I am lost, I am lost, I am lost… **The message keeps repeating from an intercom somewhere in the sky, and I can't help but agree with the message. I am lost. This all started several weeks ago at a bonfire party deep in the woods. A few of the guys from work and I, along with their significant others, partners, flings, and so on, were simply trying to have a good night out away from city life and enjoy a small clearing in the woods where no prying eyes or judgment could find us. However, as we all know, if someone posts this sort of plea to a group of strangers online, it must be a desperate measure.**

** **

**Honestly, I should have known something was up the moment I arrived at the meetup spot. One of the girls, a pretty, tall, and gothed-out twenty-something-year-old that my friend Tom had just met that night, had brought with her some various odd party items. With her was an ornate trunk made of ancient-looking wood, with strange symbols and medallions covering every visible surface of the thing. A black book, which shared at least a visual resemblance with the box, was also present. Additionally, there was a goat with her.**

**“I’m Beth,” she introduced herself with a cute black smile and a wink, with enough prolonged eye contact that I couldn't decide whether or not flirtatious intent was meant by it. I must have been staring myself because she started to giggle, and Tom was glaring passively in my direction. The pause had surpassed a pregnancy, so I just gave an awkward half-wave, half-salute and a “Howdy!” a bit too loud and a bit too shaky. Honestly, there is a good reason why I am single. I don’t know the first thing when it comes to interacting with people of the opposite gender. However, let's return to the predicament I am in.**

**We started on our way to the clearing in relative silence, the goat interjecting here or there when it wanted to stop and nibble at anything green we passed by. The night was cool but not frigid; autumn had just begun, and some of the heat from September still lingered in the air, carrying sweet and woody aromas from the woods around us, which very much complemented the vibe of escape I was looking for. The sun had begun to set when we arrived, so by the time we found the clearing, the sky was turning from orange to twilight rather quickly. Luckily, Fred, my supervisor, had come out there the day prior and set up all the non-perishable amenities.**

**“All right, everyone.” Fred began. “This is a little hideout, passed down through the Wilson family for generations. Since I have invited you all here, let's put aside labels and hierarchy for tonight and tomorrow. Right now, we are all brothers, sisters, and so on. As long as we show each other respect, I…” he points to himself. “ as the de facto dad of this entourage, won't have to put anyone in time out!” he said with a chuckle, joined in by the rest of us.**

**At that exact moment and shockingly fast, Fred lit up a Molotov and chucked it toward a rock at the base of the pier he had constructed, igniting it with a loud “WHOOSH!” and the feeling of opening an oven directly into your face. Fred backed into me with a loud “Woo-Hoo” as the hairs on the arm he used to throw the bottle had all been singed off.**

**Everyone clapped and laughed, including myself as I stedyed myself from falling on my ass, as music started blaring from a loud as fuck speaker somwhere up in the trees behind the fire. Beth hitched the goats' long leash to a nearby branch and began disrobing down to what appeared to be a black silken nightgown. Her long, somewhat curly black hair draped across her moonlight-white shoulders to her mid-back. She was distinctly adorned with odd piercings and tattoos, all in gold and black, which only accentuated her physique; she truly was a siren, or a nymph, and I was helpless. She strode over to me somewhat seductively with a red solo cup filled with red wine, swaying her hips and shoulders in sync with the music, and slowly approaching my position of solitude near the edge of the camp barefoot.**

**“Howdy to you, too handsome,” she said with the same look she had given me on our initial meeting. “Why don't you come join me and keep me company?” she said while handing me the cup. I took it graciously and responded meekly and dumbly with… “What about Tom?” She shushed me and put a soft, pale finger that smelled of roses against my lips, then pointed toward Tom and the rest of the group.**

**Tom must have pregamed because he was all of who knows how many sheets to the wind, and it had only been like fifteen minutes. He had his arm around Jennifer, a long-time crush of his and our coworker, who was equally as inebriated. At that point i just smiled, said “fuck it.” and followed her back to the fire. We danced and took turns singing songs that we knew as they came on the speaker, drinking wine and vodka, and falling all over each other.**

