CreepyPasta: Modern Tales Of Horror

The Chanting in the Woods

I don't sleep with my windows open anymore. No matter how hot out it gets, that bastard stays closed. It's been this way for a long time. Since I was very young. It's not a real hit with the ladies during summertime. People usually recommend air conditioners, and I usually go with the prospect when I have company. But when it's in, I don't sleep well at all because I can only imagine how easy it would be for anyone to bypass them.

There is a single perk to an AC though, well, besides the relief from the hot stickiness of the summer's humidity, and that's the steady hum which stifles the silence. I don't like the silence you see. There was a time when it brought me an almost zen like level of peace and tranquility, but now, I find it invasive, dangerous. Silence never comes alone. From time to time, I can still hear the chanting, from my youth, I can hear them all, wordlessly and yet with prestigious synchronicity and harmony with one another, their conjoined voices echo out from the woods like the gentle and yet threatening breeze that proceeds a violent hailstorm, rhythmic yet senseless. It never went away, and yet I know they've all moved on or died. I know this is all very well.

When I was about nine years old, Me and my dad lived in this old rented two family apartment house in a town called Bridgewater in the state of Massachusetts. We lived on the bottom floor, The second floor wasn't used. It was recently vacated by its prior residents. It was a very quiet neighborhood, very suburban and with plenty of woods. Behind our house, there was a backyard that proceeded into a large forest that spanned for miles out. I used to play in them.

My dad and my mother were recently divorced, so there were just the three of us living here. Me, him and the dog Cash, who was named after the late country singer Johnny Cash. He was an old Scottish Terrier. You know the type, ankle biters with the really ugly bearded faces. They got him as a pup when I was still in diapers and he was my lifelong friend. He may have been something of an idiot, but at the time, he was all I had. I cried and cried when mom tried to take him. In the end, he was left in my father's care for my sake.

Me and Cash would spend a lot of time playing in the woods. When you're young, your imagination is a very powerful thing, and the woods had an almost magic quality in terms of supplementation for my imagination. I would play army, Build forts, climb trees. One time me and Cash traveled in so far, I actually got lost. We were losing daylight as it was October and the light was fading at a much faster rate, I began to panic, afraid I'd be trapped out here in the pitch black. As we walked around, frantic for landmarks, anything familiar, That's when I saw it. The clearing, with a large rock in the center.

It wasn't exactly uncommon to see graffiti and vandalism in the woods. A public forest is known quite well for trees with messages carved into them, names, swastikas, brad and Jen 4ever in a nice cute heart. Stuff like that, not to mention the pseudo gang names spray painted on rocks. That was the impression I got of this place, a hangout for older kids. But something wasn't right. Me being only 9, my mind wasn't exactly capable of comprehending the connotations of symbols and other things, and yet there was something really off about these images. I've never seen anything like them before. The surrounding trees had crudely shaped images of what appeared to be a goat man hybrid, like a stick figure, with an unnecessarily detailed goat's head imposed over where you'd expect to see a very basic stick figure face.

These images were drawn over and over and over again, all over the trees that surrounded the clearing, almost obsessively so, and not just at the basic human height level, but all up the trees, as if whoever carved them, had to use a ladder. The rock itself had red markings all over it, letters that I have never seen before. Underneath though, was written in black spray paint a message I actually could read. It said "Behold the wisdom of the Horned" and below that, there were five painted lines. They were all the same height except for the two outer lines that were twice the height and spiraled outwards at the top.