Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Whisper Woods Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

WHISPER WOODS

They acted like Darren didn’t understand what “five years and eligible for parole in three” meant. They said Darren’s dad just happened to win the fight, and it was the system that was flawed. Assault was only what they called it when a poor man beat a rich man.

In the living room, floral patterned couches and off-white doilies under dusty vases of plastic flowers, Darren’s half-drunk grandfather, Leroy—legal guardian until Dad got out because Mom was in the wind—told him all about the good fights he’d been in. How fighting was noble and righteous, and how the law just had to stick their noses in and protect one of their own.

“That doctor man should’ve watched his mouth ’round your dad. If he wasn’t rich and didn’t have all them connections with politicians and judges, your dad would be out and you’d be back at home, normal. And I’d be retired again instead of playing house. Like, ain’t I had enough? Sixty-six, ain’t I had enough?”

The ways of the world weren’t news, and Darren didn’t need to hear it to know they didn’t want him there. He didn’t want to be there either. It might’ve been better if he was somewhere cool, a town where everybody didn’t call his mom a slut for taking off, and everyone didn’t know his dad was in jail, and everyone didn’t know his grandmother had to get a job at the tennis club—she’d been saving to become a member, before—because the budget went out of whack with Darren’s existence.

Darren got up and took a step away from the loveseat he’d been sitting on because the sun glare hitting the TV was too much and listening to his grandfather get drunker made him mad.

“Take your glass out and see if Nancy’s got any Vachon’s in the cupboard.”

Darren turned and took the glass, bumping the strange stone sculpture his grandmother placed on the coffee table as a centerpiece to the room. It was ugly and dark green, polished soft smooth. Its overlong arms and legs coiled around its slender body. The head was oblong and faceless.

“Watch that, Nancy’d have your ass if you broke it.”

“Stupid looking.”

“Don’t matter, she likes it.”

Darren grumbled non-words as he shuffled to the kitchen, dragging his socked feet. Even lifting to walk seemed like work. The cup went into the sink, and Darren checked the cupboard next to the stove. It smelled funny in there, spices and fruit stink from the compost bin. There was a wicker cradle full of dried flowers hanging from the ceiling next to the lightbulb, but it hardly helped the scent, and more than anything, it was in the way. He ducked it; something about it made him feel off, but his grandmother hung it and it was her pantry. “…and Nancy’d have your ass,” he said in a whiny mockery. He reached into the box of Ah Caramel! cakes and took out two packs.

“Hey, gonna make me spill,” his grandfather said, barely catching the cake package Darren tossed onto his chest. “Maybe I teach you some manners? You’re not too big to go over my knee.”

Darren was too big to go over his grandfather’s knee, and he grumbled something to that effect as he made for his bedroom. The old man had pins in his legs and a fake hip, had arthritis in his hands from working at Ford for forty-seven years. The old man was all talk. Now his grandmother, she might try, might succeed even. She was only sixty and strong like a farm hog. She didn’t get drunk, and she didn’t threaten him, but that didn’t mean she liked Darren living there. She talked about him without really talking about him—the money, the free time gone, the changes in lifestyle she hadn’t anticipated, ones that went against the lifestyle she’d come to expect from retirement—despite rarely having anything golden about her golden years, so far. She said it all without saying how come so much was different, as if his being twelve meant he was dumb.

The spare room where he slept was stiff, with a musty smell, and had flower wallpaper and an ugly wooden bureau. His grandmother said he had to make the bed every day; he’d never made his bed living with his dad. Most times, he’d slept on a bare mattress with a pillow and blanket. All the extra was just trouble.

The whole scene made him sick, like it was him who got the sentence when his dad whooped that dude’s ass. “Bullshit,” he said.

He sat on the made bed and opened the second cake package. As he chewed, he thought about the future. Three to five years living like a prisoner, under their roof, playing by their rules. No thanks.

It hit him then. The answer. Butterflies set free in his heart. Everything he needed was out in the garage where they’d put all of his dad’s stuff when his dad went away.

—

Richie lived in the apartment three over from where Darren lived before the arrest. His parents both worked, and his five siblings hung out, unattended to, most weekends. Richie answered the text from Darren’s grandfather’s cell, coming into the kids’ shared smartphone, with the simple statement: 10 min.

Darren had a backpack of food and was in the garage digging out the little tent and all the other camping stuff when Richie came through the door. He had a cigarette between his lips, unlit.

