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Hello.
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To begin with, I am a healthy, twenty-three-year-old male with army experience. I don't write a lot. I barely even wrote in English class, so please forgive me for any errors I make. I enlisted at 17 broke and came out still broke.
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I needed a job.
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So when I read the job ads in the paper on a sunny June morning, I needed something that would pay well. Hell, I didn’t care if I would end up as the local gravedigger, but something caught my eye.
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I almost spat out my morning coffee. “How many dollars a week?”
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The ad was for a park ranger at Whitewater Forest. To keep it clean, protect old buildings, and be ready to enforce the law on anyone with ill-intentions. How bad could it be? It couldn’t be as bad as serving in the army for five years.
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Nothing, and I mean nothing, will ever freak me out as much as Whitewater Forest. I still don’t know the full story to do this day. Maybe it’s best if I never figure it out. But the images, the bodies, the screaming. It will stay in my head forever.
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Whitewater Forest. It was quite a drive from my beaten down home to the rural countryside of the state. Mind you, this job wasn’t in the daytime, of course. But I wasn’t scared of being alone in the forest. I actually found it calming, to be honest with you.
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The road just kept getting worse and worse the deeper I got into the back country. I kept wondering if I was going to the right place. There was no road signs or anything. The only lights that lit the street was mine.
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I felt completely and utterly alone as I drove through the straight street. No car was behind me or in front of me. If my car happened to break down I would be alone for god knows how long.
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Until I found the park building. You couldn’t imagine how much joy I felt when I found that I was in the right place.
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I parked in one of many parking spots, which was funny, figuring they got little to no visitors. There was only one other car parked. Only one light in that big building was on. I got out of my car and walked on the gravely road.
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I didn’t know if I should just walk in or not.
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Sitting for me, inside, was an old man. It looked like he had been waiting for me that entire time. There was nothing on that long wooden desk except a few papers. He was staring at me, with a smile, waiting for me to say something.
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“Oh, sorry, I’m here for the park ranger job. You put an ad on the-” He didn’t let me finish his sentence.
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“Wonderful,” he said. He got up, got a uniform from the shelves, and handed it to me. “You can change in that room over there. You start today and get paid at the end of the week. Good day!”
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I should’ve had some suspicions with how fast he offered me a job. “Wait, is there anything I need to know?” I asked.
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“You read the paper, didn’t you?”
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“Yes.”
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“Then you have everything you need to know, sir. Good day! You end by sunrise. I will take my leave.”
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And the man left. I thought to myself, how hard can it be?
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Writing his now I’m laughing at myself.
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I started the night with patrols. Nothing except the trees rustling and the sound of my boots crunching the leaves could be heard for miles. I wasn’t given a firearm. Only a knife and a taser.
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Something seemed off about the job. Something did. The fact that he was so eager to give someone a job and then leave as fast as he could. To be honest with you, I didn’t care what I did. I needed the money. Walking around an empty forest seemed pretty easy for a pay like that.
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It wasn’t empty.
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A long time ago, it wasn’t empty. I approached an old building. It looked absolutely demolished. Maybe the weather had done it, I couldn’t tell. But it had been a whole 30 minutes of that stinking job and I was bored, so I decided to investigate it.
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To my surprise, it was a concrete building. Someone had definitely lived there. I clicked on my flashlight. Turning around the sides, was a bunch of repeating symbols and a note engraved on the back of it.
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“You are not alone. We are still here.”
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I wondered who that could possibly pertain to. The owners of the house? At first I had innocently thought that. Then I started to wonder what could’ve happened to the house and the people living in it. Were they even talking about the house in the first place, or was the house just somewhere to write the note in?
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Turning my head to the side, I realized that there wasn’t symbols. It was numbers. All the same repeating number, actually. The number: 6.
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The message on the back of that wall bubbled in my mind as I continued patrolling. My job was to protect old buildings, and that was graffiti. I had to find whatever scum was doing that, so I didn’t lose my job.
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I decided to move down the hill and find the lake. Supposedly it was pretty nice, in the daytime. Remembering the map, the lake seemed to be right smack in the middle. I knew where I was, so I moved towards it.
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I got to the lake but I couldn’t see much. The moon and my flashlight was my only source of light. I didn’t see anything. But I heard something. Something far away. Someone male.
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“Aaaaaargghhhhhh.”
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The closer I got to the lake, the better I heard it. The piercing sound of male screaming. He seemed like he was in pain. The screaming did. Not. Stop.
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Constant, grueling pain. I needed to see what the hell could make someone scream like that. It felt like my ear drums were going to break. I pulled my binoculars and searched the perimeter of the lake.
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I dropped my binoculars and my face went white. Beyond the lake was a man. Or a ghost. He was staring at me. And screaming. Pointing at me. He was completely still but his jaw hung down a little too low.
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I wanted to leave. I turned around but I was too close to the lake. Something pulled me by the ankles. It felt like a bony hand. My heart was beating so fast I thought it was a nightmare. I tried to dig my hands in the dirt to stop myself from getting dragged. If I tried to pull out my knife I would be under for sure.
My hands gave loose above the dirt. I immediately lurched for my knife as I took in one last deep breath.
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I couldn’t see anything in the dead of night. The light of my watch only gave me a little bit of help, but I had no interest to see what exactly pulled me under. I wanted to get to the shore. I tried to swim up, and I did, but I only got a tiny gasp of air before I got pulled under again.
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I saw their face. Below them was a deep hole filled of 5 large bags.
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The best word I could describe it as rotted. Smiling. I didn’t try to look at him for too long before I slashed his arm with my knife and swam as fast as I could back to the shore.
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I got out, drenched in the lake water, panting, and spitting out water. The screaming stopped when I got as far from the shore as possible.
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Laughing began.
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I’m getting out of here, I thought. The screaming man stopped screaming and was laughing at me instead. I felt like everything in that forest was trying to kill me. I just kept running.
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I passed the decrepit building again. The number 6. 5 large bags including a man. The ghost.
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I threw the bloody knife on the floor as I reached the park building. I immediately got in my car and stepped on it.
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Looking back and even having done my research I don’t even know the full story. I’m just glad to have made it out alive. As a further update, I am now a gravedigger at your local graveyard.
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Goodbye.
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