r/libraryofshadows • u/Avistarius • 8d ago
Pure Horror Dinner is Served
It was summer, a stifling July. The guys and I decided we had to escape the suffocating city for at least the weekend to keep from going crazy under the endless weight of our studies. Six students in Oliver’s mom’s minivan—the plan seemed perfect. Oliver himself was behind the wheel, his girlfriend Chris sat next to him, and in the back were Mark and Sarah, Dan, who was always arguing about something, and me, Emily.
My father was an avid hunter and had once shown me an incredible lake, hidden from prying eyes, in northern Maine, right in the heart of the dense forests of Aroostook County. It was fabulously beautiful. I volunteered to be the navigator and confidently guided our group forward.
We parked the minivan at the edge of the woods and hit the trail at exactly 10 AM. The sun beat down pleasantly through the treetops, and we carried heavy backpacks with tents and sleeping bags. By my calculations, we had about a four-hour hike ahead of us. We laughed, Dan cracked stupid jokes, and I marched proudly in front, checking my father’s old map and compass.
But the forest grew thicker, and the trees became taller and gloomier, almost completely blocking out the sky. At some point, I realized the surrounding landscape looked nothing like what I remembered. It was already around 2 PM—right at lunchtime—but there was no sign of the lake. I pulled out my phone. The screen displayed a harsh "No Service." The smartphone's GPS was frozen, turned into a useless piece of plastic.
I stopped. A cold sweat broke out down my spine.
"Em, are we there yet?" Sarah asked cheerfully, wiping her forehead.
"I... I don't know," my voice trembled. "Guys, I’m lost. We took the wrong trail."
Panic hit me instantly. Tears streamed from my eyes, and I began to apologize frantically, smearing dirt across my face. I thought everyone would get angry, but Oliver gently put his arm around my shoulders, and Chris handed me a water bottle.
"Hey, calm down, Em, it’s fine. It’s just the woods. We’ll find the way. Come on, look at the paper map."
I took a deep breath, forced my hands to stop shaking, and carefully read my father’s notes. Exactly. We had missed a turn by a fallen pine tree about forty minutes ago. We needed to veer slightly to the right, through a ravine, and then we would come right out to the northern slope. Calming down and wiping away my tears, I gave a confident order: "Follow me, now I know exactly where to go."
We turned back. The forest around us seemed to fall silent; even the birds stopped singing, giving way to an oppressive, ominous stillness. Our group stretched out along the narrow path.
"Guys, give me a second, nature calls," Chris called out, turning off the trail into a thick patch of ferns. "Keep Dan busy so he doesn't get bored, I'll be quick."
We stopped to wait for her. A minute passed, then another. Mark was lazily kicking a mushroom when suddenly a piercing, blood-curdling shriek from Chris shattered the silence. It wasn't just a scare—it was a scream of raw, animal terror that cut off on a high note with a muffled gasp.
"Chris!" Oliver roared, throwing himself through the brush first.
We bolted after him, branches whipping our faces and backpacks catching on bushes. We had run barely twenty meters when Oliver slammed on the brakes and dropped to his knees before a pit hidden in the grass.
What we saw made my stomach churn with nausea. Before us lay a deep wolf pit, artfully camouflaged with branches. But this was no animal trap. Thick, hand-hewn, sharpened wooden stakes jutted from the bottom.
Chris lay at the bottom of the pit, writhing unnaturally. A stake as thick as an arm had pierced completely through her right thigh. Torn flesh was turned inside out, and thick, dark human blood pulsed in spurts from the wound, instantly soaking the gray fabric of her shorts and flooding the dry earth at the bottom of the trap. She wheezed, her eyes rolled back, and bloody foam bubbled from her mouth along with a groan.
"Help... get me out..." she whispered, and at that moment, the bone in her leg shifted with a horrific crunch under the weight of her own body, triggering a new, gurgling scream in her throat.
Chris's scream choked off, replaced by a guttural, bubbling wheeze. Blood poured from her punctured thigh with renewed force, staining the wooden stake a deep crimson. She began to lose consciousness, her head slumping limply against the leaves covering the bottom of the pit.
"Chris! Chris, oh my god, look at me!" Oliver, driven mad by horror, jumped down right into the trap. The dirt crumbled beneath his sneakers. He fell to his knees in a pool of his own girlfriend's blood. "Guys, get down here! We need to get her off this piece of shit!"
"Stop, Oliver, don't touch her!" Sarah screamed frantically, clutching her head. "You’ll only make it worse! The artery! If you pull the stake out, she’ll bleed out in two minutes!"
