u/G_man_jokes28

The following is a journal entry was recovered from the partially sunken MV Cordelia 3 miles from the sea shelf near the northern coast of Georgia.
The final two pages were still stained with blood browned by time passed.

The ship had been peeled open at the middle and no remains have been located of its original 24 crew. Multiple crew quarters were locked from the outside, presumably to preserve buoyancy of the craft.
Hundreds of circular perforations (roughly 5 to 7 feet in width) were noted along the hull made the fore of the ship sink at a faster rate than the aft. The punctures were made from the outside of the hull. The hull was rebuilt in a AI generated imaging model to understand the cause of the tragedy and based on the damage pattern, the underside was split open like a tin can ripped by a bladed vice grip. The AI engine did not produce any explanation. The crew is not believed to have been at fault.

Journal
Aug, 11 2025, 06:40
I’ve been out at sea by myself for a full 24 hours now and the sun is just coming up again.
Hard to write in the current conditions. Caught plenty of bonito but the ice in my cooler is melting so I’m either getting home soon or dumping them before they turn rancid.
Search plane saw my flare but the currents must have displaced me because the search team never came to my location.
I must be out quite a few miles.
Getting worried. Never been lost on the water before.

Oh. And I’m on a kayak.

Journal
Aug, 11 2025 12:30
My water straw in my survival kits works!!
Just filtered a gallon with it I am actually kinda stoked about this whole thing now.
I have a way to catch fish, I have a way to make water, (albeit briny) my clothes shield me well enough from the sun and the weather should be good for the next three or four days based on the weatherman’s assessment before I left.

A bad thing or two. My phone cannot connect to satellite to call for help that way. I’m out of flares, (only packed two).
No way to cook the fish I catch.
Something big hit my rig near the bottom about an hour ago and completely spooled my largest rod. Had about 450 yds of braid on and dropped it to about 230 yds down till I hit bottom.
Got hit, then it just ran straight down in short steady tugs. Must not have hit the bottom like I thought.. Cool bite though!!
I still have line on it but the jig is gone and I am tired out.

Journal
Aug, 12 2025 07:00
The kayak is miserable to sleep on. Almost fell in the water twice. Glad I got a bigger model because I can stretch from the front to the seat if I lay on my tackle box in the middle with my feet overhanging the front by only a few inches.

Aside from that, there was some serious surface activity on the water last night. I was too tired to investigate and to be honest it just sounded like some baitfish busting from something trying to eat them. This is only odd because in this region, we don’t really have a whole lot of night hunting fish. Could have been tuna chumming them up but I didn’t really hear them jumping and ripping on the surface.

Weird stuff happens at night in the ocean.

Aug, 13 2025 07:00
I am so glad I invested in some good survival equipment. Quality keeps you alive I guess. I’ll update this journal both morning and evening. My water is pretty briny but I’m sweating a lot due to the warmth of midday.
SC coast can be brutal in summer.
No freaking clue where I am at. Just started heading to what I think is West based on the sun. The compass I bought doesn’t seem to work all that well so I navigate as the Vikings did or some cringy stuff like that.
Every time I see the horizon, I am reminded how vastly hopeless my situation is.

A lot of fish are congregating around my kayak during the day and they get attacked by something every night. Each morning theres only a couple left and each day fewer and fewer show up again.

I feel like my peddle drive can’t keep up with the ocean current. I make some “progress” just to need a break and lose it all plus some. I’ve been getting more tired recently too. I cannot tell you how pathetic my whistle feels in this expanse.
To be honest, I should have seen a lot of ships by this point. I am shocked that no oil tankers or deep sea fishing vessels have stumbled across my drift yet.

Not very hopeful.

Aug, 13 2025 19:00
Entry as promised. Today was freaking hot. Holy cow. I’ve been praying all day and playing hooky with the fish below me but theres only about 3-4 left. Can’t identify them either. They are silvery but with thinner bodies. About 3 pounds each, 12 inches long and very, VERY spooked.

Hooked one in the early morning but he broke my line. They must have some gnarly teeth cuz I was using 50 pounds pound monofilament as a leader.

I stared into the water for what felt like a couple hours today. Mesmerizing. Almost felt like jumping in, but something tells me thats a really, really bad idea. There was something of note that I noticed down deep. Like really deep. It wasn’t anything I’ve seen before. It was the largest darkness I have seen in my life. Like a cloud came overhead and its shadow seam beneath me. The water was incredibly clear. Like hundreds of feet almost. And whatever this was seemed to be just shallow enough to make me aware but still deep enough to where I could not make out anything useful. Maybe just a whale or a group of them.

Praying I get some better sleep. Nights are so wild out here.

Aug 14, 2025 07:00
I saw what was under me last night. And it is a very good thing I have not gone in the water yet. There was a mass of them right below me. Hundreds of thousands perhaps. I had to turn off the light pretty quick because it got them really fired up in a matter of seconds and started try to latch onto the hull of my kayak. I could feel their beaks scratching at the plastic belly of my sole hope of life.

It’s squids. Humboldt or Red Devils. I have got to be far off the coast and drifting south to be running into them out here. I get the feeling they have been hanging super deep under my kayak for the past few days. Some of them had chunks taken out of them and others were actively being eaten by each other. They are manic. Just a horde of violent, angry hunger gnashing below my kayak at all times.
My light only got about 10 feet down through the water because their bodies were so tightly packed. There is no way they are all the way up here. I’ve got to be crazy far off on my estimation or they are in the wrong waters!

I need to be rescued soon.

Aug 14, 2025 19:00.
They are already right below me. I can see them coming up early tonight to feed. Theres nothing else for them to eat so I don’t know why they are still around my kayak.

I caught the last fish under my boat. Tasted good but by golly it looked weird. The meat had some rough looking dark spots that I had to cut out and I don’t feel the best after eating it. The water I have been using through my straw is not helping. I feel a headache chewing at my brain intensify with every sip.

Gonna try to get some sleep. God knows how.

Aug, 15 2025 07:00
I’m going insane. I was sick all night and lost a lot of fluids puking. The squids absolutely went BERSERK when my failed attempt at nutrition hit the water. They ate it as eagerly as when the fish was still alive and not partially digested.

I feel the worst I have ever felt and I see a storm coming. Need to gather my strength so I don’t tip over.
The squids stayed under me till 0645 this morning. I felt little vibrations as their beaks and claws tentacles scraped my kayak probing for a weakness.
They are waiting for me.

Aug, 15 2025 19:00
The storm came and went. Much better than I thought. Still got dumped though. I have never in my entire life scrambled so hard to get back in a kayak or out of the water.
Some of my gear got dumped and is lost now. Among it, one of my rods, my filet knife and my measuring board. Not terrible considering a 6 hour storm.

I dropped down a jog before the storm on my heavy rod and instantly got a hit. It was definitely squid but as it was coming in, suddenly it stopped like I was hooked onto a submarine, jerked a couple times and then went strait down into the abyss with such speed and force that my reel got hot. I panicked, grabbed the spool to break the line and almost got pulled in before the line snapped.
Theres something tremendous down there. Something much, much bigger than what I’ve seen. That rod has man handled 6 ft sharks before but today it felt like trying to lasso a train.

Aug, 16 2025 06:00
One of them tried to pull me out of the kayak last night. It grabbed my foot and got my whole leg in the water! I have a set of bleeding gashes on my foot now and the blood has them in a frenzy. I wonder how long it will take their beaks to make it through the hull of my raft. I’m getting really scared. I don’t want to die like this.

I can imagine their swarm ripping me apart. Their barbed tentacles leaving no area of my body untouched and un-severed. Their beaks rending my skin and muscle open and my blood adding to the encompassing black of their ink. Getting pulled down will be the worst thing. I hate the deep. Stupid thing to admit from someone on a kayak alone on the ocean, I know. But, I’ve never thought about it till now.

The water is so dark. I can sense the eyes of the deep. It feels like gravity is ushering me into its maw. Like its fingers pull at my reason and mind to trick me into testing the depths with my flesh.

I can’t keep looking at it.

Aug, 16 2025 14:30
They are attacking in broad daylight now. Theres water getting into the hull of my kayak and I have to drain it by hand every 30 minutes. I can’t keep this up.
I need to be found. Quickly.
I can’t go another night like this.

I’m terrified constantly. I’m hungry, thirsty, tired, sick, and I want to go home.

There is something immense below them. Like one they are gathering around. Shielding her from mortal perception. She is SO BIG. Her presence is simply terror manifested by mass. She is nearly pitch black but ever so slightly red. She is not as big as a whale. She dwarfs whales. The diamond of her rear fin is like the spade that dug a home for Hades. Her arms are like the chains of a freight ship. Her eyes are like portals to a galaxy below the depths. She is awful and terrible beauty.
She is malevolence, born of nothing before her and birthing all that are like her. She gazed at me from her inverse heaven. No, from hell. She gazed at me from hell. What else do you call this?
They are circling like a cyclone below me now. They are spinning counter clockwise and at the eye of their storm I can see her waiting.
She coming closer!
I can see her arms spreading!
She’s going to take me down!
Oh God, please help me!

Aug, 19 2025 09:00
I got rescued.
A shipping vessel blew a horn and they all just vanished back to the depths. Not only did they vanish but my headache returned. I had not noticed its temporary absence.
It felt like a brutal alarm clock had clobbered me in the back of the head. I looked up sleepily to appraise my saviors and when I slumped my eyes back to the depths all of the squid were gone. It was so quiet.
I thought I was dead. Even now I feel my spine stiffen just thinking about it.
The bottom of my kayak is ruined. Thousands of teeth marks denote the horror I just experienced. My blood coats the interior like a warning sign designed to be the most earnest of threats.
And yet, I cannot stop thinking about her.
How ancient she must be. How vast she was. Nothing could hunt her.
I feel the pull. Just like squid pulled at my jog on the end of my line, she is pulling at some strand of my subconscious. The pull to go back. To offer my witness to her. I feel that I am a lover to her. The only mortal blessed to see her marvel laud bare. And I think she regrets it. I think I was meant to die with that. A merciful gesture before death takes me in the form of frantic, angry demons ripped my soul from my body at depths never felt by man. I want to see her again. I do remember the horror she made me feel. But the intimacy. The honesty. Unabashed truth displayed in titanic grandeur.
Honestly, I don’t even think I deserved to be saved. I deserved to be taken to her. To ride on the wings of demons to the depths of her maw. I feel that I want that now. I feel that I halted what should have been our joining. Our union.

I have to stop. The pen is pulling me into my darker thoughts. Like the call of the abyss.
I’ll update when we make port.