“You got to help me carry all this,” Darren said without looking up as he tied a cord around the tent bag and a tarp. He’d been kicking the tarp flat and dust rode the atmosphere like fog.

“Where to?”

“Whisper Woods.”

Richie took a lighter from his pocket and lit the tip of the cigarette. He exhaled heavy after inhaling heavy. “You gonna live in Whisper Woods?”

Darren shouldered his backpack and stood straight. “Yeah.” He wiped cobwebs onto his pant leg. “Why not? Not like any of that stuff’s true.”

Richie shrugged and grabbed the handles of the tent bag. “Got T.P.?”

Darren’s eyes flashed, and he dropped his bag before hurrying inside to steal toilet paper.

—

Sweaty hot, the boys got to the trailhead, hiked into the forest about fifty yards, and then hooked a right, toward the creek. They pushed through a wall of cedars and found a small clearing. Rough but enough. They dropped their bags, and Darren unzipped one to grab the two cans of Lucky Lager he’d stolen from his grandfather’s beer fridge. Richie handed over a cigarette when he accepted a cool can.

“How long you gonna stay out here?”

“Three to five,” Darren said. “You could stay, too. No school. No sisters. No bullshit.”

Richie shook his head. “I ain’t home by eight, my mom got my face on milk cartons and telephone poles.”

“Pussy.”

“Whatever, just ’cause your mom took off. Not my fault my mom gets real worried.”

Darren spat onto the brown forest floor. “You just like looking at your sisters in the shower.”

“Bitch, you like looking at my sisters in the shower.”

Darren sucked hard on the cigarette and spoke around a cloudy exhale, “They like me looking at them in the shower.”

“Yeah, right.”

The tent reached about four feet high. It was red and grey, cheap. Where they’d settled, it had only a couple roots poking up, nothing Darren couldn’t deal with. His fishing pole leaned against a balsa right by where Richie had set up a circle of rocks for a fire pit. They’d gathered twigs and made a teepee in the center of the pit for when it was time to light the thing. Darren sat in the dirt to carve into a felled cedar branch, peeling away smaller offshoots and brown needles.

“Look, man, I’m going.”

Darren huffed. “What, you scared of the whispering pervert?”

“Nah, ain’t no pervert. Pervert’s just what they call him nowadays. I ain’t being in here after dark, hell, not even when the sun starts going down. You know what they say. They say everybody knows but won’t nobody do shit.”

“Pussy. Who’s everybody?”

“Yeah, whatever. Rich people, I guess. I’ll come back tomorrow, check out your corpse.”

“Tell Bernice I said hey.”

“Fuck you, man,” Richie said as he pushed through the cedar wall, headed back for the trail.

—

The fire crackled as the sun went down. Darren had a marshmallow speared, dangling six inches above the peak of the flames. All was quiet aside from the fire’s crackle until he heard the soft, helpless voice floating on the warm, evening air. It was feminine, old, and familiar… somehow.

“Help me.

“I am hurt.

“I cannot move.”

Darren looked around, fear digging in deep, but also something else. A part of him needed to help that voice. He stood, his aged and weathered Nikes brown with freshly-turned soil. “Hello?” he said. “Who’s there?”

—

Richie sniffled back tears and snot as he led three police officers and Darren’s grandparents to the place where he’d last seen Darren. The tent had blown into the wall of cedars and the fishing pole leaned into a shrubby bush, but the site appeared otherwise undisturbed. The backpack was there. The beer cans and the empty wrapper from a pack of marshmallows were there.

“And when did you last see him?” one of the cops asked.

“Like two days ago. Maybe like six o’clock. I got home in time for supper.” Richie swiped his wrist beneath his nose. “You think the woods got him?”

One of the cops scoffed, but nobody said anything for a few seconds.

“The whispering tongue and the blood begun run.”

The cops and Richie turned to Darren’s grandfather.

“Mr., uh, Leroy?” The cop leaned forward as he spoke, as if to give the man a better angle to hear by.

Darren’s grandfather ignored him, staring blankly into the shadows cast by the trees and the sun peeking through the flora umbrella overhead. “Mothers do weep, and fathers do rage. Death and sadness many a hearts do cage.”

“Chaisson, we have a part of a leg and a Devils T-shirt.” The voice crackled from one of the cops’ radios.

