The Forest Stalker

It was late afternoon, and you were carrying a bundle of firewood back toward your cabin when something pale caught your eye between the trees. At first, you thought it was sunlight reflecting off white bark. Then it stepped forward. Your grip on the firewood loosened. Standing motionless among the pines was a woman. Or at least, she looked like one.

She towered over the brush, impossibly tall—eight feet, maybe more. Her skin was ghostly pale, almost blending into the thin fog drifting through the forest. Her arms hung far too low, ending in long fingers that nearly reached her knees.

She didn't move.

She didn't blink.

She simply stared.

The trees around her were perfectly still.

No wind.

No birds.

You looked away for only a moment to steady your breathing.

When you looked back...She was gone. The spot where she'd stood was empty.

You hurried the rest of the way to your cabin, telling yourself there had to be an explanation. Maybe a trick of the light. Maybe another person hiking through the woods. Maybe your eyes were playing tricks on you. You locked the front door anyway. Only after the sun disappeared did you notice the muddy footprints beneath your bedroom window. They weren't yours.

You began to come across random objects on your front porch everyday. Every morning, there was something new.

A smooth stone with a spiral carved into it.

A bundle of wildflowers tied together with strips of bark.

Fresh blackberries piled neatly on the porch

The gifts became stranger after that.

A perfectly shaped bird's nest, somehow untouched.

A handful of bright blue feathers.

She never left them while you were watching.

Only after sunset.

Only when the forest was quiet.

One evening, curiosity finally outweighed fear.

Instead of closing the curtains, you extinguished every light inside the cabin and sat by the front window with your rifle resting across your lap.

Hours crawled by.

Nothing.

Then, sometime after midnight...A shadow emerged between the pines.

She moved with impossible silence despite her size.

Up close, she looked even less human than before. Her arms were too long. Her joints bent just a little wrong. Her head tilted almost ninety degrees as she looked toward the cabin.

Clutched carefully in one hand was a bouquet of white flowers.

She approached the porch one cautious step at a time.

Every few seconds she stopped and looked toward the windows, as though checking whether she was being watched.

When she reached the porch, she knelt—awkwardly, almost uncertain—and laid the flowers beside yesterday's polished antler.

Then she backed away.

Not turning around.

Not taking her eyes off the cabin.

Like a nervous deer retreating from something it desperately wanted to approach.