Aug, 19 2025 21:42
She’s here! She is here now! The ship jolted to a stop and the hull is taking in water.
She has returned for me.
I went below to see the skin of the ship and despite the multiple layers these ships have in their hulls. Her talons have pierced the belly of my deliverer. The engines have gone out. The ships is screaming in painful, deep groans. I didn’t know she was this big. The depths deceived me.
There are hundreds of her talons in swirling lines down the hull. I reach out and touch her cold steely claw as it protrudes into our vessel. I can sense here movement. Immense, crushing pressure leans into my hands against the ribs of the ship. She is embracing me. My scream is one of happiness and fear. No sound like it has ever graced my lips.
I begin to smack and pound at the hull. My fingers find the smallest of seems in the iron giants belly and are quickly dedicated to rending those weaknesses apart despite the fact that my nails are no match for iron that has stood the temper of the sea. It doesn’t matter. If the steel will not peel, she will feel my fingers made raw in my display of fervent passion. She will see the markings of my faith plastered onto the hull.
The water is gushing in and I feel the ship beginning to tilt as it collapses to her pressure. They come in deep full waves of power. Like contractions, birthing us into the deep to be baptized by a torent of gnashing red hunger.
She has us firmly gripped now.
No one else knows who she is. No one else can comprehend their demise. I am so happy. And yet, I am filled with furious terror. She gives my heart something I cannot understand. Something true and immutable. As vast and beautiful as the ocean and as tumultuous and violent as the same.

She is here. I am with her soon.

The following is a journal entry was recovered from the partially sunken MV Cordelia 3 miles from the sea shelf near the northern coast of Georgia.
The final two pages were still stained with blood browned by time passed.

The ship had been peeled open at the middle and no remains have been located of its original 24 crew. Multiple crew quarters were locked from the outside, presumably to preserve buoyancy of the craft.
Hundreds of circular perforations (roughly 5 to 7 feet in width) were noted along the hull made the fore of the ship sink at a faster rate than the aft. The punctures were made from the outside of the hull. The hull was rebuilt in a AI generated imaging model to understand the cause of the tragedy and based on the damage pattern, the underside was split open like a tin can ripped by a bladed vice grip. The AI engine did not produce any explanation. The crew is not believed to have been at fault.

Journal
Aug, 11 2025, 06:40
I’ve been out at sea by myself for a full 24 hours now and the sun is just coming up again.
Hard to write in the current conditions. Caught plenty of bonito but the ice in my cooler is melting so I’m either getting home soon or dumping them before they turn rancid.
Search plane saw my flare but the currents must have displaced me because the search team never came to my location.
I must be out quite a few miles.
Getting worried. Never been lost on the water before.

Oh. And I’m on a kayak.

Journal
Aug, 11 2025 12:30
My water straw in my survival kits works!!
Just filtered a gallon with it I am actually kinda stoked about this whole thing now.
I have a way to catch fish, I have a way to make water, (albeit briny) my clothes shield me well enough from the sun and the weather should be good for the next three or four days based on the weatherman’s assessment before I left.

A bad thing or two. My phone cannot connect to satellite to call for help that way. I’m out of flares, (only packed two).
No way to cook the fish I catch.
Something big hit my rig near the bottom about an hour ago and completely spooled my largest rod. Had about 450 yds of braid on and dropped it to about 230 yds down till I hit bottom.
Got hit, then it just ran straight down in short steady tugs. Must not have hit the bottom like I thought.. Cool bite though!!
I still have line on it but the jig is gone and I am tired out.

Journal
Aug, 12 2025 07:00
The kayak is miserable to sleep on. Almost fell in the water twice. Glad I got a bigger model because I can stretch from the front to the seat if I lay on my tackle box in the middle with my feet overhanging the front by only a few inches.

Aside from that, there was some serious surface activity on the water last night. I was too tired to investigate and to be honest it just sounded like some baitfish busting from something trying to eat them. This is only odd because in this region, we don’t really have a whole lot of night hunting fish. Could have been tuna chumming them up but I didn’t really hear them jumping and ripping on the surface.

Weird stuff happens at night in the ocean.

Aug, 13 2025 07:00
I am so glad I invested in some good survival equipment. Quality keeps you alive I guess. I’ll update this journal both morning and evening. My water is pretty briny but I’m sweating a lot due to the warmth of midday.
SC coast can be brutal in summer.
No freaking clue where I am at. Just started heading to what I think is West based on the sun. The compass I bought doesn’t seem to work all that well so I navigate as the Vikings did or some cringy stuff like that.
Every time I see the horizon, I am reminded how vastly hopeless my situation is.

A lot of fish are congregating around my kayak during the day and they get attacked by something every night. Each morning theres only a couple left and each day fewer and fewer show up again.

I feel like my peddle drive can’t keep up with the ocean current. I make some “progress” just to need a break and lose it all plus some. I’ve been getting more tired recently too. I cannot tell you how pathetic my whistle feels in this expanse.
To be honest, I should have seen a lot of ships by this point. I am shocked that no oil tankers or deep sea fishing vessels have stumbled across my drift yet.

Not very hopeful.

Aug, 13 2025 19:00
Entry as promised. Today was freaking hot. Holy cow. I’ve been praying all day and playing hooky with the fish below me but theres only about 3-4 left. Can’t identify them either. They are silvery but with thinner bodies. About 3 pounds each, 12 inches long and very, VERY spooked.

Hooked one in the early morning but he broke my line. They must have some gnarly teeth cuz I was using 50 pounds pound monofilament as a leader.

I stared into the water for what felt like a couple hours today. Mesmerizing. Almost felt like jumping in, but something tells me thats a really, really bad idea. There was something of note that I noticed down deep. Like really deep. It wasn’t anything I’ve seen before. It was the largest darkness I have seen in my life. Like a cloud came overhead and its shadow seam beneath me. The water was incredibly clear. Like hundreds of feet almost. And whatever this was seemed to be just shallow enough to make me aware but still deep enough to where I could not make out anything useful. Maybe just a whale or a group of them.

Praying I get some better sleep. Nights are so wild out here.

Aug 14, 2025 07:00
I saw what was under me last night. And it is a very good thing I have not gone in the water yet. There was a mass of them right below me. Hundreds of thousands perhaps. I had to turn off the light pretty quick because it got them really fired up in a matter of seconds and started try to latch onto the hull of my kayak. I could feel their beaks scratching at the plastic belly of my sole hope of life.

It’s squids. Humboldt or Red Devils. I have got to be far off the coast and drifting south to be running into them out here. I get the feeling they have been hanging super deep under my kayak for the past few days. Some of them had chunks taken out of them and others were actively being eaten by each other. They are manic. Just a horde of violent, angry hunger gnashing below my kayak at all times.
My light only got about 10 feet down through the water because their bodies were so tightly packed. There is no way they are all the way up here. I’ve got to be crazy far off on my estimation or they are in the wrong waters!

I need to be rescued soon.

Aug 14, 2025 19:00.
They are already right below me. I can see them coming up early tonight to feed. Theres nothing else for them to eat so I don’t know why they are still around my kayak.

I caught the last fish under my boat. Tasted good but by golly it looked weird. The meat had some rough looking dark spots that I had to cut out and I don’t feel the best after eating it. The water I have been using through my straw is not helping. I feel a headache chewing at my brain intensify with every sip.

Gonna try to get some sleep. God knows how.

Aug, 15 2025 07:00
I’m going insane. I was sick all night and lost a lot of fluids puking. The squids absolutely went BERSERK when my failed attempt at nutrition hit the water. They ate it as eagerly as when the fish was still alive and not partially digested.

I feel the worst I have ever felt and I see a storm coming. Need to gather my strength so I don’t tip over.
The squids stayed under me till 0645 this morning. I felt little vibrations as their beaks and claws tentacles scraped my kayak probing for a weakness.
They are waiting for me.

Aug, 15 2025 19:00
The storm came and went. Much better than I thought. Still got dumped though. I have never in my entire life scrambled so hard to get back in a kayak or out of the water.
Some of my gear got dumped and is lost now. Among it, one of my rods, my filet knife and my measuring board. Not terrible considering a 6 hour storm.

I dropped down a jog before the storm on my heavy rod and instantly got a hit. It was definitely squid but as it was coming in, suddenly it stopped like I was hooked onto a submarine, jerked a couple times and then went strait down into the abyss with such speed and force that my reel got hot. I panicked, grabbed the spool to break the line and almost got pulled in before the line snapped.
Theres something tremendous down there. Something much, much bigger than what I’ve seen. That rod has man handled 6 ft sharks before but today it felt like trying to lasso a train.

Aug, 16 2025 06:00
One of them tried to pull me out of the kayak last night. It grabbed my foot and got my whole leg in the water! I have a set of bleeding gashes on my foot now and the blood has them in a frenzy. I wonder how long it will take their beaks to make it through the hull of my raft. I’m getting really scared. I don’t want to die like this.

I can imagine their swarm ripping me apart. Their barbed tentacles leaving no area of my body untouched and un-severed. Their beaks rending my skin and muscle open and my blood adding to the encompassing black of their ink. Getting pulled down will be the worst thing. I hate the deep. Stupid thing to admit from someone on a kayak alone on the ocean, I know. But, I’ve never thought about it till now.

The water is so dark. I can sense the eyes of the deep. It feels like gravity is ushering me into its maw. Like its fingers pull at my reason and mind to trick me into testing the depths with my flesh.

I can’t keep looking at it.

Aug, 16 2025 14:30
They are attacking in broad daylight now. Theres water getting into the hull of my kayak and I have to drain it by hand every 30 minutes. I can’t keep this up.
I need to be found. Quickly.
I can’t go another night like this.

I’m terrified constantly. I’m hungry, thirsty, tired, sick, and I want to go home.

There is something immense below them. Like one they are gathering around. Shielding her from mortal perception. She is SO BIG. Her presence is simply terror manifested by mass. She is nearly pitch black but ever so slightly red. She is not as big as a whale. She dwarfs whales. The diamond of her rear fin is like the spade that dug a home for Hades. Her arms are like the chains of a freight ship. Her eyes are like portals to a galaxy below the depths. She is awful and terrible beauty.
She is malevolence, born of nothing before her and birthing all that are like her. She gazed at me from her inverse heaven. No, from hell. She gazed at me from hell. What else do you call this?
They are circling like a cyclone below me now. They are spinning counter clockwise and at the eye of their storm I can see her waiting.
She coming closer!
I can see her arms spreading!
She’s going to take me down!
Oh God, please help me!

Aug, 19 2025 09:00
I got rescued.
A shipping vessel blew a horn and they all just vanished back to the depths. Not only did they vanish but my headache returned. I had not noticed its temporary absence.
It felt like a brutal alarm clock had clobbered me in the back of the head. I looked up sleepily to appraise my saviors and when I slumped my eyes back to the depths all of the squid were gone. It was so quiet.
I thought I was dead. Even now I feel my spine stiffen just thinking about it.
The bottom of my kayak is ruined. Thousands of teeth marks denote the horror I just experienced. My blood coats the interior like a warning sign designed to be the most earnest of threats.
And yet, I cannot stop thinking about her.
How ancient she must be. How vast she was. Nothing could hunt her.
I feel the pull. Just like squid pulled at my jog on the end of my line, she is pulling at some strand of my subconscious. The pull to go back. To offer my witness to her. I feel that I am a lover to her. The only mortal blessed to see her marvel laud bare. And I think she regrets it. I think I was meant to die with that. A merciful gesture before death takes me in the form of frantic, angry demons ripped my soul from my body at depths never felt by man. I want to see her again. I do remember the horror she made me feel. But the intimacy. The honesty. Unabashed truth displayed in titanic grandeur.
Honestly, I don’t even think I deserved to be saved. I deserved to be taken to her. To ride on the wings of demons to the depths of her maw. I feel that I want that now. I feel that I halted what should have been our joining. Our union.