Nancy put her hand over her mouth. The cop keyed the mic. “Copy.”

Leroy continued. “Dry be the flesh, the flesh of the once supple young.”

When he finished, everyone remained silent while the birds chirped and the chipmunks chattered, leaves and needles crunched gently. Leroy kept his eyes trained hard on the deeper woods.

—

In the basement of the hospital, Richie, alongside Darren’s grandparents, identified the faded New Jersey Devils Stanley Cup Champions shirt Darren had been wearing.

“So, you got a foot, what about the rest of him?” Leroy asked.

The doctor scrunched his face tight and said, “The rest is almost certainly in bits or somewhere down river. The river’s running fast, and the dam’s doing its part. I’m sorry, but…”

“Almost certainly, huh?” Leroy said. “You in on it too? The secret? Try to keep anyone from knowing the truth? Why you all do it?”

The doctor lifted his left eyebrow and clicked his tongue, said nothing, but shook his head like Leroy had a case of lost marbles.

—

The funeral was somber. Kids from Darren’s school showed up in stuffy, ill-fitting suits and dresses. They stood, bored, while the adults shook hands and offered empty platitudes. The mayor and the chief of police, and a whole host of recognizable, unnameable faces stood around Nancy, shaking her hand and giving her hugs. A few kissed her cheeks.

“Those guys smoothing her over. Make it so she don’t ask questions,” Gerald Thompson said, leaning in close to Leroy’s ear. “They know like I know, like you know. Even more, my bet.”

Leroy licked his teeth beneath his lips. He never trusted the upper crust, and he knew things. Strange things. Things about Whisper Woods. But most of that was so long ago, and mythical. It was the kind of thing ingrained in him, like buying that Jesus walked on water.

“I don’t doubt it,” Leroy said, and the line progressed. The mayor took Leroy’s hand in a surprisingly sandpaper-rough grasp. “Mayor.”

“We’re all real broke up about this one. Wish it could’ve been different.” The mayor pumped the hold twice and then moved on.

Leroy looked at Nancy. Tears dampened the makeup on her cheeks, her eyes glared at nothing, unfocussed, while her fingers fidgeted with the leather charm bracelet she wore.

“I bet you’re real broke up,” Leroy hissed to himself.

—

Nancy said he was crazy, his son refused to speak to him, and more than four hundred townsfolk had already shook his hand at the memorial service three days after the boy had gone missing—they’d cremated the leg. Nancy was wild with grief, but went into work anyway—to keep her mind elsewhere. Leroy went through the motions, but ached to re-pitch the tent Darren had pitched, in Darren’s campsite, knew that almost certainly he’d hear something.

People didn’t talk about the stories much anymore, but when he was a boy, Leroy knew all about Whisper Woods; everybody knew when Janine Teirny went missing from the woods, only to be found a day later, burned beyond recognition in an abandoned shack, that she was still out there, being used up. People talked indirectly and pointed fingers and demanded there be a search of the woods, despite finding what the medical examiner claimed was her body.

But there was no search, never even got to that point.

“It’s Dracula that’s out there,” Chad Hunwick told Leroy back in the third grade.

“My gramma says there’s a hole that goes all the way to hell, that’s how come nobody ever cut the forest down even though it’s in the middle of town,” Beatrice Shea told Leroy in fifth grade.

“Maybe it’s like aliens,” Leroy told Adrian Runner between coughs in the tenth grade as they passed back and forth a pinner of the scratchiest marijuana either would ever smoke.

The only thing that never changed was that the voice was there, and that everybody knew it was there, but nobody did anything about it. Once, in the sixties, the local daily printed a story of outrage and demands—a mother had lost her daughters to Whisper Woods. The mayor was quoted the next day, promising that they took missing children seriously, but also pointed out that the woman’s daughters had been seen—according to three eyewitness accounts—getting into an all-black van a block from the trail entry into the forest, and that van was seen heading southbound toward the highway. Then nothing, not a peep.

—

The tent was up, and Leroy wore a sheen of Deep Woods Off, though hardly any sanguivorous insects frequented Whisper Woods. He lit a fire a few minutes before full sundown and waited, twelve-pack of Lucky Lager by the front right foot of his canvas pop-chair. He tapped the scuffed toe of his sneaker now and then, as if to remind himself the beer was all there still.