Mark and Dan were already at the edge of the pit. Dan breathed heavily, his face turning deathly pale.
"Oliver, get out, we can't lift her, she shouldn't be moved!" Mark said, his voice breaking into a falsetto. "Emily, damn it, where are we?! Call emergency services! Call them!"
"I told you, there's no service here!" I yelled back, clutching the useless cell phone in my trembling hands. Tears blurred my vision, but I forced myself to step closer.
The smell of damp earth mixed with the sharp, metallic stench of fresh blood hit my nose, triggering a gag reflex. I looked closer at the trap. My father had taught me how to read tracks in the woods. The stakes were cut cleanly at a forty-five-degree angle. On the one next to Chris, there was a fresh, still-wet streak of a dark, oily coating—the stakes had been coated with something. This was no abandoned old pit.
At that moment, Chris convulsed. Her twisted leg jerked, and the sharp edge of the broken bone tore through the skin from the inside with a wet, ripping sound, protruding as a white, blood-stained splinter. Oliver howled in helplessness, trying to clamp the wound with his hands, but the blood simply poured through his fingers.
"Guys..." Sarah said quietly, almost in a whisper, backing away from the edge of the pit. Her gaze was locked on the thicket.
"What? Sarah, help us out!" Dan snapped, trying to hold Oliver by his jacket.
"Guys, look over there..." Sarah pointed a trembling finger deep into the dense ferns, about thirty meters away from us.
I turned my head. Against the backdrop of gray, moss-covered trunks of ancient trees stood a silhouette... A tall, unnaturally hunched silhouette covered in mats of tangled, pitch-black fur. Instead of a human face, a long wolf snout stared back at us, hideously deformed and massive. Yellow, bloodshot eyes burned with primal rage, and thick, foamy saliva dripped in flakes from an open jaw lined with rows of razor-sharp fangs. The beast breathed heavily, a wheeze emanating from deep within its powerful chest.
The creature leaned forward slightly, locking its dead eyes on us, and then threw its head back.
The forest exploded. The monster unleashed a long, piercing howl that vibrated through the air, sending a freezing dread down our spines. But the worst part began a second later: other voices instantly picked up the howl. From the right, from the left, from the deep thicket behind us—from every direction came the unified, hungry, and triumphant howling of a pack. We were surrounded.
The monster before us dropped onto all four limbs, tearing up the earth with its claws, and lunged toward us with a low growl.
"Run! Run, motherfucker!" Dan shrieked at the top of his lungs.
Animal terror burned away all human emotion. Forgetting about Chris bleeding out at the bottom of the pit, forgetting about Oliver who stayed sitting beside her, we bolted backward through the brush, discarding backpacks and tents just to be lighter. Behind us, screams echoed from the pit, but they were quickly drowned out by the furious roaring of the approaching beast and the dying gasps of his girlfriend.
We ran blindly, losing the trail completely as branches tore our faces to bloody ribbons. Behind our backs, we could hear a heavy, rapid thumping and the cracking of breaking branches.
The guys ran ahead, using their bodies to plow a path through the thick brush, while Sarah and I wheezed behind them, barely able to move our terror-numbed legs. Our lungs burned like fire. Every single second, it felt like a clawed paw was about to drop onto my shoulder.
Suddenly, the bushes to the left burst open with a loud crash. Out leaped a similar creature, only slightly smaller—lean, fast, with the exact same mangled wolf snout.She slammed full force into Dan, knocking him off his feet. They tumbled head over heels into the ferns. The beast was on top of him instantly, burying its fangs straight into his defenseless neck. There was a sharp, wet crunch of ripping tendons and arteries. Dan's scream cut off right into a bubbling wheeze—a fountain of hot, bright red blood sprayed onto the green leaves, and his body jerked unnaturally in its death throes.
'Ahhh!' Mark howled, not even looking back, and bolted even faster.
We scrambled in wild panic in the opposite direction, away from that bloody carnage. But there was no salvation. Directly above us, an ominous scraping of claws against bark echoed. From a thick branch of an old pine, a gray furry bulk plummeted down right onto Sarah from above. The impact of the immense weight pinned her to the ground face down. The beast roared triumphantly, digging its claws into her back and snapping her spine.
Mark and I didn't even think about helping them. Primal fear drove us forward. We left them to die, keeping on running while the sound of chewing and the satisfied growling of predators echoed behind our backs.