I have to stop. The pen is pulling me into my darker thoughts. Like the call of the abyss.
I’ll update when we make port.

Aug, 19 2025 21:42
She’s here! She is here now! The ship jolted to a stop and the hull is taking in water.
She has returned for me.
I went below to see the skin of the ship and despite the multiple layers these ships have in their hulls. Her talons have pierced the belly of my deliverer. The engines have gone out. The ships is screaming in painful, deep groans. I didn’t know she was this big. The depths deceived me.
There are hundreds of her talons in swirling lines down the hull. I reach out and touch her cold steely claw as it protrudes into our vessel. I can sense here movement. Immense, crushing pressure leans into my hands against the ribs of the ship. She is embracing me. My scream is one of happiness and fear. No sound like it has ever graced my lips.
I begin to smack and pound at the hull. My fingers find the smallest of seems in the iron giants belly and are quickly dedicated to rending those weaknesses apart despite the fact that my nails are no match for iron that has stood the temper of the sea. It doesn’t matter. If the steel will not peel, she will feel my fingers made raw in my display of fervent passion. She will see the markings of my faith plastered onto the hull.
The water is gushing in and I feel the ship beginning to tilt as it collapses to her pressure. They come in deep full waves of power. Like contractions, birthing us into the deep to be baptized by a torent of gnashing red hunger.
She has us firmly gripped now.
No one else knows who she is. No one else can comprehend their demise. I am so happy. And yet, I am filled with furious terror. She gives my heart something I cannot understand. Something true and immutable. As vast and beautiful as the ocean and as tumultuous and violent as the same.

She is here. I am with her soon.

This is a local story that caught a lot of traction in my friend group in Eastern Colorado. We are mostly EMS and medical workers and this particular case was just such a wild occurrence on so many levels that we all did what we could to get as much info on it as possible. It was as hard to read as things like this really get, but for a local legend goes, it’s worth letting it out in its entirety.

The following is a mixture of spliced together police reports, personal entries from Rob and abbreviated medical reports. I wasn’t able to get copies of anything aside from his journals, but this is what I got from memory and screenshots.

Evidence
Category: correspondence
Type: Subject unsent email
Send to: Christacat@icloud.com
Subject: I’m heading out.

“Johny just passed and I’ve buried him out back behind your mother and brother.
You know how good he was and I’m struggling with him no longer being here to hunt with me. He was a good dog.

I’d send this to one of the other kids but you’re the most likely to not forget about me. Haha!

I’m leaving for a hunting trip and wanted to let you know where I’ll be and what to expect if I’m not back on schedule. It’s my first time back in the mountains since your mother passed. I think it’ll be good for me.

The local park rangers know me from a few years ago and they should know where I like to go.

I’m going to Needle Mountains Game land again. Should back by 20250930. Wanting to be back before it gets too cold.

I’ve got a tag to fill for Muleys and with winter coming, this’ll fill the fridge and give me some time to grieve alone in my hellish little heaven on the mountain.

I miss you, and I’ll be okay.

PS.
Johny passed away. I buried him this morning. Could use your prayers.

Love, Rob-“

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal

“20250917
Well, looks like I forgot my water purification straw. Dumbass.
I’ve got the jetboil though, so I should be more than okay, just gonna take longer to move around.
Feels good out here. It’s about 34 degrees, nice consistent winds from the north, and I can smell winter coming. Love this smell.
Lots of muley sign on the way up here and I’m thinking they’ll be rutting through the upper tree-line.
I’ll have to hike in roughly 4 clicks and up about 1,200 feet to crater lake which should be easy for a crusty ole devil dog like me.

The truck is at the Andrews Lake trail entry and I’ve left a note with my route plan on the dash which is more a redundancy than anything else. Can never be too careful on a solo hunt.

Didn’t end up stopping by the warden office. Called em and left a message. The drive took longer than I thought and it was about 0200 when I finally parked and started prepping for the hike.
About to step now. Next entry should be at Crater Lake tomorrow morning.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“20250917
Things unraveled a bit. Mountains do a good job of fucking up your plans.

Got turned around on the trail about 3 kmtr in. Zoned out and missed a turn. Things look a bit different this time and the dark didn’t help.
It’s currently 1000 and I am beat. Got to the lake at around 0830. Gonna boil some water, eat, and take a nap.

No deer sign up here which is strange.
Conditions are perfect and they always meet up near water. I don’t see any tracks at all actually. No people, no animals. The only thing up here right now are the fish. Forgot to bring a rod though so, tough shit I guess. Victory favors the well prepared so I’ll have to coax a win out of this hunt with old age and treachery.

I’ll make a movement farther east when I wake and try to find a good spot to glass for a set of antlers.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“20250919
Found em!
Got a small herd of does that look to be in heat. Just a matter of time before a good buck shows up. And at the very least, I can just tag a doe if nothing good happens.

This group was a real challenge to find. They were a great deal father southeast than I thought and they are avoiding the woods like the plague. They honesty look a but unwell. They are huddled in a decent thicket on a plateau at the moment and haven’t moved in a day or so. There must be some water over there. It’s gonna be a challenge to get within 300 yds for a shot. Their location gives them exceptional lines of sight in all directions. They seem pretty spooky too. Very odd.

Rolled my ankle yesterday so this time to glass has been beneficial. Not a bad sprain but it’s bitching for sure.
I’ve got a stream nearby and food supply is good this far.
The rifle almost feels like it’s quivering for a kill. And I for one could do with some red meat. Already getting tired of mountain house meals. Haha!”

Evidence
Category: Official Entry
Type: Game Warden
“Sept. 18, 2025
Ran the number on the truck found at the Andrews lake trailhead.
Looks like Rob is back for one more hunt. Surprised he never stopped in to check in but, his license and online registration is still good so I’ve got no qualm with it.
Tried to reach him by phone but he must be south of the peak by now.
Surprised he didn’t leave a note.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“20250922
It’s so beautiful out here. I’d forgotten it.
The sky is crisp and clear as a glass of cold gin and the stars are brightening by the second. They remind me of poems I’d written to my love before she left.
I remember how beautiful she was by how beautiful it is here. All the details of her face and body rush back to me when the mountains embrace me with their cold, dark touch. She was so warm to me but her touch sent chills through me like the wind that crashes down in the evening.
I remember her presence being so warm like the first light that conquers the passing night each morning.

The mountains engulf the edges of the sky like a mat of black hunger and mark the line I can never cross till death finds me. And search through these hills it does. I can tell it is calling for me. Somewhere deep in my heart and bones feels like surrendering to it. Not out of age or pain but out of the hope that it might just bring me back to her and my son.

I wish I could be up here alone with the thoughts I love. Thoughts of my darling, thoughts of my son, of my family and Johny. But the other thoughts are up here now too.

It always shocks me how vivid they are. It almost makes me regret staying infantry. Honestly wishing I had not forsaken the peace of my future for the thrill of combat. But, what I’ve done is done. I’m thankful still. But I’m not able to forget them. I wish the sting of cold air and the burn of tired legs could cleanse my memory or save me from it all but those days will never leave me. I’ll remember them for the honor and purpose they give to my lost brothers. Thats a good enough reason to suffer them longer.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“20250922
The sun came up about 5 hours ago and I couldn’t find that herd.
I closed the distance to their hide over the course of the morning and there is nothing here but a single yearling ripped to parts and pieces.
Nothing has evidently been eaten of it, but it has been spread around in a large circle at the lowest point of this depression. There is no wind right here so I didn’t smell the blood till I got to it.
I couldn’t find tracks for the other deer but I have a feeling they fled downhill.
I’ll rest up and head that way in the afternoon.

I’m not sure what did this. There were no prints anywhere that I could see, so I figure some sort of cat with a very light step. Nothing else would likely have been able to sneak that close to them.

I wanted to mention that I must have cut myself somewhere. When I woke I was very tired and I had blood under my fingernails. All my gear is accounted for and all my clothing is clean but the dew left them a bit damp.
Someone must have come by last night. My compass is gone. It’s neatly missing so I don’t think I lost it. Someone must have stolen it. Fucking twat.

I also realized that the letter I wrote for the warden was still in my right hip pocket. Whats even happening to me!? I feel like I’m going insane.

I have been having a lot of strange dreams. I hear things when sleep takes me. Screams and something splashing on the ground. I feel something chasing me like a wolf or a bear and when I wake up, I’ve been sleep walking or thrashing in my sleep.

I haven’t struggled with this since 2015.
It started a few weeks ago but it’s been worse these past three days. My sleeping has been poorer and poorer as I’ve stayed here longer. Thats just not the way it usually works for me. The mountains have always helped me sleep. I’ll probably crash here soon and have a better sleep.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“20250925
Something happened last night.
I’ve been tracking this herd for a while and saw a set of antlers over a crest at dusk yesterday. It was oriented facing me and did not move for about an hour till I lost sight of it as the light died out. Never got to see the head or body. Just tall sharp tines that seemed a bit too white. The deer just got their antlers a month or so ago but these looked sun-bleached to all hell! Must be a big ole boy.

I woke up sometime late at night. I couldn’t breathe. My heart was pounding and before I could get my bearings I felt something breathing right behind my head. I was lying on my back and couldn’t even look up to see it, but it was there. Something wet landed in my hair and its breath was so close and so hot that my eyes burned with every ebb and flow of respiration.
I started to panic and could feel my chest aching with my heart beat. Finally I was able to breathe and I shot up from my bed clamoring for my knife or gun. I couldn’t see them in the dark and in my panic I gashed my left hand open with my knife. Still got it out and as I looked around with my flashlight, I could hear and see nothing else.
Only thing I could sense was a lack of wind and a smell. It was horrid.
It reminded me of finding a room filled with a dead family in Fallujah. They had been partially vaporized by an explosive of some sort and stewing in that room for a while. Something else was on the air. I could smell deer flesh. Whatever this thing was had probably been what killed that yearling muley a few days ago.

I stayed up that night and just had my rifle and light nearby till the sun came up. It’s been dry here and I don’t want to risk a fire. My tarp is lighter than a whole tent, but at the rate that the temp is falling, I need to improve my shelter, finish this hunt, or head back early. I don’t want to risk too much in the weather.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“20250928
It just rained.
I don’t understand. It was below freezing and felt like snow but it just rained for three hours. I’m quite worried as I’ve lost the trail. I know roughly where I am but that thing keeps stalking me. I’ve seen it now.

