Welcome To Dreadwood

Jungle

Victor remembered spending a wonderful time in a tourist town that had suddenly appeared on his GPS map. A charming town beside the sea. He and his travel partner stayed at a lovely beachside hotel. During the night, they would hear strange noises and voices coming from outside their room. They didn't think much about it as the sounds disappeared with the sunrise. The town seemed a bit strange, but the trip was made stranger by the fact that Victor didn't remember having a travel partner before or after the visit to the town. Who was he? Who knew? It all seemed perfectly normal at the time.

Victor didn't remember how long he had stayed in the town, but one night after going to sleep, he awoke in the middle of the night to find himself outside in the pitch darkness. Looking around in the moonlight that reached the ground, he made out where he was—the unexplored jungle on the highest mountain near the town.

"Great!" he thought. "But how did I end up here?"

Sleepwalking? Impossible, he never sleepwalked. Plus, it was a long way up the highest mountain to the jungle. Someone brought him here? They would have needed a vehicle to bring him all the way up here. He would have felt someone carrying him to the vehicle.

With no idea of how he ended up in the jungle, Victor decided to determine his exact position in the jungle.

Victor was a skilled tree climber, and he decided to climb to the top of a tree to see where he was in the jungle. Reaching the summit of a nearby tree, Victor surveyed the surroundings like an eagle. In the moonlight, he discerned that he was in the middle of the jungle, and the town was to the west.

Victor got down and began walking west. He glanced around every time he heard a sound. Up ahead, a winding stream glistened under the moonlight, which filtered through the thick foliage. The stream was tranquil.

Coming up to the stream, he sat beside the stream and looked at his reflection in the water, pondering how he would get out of the jungle. As he got up, he heard a rustling noise among the trees. Glancing in the direction of the noise, he thought he saw something. He couldn't believe his eyes. There seemed to be something close behind. Victor was losing his mind. He thought about running and hiding.

Victor sat near a tree and looked up at the starry night sky, which could be partly seen through the parting of the foliage at the treetops. Eventually, he became convinced that he wasn't alone in the jungle, that somewhere among the trees, a beast was stalking him.

As Victor moved through the jungle, he would stand still for a long time, listening to the wind, searching for the slightest sound of movement in the distance. He began to run desperately towards the town, finding no way out of the jungle.

After many attempts to leave the jungle, he finally found a way across the boundary of the jungle. As he crossed the boundary, he felt the cold night air turn hot and wet, and a claw grazed against his back, ripping his favourite sleepwear. The beast had been an arm's length behind him.

Victor continued running and only stopped when he had reached town. When he told the townsfolk about the beast in the unexplored jungle, everyone laughed. There was no beast according to the locals. Had Victor imagined the monster all along?