Do you like scary stories? How about monsters and things that go bump in the night? If you do, then I have the collection for you. This is an anthology of short scary stories, all of which are original; with more being added as time goes on. If you...
This is a story that happened long ago. Back then, a Captain and his men went to the cold north to escape the war. They didn't want to fight, but they didn't want to be caught either. They traveled for many days until they came to a large valley. They decided to set up camp and live there until they could find a place to call home.
In the summer, the valley was wonderful, and they never went hungry. But as the months passed, winter began to set in and they knew they had to leave or they would starve.
"This way," said Captain Sheridan. He was going to lead his men out of the valley through the narrow pass they had used to enter the valley. Upon reaching the pass however, they encountered a wolf. But not just any wolf. This wolf was the size of a bear and smiled like a man. His eyes were wide as saucers and milky white. His coat was solid black.
He spoke to them, saying, "You eat me and I'll eat you. From the inside out I'll chew and chew."
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Afraid, Captain Sheridan raised his gun and opened fire. The wolf dropped dead and the men went to investigate it. Despite its size, the wolf weighed close to nothing, and the men could lift it up without much effort. The Captain ordered his men to take the wolf with them as they left the valley because they needed food for the winter.
They went through the pass expecting to find the land they had left behind. However, they ended up in the valley again!
"We're cursed for running away." Said one of the men.
"We shouldn't be here." Said another.
The Captain tried again and again but the same thing happened each time. It was only a straight path. Yet, no matter how careful they were, the path always led them back to the valley. His men were terrified that they couldn't leave. They whispered that something evil was happening and the Captain agreed. But there was nothing they could do. So, defeated, Captain Sheridan and his men retreated back to the valley and settled in for the winter.
The wolf was big enough to feed the Captain and his men for a solid month. Its meat tasted like it had already been cooked and because they didn't have a fire, they ate it raw. After the wolf was all bones, they buried him under the blankets in the Captain's tent. The snow grew thick and heavy in the meantime, and no matter how many clothes they put on, they couldn't stop feeling cold.
One night, as the Captain lay sleeping in his tent, he heard someone say in a deep voice, "You eat me and I'll eat you. From the inside out I'll chew and chew." It was coming from inside his tent. Frightened and weak with hunger, the Captain did not move but curled tightly into his blankets and finally managed to sleep.
The next morning, one of his men wasn't there. They went searching for him, calling out his name as they explored the ice and snow, but they never found it.
"We're going to die here." One of the men said later that day.
"Don't talk like that." Captain Sheridan said, but he didn't believe his words. "We just need to keep someone posted during the night. This won't happen again."
From that night on, the men kept a watch around the camp. For a time, no one else disappeared. But the men, including Captain Sheridan, were getting hungrier every day. And the animals they hunted were starting to leave the valley for winter. The Captain and his men became horribly thin and began to look like skeletons.
It was the middle of winter when Captain Sheridan heard the voice again. He was on watch and had a little fire to keep warm by. First came footsteps, heavy, crunching the snow. Something big was approaching him. It began to talk beyond the light of the fire, saying, "You eat me and I'll eat you. From the inside out I'll chew and chew."
The Captain leveled his rifle and fired off into the dark. As his muzzle lit up the night, he caught a flash of skeleton, and the smile of a wolf whose body was about the size of a bear. The footsteps stopped. Captain Sheridan was so scared that he didn't call out to the others. Instead, he pulled a stick of burning wood from the fire and brought it up to the dark. There was no wolf. Not even tracks. His stomach growled and he continued his watch well into the night, wondering if he was seeing things.
That next morning, another man had disappeared. Though they went out looking for him, none of them believed that they would find him. This happened again and again, day after day, until there were only two men left, Captain Sheridan and his Lieutenant, Dan. They took turns keeping watch. During the day, they were too tired to hunt. And at night they were too scared to sleep. Neither of them spoke about the voice, but the captain could always hear it, somewhere in the woods, saying, "You eat me, and I'll eat you. From the inside out I'll chew and chew."
Finally, a blizzard came and the two men huddled together to keep warm. They were in the Captain's tent, wrapped in blankets, some taken from the wolf's grave. The storm lasted for days and the Lieutenant was getting weaker and weaker with hunger.
"We'll starve if we don't get some food in us." He told the Captain. The wind outside howled like the black wolf they had killed.
"No we won't." The Captain said.
The Lieutenant didn't believe him at first, but then, he noticed that the Captain wasn't as thin as he had been.
"Aren't you hungry?" The Lieutenant asked.
"No." The Captain said. The tent rattled as the storm blew around it. The Captain was smiling in a way the Lieutenant had seen only once before. Hadn't the wolf smiled just like that?
"Wh-why?" The Lieutenant asked, trembling.
The Captain stood and walked over to a spot in the tent he kept covered in blankets, where they had buried the wolf's remains. He pulled the blankets back and instead of an animal skeleton, the Lieutenant saw the bodies of his friends, each covered in human-sized bite marks. Some had no skin.
The Captain's face changed and his eyes became as big as saucers and milky white just like the wolf. He said, "We won't go hungry. Can't you hear him? He's saying, 'You eat me and I'll eat you. From the inside out I'll chew and chew.'"
The Lieutenant ran out of the tent screaming.
The next spring, when the snow melted and the animals returned, a man and his Indian Guide came through those very woods.
They found the body of a man who had died while holding onto a tree. Though his skin had long since been picked clean, they couldn't help but think he looked scared when he died. Following his trail, they came upon a campsite. The man immediately recognized that the site belonged to deserters and upon searching the eerily quiet tents, he found something buried under blankets and dirt in the biggest tent. They were bones, all of which were human. Some had been gnawed on by an animal.
The Guide said, "This is bad place. Dark spirit here."
When the man asked his Guide what he meant, the Guide said that a spirit of hunger lives in the woods. It offers itself as food to starving travelers. However, when it is eaten, those that ate become sickly and starve, or turn into something else.
Not heeding the Guide's warning, the man stayed a bit longer in the tent until he found a journal. In its pages, he discovered Captain Sheridan and the lost men. What happened to them caused him to shiver. A wolf howled close by moments after and following it were the words of rhyme that would haunt him until his dying day. 'You eat me and I'll eat you. From the inside out, I'll chew and chew." The two of them left quickly after that, not resting until they were far away from the valley. The man returned to his home and passed this story down until this very day.
So, if you ever visit the woods of Black Wolf Valley, particularly during the eve of fall, you might hear a voice in the forest. Whatever you do, don't go near it. And if you are a hunter, do not hunt it. Because if you do, you will never be full again and you will hear a deep growl around every corner saying, "You eat me and I'll eat you. From the inside out I'll chew and chew."
