PART 3: THIS IS WHY PEOPLE ARE SCARED TO CAMP IN THE DARK DIVIDE WASHINGTON – Bigfoot Stories
I did not sleep that night.
Not really.
I lay in bed with every light in the house turned on, listening to the refrigerator hum in the kitchen and the old pipes tick inside the walls.
Every few minutes, I checked the windows.
Then the doors.
Then the backyard.
Then the woods.
Nothing moved.
That was what frightened me most.
Nothing moved.
The forest had always been alive at night. Even when I couldn’t see anything, I could hear it. Branches rubbing together. Owls calling. Small animals moving through leaves. Wind passing over the tops of the trees.
But after what happened at Walter’s farmhouse, the woods had become something else.
They weren’t quiet anymore.
They were listening.
At 3:17 in the morning, I heard three knocks.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
They came from beneath my bedroom floor.
I sat upright.
My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it.
I waited.
Nothing.
Then—
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
This time, the sound came from inside the wall.
I grabbed the flashlight beside my bed and stepped into the hallway.
The house seemed different.
The shadows looked deeper.
I walked toward the kitchen.
My dog was standing there.
He was staring at the back door.
His body was rigid.
His ears were pointed forward.
I whispered his name.
He didn’t look at me.
Then I saw what he was staring at.
The back door was open.
I knew I had locked it.
I always locked it.
I walked toward it slowly.
Cold air drifted into the kitchen.
Outside, the yard was completely still.
The moon was hidden behind clouds.
I stepped onto the porch.
My dog followed.
I swept the flashlight across the yard.
Nothing.
Then the beam stopped on the fence.
There was a mark carved into one of the posts.
The same mark I’d seen in the woods.
Three lines.
A circle.
And beneath it, something new.
A name.
My name.
I almost dropped the flashlight.
It had been carved deeply into the wood.
Not scratched.
Carved.
The letters were fresh.
Wood chips covered the ground.
I stepped closer.
My stomach tightened.
Someone—or something—had written my full name into the fence.
I touched the letters.
The wood was warm.
Warm enough to feel alive.
My dog suddenly growled.
I turned.
Something was standing beyond the fence.
At first, I thought it was a man.
Tall.
Thin.
Completely motionless.
It stood between two trees.
I raised the flashlight.
The beam reached it.
And the figure stepped backward.
Not away from me.
Into the darkness.
I ran to the fence.
“Hey!”
My voice sounded pathetic in the night.
The figure was gone.
But there were footprints.
Bare footprints.
They started at the tree line.
They crossed the wet grass.
They stopped directly beneath the fence.
And then they disappeared.
No footprints led back into the woods.
I stared at them for a long time.
Then I noticed something that made my blood run cold.
The toes were pointing toward my house.
Whatever had stood there hadn’t been trying to leave.
It had been trying to get in.
I went back inside and locked every door.
Then I called Walter.
His phone rang six times.
Voicemail.
I called again.
Nothing.
I called Daniel Mercer’s number.
The hunter who had disappeared months earlier.
The number had been disconnected.
I stood in the kitchen holding my phone.
For the first time, I understood something.
Walter hadn’t disappeared.
He had been taken.
And whatever had taken him was getting closer to me.
By sunrise, I had made a decision.
I was going back into the woods.
Not because I wanted to.
Because I needed answers.
I packed a rifle, flashlight, spare batteries, rope, water, and a compass.
My dog followed me to the truck.
I told him to stay.
He refused.
I didn’t argue.
The forest looked different in daylight.
That should have made me feel better.
It didn’t.
I followed the trail from my property toward Walter’s farmhouse.
Halfway there, I found another mark.
Then another.
Then another.
They were everywhere.
Trees.
Rocks.
Fence posts.
Even the dirt.
The symbols formed a path.
I followed them.
Eventually, I reached the old farmhouse.
Walter’s truck was still parked outside.
The front door was hanging open.
I entered with my rifle raised.
The house smelled like damp earth.
The basement door was open.
I remembered what I had seen down there.
The markings.
The scratches.
The strange circular boundary beneath the floor.
I didn’t want to go back.
But something told me the answer was there.
I descended the stairs.
The basement was darker than I remembered.
My flashlight swept across the walls.
The symbols were still there.
But there were more of them now.
Hundreds.
Some were old.
Some looked fresh.
And in the center of the basement was a wooden chair.
I had never seen it before.
Something was sitting in it.
I froze.
It was a man.
His back was toward me.
His clothes were dirty.
His hair was gray.
I whispered:
“Walter?”
The man slowly turned his head.
It wasn’t Walter.
It was Daniel Mercer.
The missing hunter.
His face was pale.
His eyes were open.
But there was something wrong with them.
He looked at me and smiled.
