I gasped for breath and my eyes flew open wide as I woke from another fitful nightmare. Only two days had passed since I came upon the creature, and every second my eyes were closed, it was all I saw. Countless nightmares of its lavender eyes staring into me, the feeling of it gutting me with its giant horns, eviscerating me with pitch-black claws.

I couldn’t unsee what I had witnessed and it was plaguing me night and day. Blinds remained closed, no windows were opened, and I must have checked once an hour that all doors remained locked. Even in the daytime, the lights all remained on. Silence became deafening, maddening to the point where even in the shower I had to play music to drown out the screaming in my own head.

For two days I had barely slept for the nightmares that haunted me. Food was an afterthought. My thoughts were jumbled and chaotic and becoming increasingly more sinister. I knew that I couldn’t continue on or I would fall into complete madness that I would never return from. The journey I had to take was clear but my mind was anything but.

Over the course of a week I prepared myself for what had to be done, stocking up on food, water, making sure all of my camping gear was in order. I’d never gone out like this by myself before but I knew that no one else I told would believe me. I didn’t even believe me half the time, convincing myself that it was just a delusion brought about by dehydration and overexertion. But deep down I was aware that I would never be able to overcome this feeling of terror and dread unless I faced the source of it. It was absolutely the worst idea I’d ever had.

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On a particularly chilly late summer morning, I gathered my pack with all of my supplies, texted my friends and family to let them know I wouldn’t be available for a few days for a camping trip, and opened my door for the first time in 9 days. The sun hadn’t yet risen above the trees, leaving the grass still dewy and the forest in a slight mist. I took a deep breath, steeled my insides, and closed and locked my door behind me. Hitching my pack up higher on my shoulders, I began my hike towards the unknown. Just before entering the woods, I turned back to glance at my house longingly and utter a silent goodbye.

The hike seemed easier this time around. It was almost as if the forest welcomed me back home. Unlike my hurried escape from it, this time the branches seemed to be parting just for me, inviting me in and pushing me along with light, coaxing touches. The sun shone brightly above the canopy, illuminating the path in an almost ethereal way. There were no brambles or roots or rocks to trip me – in fact moss was now covering the path, silencing and cushioning my steps. Change was evident all around me to the point where I questioned if this was the same path I had taken days before.

Even with the heavy pack on my back, it took me less than half the time to find the clearing than it originally had. There was no evidence of the creature. Birds were singing, a few deer were munching on the grass, squirrels played in the trees. I made my way over to the other side where I had seen the creature disappear. Nothing seemed out of place or strange until I came upon a hoofprint.

I had seen deer prints before, but this was nothing like any I’d encountered. These were much larger and oddly spaced – much too far apart for a normal sized deer, and it almost looked as if whatever made them had a large talon on the back of the foot, kind of like a large predatory bird. I searched for the beginning of the hoofprints and found them leading in from the forest very near where I had seen the creature. Putting my pack down, I placed my foot next to one of the prints and found it was bigger than my own foot. I tried to step to the next print I found and it was impossibly far away – I would have had to do a split almost to reach it.

There was no doubt that these hoofprints had come from the creature. After grabbing my pack, I followed the footprints across the clearing. They skirted along the edges, never venturing too far in. I had gone almost to the other side again before the footprints took a turn into the woods. I looked back across the clearing and decided to follow where these footprints led.

The brush here was dense to the point where I lost the prints many times over. I kept having to go back to the previous one and determine where the next might fall. It took longer than it should have to realize that they followed very closely to the twists and turns in the path I took to enter the woods. My heart sunk at the implication and I hastened my pace until I found myself staring at my house again. The hoofprints stopped just at the edge of the forest, or so I thought until I spotted a single print many feet away in a small bald spot in my yard. I followed slowly the direction it took up to my house and realizing with a sinking feeling in my gut that there was one window that it could have looked through that didn’t have a curtain or blind. The window was just over 7 feet off the ground so it hadn’t even occurred to me.

A chill ran through my spine as I realized the creature had followed me home and had been watching for, I didn’t even know how long. The prints were quite fresh as well, less than a day old. It knew where I lived. It watched me. Even inside I wasn’t completely safe.

Taking a series of deep, steadying breaths, I readied myself to delve back into the forest and find the creature that had already found me. There was no going back now. I headed back to the path I had taken and made my way to the clearing again, to the other side where the footprints originated. I couldn’t believe I was really about to do this. With another deep breath and a long drink of water, I pushed into the forest following where the tracks had come from.