best to hike somewhere else." Jax didn't say anything in reply, she herself could be a bit superstitious from time to time but she felt like this was some BS locals told tourists to scare them.
 
Thomas arched an unsure eyebrow, his hand resting on the pistol at his side like it normally did when he wasn't paying attention to what he was doing. From what he could gather from reading this woman's face and her body language as she talked, she wasn't lying, at least about the part of it being local legend. A grin spread across his lips as he stood back up straight and turned his head to Jax. "Looks like our stay here is going to get much more interesting." He began to walk off towards the room, throwing his head over his shoulder to look at the lady. "Thanks for the info!" he said with a grin as he shouldered his bag.
 
Jax grinned and followed him, the lady was quite bewildered by Thomas's reaction. Startled she started to yell out a "wait!" but Thomas and Jax had already turned the corner walking down the hall to their room. Stopping in front of their room's door Jax swiped the key and unlocked it. "I think all that is a bunch of horse shit," she laughed "A town is always going to have some 'disturbing events' especially with wooded areas, that doesn't mean there's demon children living in the woods." Opening the door she walked into the room and dropped the bags on the bed. Unzipping one of them she started rooting around for her toothbrush.
 
Plopping down on the bed, Thomas took his pistol from out of the holster and unfastened it, setting it down on the nightstand. "Who knows, maybe some drunk hillbilly was wandering around the woods one night and mistook the hooting of an owl or something for some strange demon child. Although, I did here this one story about a scientist who took orphaned children and injected water into their heads, causing them to become grossly deformed. However, I don't think little miss Sharon quite meant that."
 
"I bet there were just some runaways that they never found and started joking they were living in the woods, eventually twisting it into some campfire ghost story." Jax said finally finding her small bag of toiletries and sleep clothes taking them into the bathroom. A few minutes later she was out in sleep shorts and a sports bra, face washed and teeth brushed, ready to hit the sack. Throwing her laundry in a pile on the floor she moved the bags of the bed and crawled in under the covers.
 
Simply shrugging, Thomas took a pair of shorts and his toothbrush and went into the bathroom, coming out a few minutes later. "Oh well, it is what it is, and I suppose we can look into it more in the morning. If nothing else, it'll be a fun story to tell our friends back home." As tempting as it was, it was too damn late to be playing any jokes, so his shaving cream monster bit would have to wait. Besides, he knew that Jax was too tired to put up with it, and he didn't really feel like getting slapped. Deciding to leave things as they were, he figured that the best thing to do now was just try and sleep. "Night love." he said quietly.
 
Jax just barely conscious mumbled a "G'night", soon after was dead asleep, snoring softly.
She was woken up in the morning by the sunlight pouring into the room. Letting out an annoyed groan she pulled the blankets and sheets up over her face, but the damage had been done and there was no going back to sleep. Rolling out of bed she let out a yawn and stretched her back. Walking into the bathroom she ditched her sleepwear and got the shower running, brushing her teeth as she waited for the water to heat up.
 
A short while later, Thomas awoke, partially woken up by the light, and partially woken up by the nose Jax was making. He slid off of the bed and rubbed his eyes, his morning stretching interrupted when he saw that a note had been slid under the door. "What in the hell is this?" he asked himself curiously as he woke up.
"If you value your life, you will not go into the woods. Dark things lurk there, and it's just a matter of time before they get you."​
The note was written in an eerily blood red ink, and Thomas' thoughts first went to Sharon and her hesitance about the woods. "Hey Jax." He called out. "There's a note here that you should read."​
 
"What?" she asked, her words muffled by her toothbrush. Walking back into the bedroom she took the note from Thomas's hand and read it over. "Seems like they're just trying to pull some sort of joke on us." she shrugged, handing it back to him, then went back to the bathroom to spit and rinse out her mouth. "That lady at the desk was probably talking to some other employee and they decided to have a little fun." she continued as she hopped into the shower, grabbing one of the mini shampoo bottles and squirting the soap into her hand. "Every once in a while people tried to pull that stuff on Rocky and I when we were traveling, always turned out to be a bunch of bullshit."
 
Thomas shrugged and mouth a silent, "eh, maybe." Leaning against the bathroom sink, he thought in silence for a moment. "Alright, if they wanna play jokes on us, then let's play some jokes on them. We'll go out and about, maybe hit a few outdoor stores, and casually mention that we're going hiking. If they ask us whether or not we've heard the legends, we'll say of course we have, after all we've lived here for years. If they keep insisting on us not going, then we'll know that this isn't some joke and that either there is actually something there, or this is a legitimate, deep rooted local legend. If we want to go further, we'll say that we want to see what's really out there, and their reaction will tell us the rest."
 
Scrubbing at her hair Jax pursed her lips thinking for a moment, "Sounds like a good idea to me, but what if they question never seeing us around before since we've lived here for years. I mean this town isn't super small but it still seems about the size most everyone would know each other, or at least have seen them before." she said rinsing the suds out of her hair and grabbing a bar of soap to scrub at her skin with. Jax felt if you were going to go through with a story you had to think about every possible detail in order not to trip up and get caught in the lie.
 
"Hmm..." Thomas said in thought, falling silent for a moment. "Maybe we haven't lived in this town, but we've lived in Vermont for a while. This maybe be more than just a local legend,maybe even a state wide one, but if it is, then we'll say that we've done some research at the library or online concerning local legends. After all, don't we just look like the kind of people who would love to see if such a macabre tale is true?"
 
"Yeah sounds like an okay plan," Jax was pretty sure the tale was just a story and they were wasting time trying to find out more. Rinsing off Jax finished up her shower and shut the water off, moving the curtain out of the way and stepped out of the bathtub. Grabbing a fluffy white towel off the rack and started to dry herself off. "Shower is yours." she said wrapping it around herself and headed to the bedroom to grab clean clothes.
 
"You know, we could also just say fuck it and go out anyways, paying no attention to what the locals say." Thomas offered as he got into the shower. While Jax didn't seem to have any interest in the legends, he did, and tales such as this fascinated him immensely.
It didn't take him long to clean up, and soon enough, he was dressed in clean clothes, ready for the day. "So, little miss Jax, what do you think: fuck it and just hike, or play with the locals and see what we can find?
 
Dressed in hiking boots, durable cargo pants, and a light tank top Jax was rearing to go and be out in nature. "Really yeah just fuck the locals and let's go hike. I'm not really in the mood to be chasing ghost stories." she shrugged, getting up from where she was sitting on the bed "Wanna go grab breakfast and head out?" she asked.