The moon was up, though hardly dented the blackness of the forest. The air had chilled, but was still a fine fit for short sleeves. So, comfortable.

Dozing, eight beers deep, a sound roused Leroy enough to focus him. The sound drifted to him again and he knew it immediately.

His eyes remained closed when he heard Darren’s voice. “Help, Grandpa.

“I’m hurtin’.

“I can’t move nothin’.”

Leroy popped to his feet, knocking the dregs of a warm can of Lucky onto the smoldering fire pit. The foam hissed, and Leroy shouted, “Darren?”

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

“Darren, where are you, boy?”

The silence was total. No animals hooting or screeching. No forest sounds of cracking or breaking detritus. Only quiet and his quickening breath.

“Darren?”

Nothing.

Nothing.

Noth—

The voice, seemingly further away, said, “Help me.”

Leroy ducked into the tent, feeling around the darkness. He came up with the Maglite he’d borrowed from Reba Lechance—a widow from up the block with a dead cop husband and a thing for Leroy Stewart. The light shined a powerful beam, and Leroy called out, “Darren, where are ya?”

“This way,” Darren said, and Leroy took off in an ambling jog down the trail.

Immediately his knees and hip ached, his chest burned, and his throat became full with chunky mucous. He spat and coughed. But he kept on. 

Twigs snapped beneath his feet. Tree limbs brushed his arms. Needles and sticks raked at his neck and face. But he kept on.

“Help me.”

That voice was closer, but Leroy had no wind left in him to respond.

“Come get me!”

Closer yet and Leroy pushed, walking, but quickly as he dared, wishing he was sober, or maybe a little more drunk. The light bounced, playing off the wild browns and greens of the season. He was hundreds of yards from the trail and moving deeper into the thick of the woods.

“I’m hurtin’ all over!”

The voice seemed right there, right next to him.

Ahead, the trees thickened into a wall, and the light cast only a foot in front of him. The branches and limbs pressed against his arms and face, and then his legs. But he kept on, pushing through, the gnarly twigs and limbs driving bloody divots into his flesh.

He began to emerge, as if being birthed by the trees.

“I’m stuck in here!”

The voice came with an echo and once Leroy’s face was through the wall of brush—blood bubbling and running down his cheeks and neck—he saw why. There was an old mine shaft with a wooden frame entry. He stumbled and leaned against his knees, shining the light into the mouth of the tunnel. The wood inside had been replaced and kept up, as if the mine were live. The stone of the walls shined with black symbols painted thereon.

Leroy gasped a breath and then exhaled, “Dare-en!”

“Help me!”

The pain and terror in those words rejuvenated the old man’s well-worn frame, and he barrelled down the slope of the tunnel, ignoring the paintings, ignoring the fresh beams buttressing the ceiling, ignoring all but the rocky floor and the sound of his grandson’s pleas.

“Get me!”

The floor began to level some, but Leroy’s momentum had him running still. His toe bumped an up-risen stone and sent the man into a plunge. His arms shot out, and the snap of his right wrist echoed from the walls before the reports of his groaning drowned all else. The Maglite rolled until it lit above a chasm. Leroy grabbed his right arm with his left hand and tried to squeeze off the pain. He attempted to rise then, but different pain sliced into his bones from his prosthetic hip down. He groaned again.

“Grandpa?”

The voice was so close the pain melted and dripped into the periphery. Leroy kicked with his good leg and reached for the flashlight. His breathing was ragged and anguished, he tasted copper and snot. Painful tendrils reached from his lungs into his biceps.

He got to the lip of the chasm and shined the light down.

It wasn’t so deep.

Leroy saw only two shapes, at first. One was an emaciated, pale, shirtless, one-legged version of Darren. A map of red and blue veins and arteries coursed his frame. The other was a slender form, too tall to be a man, too skinny to exist in a world of gravity. The thing had legs and feet. It had a torso and shoulders. It had arms, arms that reached up through a jagged tear in Darren’s stomach. Its head was oblong and bulbous at the bottom. It had no eyes, but it had a mouth, and a tongue. The tongue was long and deep red. It plunged into a vein jutting from Darren’s neck.

It looked strangely familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

“Help me,” Darren’s mouth said, his eyes teary and blinking up at his grandfather. Despite it all, the boy was alive.