“You’re late.”
I couldn’t move.
“Daniel?”
He stood.
His movements were stiff.
Like someone learning how to use a human body.
“Where’s Walter?”
Daniel tilted his head.
“He’s still here.”
“Where?”
Daniel pointed toward the floor.
I looked down.
Three knocks came from beneath us.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Daniel smiled again.
“They know you’re here.”
I raised the rifle.
“Who?”
His smile disappeared.
“The ones underneath.”
Something moved beneath the floor.
A long scrape.
Then another.
I backed toward the stairs.
Daniel didn’t move.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” he said.
“Where’s Walter?”
Daniel looked directly at me.
Then he whispered:
“He gave them his name.”
The basement went silent.
I stared at him.
“What does that mean?”
Daniel’s expression changed.
For a moment, he looked terrified.
Actually terrified.
Then he grabbed his own throat.
His eyes widened.
A sound came from inside him.
Not his voice.
Something deeper.
Something that sounded like several people whispering at once.
“Name…”
Daniel collapsed.
I ran forward.
But before I could reach him, his body jerked violently.
His mouth opened.
And another voice came out.
My father’s voice.
My father had been dead for eleven years.
“Come closer.”
I stopped.
Daniel’s eyes were no longer looking at me.
They were looking past me.
Toward the stairs.
I turned.
There was someone standing at the top.
A woman.
I didn’t recognize her.
She was maybe sixty years old.
Her face was covered in scars.
She held an old lantern.
She looked at me without surprise.
“You heard him,” she said.
“Who are you?”
She walked down the stairs.
“My name doesn’t matter.”
“How did you get here?”
She ignored the question.
Instead, she looked at Daniel.
Then at the symbols.
Then at me.
“They’ve marked you.”
I looked at the symbol on my wrist.
The same one that had appeared after my first trip into the woods.
“Who are they?”
The woman lowered her voice.
“The Keepers.”
I had heard that word before.
Walter had mentioned it.
But I had thought it was an old man’s superstition.
“What do they keep?”
She looked at the floor.
“People.”
The three knocks came again.
This time, the entire basement shook.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
The woman grabbed my arm.
“We have to go.”
“What about Daniel?”
“He’s already gone.”
Daniel’s body moved.
His head slowly lifted.
His eyes locked onto mine.
And he spoke in my father’s voice again.
“Your name belongs to us now.”
I fired.
The shot exploded through the basement.
Daniel fell backward.
The woman screamed at me to run.
We sprinted up the stairs.
Behind us came a sound I will never forget.
Something was climbing through the floor.
Not breaking through.
Climbing.
Like the earth itself had opened.
We burst through the front door.
My dog was waiting beside the truck.
The woman stopped in the yard.
She stared at the forest.
“What?”
I asked.
She didn’t answer.
Then I heard it.
A whisper.
Not from the house.
Not from the woods.
From everywhere.
My name.
My full name.
Repeated over and over.
The woman grabbed my face and forced me to look at her.
“Don’t answer.”
“What?”
“When they call your name, don’t answer.”
The whisper became louder.
My name rolled through the trees.
Then something answered from deep inside the forest.
Three knocks.
The woman went pale.
“That’s impossible.”
“What?”
She looked toward the tree line.
“They don’t knock from inside.”
“What does that mean?”
She took a step backward.
“It means something else has crossed the boundary.”
The woods went completely silent.
Then every bird in the forest took flight at once.
Hundreds of them exploded from the trees.
Something enormous moved between the trunks.
The woman whispered:
“Run.”
We ran.
I never looked back.
Not until we reached the truck.
When I finally did, the woman was standing beside the farmhouse.
She hadn’t followed us.
She was staring into the forest.
And behind her, in the upstairs window, I saw Walter.
He was standing perfectly still.
Watching me.
I raised my hand.
Walter lifted his.
Then he pointed toward the woods.
I couldn’t hear what he said through the glass.
But I could read his lips.
“Don’t let them learn your name.”
The window went dark.
My dog started barking.
The woman screamed.
And somewhere beneath the ground, something laughed.
I drove home without stopping.
But when I reached my property, I found something waiting on my front porch.
A piece of wood.
Freshly cut.
I picked it up.
There was a message carved into it.
Not my name this time.
A different name.
One I had never heard before.
ELIAS MERCER.
I stared at it.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
For several seconds, there was only breathing.
Heavy.
Slow.
Wet.
Then a man’s voice whispered:
“That’s not your name.”
I couldn’t speak.
The voice continued.
“That’s the name they gave you.”
The line went dead.
Behind me, three knocks came from inside my house.
I turned slowly.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Then a fourth knock.
I had never heard four before.
And somewhere in the darkness behind the walls, something whispered:
“Now you know your name.”
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