Spider in the Woods

Here is the start of a story I wrote after seeing a forum post on Dark River Press. The forum isn't there anymore, unfortunately, though there wasn't a lot of activity on it, so I understand getting rid of it. Anyway, the editor of Dark River Press had posted a picture of a girl in the woods and asked people to write a 100 word story about the image. If the forum was up I would have grabbed that story and posted on here, but what I am going to post is my follow up to that story. I was instantly inspired to write about some sort of cult that lived in the woods. This is about three pages of the story, I'm planning on cleaning it up a lot and then submitting it to some websites, and most websites prefer having stories that haven't been published, hence only getting three pages. It's a bit rough, but maybe you can help out with it?



It was another boring day at work. Answer a couple of questions, a few minutes of editing a web page, correct an issue in a video that he is working on. And then hours of goofing around on the internet. This is what his days are usually like. The last couple of months he has been checking out the local newspaper site along with the usual time wasters. Getting older, he just assumed it was time to start finding out what is happening in his town. Most of the time he only scans the site, nothing out of the ordinary happens, and if something really crazy happens, he quickly posts it on the a website for the masses to make fun of. But, the last couple of weeks there has been a string of stories involved missing people. Mostly college aged guys. Nothing really connected except for the fact that they all had a tie to the woods just outside of town. The newspapers don't really go much further than mentioning that they have gone missing near the woods. He was the one to actually make the connection of the woods. Google maps helped out with that. After the third guy he started making little notes about the stories. Tracking times, how long it took for the reports to come out, and basic details about the guys. It's Friday and after staring at the computer for 7 hours, checking out pictures of the woods and re-reading the stories on the news website, he decides that he is going to go out to those woods. The boredom has got to him, he is sure his wife won't mind if he takes some time after work. "Hey babe, you know the stories I've been telling you about? About the guys going missing in the woods? I think I want to swing by there." "Why? What possible reason do you have for going there?" "Well, I want to get away from the desk and figured a nice walk in the woods would be a good way for me to chill out." "Fine, just keep you phone on you, I don't need you to be the next story." "I'm a bit older than those guys, and I don't need to run away from something, these guys probably just owe people money or don't want to deal with something, so they are taking off."


Driving to the woods, he realizes that he has never been in them before. They almost encircle the entire town, like a type of defense from the east. There are roads through them, and the highway is on the southside of them, the woods are a state park, considered a national preserve because of how old they are. The guys must have gone to the park. They did find a couple of the college guys cars left in the parking lot. That was how they determined who some of the guys are.


It was late February, all of the snow melted and it feels like a cool spring day. The woods are not dense, yet it's clear it is a forest. The trees are tall, jagged arms reaching up to pull the sky down. The ground is covered in moldy yellow and brown leaves and bits of wheat grass. There are a lot of paths in these woods, hikers and city dwellers love to wander around here. The woods have a shy scared animal feel to them, most of the time the animal will just watch you and leave you alone, but there is always a feeling that it might lash out and maim you. He's been here before, but isn't out here all of the time. He at least knows the general path of the trails.


Parking his car, he notices that there are not that many people out here. There is a post up with some yellowed papers announcing weekly hikes or bird watching events. He notices something painted on the corkboard, looks a little like a spider, but could easily be some kid's tag. The main trail is next to this post, it's a dirt path packed down hard making it hard to see if there are any recent boot prints. It seems as though the trees near the path are pointing forward on the path, telling him the way to go. He has his cheap notebook in his pocket, a pen with him, and his cell phone with a camera. His cell service is spotty over here, but he has some. His guess is that the other guys probably had similar service here too. Not sure what he is going to find, but the crisp air feels good. The sky is a dark gray, giving the brown trees a stark contrast. After the long boring week, he believes the walk in the woods is going to feel good.


He's been walking in the woods for about a half an hour, following the main path and ignoring the side paths when he notices the first sign. This sign wasn't made by the government or some local group pointing out different hiking paths, this sign was made out of animal bones and sticks. They are laid out at the trunk of a tree and seem to point to a path on the left. He pulls out his phone and snaps a picture, the shape isn't discernible, just a circle of bones with the sticks laid out on each side, the left side with more sticks than the right. The objects were clearly placed here on purpose, the leaves were cleared out around it, but it's hard to tell how long they have been there. The left path looks a little more abandoned, but not in any clear way he can point out. Not sure if this sign was here when the guys went on the path, not even sure if they didn't turn down one of the side paths, he decides to go to the left and see where this leads. His cell phone still has service.


As he walks this path, the abandonment feeling appears and disappears quickly. Almost as if something large was on the path and is now gone. The path has areas that are cleared off and then areas that are covered in leaves, almost like someone had recently picked something up off of the ground. And for the lack of markings on the trees. The trees in these cleared areas have what at first appeared to be scratches in the bark, but further along the path appear to be designs of spiders. These designs are similar to the one on the post at the beginning of the path. It has eight legs and a large abdomen and what appears to be two large fangs, they look like a child’s drawing of a spider. He can tell that they were done with a knife. And while they might all be of a spider, none of them look exactly the same. The trees are covered with them. He also notices that the designs appear around the higher limbs of the trees, as if someone was sitting on the limbs and carved them into the tree. He is not sure if it’s the cleared areas on the paths, or the spider carvings, or the quietness of the woods, but he is on edge, hairs on the back of his neck are straight up. “This is as far as I am going, I think I have enough to go on...” He said this out loud, just to add some noise to the empty space that is covering the entire woods. Quickly he pulls out his phone, deciding to take some pictures and call his wife. He feels that right now he needs to hear her voice.


He moves around the area to get some pictures. There is one tree, a larger tree, one that looks much older than all the rest. He noticed it earlier, but had the feeling that he didn’t want to look at it. Once when he was little, he was spending the night at his grandparent’s house and had to sleep in the basement. This was an old house. There was a door under the stairs in the basement. As he was down there trying to sleep, he did his best to not look at the door. He just knew that if he looked at that door, it would move and something would come out. This same feeling came over him as he was in the presence of that old large tree. It was a large dead oak tree. There were some rocks around the trunk of the tree, and a large gaping hole facing the path. The carvings that were on the other trees were no where to be seen on this tree, as if the tree didn’t need to be covered with those crude tattoos. He can’t stop staring at it, the tall dead grass giving the tree a cowl on the back side of the tree, the dark in side of the hole which gives him no view of the back of the hole. This tree seems to watch over the trees and path of the area. He now notices that the area around the tree is one of the bigger cleared areas on the path, as if there was a large gathering in front of the tree. And he is standing in the middle of it.


“You are not suppose to be here.”