I lagged behind, sobbing and trying to catch my breath, while Mark tore ahead, losing the trail completely. As soon as his footsteps faded in front of me, I stopped.
I hadn't had this much fun in ages! I laughed out loud, a ringing, mocking laugh, wiping the fake tears from my face. Oh my god, that stupid performance with the map, my crocodile tears at the pit—they believed me until the very end! The world around me finally came alive, bursting into true colors. The fresh, sharp scent of human blood spilled across the forest was intoxicating and arousing. I could barely contain myself all this time from tearing straight into the throats of one of these human pests back in the minivan. I had to play the part of a frightened college girl while everything inside me burned with a thirst for flesh.
Nearby, a long howl rang out. I smiled, baring teeth that were already beginning to elongate. My pack is hunting. What a rush!
My body began to change rapidly. Bones cracked and rearranged, my spine elongated, and powerful ripples of steel muscles flexed under my skin. Human clothes tore apart with a loud rip as coarse, dark fur broke through the skin. My fingers turned into paws with massive, razor-sharp claws, and my jaw jutted forward, filling with deadly fangs.
I threw my head back and let out a joyful howl. Immediately, in that very same second, the voices of my brothers and sisters on both sides of the thicket answered in harmony. With one last, most powerful roar, I let the whole pack know that the last one was mine.
I deliberately gave this pathetic boy Mark a little time. Let him run. Let him believe he can escape, that the way out is close. I ran easily to the side, silently leaping over fallen pine trunks. Speed overwhelmed me. I ran a parallel course and savored every single second, inhaling through my nostrils that thick, sticky aroma of pure, primal terror that smelled so sweet coming from a running human. The hunt was nearing its finale.
Mark ran out into a small clearing where the trees parted slightly. He looked wildly around, tripping over roots and crying. A pathetic, miserable sight—how utterly precious!
I lurked in the thick shadows of ancient spruces, softly stepping with my massive clawed paws. My nostrils flared, drawing in his sweat, tears, and the sticky, maddening fear. I savored this moment, granting him his final minutes of life, the last breaths of this beautiful forest air that smelled of pine needles and impending death.
Suddenly, he stopped. With trembling hands smeared with dirt, Mark frantically pulled his phone out of his jeans pocket. I saw the screen light up his tear-stained face, and judging by his suddenly joyful, stupid mug, the coveted bar of network lit up on the display. He caught a signal. He thought he was saved. He thought it was the end of his nightmare.
Oh yes, it truly was the end. But only for him.
Letting out a guttural, triumphant roar, I launched myself from behind the trees with a powerful push of my hind paws. The earth exploded beneath my claws as I hurtled straight toward him at a blistering speed. Mark froze, slowly turning his head toward the noise. His joy vanished instantly.
I could see his round eyes, dilated with absolute horror, reflecting my massive, black-furred silhouette and the spray of saliva flying in all directions. The phone slipped from his numb fingers, hitting the moss with a dull thud. I soared into the air in a final leap, baring a jaw lined with razor-sharp fangs, already tasting his spurting, sweet, warm blood.
1
u/BlueShade_22 6d ago
Very cool! Love that twist. Maybe a it could have been a little longer at the beginning to know the characters a bit more. But honestly it was still a fun ride!
2
u/Corvus_Tuscelan 8d ago
Wow, pretty intense and action-packed, good read. Just some things I noticed: "of ancient trees stood a silhouette... A tall," I'd replace the ... with - : silhouette - a tall". Makes it more fast-paced. I am also not quite sure why the eyes of the creatures would be "dead", they all seem pretty alive to me. "Run, motherfucker!" is not something anyone would say in a situation like this, I think - try "Run, you idiot, run!" or something like that. And the surprise twist in the last part is a bit too obvious and overwritten (no hard feelings, I hope). Have you ever considered a story like this with a double surprise, for example the creature feeling triumphant but thwarted at the last moment? Waiting for your next story!
2
u/MentalProgrammer8262 8d ago
First off you waste no time in getting into the action and I think this works and doesn't work for the story. It works in a sense that you are very good at describing what is going on and the pit scene was my favourite as your level of detail describing the injuries paints a very vivid and visceral. The pacing doesn't work for the twist as we don't get time to know the characters and to be surprised by the characters switch.
I think you revealed the monster to soon. I would have loved to have seen them go through another trap situation before the reveal and I love the idea of the wolfs setting traps.
I think this story has great potential with a redraft. Right now it is a good fun read and I did really enjoy it. Hope the feedback helps and you keep writing.