The screams began every night at midnight.
At first, I thought I was imagining them. Out here, miles away from the city and surrounded by nothing but fields and forest, it was easy for my mind to play tricks on me. But night after night, the sounds returned—soft at first, like distant cries carried on the wind. Then louder. Sharper. By the fourth night, I couldn’t sleep. By the sixth, my hands shook as I lit the lantern at dusk.
I had come to this old farmhouse for peace, thinking solitude would quiet my frayed nerves. But the silence here was deafening, and now it was filled with something far worse. These screams weren’t the cries of animals or the wail of the wind. They were human—or at least trying to sound like it.
On the eight night, I couldn’t take it anymore.
Lantern in hand, I stepped into the night. The air bit into my skin, cold enough to freeze the breath in my lungs. The barren fields stretched endlessly, the dead cornstalks rattling in the wind like brittle bones. My boots crunching over the frost-bitten earth, my heart pounding in rhythm with each step, I followed the sound of the screams.
The sounds led me to the woods at the edge of the property, a place I avoided all these days. The trees stood like sentinels in the dark, their twisted branches reaching for the sky. I hesitated. There was something ancient about the forest, something that felt like it was watching me. But the screams wouldn’t let me turn back.
“Who’s there?” I called, my voice shaking. “Do you need help?”
The only answer was another scream, louder this time, almost deafening. It seemed to come from deeper in the woods. I swallowed my fear and pushed forward, the lantern casting flickering light over the tangled roots and gnarled trunks.
As I walked, the air grew heavier, pressing down on me like an unseen weight. The ground turned soft and wet beneath my boots, and the smell of decay filled my nose. The screams were everywhere now, echoing from every shadow, surrounding me in a cacophony of despair.
And then I saw it.
A figure stood in the clearing ahead, hunched and cloaked and wrapped in shadows. It wasn’t tall, but its presence filled the space like a living void. Its head tilted slightly, as though it were listening to something I couldn’t hear. Slowly, it turned toward me.
I froze. Its face – if it could be called that – was a swirling abyss, an endless void of darkness that seemed to shift and writhe. My breath caught in my throat, and the lantern trembled in my grasp.
“Why do you scream?” I managed to whisper, though my voice cracked as I spoke.
The figure didn’t move, but the screams stopped. The silence that followed was suffocating, heavier than the air, louder than the noise had been. Then, a voice slid into my mind – not a sound, but a whisper that seemed to bypass my ears and settle in my head.
“Fear,” it said. “Fear is what you hear. Fear is what you carry. Fear is what now shapes you”
My knees trembled. “I don’t understand,” I gasped.
The figure loomed closer, though it didn’t seem to walk or move. It was just there, towering over me. “You cannot run from it. You cannot silence it. Fear will follow you, cling to you, until you turn and face it.”
as I shook my head “I can’t,” I whispered. “I can’t face it.”
It extended its shadowy hand, a shapeless, trembling form that seemed to pulse with an invisible energy. As it touched me, an intense wave of cold shot through my body, as though it reached into my very soul and laid everything inside me bare. It wasn’t a physical touch but more a presence passing through me, embracing my fears and doubts as if it knew them, as if it had fed on them. I braced myself for pain, an unbearable horror that would consume me whole, but what I felt was something else. It was emptiness, a profound stillness that brought all my thoughts to a sudden halt. It was as though the figure had touched the core of my being and let me glimpse what would remain if I let go of my fear: a fragile version of myself, but unbroken.
And then, just as quickly as it had come, the figure began to fade. It melted into the night, swallowed by the shadows from which it seemed to have emerged. As it disappeared, an odd sensation lingered – a paradox of calm and unease, as if I had lost and gained something significant all at once. It was gone, and yet it felt like it would never entirely leave, as though it was now a part of me, a whisper in the darkest corners of my mind.
The clearing was silent, but the air felt different, lighter, as though something within me had shifted. And in that silence, I understood something: I was no longer the same person who had entered these woods. Something in me had faced the figure – and survived.
The clearing was silent. The air was lighter now, easier to breathe. And the screams? They were gone. I stayed there for a moment, staring up at the dark canopy of trees.
When I finally stood and made my way out of the woods, I realized the world seemed different. The fields didn’t stretch so ominously. The wind didn’t howl so mournfully. And on the horizon, the sky was beginning to brighten. For the first time in what felt like forever, dawn was breaking, painting the clouds with soft strokes of pink and gold.
I stopped to watch. The weight that had pressed on me for weeks was gone. The terror hadn’t disappeared – it was still there, lurking in the back of my mind—but it no longer consumed me. I had faced it. And somehow, I had come out the other side.
Looking at the brighter day unfolding before me, I whispered to myself “There’s light out there if you’re willing to look. And fight for it. And it’s worth every effort.” I turned back toward the house, ready to rebuild. Ready to move forward. Fear hadn’t won, and I wasn’t going to let it define me. Not anymore.