It’s taller than me. It’s too slight of frame to be a bear. It never moves when I see it but if I blink or loose line of sight it’s always gone. Just before I settled in for bed last night I heard something behind me. As my old eyes scanned through the dying light, I saw nothing at first until a nob on one of the trees, or what I had thought was a nob, retracted back behind the tree. It was watching me the whole time!
I got up, hit the light, sprinted over with my rifle and searched for any sign of it for a good hour!

I searched until I heard it. It didn’t say anything as much as called to me. The sounds it made were indistinguishable but I felt like it was my wife and my son saying my name at the same time.
I’ve learned to call to animals to get them to come closer or go away and this is what it felt like to me. Something calling to me to incite a response.
I flicked my light to it and saw its eyes. They were 100yds away or so and high. Not like on the slope of something, or in a tree, but just so tall. It blinked and I caught movement as it turned away. 30.06 is a man killing round but for some reason, as I fired at it, that gun felt so small. As I got on its trail, I found no blood but that smell was everywhere. It coated my nostrils like paste and I felt nauseated. The skin on the back of my neck began to crawl as I realized how bad a position I was and I decided a tactical withdrawal might be in my best interest.

I got back to my camp but all my gear was splayed out over the ground. It took me a while to get it together.
I’m really cold right now. Its 0300. The rain soaked most of my gear and my jetboil isn’t lighting. I’ve started a fire with my lighter but it’s pretty pathetic. My hand is throbbing from the cut. Seems my field medicine was not effectual. Can’t use my left thumb thanks to the swelling.
I’m going to head back tomorrow. A lot more has happened but thats all for tonight.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“It’s so cold out here.
I’ve lost the trail entirely. My map is useless cuz I can’t find my direction. It’s been cloudy for 2 days and I can’t use the sun or stars to navigate. I’ve been using my range finder and estimation to gauge the distances between ridges in an attempt to use the terrain to triangulate my position but, I’m sitting on mixed results. I know I need to keep going East. I started out going South then West, so I just need to go East and then North.

Whatever it is, I’m gonna kill it. I’m gonna fucking kill it.
It woke me again last night.
It was standing right over me. It smelled horrid. Like that room. I could only see an impossibly slight glare from its eyes and the mountainous outline of its pitch black silhouette against the nearly all black sky.
I didn’t move. I was actually afraid this time. I have not been afraid in many years. It made me just as afraid as the first house I cleared. Up until I breached that door, I could have pissed myself.
It felt like with every breath it was getting a millimeter closer to my face and the stench was worse and worse. I could feel pressure on my chest like vicious dredd.
My fingers sifted through my sleeping bag till I felt my knife.
What else could I have done?
I could hear my body trembling from the friction of my sleeping bag. I didn’t want to do anything but stay still.
I decided to lunge up at it right as I heard my wife’s voice whisper in a mocking tone mere inches away from my face,

“Did you bury him deep enough?”

I sprung up enraged and swung at the naked night air.
Nothing. What the fuck!? Not a damn thing. The smell, the feeling, the pounding heart. All of it was gone. It was dawn. I don’t know whats happening.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“I found a large buck this morning. It was just dead. Still warm. Nothing injured it. It was perfectly fine. Just dead.

I’m out of food. I’ve been out here for too long now. My body aches and my ankle and hand are in a horrible condition. I’m so hungry. You’re not supposed to eat something you found dead if you don’t know what killed it but I was so hungry.

The snow came. I’m on a leeward ridge that faces the sunrise. The wind is better here and I lack the ability to go far. I can’t find Johny. He must have run off last night after a rabbit or something. He keeps me warm at night and he’s such a comfort to have nearby when it’s dark.

The deer tasted good. I got a fire going and the meat rests well in my belly. I’ll leave some out for Johny when he gets back.

He’s looking at me.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
Note: subject’s note date was not accurate. Following text roughly approximated due to weather and bodily fluid damage to page. DNA testing confirms all fluids belong to subject.
“20231005
Johny bit me last night. I woke up with him up against me but he smelled awful. I can’t remember why but he smelled like something dead. I got up a little to see if he had anything on him but when I tried to move him he started to growl, low and without breathing in. The growling was coming from him but he wasn’t breathing.
I went to flip him over but as soon as I touched him, his head whirled around 180 degrees without moving his body and his mouth wrapped around my face!! The pain was the most vivid thing I’d felt for days and I couldn’t pull away. His teeth sunk into my skull and left jawbone and cemented me in place. I was frozen. Wet, hot breath pressed against my face like a wall of rot and malice as his throat began to flex and shake. My eyes were wide open. The growling was so loud it hurt my ears. I could see a face down his throat, like a cave leading to a cavern and the face was my son. Rotted and ravaged by his cancer, but it was his face. Johny’s stomach was a room I’ve seen before. Someplace that brought an already insurmountable level of dread and panic to a new level.
The smell and sound and pain crushed the last remnant of sanity and resolution I had.
And as my body melted under the weight of my crumbling mind, I screamed and screamed.
I grabbed Johny’s mouth with my broken and bloated hands and started to rip him off my face. His teeth chipped against my skull and one of his canines caught on my molar through my cheek. His maw let up not a single ounce of pressure and I felt my skull was about to crack.
Finally, with a strip of my lip caught in his grasp, I got him off me.

I gasped, woke up and he was gone.
There’s blood everywhere. It’s on everything.
My hands are cramped and I need water. I’m so thirsty.
The deer has turned in my belly and I feel ill.
I’ll just stay here for now.

I’m very tired. I miss Johny.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
Note: date provided is not accurate. Following text approximated due to damage to pages of entry. Final subject entry prior to recovery.
“20231005
It and I’m cold.
It’s been
It hears me.

I hear it.

Can’t find Johny, but I hear him panting for me.
My ankle is broken.

I keep cramping up. I tried moving up the mountain. The clouds are gone. I couldn’t make it. I fell and scraped the skin off my good hand on a rock.
I need water. I’m thirsty. I’m hungry.
I’m gonna kill it.
Weather is beautiful.
My voice is gone.

The hand smells rancid.

Might need to use that last round soon.
No use trying to survive anymore. It all hurts.

I’m gonna fucking kill it.”

Note: the following was written by the subject 394 times till writing utensil was empty and was written with words overlapping due to lack of space on pages.

“She is speaking to me”

Police report:
“Subject was located in a hole, under a fallen tree on a leeward slope approximately 2 kilometers from Andrews Lake and 1 kilometer from Animas River. It is believed he covered 60-70 kilometers in tortuous and inconsistent patterns.
Subject was not responsive when located and had a rifle in his right hand in a position consistent with attempted self harm.
Recovery was performed via airlift. Subject was stabilized and brought to Animas Surgical hospital.

Medical Report: Robert Serter
20251007 1319
Patient admitted at 1202
Critical condition.
Patient presented with hypovolemic shock, hypothermia, severe dehydration, multiple left ankle fractures, advanced gangrene and infection left hand, multiple lacerations on face, neck and scalp, blunt force head trauma.

Patient was provided IV fluids, IV anti-bacterials medication, surgical repair (6 screws, 2 plates) of left ankle, surgical repair of facial area lacerations, surgical amputation left arm above elbow, BP medications provided via IV.

Medical report:
20251010 0900
Patient is awake but unresponsive despite showing significant improvement within 3 days.
Patient will not respond to verbal or visual communication. Multiple attempts to get patient walking or communicating have been unsuccessful.

*update*
20251010 2230
Patient screamed for 12 minutes.
Patient experienced manic episode and is now stabilized and coherent.
Police have been notified for followup.
Patient is able to eat and drink normally.
Patient is able to walk with aid of crutches.
Patient was not aware of their location or situation.

Patient was discharged at 1900 and admitted to Common Spirit Mercy Hospital.

20251102 0900
Patient is in good spirits and shows steady mental and physical improvement.
Patient displays symptoms consistent with rapid onset, advanced dementia.

Alright…
As an explanation, his dog was named after his son, “Johnathan”. Don’t know why you would do that to yourself as his son passed away to cancer at a very young age, but thats what he chose to do. I guess he broke a little when the dog finally died. We found most of this out via talks with his daughter Christa when she came to visit him.
His wife had passed away in a vehicle collision in the late fall of 2023 and was laid to rest next to the son in their woods.

As far as his injuries go, his facial wounds were all self inflicted.
They pumped his stomach and found rotted deer meat, urine and human flesh that they believe used to be his lower lip.

The surgeons did a great job of patching him back up, and he took to the treatments really well. He was obviously very happy to be alive but we needed to remind him daily where he was and what had happened to his arm and ankle.

Rob was always kind to us but wakes up in the night in fits to this day saying that Johny is back.
Theres been a few incidents at the nursing home with him standing in his bed at night like a little boy looking at his window, scared out of his mind and screaming till he wets his pants.
Horrible thing to let out, but we are still speculating as to what is happening to him. I think he really is just experiencing severe dementia, but some of my friends blame more sinister explanations.

Whatever it is, it’s with him now.
I walked past his room the other night and he was watching me from the corner of his room. He was standing straight up in his bed against the corner of the wall. His disfigured face now looking somehow more savaged. His arm appearing like it was still raw at its stump.
His eyes were so fully dilated that they seemed pitch black. That blackness was so complete that it cut through the already dark room. I could have sworn I saw another set a few feet above him looking down at me. It felt like when I was a child, right before I was attacked by our neighbor’s dog. I remember thinking about how painful it’s bite might be. The sensation of its teeth locking into my flesh and the copper tang staining my tongue as adrenaline takes over my senses. That hungry calculated glare that precedes the execution of a violent act. It feels like… he’s waiting. And I don’t like it.
He’s so normal during the days. So sweet. But, as soon as everyone else goes to sleep he’s just so different and it just gets worse every single night.

Now that you know how crazy I am too, it really is not that strange for a nursing home. Old folks do some weird shit.
But this has a … flavor to it. A smell in the air that just sets differently in my psyche. Theres a real smell too. Like a wet rancidness that clings to your body as if you walked past a fog of noxious aerosol every time you walk past his room at night. Theres no source that we can find.
My mom had some bad mental health issues when she got older. Dementia runs in my family and Rob is the reason I’m so afraid of that happening to me too.

I hope you enjoyed this. I hope you aren’t scarred but, just like us medical service workers, enjoy the nasty gritty details.

Fun fact:
Insects make up the highest amount of bio-matter in the world aside from plants. In fact, the entire human population as well as that of all livestock is dwarfed by insects to a staggering 300%-400%.

I was working on the house when it really started and a cicada flew into the back of my head and grabbed onto my hair near my ear.