**It must have been near midnight when we all went to sit in a semicircle around the fire to speak as a group in our, for some of us, new couplings. As Beth and I sat down, she turned to me and asked… “Do I have something in my teeth?” I looked at her and had to lean in due to the now-faded light from a diminishing fire. She did not have anything in her teeth; however, before I could respond, she pulled my face to hers and expertly kissed me in a way I had never experienced before and probably never will again. She looked deep into my eyes, gave me another wink, and told me to sit still and play well until she returned. Honestly, I was hooked. I had no defence against her persuasion and could only blush and do as she requested.**

**Beth set off to her trunk, then into the darkness beyond the trees with whatever she had received from it. My gaze was broken from her as Fred began talking to the group as a whole once again. “Everyone, as a continuation of Wilson tradition here at the witching hour,” he said in a low but steady voice, obviously trying to get spooky with the mood. I wanted to tell him that the witching hour was 3 am, but I didn't want to interrupt his flow. “AS you all know, no campfire is complete without stories from the beyond, and this being the Appalachians, and me being a descendant of some of the original settlers here, will begin our storytelling with a paranormal history lesson of this very clearing.” He stated this while wiggling his fingers in a spooky manner. I don't know if laughter was the response he wanted, but he rolled with it regardless.**

**Fred took a moment to lower the volume of the music, then changed it to some cheesy Halloween forest ambiance. Even though I thought this was silly, as the fire started to die off a bit more and the silence of the woods, aside from Fred's playlist of horror, set in, I began getting somewhat entranced by the whole setting and aura of it all. Just then, Fred began.**

**“Now, some of you have known me for a while, and several of you probably don't even know my name, so I'll start with an introduction of myself and my land. My name is Fredrick William Wilson, the Fourth, and the land you are on now has been the center for many a struggle between the native populations that once dwelled here and the settlers, along with my family, who originally hailed from England. Witches have been tried and hanged in these woods, drowned in its lakes, and tortured by its occupants. Legends of beasts who mimic voices, whistling, and cooing, always out of sight but ever present, linger here. People go missing in these woods under circumstances that make no sense, and they are often found in pieces, with equally confusing circumstances surrounding their disappearance. This all to say the most guarded secret of this land, that only the Wilson family has lived long enough to carry the tradition of its telling.” **

**Throughout his speech, Fred had gone from smiling with a playful tone to his voice, to somber with the sternness of a father warning his children to “Beware the dark and dangerous woods!” honestly I had never really seen him serious like this unless something was sevearly fucked up at work, so we all leaned in silent and stoic. He continued in his new tone…**

**“What I am about to tell you, you don’t have to believe, but I implore you to take this tale as a heading of caution not to go too deep into these woods, for your safety, and that of others. This is the story of how the Wilsons found The Hellmouth.**

**Some time between when the natives stopped fighting for this land and before my family was the last to inhabit it, a small village was spread throughout the four to five hundred acres we have in this valley. My great-grandfathers, great-grandfather lived here in this clearing and acted as a shepherd and protector under the word and will of God. He was a witch hunter and a slayer of beasts that found their way to the village from wherever those witches had summoned them. He started this duty in his mid-twenties and had garnered quite a following of supporters all the way to his tragic death at sixty-seven years old. Around the age of thirty-five, he had four children, three girls and a boy, all god-fearing and well-behaved with his lovely wife, Anna, a half-Irish, half-English woman with fire-red hair like my own, known to all as a charitable and all-around helpful member of her community.**

**My grandfather had been, during that year, having to hunt beasts down nearly every few days, and as the days grew shorter and the trees began to shed their leaves, he knew to save on resources for the coming winter, that he had to find the source of this onslaught and burn it out. He assumed, of course, that a witch was responsible for this and possibly even a coven, so he grabbed a few other strapping and faithful men in town to track the source of the beasts. Now you might be wondering what could be so bad about these beasts other than the safety of the village, and you would be right in your confusion. See, the beasts didn’t just pose a threat to people, but also to livestock, crops, and wild game. They would come in the night and kill or lure off animals and people, but never eat them, only flay and eviscerate them, violently to horrify all who stumbled across them. As for the crops, whenever more beasts were spotted in the woods, farmers would wake to find plants withered and stamped, or worse, plants would take on a more malignant appearance. The plants would bleed, leak pus, and rot; they were warm to the touch and poisoned even the best-looking food that grew near them.**

