The Fyrn

Distress call

Nothing was damaged outside of my cabin. No scratch marks, broken antennas or even so much as a fogged up window. What there was, however, was a pair of muddy boot prints standing right outside of my window. Right where the man, if he was a man, had stood. They had almost been washed away, though they were still visible. I snapped a picture of them as evidence. Not for the police or Nora and Justin, but for myself. I knew that I'd find some way to blame it on lack of sleep, fear or whatever else. But, as long as I had this picture I would know that the previous night's events were in fact real.

I chose not to tell Nora or Justin, as I knew they'd chastise me for leaving a poor soul in need of help at the mercy of the woods and the storm. Not that I blamed them, of course. I would've done the same, had I not been chosen to be the one that would be haunted by that thing. Normally I'd be eager to blame myself for leaving him out there as well, but I just couldn't get those words out of my head.

You
We are here for you

They haunted my brain for many days and they still do. Those aren't all that plague my thoughts now, however, but I shouldn't get ahead of myself.

I chose to keep living in the cabin, as I truly did love it there. The isolation still wasn't a curse and I liked the woods even more now that I could navigate through them a bit better. Sleep didn't come easy in the days after the incident, if it came at all, but I managed to get through the days with what little rest I got. After a week had passed without further incident, I dared to hope that the whole ordeal was over, yet the words bounced around my brain all the same. Not knowing whether I was ever going to be able to truly rationalize what happened, I spent many hours looking at the photograph of the muddy boot prints outside my window. The radio worked fine again, Justin chalked it not working up to the storm interfering with the frequency. I, however, knew better. I started to believe that it might have been the creature that Justin described to me on that very night; the Fyrn. That was only speculation though, and I knew it. All of these thoughts were interrupted when I heard Nora's voice over the radio.

"Alex? You there?" Startled, I jumped towards the desk and replied:
"Yeah, I'm here. Something wrong?" As I settled down and started fidgeting with the box of matches on my desk, she told me that a distress call had come through from a hiker and that I was closer to their position than she was. They were a few miles north of me and she didn't know what the distress call was for, but I'd figure that out soon enough. Grabbing my binoculars, I peered out of the window that held that awful memory. For a second, I thought I saw the man staring at me from the corner of my eye but it turned out only to be a figment of my imagination. When I turned on the heat vision, I could see a small campfire and a few normal woodland creatures moving around. That was more than likely where the call came from, so I made the somewhat long journey there.

It took me a good 2 hours, but I finally arrived at high noon. The sun cast a harsh light over the dense forest. I approached the campsite which was situated in a small clearing. The small fire had long since died out, yet the ashes still sent thin tendrils of smoke into the clear sky. A tent stood to the left of it, its flap open and the contents of a backpack thrown about inside haphazardly. Yet there was no sign of the hiker.
"Hello?" I called out, my voice seeming too loud in the silence that followed. No response came, except for the distant song of birds. I stepped closer, examining the ground for any signs of struggle or tracks. That's when I saw them. I had looked at the picture on my phone a hundred times and a hundred times over, so the muddy boot prints that lead away from the campsite were as familiar as they were frightening.
A cold chill crept down my spine like a critter, making the hair on my neck stand up, the hair on my arms and legs soon followed suit. Frozen, I stood there. I couldn't move, terror took me. I looked to my left and saw another set of shoeprints. These were hiking shoes, probably worn by whoever had sent out the distress signal. I was ready to abandon this place, for fear of who– or what– the hiker may have been. There was, however, something to point towards the possibility that the hiker wasn't like the man who had stood outside of my window that night. There had obviously been a struggle. The barely distinguishable shapes of 2 figures were still visible in the mud. They'd left outlines of their struggle in their absence. The question then became; what happened to the hiker? The answer came in the form of a raspy, terrified female voice behind me: "You came! Thank Christ you came!" The voice said in a greasy, disgusting southern accent.
I spun around quickly, scared that she may be what I'd come to fear. But there, the hiker stood before me, unharmed but visibly shaken, her eyes darting around as if expecting something to emerge from the trees at any moment. "I," She stuttered, "I saw someone. They... he weren't right. Feller had glowin' green eyes, and he moved funny too, hard to describe."
I listened intently as she described her encounter with the same man who had stood outside my window a week prior. It had approached her campsite without a sound, it moved unnaturally and stiffly, like a deer with chronic wasting disease. "I saw the fucker while I was cookin' breakfast over the fire there. He kept movin' all stiff-like. Then he ran at me like a goddamn rabid dog! Threw me to the ground, he did! But I got the bastard, grabbed a burning stick and poked it in his eye! He went mad, kept away from the campfire too. Seems he was scared of it."
I nodded, trying to keep a calm demeanor despite the fact that my mind raced with the speed of a thousand windstorms. Thoughts whirled around, as did the memories of that fateful night the previous week. Before letting all of that get in the way, I wanted to investigate the tracks the man had frantically left in his effort to escape. Commanding the woman to stay behind, near the fire, I followed the tracks into the woods. I walked through the dense forest for a few minutes before stumbling upon something ungodly.