Normally, I have really good composure when it comes to these sorts of run ins, but in this particular instance, one of its stupid little hooks on its leg caught the tender skin on the side my neck which tricked me into thinking I was as being stung. This paired with the exceedingly noisy signature of its wings screaming into the back of my scalp caused me to yelp like a pup whose tail has been freshly trod upon by a careless owner. Simultaneously, I hurriedly flicked it off with a panicked hand and cursed in hushed tones at the poor handling of this inconsiderate run in.

“Another damn cicada?” I said as it worked itself upright on the ground, spread its wings and flew off. This was the second time today and fourth time in two days this had happened. And it was always hitting or attempting to stick a landing near my ears.
Very unsettling.

Well, no sooner had the jitters left my system than that same noisy fat bug came and landed right on the bill of my hat! I really was just annoyed at this point but have no other issue with bugs. Always enjoyed them to be honest.
However, as I’m studying this beautiful insect thats landed on my hat, I think I hear it say something.

“Listen”

It spoke with no accent, unusual inflection, chirping noises or anything that would give away that it was a bug talking. It spoke to my mind perfectly clearly.
Just sounded like a little child no older than 10 had addressed me and asked for my attention.
I grabbed it and held it up by its sides while looking into its eyes.
It was just a bug. Nothing new or unusual to report about it. But it had definitely told me to

“LISTEN!”

There it was again! But, this time, almost a scream. I flung it away and it caught flight once more, buzzing away into the trees.

I had a strange dream that night about being covered in bugs of all sorts. Some soft bodied that slunk across my skin with ease and an almost comforting smoothness and some that grabbed my flesh with their barbed feet and used my pores as hook holds to traverse my body. Through it all, I could not speak or move.
They started at my feet and hands and crawled up to my arms and legs.
They were crawling to my face.

Sensation and realization were the catalysts to panic. Panic was the ruler of my mind in that moment. My mind was void of reason or answer to my new hellish conundrum.
I squeezed my eyes closed harder and harder as they inched closer to my face. My nose! My ears! What if they crawl inside!? I tried to flex some unknown sphincter in my olfactory and auditory orifices but to no avail.
Every inch of my body crawled with microscopic (and some not so microscopic) hooks and foot pads and slime-less, but somehow sickeningly slick bodies. Chirping irrupted from every millimeter of territory the insects now claimed on my body and with it all I could do absolutely, undeniably, maddeningly … nothing.

Then, they all stopped. At the edges of my ears, they gathered in tight packed hordes.
Not daring to invade my nostrils or ear canals, but instead they spoke.

They said something simple and chilling.

Horde, “Listen now.”,
and even more silently, as if to prevent the chance of something overhearing or perhaps to garner my trust through the impression of calm innocence, “He is coming.”

Then the chirps became a chorus of it. The same phrase over and over. Louder and louder as if to raise in adoration and worship,
“He is coming.”
“He is coming.”
“HE IS COMING.”

Then silence. For a moment. The ringing of the words dying from the hot moist air. Just as all noise had faded, their legs bite into my every pore to the point of breaking my skin in a instant shocking coordinated tensing of chiton. With the total focus their actions had earned them, they broke the silence by whispering in a crisp, clear and urgent manner,

“Listen for him.”

Just like that, I was awake.
I maintained complete masculine composure and certainly DID NOT jump out of bed and search every crevice of my bed and room for bugs to squish.

For real though, honestly I actually woke with a sense of euphoria. Like, total peace.
My skin was crawling the entire day following this, but I felt emotionally … satiated.
It wasn’t an hour after sunrise that, while making coffee before work, I saw that cicada on my kitchen window.
I walked to it, sipped my coffee and gave it the greeting of the day.

Me, “Well, good morning”

Cicada, *stares bugishly*

Me, “Yeah. I slept great. Thanks for asking.”

Cicada, *adjusts mandible*

Alright. Thats out of the way now.
After it mundanely adjusted its mandible and right as I was about to speak to it through the pane of glass, it spoke again, cutting me off quite rudely.

Cicada, “Can you hear him?”

Me, “Uhh, no?”

Cicada, “Are you listening for him?”

Me, “Who is he?”

There was a long pause, as if the risk of answering was being weighed on the scales of risk and necessity.

Cicada, “The Lord of the Wind and the Sky.”

The words hit me deeply despite a lack of knowledge as to their importance. The words struck me in my chest, and the ringing in my ears, from my dream came back as if a gong had been struck in my brain stem.

Me, “Okay. And who are you? Aren’t you supposed to be looking for love or off being loud in the trees?”

Cicada, “I am the trumpet. I bear the good news. I am the minor mirror of his existence. I laid for a mere many years to be called from the earth. He has waiting many a millennia.”

It was not lost on me how stupid it felt indulging this obvious slip into insanity but when I tell you that this was real, I mean it. It was really speaking to me. The volume of a normal voice impacted only by distance. It spoke in my mind and in its mind.

Cicada, “You must listen. You must listen so that you may know. And you will feed him. You will all feed him.”

My humor faltered under the weight of that statement. My euphoria constricted to a pinpoint and disappointing sobriety reclaimed my senses. I’ll admit that I was beginning to believe the mind words of the trumpet cicada. My tone shifted and I truly wanted to know more.

Me, “What does he sound like? Can I talk with him?”

Cicada, “You will feel him.”

Me, “Well, I don’t like that. When is he coming? Why you? Why a bug?”

Cicada, “He has lain. Slept. As I did. He is to come again. To judge and consume. Listen for him. Believe and be saved. Birth him.”

And that was all I could take for the morning. I set my coffee down, it was too hot anyways, grabbed my keys, gave Mr. Trumpet Cicada a middle finger and made my way to work.

That night I did not dream.
And I did not sleep all that much either.
Just as sleep’s calming undercurrent begun to tug at the tassels of my exhausted subconscious, I was coldly alerted to the sounds of Cicadas singing.
At the foot of my bed.
Loud and angry.

I whirled around. My thoughts and emotions bifurcated by anger and fear. What stood there was worse than my last dream. It was real. It was the Trumpet. A cycloptic mound of writhing exoskeletal horrors stood on top of the foot of my bed. Little unfortunate bugs fell from its fingers and chin like droplets of black oil running down the lower prominences of some demons lesser features. He had chosen what I can loosely describe as human form. And he was not good at it. “Child” was the word that rushed into my head as the hive stood there looming over me. Slight jerks and fidgeted movements reminded me of the few interactions that marked my total experience of adolescent interactions. The cicada I had shared morning communion with sat affixed to the forehead of its cranium and from it, amplified by all the others, came his voice at an insane volume.

The Herald, “LISTEN”

Me, “I am.” I croaked with a throat parched by shock and fear.

Cicada, “You do not.” He proclaimed. His voice in my mind was weary. Rasping. “You must listen. You must go. You must feel.” Every word ever so slightly more distorted than the last as if the seconds that ticked by cut into him with the rusted, jagged blade of age. “You are the deliverer. He has chosen you. I speak plainly. The field. Go to it. Feel the earth. Feel for the Lord of the Wind and the Sky. He will birth from you. You will join his judgement.”

Me, “What the fuck dude. I’m not doing that! Why the hell would I?”

He stood there. They stood there. Every word spoken oozed chewed up larva, beetles and worms. They were spilling onto my sheets in wet thick clumps like putrid punctuations to my heralds proclamations.

He leaned over my shivering being.

The Herald, “Because if not, I will take you there. My life is short. His is not. You must go now.”

I’d rather fight a bug than obey one. But the instant I began to plot the “attack on katydid”, my mind was violently thrashed with images of being held down by mountains of insects. My limbs neutralized by venomous bites and my health robbed in moments by the melting bile of formic acid coursing through my veins. And I felt it as clearly as if it were happening. The herald. The trumpet. Crawling into my mouth. Capitalizing on my screams and grunted efforts. Stopping at my uvula. Slicing and pushing his path through my flesh and clawing into my brain. It was happening but not happening.

The Herald, “Do you understand?”

I could not dare open my mouth. I shook my head. North, south. He understood.

I got up from my bed as the pressure on my legs shifted. It had my legs pinned the whole time. Our mental correspondence had cluttered my thoughts enough that I did not even notice the near bone crushing pressure on my lower extremities.
Getting up to my feet I was ushered by the form bursting into millions of shards of flighted chittering chiton. Their noise and presence drowned out the ability to think rationally and I could do nothing but take the next step. Then the next. And the next after that.

When I got outside, I saw it.
A tornado of buzzing, chittering flesh reaching to the heavens as if to mock the mere finite distance of the stars, plunged its mass into the soil of my field behind my house. Like the end of a morbid rainbow marking the destination of the damned, it had bored away the top soil.
The wings and sharp glistening bodies flickered the light of a full and bloody moon. Dark, red light marked the girth of a phenomenon I had never once dreamed could occur.
Fireflies caught in the melee of edges and spikes exploded in tiny clear bursts of bioluminescent puffs as their bodies were crushed by their compatriots. Their deaths were a joyful flare of decadent sacrifice aimed at the glory of the coming God.
They were harkening to the Lord.
They were harkening to me.

I took step after step. Every moment, the swarm grew louder and louder. The perfect symmetry of their vortex of worship was compromised only long enough to draw me in.

There I stood.
The earth below me was cold on my feet. Ants and worms squirmed beneath my bare and sweating feet. Not a single grain of dirt laid anywhere. It was bugs. All of it. The ground, the wind, the sky.

The Herald, “Lay with God.”

The resounding command given to me by every one of the quintillions of beings.
The Heralds voice was so far ground by age that it was unintelligible. Only the presence of the other beings, still fresh from chrysalis or hearty enough to withstand the meager time allotted their pathetic mortal coils could render the command legible in my mind.

The Heralds voice boomed in my head once again.
“LAY WITH GOD. Let him eat your womb.”

The soil churned slightly. Weakly.
I placed my hand against the cold, indifferent earth and all other sounds ceased.
I could hear him.
I could hear my savior. My Lord. My son to be. He shifted sleepily. But I could hear his hunger. I could feel his rage. Denied his Godhood for millennia. Denied his justice. He writhed and his hunger turned sour. It turned into angry, bitter, vengeful determination. My mind’s eye was flooded with the vision of what was to come next.
My body slowly consumed by the emulsified earth. His presence nearing me. Laid flat, my belly exposed to his arms. His biting and rending. Crawling, pulling, pressure, chewing, impartial to my mammalian suffering. Death. Growth. A mother.
Of sorts.
Birth from my corps. Flesh of insect and man melded into the horror that only a God of great and terrible spite could imagine.

I turned.

So fast, I turned.

I ran.

Splintering chiton tore at my flesh. Needle like utensils plucked at my skin, filling my blood with acid and toxins not yet mastered by man.
The whole of the swarm began to descend on me.

But my hand still held my keys.
My car still functioned and unlocked.
The autostart still initiated.
My legs, pushed me faster than the bugs could fly, but still some were on me and in my way.
Their broken worship crackled into raging fury at my cowardly defiance.