**The beasts once killed resembled dogs, wolves, bears, and even deer; however, before they died, they appeared as gigantic, indescribable monsters and demons. Humanoid with rotted and terrifying visages, or as animals with too many teeth, eyes, and limbs. Sometimes, even as multiple animals conjoined in unholy chimeras. After they were killed, their flesh would begin rotting almost immediately, crawling with pitch-black insects and emitting the whispers of the damned. Ultimately, they would have to be burned to protect the land and its occupants.**

**So, on this day, almost two centuries ago, on October 13th, my grandfather set out and, at the stroke of midnight, found the jagged hole from which all the demons were coming. About eight hundred meters to our northwest is the clearing where the mayor lived.” Before continuing, he pointed in the direction Beth had wandered off in. I wish I had been paying more attention, because I would have noticed the goat was also gone. However, I held my concerns about her absence to myself and continued listening, hoping she would return soon so I could keep her close and kiss her once more. I was and still am very dumb.**

**Fred continued. “It took them all day as it was hard for any of them to believe the problem lay so close to home, but the festering stench and fetid plants only grew thicker the closer they got to the mansion, in which the mayor resided. You see, my grandfather had never been to this property to hunt any abominations before. This was due to what he thought was caused by the protection provided by the giant fence that surrounded the property and the mayor's private security force. Additionally, the only time he had interacted with the leader of his village was in the town hall, which was quite far from his property.**

**There in the woods just out of sight in the treeline, my grandfather and his mates lay in wait for night to fall on the property. As the day went on, several carts, which only by sound and smell appeared to house animals or livestock, came through the front gates to somewhere just out of sight, then went back into the woods to who knows where. As it approached midnight, a long line of hooded figures, followed by an equally long line of various animals, shuffled into the large hedge maze at the front of the property, chanting the whole time. My grandfather knew that they were too few to stand against whatever was going on here, so they stayed to watch helplessly as the night proceeded. He should have run; he may have been able to bring back the lads who came with him if he had done so, but he was naive, even in this situation, having spent so long interacting with them.**

**Ten minutes before midnight, the screaming of dozens of different animals and several human ones cried out in a drone far too long for anything with lungs should have been able to bellow out, the song disjointed and ever deepening, becoming almost painful to the ears of the listeners. And then… Silence! There was no noise, be it from the property or the woods around them, even from themselves. Then a great flash of red light blinding and burning, accompanied by a screech much like a train preparing to cra-!”**

**Just then, the ground began to shake around our camp; a distant, animalistic scream, held for far too long, came from the northeast. Then silence, from everywhere, the fire, even us. Then “FLASH!” A burning red light that tore through me down to my soul. Then darkness.**

**I awoke in a decrepit mansion on the floor of a third-story hallway filled with windows, with a feminine silhouette standing over me. “Wake up, handsome.” I heard Beth's voice in the seductive way she liked to talk. I suddenly sat up, pushing myself from the floor to my feet, only to find myself alone. So here I am now, it's been weeks, maybe longer, and I have no idea where I am. I don’t get hungry, or thirsty, or tired, but I can still bleed, although every time I try to kill myself, I wake up back in that hall to Beth uttering that same line. The outside of the mansion is surrounded by an endless hedge labyrinth with doors leading to apocalyptic hells beyond imagination. It's one of these hells where I write to you from. I found a door that leads to a dark, unending suburban neighborhood, which thankfully still has electricity operational in it. That voice in the sky never stops, but it seems relatively safe here. The goat that Beth took with her stalks the labyrinth as something almost unrecognizable, except for its head. It has gotten me a few times, and it definitely has no concept of mercy or how to kill quickly. I hope someone who knows what they are doing finds this and comes to help me, or finds a way I can die so when I finally get tired of trying to escape, I can go out on my terms. Please find me. **I am lost. I am lost. I am lost. I am lost. I am lost. I am lost. I am lost. I am lost. I am lost.