Rural Horrors – Chop Of The Lumberjack
Three disappearances, one forest.
Archibald unfolded the newspaper whilst sitting in an upright position near the end of his sofa. Blasted across the front headline, read in bold:
‘THIRD PERSON GOES MISSING, PRESSURES LOCAL LAW TO INVESTIGATE’
Archibald read on at the printed article. ‘A young woman, Catherine Bright, aged 23, is a local resident in Greywalk – who has recently gone missing after being last sighted near Oakriver forest, on the northern outskirts of the town. She is believed to have been driving in her car on the roads cutting through the forest. However, her car has not been found …’. The living room door opened, and Archibald put the newspaper down feeling he was being distracted from his mission – starting his own business.
His brother, Daniel, walked into the bright living room with the curtains left wide open and the light glaring across the room at Daniel. Daniel looked down at his brother, who looked up at him with a smile on his face, and Daniel asked, “are you going down to meet the new client later?”. He continued, “if we’re lucky, we might take him on as our first buyer”.
Archibald, rising up from off the sofa, and standing up firmly with the same smile on his face, replied, “of course. I’ve been planning this business for years, and since … that … happened a few months ago, I’ve been dying to get started”. He finished, “nothing’s going to stop me now”, with entrepreneurial hopes rushing positively in his mind.
“Well I’m glad to see you’re looking positive”, Daniel commented. He lifted up the cuff of his shirt and looked down at the time on his wristwatch – quarter past two. “I really should get going though now, but text me and let me know how it goes”, he said. “No problem, I’ll see you later”, said Archibald loudly, as Daniel went out into the hallway towards the front door. “Bye”, returned Daniel, as he left the house and closed the door behind him.
It was only minutes away when Archibald decided to grab his coat from off the rack in the hall, and leave – to meet with his client at their home. He walked out and shut the gate behind him. He got into his car parked outside in the street. A silver sedan with a design fit to the modern day. When the key turned, the engine revved up. He drove off.
Archibald turned on the radio. Songs of all classical, Mozart and the like, were played through the small box fitted into his car. The roads were empty so far, until he hit the dual-carriageway, which was busier – but not busy enough to cause a traffic jam. Archibald’s mind stayed in a state of positivity. He thought about the life he was going to live, now that he had a venture under his belt. Nearly clipped.
The trees began to grow taller and taller, and the roads emptier. Eventually, he was the only car in sight. The only sound was from the birds in the skies … and the music from Archibald’s radio. A large, white metal sign displayed – ‘You Are Now Entering Oakriver Forest’. Archibald remembered the name, and the emptiness around him came to his unsettling realisation. He turned the radio up trying to lessen the worry. It’ll be fine, thought Archibald.
The music blared through the trees like an ice cream van at night. A weeping cry screamed so loud that even Archibald could hear it through the radio in his car. “HELP ME!”. Archibald felt a rush of fear through his heart. He told himself not to stop driving, and he ignored the calls for help.
Until he did, and the car stopped in a big pile of mud laid out on the ground, almost as if it was planted by someone. The scream echoed again. “HELP!”. It sounded to Archibald like a woman.
He got out the car. A squeal from within the trees broke out. Archibald thought, but where could it be? He couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. He took out his phone and dialled 999. His phone kept ringing through and ringing through, but there was no answer. He lost his signal.
A screech of pain roared, but slowly dimmed down and turned to silence. Archibald stood beside his car, terrified and alone.
He had no choice but to walk out into the forest and find out what was happening. He walked past the tall trees, the leafs and all the sticks and logs lying about the ground.
His eyes widened in shock. He saw an axe tainted with blood, held in a hand. It was tore right out from a young woman, bleeding on the floor with her eyes now closed. Her clothes were more than stained.
It looked like a man, and it was dressed in a red tartan shirt like lumberjacks wear. Just a few footsteps him was a hut, with two windows at each side of a closed door. The man stood still, looking down at the poor dead woman at his feet. Blood started to drip from his axe and onto a leaf amongst the mud at his feet.
The door to the hut opened, and the man shot his eyes across to look at it. Out came a man, wearing a white shirt now covered in brown mud, and a rope attached to one of his wrists. He held a small knife in between his fingers. The man was about to walk towards him, when an unexpected noise occurred. “Over here!”, Archibald called, trying to distract the man.
When he turned around, Archibald fell to an instant regret. His face was of a deformed nature, with one eye brown and the other eye blue. He had a blood red scar that shot right below his nose and above his lip.
The man and his axe was ready to fly at Archibald in a fit of rage. But the man at the hut door stopped it. He threw the knife right into the man, and he then dropped to the floor, along with his axe. He showed no signs of breathing as he lay there without life.
Archibald approached the injured man at the hut door. The injured man burst into tears. “He killed my wife”, he said. She was lying dead inside the hut, and her neck was sliced open with dried-in blood all over the floor. She was locked to the bed by a rope tied tight.
The police showed up in five cars and one van, along with an ambulance. They set up forensics around the entire forest. Daniel rushed over to a terrified Archibald. The injured man was treated in hospital for his injuries, but his wife was no more, along with the young woman Catherine Bright. Her car was never found.