Every stride was a blinding shock of pain. Every time my bare feet hit the ground, new and visceral pain blossomed through the soles of my feet as the bug blanketed ground welcomed my exposed soles with malicious, gooey crunches. Their stinging probes and sharpened bodies piercing into me with ease. The air was so thick with the bodies of the worshipping congregation. It felt like pushing against a wall but I knew if I paid any heed to the pain, or the pressure, I would instantly be consumed. Even my breathing was stifled as my mouth and nostrils were assaulted by every flying insect of nasal cavity caliber. Cough broke into wheeze. My heart thundered from the effects of toxin, pain, adrenaline, shock and panic and every single millimeter my body flew was illuminated by screaming, searing agony.

It was the worst 100 yds I have ever travelled.

My memory fades from the toxins.
But I know I am somewhere right now that is not there. Nowhere is safe. But I’m somewhere safer. I just need to rest and refit. I need to flush my body from these toxins. They burn and itch at every inch of my body. The pustules they have cratered into me ooze with rancid ichor.

My new abode is a bunker that one of my uncles built not 2 years ago. He’s a prepper and former construction foreman.
This bunker is over built as fuck.
And it’s just not enough.

In my head I hear them. I feel their bodies pressed against the walls of this concrete tomb. I feel their wild anger and burning need to bring me back.
I haven’t heard from anyone up top in some time. I have a phone line to them. I’ve called them countless times now but, something tells me they aren’t there anymore.

I go to take a shower and as I turn the shower handle the water refuses to come through. They’ve clogged the pipes.
I had to close all the vents. I could hear them congregating around the filters and chewing through the fabric and metal blockades.

It’s so hard to breathe now. I can hear that they are getting closer. They are screaming in my mind. They will take me. They will bury me. He will birth from me. The Lord. The God. The mind.

I can hear them inside the bunker now. Speaking for me. Singing for me. Skittering …

somewhere.

Theres quintillions of them and they are coming for me.

Fun fact:
Insects make up the highest amount of bio-matter in the world aside from plants. In fact, the entire human population as well as that of all livestock is dwarfed by insects to a staggering 300%-400%.
In number, there are about 200 million insects to every human…

I was working on the house when it really started and a cicada flew into the back of my head and grabbed onto my hair near my ear.

Normally, I have really good composer when it comes to these sorts of run ins, but in this particular instance, one of its stupid little hooks on its leg caught the tender skin on the side my neck which tricked me into thinking I was as being stung. This paired with the exceedingly noisy signature of its wings screaming into the back of my scalp caused me to yelp like a pup whose tail has been freshly trod upon by a careless owner. Simultaneously, I hurriedly flicked it off with a panicked hand and cursed in hushed tones at the poor handling of this inconsiderate run in.

“Another damn cicada?” I said as it worked itself upright on the ground, spread its wings and flew off. This was the second time today and fourth time in two days this had happened. And it was always hitting or attempting to stick a landing near my ears.
Very unsettling.

Well, no sooner had the jitters left my system than that same noisy fat bug came and landed right on the bill of my hat! I really was just annoyed at this point but have no other issue with bugs. Always enjoyed them to be honest.
However, as I’m studying this beautiful insect thats landed on my hat, I think I hear it say something.

“Listen”

It spoke with no accent, unusual inflection, chirping noises or anything that would give away that it was a bug talking. It spoke to my mind perfectly clearly.
Just sounded like a little child no older than 10 had addressed me and asked for my attention.
I grabbed it and held it up by its sides while looking into its eyes.
It was just a bug. Nothing new or unusual to report about it. But it had definitely told me to

“LISTEN!”

There it was again! But, this time, almost a scream. I flung it away and it caught flight once more, buzzing away into the trees.

I had a strange dream that night about being covered in bugs of all sorts. Some soft bodied that slunk across my skin with ease and an almost comforting smoothness and some that grabbed my flesh with their barbed feet and used my pores as hook holds to traverse my body. Through it all, I could not speak or move.
They started at my feet and hands and crawled up to my arms and legs.
They were crawling to my face.

Sensation and realization were the catalysts to panic. Panic was the ruler of my mind in that moment. My mind was void of reason or answer to my new hellish conundrum.
I squeezed my eyes closed harder and harder as they inched closer to my face. My nose! My ears! What if they crawl inside!? I tried to flex some unknown sphincter in my olfactory and auditory orifices but to no avail.
Every inch of my body crawled with microscopic (and some not so microscopic) hooks and foot pads and slime-less, but somehow sickeningly slick bodies. Chirping irrupted from every millimeter of territory the insects now claimed on my body and with it all I could do absolutely, undeniably, maddeningly … nothing.

Then, they all stopped. At the edges of my ears, they gathered in tight packed hordes.
Not daring to invade my nostrils or ear canals, but instead they spoke.

They said something simple and chilling.

Horde, “Listen now.”,
and even more silently, as if to prevent the chance of something overhearing or perhaps to garner my trust through the impression of calm innocence, “He is coming.”

Then the chirps became a chorus of it. The same phrase over and over. Louder and louder as if to raise in adoration and worship,
“He is coming.”
“He is coming.”
“HE IS COMING.”

Then silence. For a moment. The ringing of the words dying from the hot moist air. Just as all noise had faded, their legs bite into my every pore to the point of breaking my skin in a instant shocking coordinated tensing of chiton. With the total focus their actions had earned them, they broke the silence by whispering in a crisp, clear and urgent manner,

“Listen for him.”

Just like that, I was awake.
I maintained complete masculine composure and certainly DID NOT jump out of bed and search every crevice of my bed and room for bugs to squish.

For real though, honestly I actually woke with a sense of euphoria. Like, total peace.
My skin was crawling the entire day following this, but I felt emotionally … sated.
It wasn’t an hour after sunrise that, while making coffee before work, I saw that cicada on my kitchen window.
I walked to it, sipped my coffee and gave it the greeting of the day.

Me, “Well, good morning”

Cicada, *stares bugishly*

Me, “Yeah. I slept great. Thanks for asking.”

Cicada, *adjusts mandible*

Before I tell you what happened next, I need you to know something. Cicadas are the oldest bugs on the earth. Not like been around the longest, but they live longer than any other bug. They achieve this during the pupal stage when they are planted in the ground as an egg, take a year or so to hatch and spend about 5-17 years (depending on species and conditions) in the earth as a pupa eating tree sap from roots and absorbing other minerals in the soil as they mature. They maintain this until the soil is exactly 64 degrees Fahrenheit and that temp lines up with the specific species preferred time of year to hatch. They then crawl up a tree, shed their exoskeleton, and bud like a butterfly into the adult cicada. They only live for a matter of weeks as adults, eating nothing and solely serving the purpose of procreation. During this period they “sing” by rubbing their wings against their bodies in order to locate a mate or even startle a predator into releasing them.
Down here in the south, their song lasts all day and peaks in the heat of the day.

Alright. Thats out of the way now.
After it mundanely adjusted its mandible and right as I was about to speak to it through the pane of glass, it spoke again, cutting me off quite rudely.

Cicada, “Can you hear him?”

Me, “Uhh, no?”

Cicada, “Are you listening for him?”

Me, “Who is he?”

There was a long pause, as if the risk of answering was being weighed on the scales of risk and necessity.

Cicada, “The Lord of the Wind and the Sky.”

The words hit me deeply despite a lack of knowledge as to their importance. The words struck me in my chest, and the ringing in my ears, from my dream came back as if a gong had been struck in my brain stem.

Me, “Okay. And who are you? Aren’t you supposed to be looking for love or off being loud in the trees?”

Cicada, “I am the trumpet. I bear the good news.”

It was not lost on me how stupid it felt indulging this obvious slip into insanity but when I tell you that this was real, I mean it. It was really speaking to me. The volume of a normal voice impacted only by distance. It spoke in my mind and in its mind.

Cicada, “You must listen. You must listen so that you may know. And you will feed him. You will all feed him.”

My humor faltered under the weight of that statement. My euphoria constricted to a pinpoint and disappointing sobriety reclaimed my senses. I’ll admit that I was beginning to believe the mind words of the trumpet cicada. My tone shifted and I truly wanted to know more.

Me, “What does he sound like? Can I talk with him?”

Cicada, “You will feel him.”

Me, “Well, I don’t like that. When is he coming? Why you? Why a bug?”

Cicada, “He has lain. Slept. As I did. He is to come again. To judge and consume. Listen for him. Believe and be saved. Birth him.”

And that was all I could take for the morning. I set my coffee down, it was too hot anyways, grabbed my keys, gave Mr. Trumpet Cicada a middle finger and made my way to work.

That night I did not dream.
And I did not sleep all that much either.
Just as sleep’s calming undercurrent begun to tug at the tassels of my exhausted subconscious, I was coldly alerted to the sounds of Cicadas singing.
At the foot of my bed.
Loud and angry.

I whirled around. My thoughts and emotions bifurcated by anger and fear. What stood there was worse than my last dream. It was real. It was the Trumpet. A cycloptic mound of writhing exoskeletal horrors stood on top of the foot of my bed. Little unfortunate bugs fell from its fingers and chin like droplets of black oil running down the lower prominences of some demons lesser features. He had chosen what I can loosely describe as human form. And he was not good at it. The cicada I had shared morning communion with sat affixed to the forehead of its cranium and from it, amplified by all the others, came his voice at an insane volume.

The Herald, “LISTEN”

Me, “I am.” I croaked with a throat parched by shock and fear.

Cicada, “You do not.” He proclaimed. His voice in my mind was weary. Rasping. “You must listen. You must go. You must feel.” Every word ever so slightly more distorted than the last. “You are the deliverer. He has chosen you. I speak plainly. The field. Go to it. Feel the earth. Feel for the Lord of the Wind and the Sky. He will birth from you. You will join his judgement.”

Me, “What the fuck dude. I’m not doing that! Why the hell would I?”

He stood there. They stood there. Every word spoken oozed chewed up larva, beetles and worms. They were spilling onto my sheets in wet thick clumps like putrid punctuations to my heralds proclamations.

He leaned over my shivering being.

The Herald, “Because if not, I will take you there.”

I’d rather fight a bug than obey one. But the instant I began to plot the “attack on katydid”, my mind was violently thrashed with images of being held down by mountains of insects. My limbs neutralized by venomous bites and my health robbed in moments by the melting bile of formic acid coursing through my veins. And I felt it as clearly as if it were happening. The herald. The trumpet. Crawling into my mouth. Capitalizing on my screams and grunted efforts. Stopping at my uvula. Slicing and pushing his path through my flesh and clawing into my brain. It was happening but not happening.

The Herald, “Do you understand?”

I could not dare open my mouth. I shook my head. North, south. He understood.

I got up from my bed as the pressure on my legs shifted. It had my legs pinned the whole time. Our mental correspondence had cluttered my thoughts enough that I did not even notice the near bone crushing pressure on my lower extremities.
Getting up to my feet I was ushered by the form bursting into millions of shards of flighted chittering chiton. Their noise and presence drowned out the ability to think rationally and I could do nothing but take the next step. Then the next. And the next after that.

