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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/abiroadwrites on 2025-07-28 18:21:26+00:00.
When I got to work that morning I kind of felt like I was walking into my own trial. Not because of anything my coworkers did, but I felt exhausted and paranoid, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if Nora had fired me.
While Nora was understandably horrified by what happened to Lana and Scott, she didn’t hold any of us responsible. She interrogated every single one of us much like the police had, and determined that Scott must have wandered off and gotten lost or killed. As for Lana, she assumed Lana must have been abducted by the mystery figure that spent the night tormenting us. She admitted that she was just grateful the rest of us weren’t killed. None of us wanted to talk about it more than that, and Nora let it go. She seemed to be on the same page as my mom, that the best thing we could all do was accept that they were both gone, and try not to let the guilt eat away at us too much.
That day passed in a blur, and by the time I was getting off work that night all I wanted to do was sleep, but Leano, Gabriel, and Marybell wanted to get dinner and talk about what had happened.
I hesitated, “I’ll go, so long as we can all get home before dark.”
Marybell had the same dark circles under her eyes that I was certain I still had as well. She gave me a tight smile, “Yeah. Same, I don’t want…” She trailed off with a sigh and a meaningful look.
I took her hand as we walked out to the parking lot, the same way I had when we walked to our tents just a few nights before. She didn’t say anything, but she did squeeze my hand gratefully.
Our cars trailed out of the parking lot like a line of ducklings, making our way to a nearby diner where we all slumped into the booth in silence. No one spoke until the waitress arrived, and we ordered coffee and fries to munch on.
After she walked away Marybell dropped her elbows onto the table and said, “Okay. Raise your hand if you heard them last night.”
Gabriel poked his fingers into the air and Leano dropped his head onto the table, but I thought I saw his fingers go up as well. Marybell also lifted her hand into the air, and looked at me with shock bordering on betrayal, “You didn’t?”
I shook my head no, “I got scared and called my mom, we stayed on the phone together all night. By them do you mean…”
Marybell looked numb, “Yeah. It didn’t sound exactly like them, at least not to me. But yeah..”
I hesitated, then decided to share the rules my mom had told me, “I might have something that could help.” No one spoke, but even Leano lifted his head to look at me. “I won’t share everything we talked about right now, but my mom is from Appalachia and she told me some things to do to protect myself from… I don’t know, from whatever we’re dealing with.”
I pulled out the list and slid it to the center of the table. The other three read it, then looked up at me.
Finally Gabriel said, “I understand everything but the acorn.”
I shrugged, “Yeah, she told me last night to add a cinnamon stick too, one on every window sill. I still don’t really get why, but she said it’s ‘deep mountain magic’ and not to question it.”
Gabriel shrugged back, “Okay. I can put cinnamon on my windows. Anything that makes it stop.”
I shuffled my feet uncomfortably, “What kind of things were they saying?”
Leano dropped his head again and Gabriel looked away but Marybell gave me a fierce look, “Things to upset us. Whatever is out there really wants us to come outside.”
I grimaced and glanced outside, the sun was still relatively high in the sky, “Does anyone have a theory on what it is?”
Gabriel glared at me, so fiercely I wanted to curl up on myself, “Naming it will just give it more power.”
I nodded, feeling the sleep deprivation make me a bit loopy, “Stinky it is then.”
Gabriel’s face scrunched up, “What?”
I shrugged, nonchalantly, “You said naming it gives it power. So whatever it is, I’m naming it Stinky.”
Gabriel stared at me like I had six or seven screws loose but Leano guffawed. After a moment Marybell joined in, and finally Gabriel’s face cracked and he gave me a smile as well.
Gabriel said, “Fine, okay. If you have to call it anything, call it Stinky. I guess. And everyone needs to be following Sam’s mom’s rules. I’ll call my abuela and ask if she has any advice, but I think Sam’s mom pretty much covered it.”
We sat there in silence for a while and then I said, “Hey, I have a rental house with a very small guest room and a couch. I can easily sleep two people, three with a little extra work.” I paused, then added, “Plus I have my whole house spook proofed already, in case anyone can’t get theirs done tonight. You guys can stay with me for a while. If you want.”
Marybell smiled, “Office sleep over, yeah? I would love to, but I do need to get stuff done at home. Responsibilities don’t stop just because we’re being hunted by Stinky.” She smirked, then sighed sadly. “But could we plan for that this weekend? I really don’t want to be alone all weekend. I can’t spend all weekend just waiting for them to show up.”
I glanced outside again, gauging where the sun was at now, and turned back to Marybell, “That’s a great idea. Maybe we can figure out some new solutions or something too.”
Gabriel lifted a tired eyebrow, “Solutions?”
I shrugged, feeling embarrassed, “I don’t know, maybe there’s something we can do to combat this thing.”
Gabriel nodded, “Of course there’s something we can do. We can all stay inside when the sun goes down, and never go back out into the mountains or look out a window or whistle ever again.”
Leano stuck his bottom lip out, “No that does not work. I would like to marry someday, and having a seven PM bedtime is going to make that challenging.”
Marybell and I chuckled and even Gabriel cracked a smile. We agreed to get together at my place over the weekend for moral support and brainstorming, then split and went our separate ways for the evening. When I got home there was still a tiny bit of sunlight peeking across the sky, and I practically sprinted through my house to close all the curtains before night fell.
I was relaxing on my plush green couch about an hour later, feet kicked up on my dark wood coffee table, when I heard what sounded like someone tapping at my door. I stood automatically, almost like I was in a trance. I walked to the door, a voice in the back of my head lamented my lack of a peephole to check who it was, but for whatever reason that didn’t stop me.
By the time the door was open, I had just realized what I was doing. But it was too late.
There on my front porch was a deer. It was a little large for a deer, although I guess I have no idea how big deer get in Appalachia. I think the biggest deer I saw in Alaska came up right about to my collar bone (the top of its head anyway), but this one was right at my eye level, almost more like a teenaged moose calf than a deer.
Wild animals don’t scare me, not even a little bit. But what does scare me is when an animal behaves so entirely outside of what’s normal. I instinctively backed up and the deer closed the gap quickly, both front hooves resting right on the threshold of my door. I stared at its nose, strangely terrified to look it in the eyes, afraid of what I would find there.
I’m not sure how long this stand off lasted because I honestly feel like I fell asleep, like that aware sleep where you can see the room you’re in and you know you’re not awake, but you’re still dreaming and it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s dream.
Finally my eyes began to drift upward, needing to confirm whatever horror might be waiting for me. My eye line travelled up the deer's muzzle until I reached the two eyes that should have been a murky animal brown or black (some deer even have red eyes and slit pupils like a goat) but weren’t. Its eyes were pure white, not the milky white film of a blind animal, but a pure white like dried and cleaned bones. The deer gave me a strangely intelligent nod as it shifted from four legs to hind legs, now towering several feet over me, but I held eye contact.
The edges of my vision began to blur, growing bone white on all sides, and I felt… I felt like my skin was sliding off, like if this creature put its teeth on me all my skin and flesh would just come right off. Just as my vision had narrowed to a pinhole and I could feel myself losing consciousness, my phone rang.
My mom has her own special ringtone, and I know this will sound silly but before I left I recorded us singing “you are my sunshine” together, and that’s her ringtone. I hate to say it because it sounds so cliche, but she is my best friend.
The sound of “you are my sunshine” in my mom’s ...
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