Creepy Pastas and other creepy stories

Out in The Woods

One of these nights it got mistier than it had ever been before. A thick silver fog covered everything and limited my line of sight to a short sphere around me. Even though the shed wasn't far from the house, I found myself feeling disoriented, and more than once I walked in the wrong direction, both times for some reason walking straight into the woods. By the time I had reached my last load, it was too foggy to see the street. My eyes stung in the moisture and it made my vision blur. Lurching forward, I managed to walk headfirst into a tree, doubling over and dropping all of the wood I was bundling onto my feet with a hard crunch. As I went to pick them up, with my foot throbbing pretty hard, I realized that the ground was too misty for me to see my own knees. I decided to head to the house, since we had more than enough wood for one night. However, it was getting to be pretty dark and I couldn't make out any signifiers of which direction I was heading in. Even though I cautiously walked for several feet in all directions, trying to figure out my position in the mists, I still couldn't figure out any point of identification.

I couldn't even locate the fence or the gate, and the more I walked, the more I seemed to stumble into trees, pine needles and mud crunching under my feet instead of dew-covered lawn. After a while, I finally realized that I couldn't even find the shed any more. Cursing myself for being so dumb (while trying to ignore my thumping heart and sense that something else was at play) I became aware that I was lost somewhere in the fringe of the forest. Screaming out for my mother at the loudest possible volume was only met with a resounding silence from the depths of the mist all around from where I stood, affirming that I had wandered too far from the house to be heard. As a deep panic started to settle on me, I noticed a glimpse of something pink moving against a nearby pine trunk. Coming closer I saw that it was a ripped-out square of pink paper. On it there was an arrow, pointing left. Looks vaguely like something my mom might make, I rationalized, to keep me from getting lost. So, foolishly, I followed the direction set by that green arrow, shivering in the increasing cold.

I kept walking for about five to ten minutes before needing to stop to take a breath. My heart was pounding so fast, it was beginning to hurt. As I was sitting down, however, I spied what appeared to be another note fluttering on a nearby trunk. I noticed that this one was embedded with a long nail. It bore another arrow, this one pointing up, and a small, sloppily written note that said "THIS WAY". Despite my increasing panic, I convinced myself that these notes were my only shot at getting back before nightfall. I was desperate to get the hell out and my brow was cold with sweat. So I followed the green arrow, to a point where I could just dimly make out another spot of pink, up an incline of collapsed stumps and leaf litter.

At this point it was getting pretty dark, and I had to strain both my eyes just to see a few meters ahead of me. Following the green arrows, feeling less and less sure of where I was, I stumbled through the woods, groping out in the mist to feel for trees (although I was terrified of something unseen grabbing my arm). I came across the third green note, which had another arrow pointing up again, this one lead to an increasingly steep slope that I didn't recognize being anywhere near my house, and with a poorly drawn smiley face right above it. At this stage, I became too freaked to cope and started to cry there a little. As I slumped against the pine stump, the possibility that I would be out in these woods all night was beginning to sink in, like a syringe being driven into the veins within my arm. I caught a glimpse of another pink square in the near distance. Squinting hard, unnerved by these notes, all of which looked fresh and without sign of decay despite the previous week's nonstop rain, I read it from afar.

What I read made my blood turn cold. I stood to my knees, dead silently, wobbling on them in fear. My ears were sensitive to any tiny prickle of noise in the mist. For a long time, I stood there in the rolling fog, reading and re-reading that horrible note over and over again, before a snapping stick somewhere behind me caused me to sprint, blindly, twigs snagging at my ankles and cutting up my face as I ran. Written on the note, in big green letters, was my name. It felt like I was running for hours, all the while, the rain and mist lapped at the back of my neck like the decaying breath of someone running right behind me. Somehow I made it back to the house. All the lights were off, and I struggled to find the keys for a moment. When I found them, I bolted indoors and quickly crawled into bed where I remained, unsleeping till morning. Mom just thought I'd come inside and gone to bed, and hadn't thought to leave the lights on. It was a miracle, aka some freakish coincidence that I even found the house at all. The final "incident" at that damn house was witnessed only by my mother. Up until then she had never experienced any of the strange things as I had, although we mutually shared the peculiar oppressive quality that the house's interior had on us, and its placement in the dreary, imposing woods.