When I got outside, I saw it.
A tornado of buzzing, chittering flesh reaching to the heavens as if to mock the mere finite distance of the stars, plunged its mass into the soil of my field behind my house. Like the end of a morbid rainbow marking the destination of the damned, it had bored away the top soil.
The wings and sharp glistening bodies flickered the light of a full and bloody moon. Dark, red light marked the girth of a phenomenon I had never once dreamed could occur.
Fireflies caught in the melee of edges and spikes exploded in tiny clear bursts of bioluminescent puffs as their bodies were crushed by their compatriots. Their deaths were a joyful flare of decadent sacrifice aimed at the glory of the coming God.
They were harkening to the Lord.
They were harkening to me.

I took step after step. Every moment, the swarm grew louder and louder. The perfect symmetry of their vortex of worship was compromised only long enough to draw me in.

There I stood.
The earth below me was cold on my feet. Ants and worms squirmed beneath my bare and sweating feet. Not a single grain of dirt laid anywhere. It was bugs. All of it. The ground, the wind, the sky.

The Herald, “Lay with God.”

The resounding command given to me by every one of the quintillions of beings.
The Heralds voice was so far ground by age that it was unintelligible. Only the presence of the other beings, still fresh from chrysalis or hearty enough to withstand the meager time allotted their pathetic mortal coils could render the command legible in my mind.

The Heralds voice boomed in my head once again.
“LAY WITH GOD. Let him eat your womb.”

The soil churned slightly. Weakly.
I placed my hand against the cold, indifferent earth and all other sounds ceased.
I could hear him.
I could hear my savior. My Lord. My son to be. He shifted sleepily. But I could hear his hunger. I could feel his rage. Denied his Godhood for millennia. Denied his justice. He writhed and his hunger turned sour. It turned into angry, bitter, vengeful determination.

I turned.

So fast, I turned.

I ran.

Splintering chiton tore at my flesh. Needle like utensils plucked at my skin, filling my blood with acid and toxins not yet mastered by man.
The whole of the swarm began to descend on me.

But my hand still held my keys.
My car still functioned and unlocked.
The autostart still initiated.
My legs, pushed me faster than the bugs could fly, but still some were on me and in my way.
Their broken worship crackled into raging fury at my cowardly defiance.

My memory fades from the toxins.
But I know I am somewhere right now that is not there. Nowhere is safe. But I’m somewhere safer. I just need to rest and refit. I need to flush my body from these toxins. They burn and itch at every inch of my body. The pustules they have cratered into me ooze with rancid ichor.

My new abode is a bunker that one of my uncles built not 2 years ago. He’s a prepper and former construction foreman.
This bunker is over built as fuck.
And it’s just not enough.

In my head I hear them. I feel their bodies pressed against the walls of this concrete tomb. I feel their wild anger and burning need to bring me back.
I haven’t heard from anyone up top in some time. I have a phone line to them. I’ve called them countless times now but, something tells me they aren’t there anymore.

I go to take a shower and as I turn the shower handle the water refuses to come through. They’ve clogged the pipes.
I had to close all the vents. I could hear them congregating around the filters and chewing through the fabric and metal blockades.

It’s so hard to breathe now. And I hear skittering …

somewhere.

I’m going on a trip

This is a local story that caught a lot of traction in my friend group. We are mostly EMS and medical workers and this particular case was just such a wild occurrence on so many levels that we all did what we could to get as much info on it as possible. It was as hard to read as things like this really get, but for a local legend goes, it’s worth letting it out in its entirety.

The following is a mixture of spliced together police reports, personal entries from Rob and abbreviated medical reports. I wasn’t able to get copies of anything aside from his journals, but this is what I got from memory and screenshots.

Evidence
Category: correspondence
Type: Subject unsent email
Send to: Christacat@icloud.com
Subject: I’m heading out.

“Johny just passed and I’ve buried him out back behind your mother and brother.
You know how good he was and I’m struggling with him no longer being here to hunt with me. He was a good dog.

I’d send this to one of the other kids but you’re the most likely to not forget about me. Haha!

I’m leaving for a hunting trip and wanted to let you know where I’ll be and what to expect if I’m not back on schedule. The local park rangers know me from a few years ago and they should know where I like to go.

I’m going to Needle Mountains Game land again. Should back by 20250930. Wanting to be back before it gets too cold.

I’ve got a tag to fill for Muleys and with winter coming, this’ll fill the fridge and give me some time to grieve alone in my hellish little heaven on the mountain.

I miss you, and I’ll be okay.

PS.
Johny passed away. I buried him this morning. Could use your prayers.

Love, Rob-“

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal

“20250917
Well, looks like I forgot my water purification straw. Dumbass.
I’ve got the jetboil though, so I should be more than okay, just gonna take longer to move around.
Feels good out here. It’s about 34 degrees, nice consistent winds from the north, and I can smell winter coming. Love this smell.
Lots of muley sign on the way up here and I’m thinking they’ll be rutting through the upper tree-line.
I’ll have to hike in roughly 4 clicks and up about 1,200 feet to crater lake which should be easy for a crusty ole devil dog like me.

The truck is at the Andrews Lake trail entry and I’ve left a note with my route plan on the dash which is more a redundancy than anything else. Can never be too careful on a solo hunt.

Didn’t end up stopping by the warden office. Called em and left a message. The drive took longer than I thought and it was about 0200 when I finally parked and started prepping for the hike.
About to step now. Next entry should be at Crater Lake tomorrow morning.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“20250917
Things unraveled a bit. Mountains do a good job of fucking up your plans.

Got turned around on the trail about 3 kmtr in. Zoned out and missed a turn. Things look a bit different this time and the dark didn’t help.
It’s currently 1000 and I am beat. Got to the lake at around 0830. Gonna boil some water, eat, and take a nap.

No deer sign up here which is strange.
Conditions are perfect and they always meet up near water. I don’t see any tracks at all actually. No people, no animals. The only thing up here right now are the fish. Forgot to bring a rod though so, tough shit I guess. Victory favors the well prepared so I’ll have to coax a win out of this hunt with old age and treachery.

I’ll make a movement farther east when I wake and try to find a good spot to glass for a set of antlers.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“20250919
Found em!
Got a small herd of does that look to be in heat. Just a matter of time before a good buck shows up. And at the very least, I can just tag a doe if nothing good happens.

This group was a real challenge to find. They were a great deal father southeast than I thought and they are avoiding the woods like the plague. They honesty look a but unwell. They are huddled in a decent thicket on a plateau at the moment and haven’t moved in a day or so. There must be some water over there. It’s gonna be a challenge to get within 300 yds for a shot. Their location gives them exceptional lines of sight in all directions. They seem pretty spooky too. Very odd.

Rolled my ankle yesterday so this time to glass has been beneficial. Not a bad sprain but it’s bitching for sure.
I’ve got a stream nearby and food supply is good this far.
The rifle almost feels like it’s quivering for a kill. And I for one could do with some red meat. Already getting tired of mountain house meals. Haha!”

Evidence
Category: Official Entry
Type: Game Warden
“Sept. 18, 2025
Ran the number on the truck found at the Andrews lake trailhead.
Looks like Rob is back for one more hunt. Surprised he never stopped in to check in but, his license and online registration is still good so I’ve got no qualm with it.
Tried to reach him by phone but he must be south of the peak by now.
Surprised he didn’t leave a note.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“20250922
It’s so beautiful out here. I’d forgotten it.
The sky is crisp and clear as a glass of cold gin and the stars are brightening by the second. They remind me of poems I’d written to my love before she left.
I remember how beautiful she was by how beautiful it is here. All the details of her face and body rush back to me when the mountains embrace me with their cold, dark touch. She was so warm to me but her touch sent chills through me like the wind that crashes down in the evening.
I remember her presence being so warm like the first light that conquers the passing night each morning.

The mountains engulf the edges of the sky like a mat of black hunger and mark the line I can never cross till death finds me. And search through these hills it does. I can tell it is calling for me. Somewhere deep in my heart and bones feels like surrendering to it. Not out of age or pain but out of the hope that it might just bring me back to her and my son.

I wish I could be up here alone with the thoughts I love. Thoughts of my darling, thoughts of my son, of my family and Johny. But the other thoughts are up here now too.

It always shocks me how vivid they are. It almost makes me regret staying infantry. Honestly wishing I had not forsaken the peace of my future for the thrill of combat. But, what I’ve done is done. I’m thankful still. But I’m not able to forget them. I wish the sting of cold air and the burn of tired legs could cleanse my memory or save me from it all but those days will never leave me. I’ll remember them for the honor and purpose they give to my lost brothers. Thats a good enough reason to suffer them longer.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“20250922
The sun came up about 5 hours ago and I couldn’t find that herd.
I closed the distance to their hide over the course of the morning and there is nothing here but a single yearling ripped to parts and pieces.
Nothing has evidently been eaten of it, but it has been spread around in a large circle at the lowest point of this depression. There is no wind right here so I didn’t smell the blood till I got to it.
I couldn’t find tracks for the other deer but I have a feeling they fled downhill.
I’ll rest up and head that way in the afternoon.

I’m not sure what did this. There were no prints anywhere that I could see, so I figure some sort of cat with a very light step. Nothing else would likely have been able to sneak that close to them.

I wanted to mention that I must have cut myself somewhere. When I woke I was very tired and I had blood under my fingernails. All my gear is accounted for and all my clothing is clean but the dew left them a bit damp.
Someone must have come by last night. My compass is gone. It’s neatly missing so I don’t think I lost it. Someone must have stolen it. Fucking twat.

I also realized that the letter I wrote for the warden was still in my right hip pocket. Whats even happening to me!? I feel like I’m going insane.

I have been having a lot of strange dreams. I hear things when sleep takes me. Screams and something splashing on the ground. I feel something chasing me like a wolf or a bear and when I wake up, I’ve been sleep walking or thrashing in my sleep.

I haven’t struggled with this since 2015.
It started a few weeks ago but it’s been worse these past three days. My sleeping has been poorer and poorer as I’ve stayed here longer. Thats just not the way it usually works for me. The mountains have always helped me sleep. I’ll probably crash here soon and have a better sleep.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“20250925
Something happened last night.
I’ve been tracking this herd for a while and saw a set of antlers over a crest at dusk yesterday. It was oriented facing me and did not move for about an hour till I lost sight of it as the light died out. Never got to see the head or body. Just tall sharp tines that seemed a bit too white. The deer just got their antlers a month or so ago but these looked sun-bleached to all hell! Must be a big ole boy.

