Chapter 4: The Digital Woods

Chapter 4: The Digital Woods

The twig sat on Liam’s cheap IKEA desk, a piece of primal horror starkly out of place next to his keyboard and monitor. It was an artifact from a world he had spent three years trying to forget, a world of deep woods and deeper shadows. The charcoal words scrawled inside the envelope were a declaration of war against the fragile peace he had built. He has not forgotten you.

His first instinct was to call the police. It was the rational, civilized thing to do. He picked up his phone, his thumb hovering over the emergency call button. But what would he say? He played the conversation out in his head, a dialogue of the damned.

“Someone put a note in my mailbox.” “Okay, son. What did it say?” “He has not forgotten you.” “...Is that a threat?” “It’s from a death cult in the Appalachian woods that sacrificed a deer and whispered in my mind three years ago. The police report said it was a bear attack. My friend died.”

He could already hear the click of the line as they transferred him to a psychiatric crisis team. They wouldn't reopen the case based on the ramblings of the lone, traumatized survivor. They would see him not as a victim, but as a man whose grief had finally curdled into delusion. They would take him away, and the people who sent the note would be free to find him again, wherever he landed. No. The police were not an option. He was utterly, terrifyingly alone.

His fortress had been breached, but his cage was now his only weapon. The digital world he used to numb his mind with mindless data entry could be repurposed. He could hunt.

He turned to his laptop, the pale glow of the screen illuminating his gaunt face. Where do you even begin to search for a nightmare? His first queries were broad, clumsy. He typed “Appalachian mountain cult” into the search bar. The results were a digital trash heap of B-horror movie plots, sensationalized true crime documentaries, and conspiracy forums about lizard people living in hollow-earth tunnels. Nothing felt real. Nothing matched the cold, silent dread of what he had experienced.

He tried to be more specific, dredging up the details that festered in his memory. “Ritual deer sacrifice woods.” More noise. Folk horror enthusiasts discussing The Wicker Man, hunting forums, PETA articles. “Masks made of birch bark and bone.” This led him to Etsy shops selling fantasy LARP gear and anthropological articles about Native American tribal masks that bore no resemblance to the skeletal grins he’d seen in the torchlight.

Frustration mounted, tightening his chest. It felt like shouting into a hurricane. For every piece of potential truth, there were a million pieces of digital chaff designed to distract and mislead. The internet wasn't a library; it was a forest, a vast and trackless wilderness of information. He was six miles in again, with no map and no compass, and the sun was going down.

He pushed his chair back, rubbing his burning eyes. He was going about this all wrong. He was searching for evidence. He needed to be searching for echoes. For other survivors. For anyone else who had seen what he had seen and wasn't dismissed as crazy.

He began again, this time combining the most specific, unforgettable elements. The things that sounded the most insane. The name Greg had found on that old forum for the patch of woods: “The Hush.” The guttural, hypnotic sound of the chant: “Hmm-maah-ohmm.” The terrifying whispers. He combined them into a single, desperate string of keywords.

“The Hush” folklore + chanting + bark mask + whispers

The first few pages of results were the same old nonsense. But then, buried on the fourth page, was a link that looked different. It wasn't a flashy news site or a slick blog. The URL was simple, archaic. It led to a forum that looked like a relic from the early 2000s, with a plain grey background and simple blue text links. The site was called “The Hearthstone Archives: A Forum for Forgotten Appalachian Folklore.”

His heart began to pound a slow, heavy rhythm. This was it. This felt right. The forum was a quiet corner of the web, filled with what seemed to be amateur historians and folklorists discussing everything from local ghost stories to the linguistic roots of mountain hollers. He typed his keywords into the site’s internal search engine.

One result.

The post was dated five years ago. The username was Cassandra19. The title was a simple, academic question: “Query: Syncretic Ritual Patterns in Unnamed State Lands.”

The post was written with a detached, scholarly tone that quickly frayed at the edges into something else. Something desperate.

“...I am researching a pattern of ritualistic activity that official sources refuse to acknowledge. The iconography is consistent across several anecdotal reports: crude totems of bone and feather, non-indigenous bark masks, and what appears to be a pre-Christian emphasis on root systems and chthonic entities. One witness, whose credibility I have no reason to doubt, described a circle of practitioners and a sibilant whispering that seemed to have no physical source. They spoke of a central figure, referred to as ‘He Who Walks Beneath Roots’ or the ‘Old Man of the Root.’ The experience left my associate… permanently unavailable for comment. If anyone has encountered similar folklore or symbology, please respond. Discretion is paramount.”

Liam read the post three times, the words blurring through a film of cold sweat. He Who Walks Beneath Roots. The name felt grotesquely, horribly correct. It resonated with the memory of the whispers, the feeling of something ancient stirring in the ground beneath their tent. Permanently unavailable for comment. A clean, academic euphemism for what had happened to Greg.

This was it. The needle of truth in a global haystack of digital noise. Cassandra19 knew. They had seen it too, or known someone who had. For the first time in three years, Liam wasn't the only one. The validation was a dizzying rush, a blast of pure oxygen in the suffocating chamber of his isolation. But it was followed by a wave of ice-cold fear. The post was five years old. Was this person even still around? And if they were, would they believe him?

He had to try. Reaching out was a monumental risk. The cult had found him once in the physical world; it was foolish to think they weren't watching the digital one. This forum could be a trap. Cassandra19 could be one of them, dangling bait for anyone who got too close to the truth.

He looked at the twig on his desk. They already knew where he was. They had already made their move. Hiding was no longer an option.

His fingers, slick with sweat, trembled over the keyboard as he clicked the ‘Private Message’ button under Cassandra19’s name. He typed and deleted his message a dozen times, trying to find the right balance—a way to prove his story was real without sounding like a lunatic, to ask for help without seeming like a liability. Finally, he settled on something short, direct, and undeniable.

Subject: He Who Walks Beneath Roots

I read your post from five years ago. I was there. Three years ago. They left something at my friend’s campsite. They just sent me something else. A twig with a tooth tied to it. The note said, ‘He has not forgotten you.’ I don’t know what to do.

He attached a hastily taken photo of the twig totem lying on his desk. It was his proof. His desperate, terrifying proof.

He stared at the screen, his finger hovering over the mouse. This was the point of no return. He was stepping out of the treeline, deliberately making a sound, announcing his presence in the digital woods. He had no idea what was listening. An ally, or the hunters who had been stalking him all along.

He took a deep, shuddering breath and clicked ‘Send’. The page refreshed. ‘Your message has been sent to Cassandra19.’

The words hung there in the silent apartment, glowing in the dark. He had just sent a flare into the sky. Now, all he could do was wait and see what came crawling out of the darkness to answer it.