Even as I write this, trying to steady my badly trembling hand, I’m listening to the sounds of tortured screams coming from West Siauliai Woods. It’s been this way every night, and I’m losing sleep. A man’s scream. A woman’s scream. A baby’s scream. The scream of something not human. And what does the night watch do? Nothing!
There’s nothing they can do.
There’s nothing any of us can do, except sit here in our homes and listen to all the pain and misery. I daresay, I’m sure that I’m not suffering, mentally, emotionally, as badly as everyone else in this village. Whoever those people are—whoever those people were—they are not my relatives. I have no children left, my wife is gone, and I’m spending the last of my days afraid to close my eyes. I’m listening to the screams of perfect strangers… and yet, still, it disturbs me so.
What’s out there, I ask myself again and again. What’s out there, causing so many people so much agony? Every scream I hear belongs to a new victim. Are they even alive anymore?
Wait.
Just now, there was something more. Goddesses, help me, I wish you could read this. My heart is pounding out of my chest. There’s something out there that’s not human. It’s big. . . I hear its voice. . . it’s calling my name. . . I mustn’t obey. I mustn’t hark. There’s another man’s scream from somewhere deeper in the woods, and his voice, strangulated, emitted the sound of gurgling blood.
West Siauliai Woods is alive tonight.
This is to anyone who may come into my home and read this diary, should I be gone by morning’s light: flee this place. Do not stay here. Do not venture into West Siauliai Woods.
I just looked out my window, and I saw the creature in the distance. A skeletal horror, fleshless, down to its naked bones, as tall as two men stacked on one-another’s shoulders. Even in the dead of night, its bones glow a sickly green hue. It’s watching me. It knows I’m here.
I must go and