Leroy began shaking and the Maglite’s beam played over a wider swathe of the darkness. Bones. Thousands upon thousands of human bones—the skulls the determinant factor—lined the floor of the chasm.

The thing turned its attention into the shine of the light and withdrew its long arms from the slit gash in Darren’s abdomen. Its smooth, eyeless face seemed to peer into Leroy, and then those impossibly long arms reached for him.

Leroy’s breaths came and left in tiny pants. Darren began moaning words of his own accord, “Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.”

“I…I’ll…get…just…a—” Leroy squeezed the Maglite and swung at the thing, nailing its reaching arms. It jerked away from the pain and opened its mouth, letting its tongue dance. “Fuck…you,” he said and took another swipe.

Darren began breathing heavier and lifted his hands no more than a foot before exhaustion forced them to drop. The thing slithered a leg around Darren’s waist. Leroy threw the flashlight and the thing balled into itself and he recognized it as the statue from the coffee table.

“Up…up,” he said, leaning in deep, grasping his grandson’s naked thigh, and tugging. Darren cried out and flopped his upper half onto Leroy’s arm. Pain tremored and the old man went rigid.

Darren whined into his grandfather’s ear, “There’s three of them.”

The thing in the pit lashed out and laid Darren flat. Terrified, self-preservation instinct activated, Leroy used all the strength he had left to whip backward. He panted and gasped, stretching out beyond the edge of the pit, blowing dust with each exhale. “I…I’ll…get…hel—”

Footfalls chasing down the tunnel silenced Leroy’s hapless promise before it could be made, and he waited, knowing they’d come to help him, knowing they’d rescue Darren, knowing they’d destroy the abomination. He turned onto his spine, felt the long spindly fingers of the thing brush the back of his head.

Firelight ignited from copper fixtures perched high on the walls. The footfalls drew closer, and Leroy looked up at Nancy. She wore a tennis skirt, sneakers, a pink polo tee, and her charm bracelet. She touched at the little silver charm.

“Oh, Leroy,” she said, rushing to his side.

“It’s… Dare… en,” Leroy managed between gasps.

“Shh, it’s all over now.” She patted his head and looked anywhere but in the pit. “It’s all over.”

“Dare…” Leroy trailed taking in a whooping inhale. “A…live.”

More footfalls approached, quicker. Heavier. Two cops, the mayor, and three garbage men. The light of the chamber fixtures played yellow off their pale faces.

“I…found…him,” Leroy tried again, his eyes wild with wonder and desperation.

The mayor frowned and patted Nancy on the back. She stood and the man said over his shoulder, “Feed the Lords what they want, if they want him, and then put the body out at the campsite.”

“You want ‘im burned?” one of the garbage men asked.

The mayor and Nancy backed away a few steps. “Probably won’t make a difference. He looks a hundred years old as it is, sapping him won’t change much,” the mayor said. “Plus, the widow won’t question if he looks a little off.”

Nancy shook her head, tears budding.

“Nan…see?” Leroy locked his gaze with his wife’s.

Nancy looked away, brought the charm to her lips.

“Go on now,” the mayor said, nodding to the garbage men. Two of them grabbed Leroy’s feet. Pain rocketed up his legs, and he wailed. Nancy’s breath hitched, but she did not move.

“What if they want ‘im all the way?” one of the garbagemen asked as they pitched Leroy down into the embrace of their gods.

Leroy tumbled, which lessened the pain in his legs, letting him focus. He felt the strange grasping limbs tighten around him, and the thing’s tongue break the skin of his throat. Beneath him, Darren moaned and began panting for air.

“That’s a good thing,” the mayor said. “To feed our Lords is a good thing.”

Darren’s gasps drew short and reedy, then ceased.

The mayor leaned over to look into the shadowy pit. Leroy struggled to rise, but it was hopeless, his arm broken and the strength sapped out of him by the pain and effort.

“Pull the kid out,” the mayor said before he bowed his head and closed his eyes. “Please accept this offering, our lords. Please bless us, you of knowledge and light and flesh.”

In unison, the garbage men and cops said, “Amen.”

Nancy whispered, “Amen.”

Leroy felt his blood reversing course and those unhuman hands and legs pressing into him, peeling his clothing. The other two abominations, identical to the first, slithered from beneath the bone pile and began running cool, clammy appendages against his bare flesh. He tried to scream but managed only a whisper. “Nancy…please.”

XX