I woke up sometime late at night. I couldn’t breathe. My heart was pounding and before I could get my bearings I felt something breathing right behind my head. I was lying on my back and couldn’t even look up to see it, but it was there. Something wet landed in my hair and its breath was so close and so hot that my eyes burned with every ebb and flow of respiration.
I started to panic and could feel my chest aching with my heart beat. Finally I was able to breathe and I shot up from my bed clamoring for my knife or gun. I couldn’t see them in the dark and in my panic I gashed my left hand open with my knife. Still got it out and as I looked around with my flashlight, I could hear and see nothing else.
Only thing I could sense was a lack of wind and a smell. It was horrid.
It reminded me of finding a room filled with a dead family in Fallujah. They had been partially vaporized by an explosive of some sort and stewing in that room for a while. Something else was on the air. I could smell deer flesh. Whatever this thing was had probably been what killed that yearling muley a few days ago.

I stayed up that night and just had my rifle and light nearby till the sun came up. It’s been dry here and I don’t want to risk a fire. My tarp is lighter than a whole tent, but at the rate that the temp is falling, I need to improve my shelter, finish this hunt, or head back early. I don’t want to risk too much in the weather.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“20250928
It just rained.
I don’t understand. It was below freezing and felt like snow but it just rained for three hours. I’m quite worried as I’ve lost the trail. I know roughly where I am but that thing keeps stalking me. I’ve seen it now.

It’s taller than me. It’s too slight of frame to be a bear. It never moves when I see it but if I blink or loose line of sight it’s always gone. Just before I settled in for bed last night I heard something behind me. As my old eyes scanned through the dying light, I saw nothing at first until a nob on one of the trees, or what I had thought was a nob, retracted back behind the tree. It was watching me the whole time!
I got up, hit the light, sprinted over with my rifle and searched for any sign of it for a good hour!

I searched until I heard it. It didn’t say anything as much as called to me. The sounds it made were indistinguishable but I felt like it was my wife and my son saying my name at the same time.
I’ve learned to call to animals to get them to come closer or go away and this is what it felt like to me. Something calling to me to incite a response.
I flicked my light to it and saw its eyes. They were 100yds away or so and high. Not like on the slope of something, or in a tree, but just so tall. It blinked and I caught movement as it turned away. 30.06 is a man killing round but for some reason, as I fired at it, that gun felt so small. As I got on its trail, I found no blood but that smell was everywhere. It coated my nostrils like paste and I felt nauseated. The skin on the back of my neck began to crawl as I realized how bad a position I was and I decided a tactical withdrawal might be in my best interest.

I got back to my camp but all my gear was splayed out over the ground. It took me a while to get it together.
I’m really cold right now. Its 0300. The rain soaked most of my gear and my jetboil isn’t lighting. I’ve started a fire with my lighter but it’s pretty pathetic. My hand is throbbing from the cut. Seems my field medicine was not effectual. Can’t use my left thumb thanks to the swelling.
I’m going to head back tomorrow. A lot more has happened but thats all for tonight.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“It’s so cold out here.
I’ve lost the trail entirely. My map is useless cuz I can’t find my direction. It’s been cloudy for 2 days and I can’t use the sun or stars to navigate. I’ve been using my range finder and estimation to gauge the distances between ridges in an attempt to use the terrain to triangulate my position but, I’m sitting on mixed results. I know I need to keep going East. I started out going South then West, so I just need to go East and then North.

Whatever it is, I’m gonna kill it. I’m gonna fucking kill it.
It woke me again last night.
It was standing right over me. It smelled horrid. Like that room. I could only see an impossibly slight glare from its eyes and the mountainous outline of its pitch black silhouette against the nearly all black sky.
I didn’t move. I was actually afraid this time. I have not been afraid in many years. It made me just as afraid as the first house I cleared. Up until I breached that door, I could have pissed myself.
It felt like with every breath it was getting a millimeter closer to my face and the stench was worse and worse. I could feel pressure on my chest like vicious dredd.
My fingers sifted through my sleeping bag till I felt my knife.
What else could I have done?
I could hear my body trembling from the friction of my sleeping bag. I didn’t want to do anything but stay still.
I decided to lunge up at it right as I heard my wife’s voice whisper in a mocking tone mere inches away from my face,

“go to sleep”

I sprung up enraged and swung at the naked night air.
Nothing. What the fuck!? Not a damn thing. The smell, the feeling, the pounding heart. All of it was gone. It was dawn. I don’t know whats happening.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
“I found a large buck this morning. It was just dead. Still warm. Nothing injured it. It was perfectly fine. Just dead.

I’m out of food. I’ve been out here for too long now. My body aches and my ankle and hand are in a horrible condition. I’m so hungry. You’re not supposed to eat something you found dead if you don’t know what killed it but I was so hungry.

The snow came. I’m on a leeward ridge that faces the sunrise. The wind is better here and I lack the ability to go far. I can’t find Johny. He must have run off last night after a rabbit or something. He keeps me warm at night and he’s such a comfort to have nearby when it’s dark.

The deer tasted good. I got a fire going and the meat rests well in my belly. I’ll leave some out for Johny when he gets back.

He’s looking at me.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
Note: subject’s note date was not accurate. Following text roughly approximated due to weather and bodily fluid damage to page. DNA testing confirms all fluids belong to subject.
“20231005
Johny bit me last night. I woke up with him up against me but he smelled awful. I can’t remember why but he smelled like something dead. I got up a little to see if he had anything on him but when I tried to move him he started to growl, low and without breathing in. The growling was coming from him but he wasn’t breathing.
I went to flip him over but as soon as I touched him, his head whirled around 180 degrees without moving his body and his mouth wrapped around my face!! The pain was the most vivid thing I’d felt for days and I couldn’t pull away. His teeth sunk into my skull and left jawbone and cemented me in place. I was frozen. Wet, hot breath pressed against my face as his throat began to flex and shake. My eyes were wide open. The growling was so loud it hurt my ears. I could see a face down his throat, like a cave leading to a cavern and the face was my son. Rotted and ravaged by his cancer, but it was his face. Johny’s stomach was a room I’ve seen before. Someplace that brought an already insurmountable level of dread and panic to a new level.
I screamed and screamed.
I grabbed Johny’s mouth and started to rip him off my face. His teeth chipped against my skull and one of his canines caught on my molar through my cheek.
Finally, with a strip of my lip caught in his grasp, I got him off me.

I gasped, woke up and he was gone.
There’s blood everywhere. It’s on everything.
My hands are cramped and I need water. I’m so thirsty.
The deer has turned in my belly and I feel ill.
I’ll just stay here for now.

I’m very tired. I miss Johny.”

Evidence
Category: Notes
Type: Subject Journal
Note: date provided is not accurate. Following text approximated due to damage to pages of entry. Final subject entry prior to recovery.
“20231005
It and I’m cold.
It’s been
It hears me.

I hear it.

Can’t find Johny, but I hear him panting for me.
My ankle is broken.

I keep cramping up. I tried moving up the mountain. The clouds are gone. I couldn’t make it. I fell and scraped the skin off my good hand on a rock.
I need water. I’m thirsty. I’m hungry.
I’m gonna kill it.
Weather is beautiful.
My voice is gone.

The hand smells rancid.

Might need to use that last round soon.
No use trying to survive anymore. It all hurts.

I’m gonna fucking kill it.”

Note: the following was written by the subject 394 times till writing utensil was empty and was written with words overlapping due to lack of space on pages.

“She is speaking to me”

Police report:
“Subject was located in a hole, under a fallen tree on a leeward slope approximately 2 kilometers from Andrews Lake and 1 kilometer from Animas River. It is believed he covered 60-70 kilometers in tortuous and inconsistent patterns.
Subject was not responsive when located and had a rifle in his right hand in a position consistent with attempted self harm.
Recovery was performed via airlift. Subject was stabilized and brought to Animas Surgical hospital.

Medical Report: Robert Serter
20251007 1319
Patient admitted at 1202
Critical condition.
Patient presented with hypovolemic shock, hypothermia, severe dehydration, multiple left ankle fractures, advanced gangrene and infection left hand, multiple lacerations on face, neck and scalp, blunt force head trauma.

Patient was provided IV fluids, IV anti-bacterials medication, surgical repair (6 screws, 2 plates) of left ankle, surgical repair of facial area lacerations, surgical amputation left arm above elbow, BP medications provided via IV.

Medical report:
20251010 0900
Patient is awake but unresponsive despite showing significant improvement within 3 days.
Patient will not respond to verbal or visual communication. Multiple attempts to get patient walking or communicating have been unsuccessful.

*update*
20251010 2230
Patient screamed for 12 minutes.
Patient experienced manic episode and is now stabilized and coherent.
Police have been notified for followup.
Patient is able to eat and drink normally.
Patient is able to walk with aid of crutches.
Patient was not aware of their location or situation.

Patient was discharged at 1900 and admitted to Common Spirit Mercy Hospital.

20251102 0900
Patient is in good spirits and shows steady mental and physical improvement.
Patient displays symptoms consistent with rapid onset, advanced dementia.

Alright…
As an explanation, his dog was named after his son, “Johnathan”. Don’t know why you would do that to yourself as his son passed away to cancer at a very young age, but thats what he chose to do. I guess he broke a little when the dog finally died. We found most of this out via talks with the family.
His wife had passed away in a vehicle collision in the late fall of 2023 and was laid to rest next to the son in their woods.

As far as his injuries go, his facial wounds were all self inflicted.
They pumped his stomach and found rotted deer meat, urine and human flesh that they believe used to be his lower lip.

The surgeons did a great job of patching him back up, and he took to the treatments really well. He was obviously very happy to be alive but we needed to remind him daily where he was and what had happened to his arm and ankle.

Rob was always kind to us but wakes up in the night in fits to this day saying that Johny is back.
Theres been a few incidents at the nursing home with him standing in his bed at night like a little boy looking at his window, scared out of his mind and screaming till he wets his pants.
Horrible thing to let out, but we are still speculating as to what is happening to him. I think he really is just experiencing severe dementia, but some of my friends blame more sinister explanations.

Whatever it is, it’s with him now.
I walked past his room the other night and he was watching me from the corner of his room. He was standing straight up in his bed against the corner of the wall. His disfigured face now looking somehow more savaged. His arm appearing like it was still raw at its stump.
His eyes were so pitch black that they cut through the already dark room and I could have sworn I saw another set a few feet above him looking down at me. It felt like when I was a child, right before I was attacked by our neighbor’s dog. I remember thinking about how painful it’s bite might be. The sensation of its teeth locking into my flesh and the copper tang staining my tongue as adrenaline takes over my senses. That hungry calculated glare that precedes the execution of a violent act. It feels like… he’s waiting. And I don’t like it.
He’s so normal during the days. So sweet. But, as soon as everyone else goes to sleep he’s just so different and it just gets worse every single night.

Now that you know how crazy I am too, it really is not that strange for a nursing home. Old folks do some weird shit.
But this has a … flavor to it. A smell in the air that just sets differently in my psyche.
My mom had some bad mental health issues when she got older. Dementia runs in my family and Rob is the reason I’m so afraid of that happening to me too.

I hope you enjoyed this. I hope you aren’t scarred but, just like us medical service workers, enjoy the nasty gritty details.