S14 Ep18: S14E18 - "More Shapes of Man" - Horror Hill

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Hello listeners and welcome to Horror Hill. I'm your host, Eric Peabody. Tonight I'll be presenting two more stories from Ambrose Ibson's new collection "What Gathers at Dusk" after all. Why stop a good thing when it's going so well?

This evening we have writers retreat and diaphenous, two tales that will have you questioning not only who to trust, but also who you really are yourselves.

Turn out the lights and let's get started.

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Also, if you're watching on YouTube, do us a favor and drop a like and subscribe. Some part of our dark circle, listeners. And now from author Ambrose Ibson, I give you writers retreat. It was late in spring when my friend and I happened upon the little cottage, which sat reaths in gloom and far from any marked road.

Squawt and Shaggy with Ivy had proved very much the proverbial needle in the haystack on account of its having been steadily devoured by surrounding acreages. I have, even today, a good idea of its general wear about, but its exact location evades memory.

“For reasons that'll soon become apparent, I wouldn't speak to its precise location even”

if I could. The thing was remarkably inaccessible in a way that few sites in the modern world are, the most rural homes can be approached by a highway or country road, and these days no one's ever very far from such scourges of civilization as billboards and light pollution. This thing we found, couched in centuries of growth, had nothing like a proper road within

five miles of it on any side. It was a point Nemo of sorts, a veritable cryptid, seldom glimpsed, except perhaps by air, or curious pilots might now and then encounter it, only to doubt what they'd seen. Its Lincoln Log-style construction introduced it as a thing from a bygone age, though just how old it was neither my friend nor I could really say.

It lacked running water and electricity, but we found within its walls other signs of relative modernity, which thoroughly baffled us. We took turns peaking through the structure's lone window and were thus introduced to a dusty Spartan, but restically cozy interior, and through these guarded passes we became satisfied that it was indeed abandoned.

A bed and desk of simple wooden construction were perched inside, and a shelf of similar make teetered between them, burdened by a collection of novels, some of which had been published in the last 10 to 12 years. There were besides piles of notebooks and loose paper upon the desk and an assortment of fine pens, the lot of them regrettably dried out and ruined by time.

had been lent something of the homey by a ruddy rug.

“Within a crooked cabinet, hardly deep enough to warrant the name, we discovered a few”

canned goods some six years past their cell-by-dates and a glass bottle filled with some cloudy brown liquor. That was all. Of course, we wondered who the place belonged to, what the structure had been used for if the owner still lived.

Thiries were batted back and forth like ping pong balls, but we didn't wonder for long. The answer, at turned out, was close at hand. You see, on the desk, half buried beneath the smattering of dust stained pages, was a dog-yared notebook with a pale blue cover.

The words "welcoming the muse" had been written across the front in neat cursive.

By paging through this little volume, we became acquainted with the one who'd left all these goods behind. The object of our trespass had been used, several years prior, as a writers retreat. Riders, on the whole, tend to be rather unwholesome creatures, "Is there anything more unlovable in the world than one who sits alone in a locked room day after day, amusing

himself with his own thoughts?" Storytelling in its commonest form is little more than fraud, and even its most celebrated practitioners or guilty at least of commodifying imagination. What they lack in muscle, charisma, and manners, authors often make up for "in ego." We had, in this little journal, a prime example of what was perhaps the most detestable,

the most pernicious variety of writer on the planet, the rank amateur. From the opening entry, my friend and I both agreed that we'd happened upon the scroll of a man who fancied himself a generational talent. He was a master, as all of that foul stripe are, of writing much and saying little. The kind of "loathsome" creature that hotly anticipates his share of the perfunctory

applause at open-mic events, only by the constant backpads of teachers, parents, and, while meaning delusionalists, does the novice and letters manage to ape the upright posture of better men. The inaugural entry ran us. I am, arrived. This remote hermitage, discovered quite by accident and untouched for ages,

will be the site of a momentous artistic undertaking. My, Walden. Having stripped away all distraction, I sit in wait of Prometheus. The fire he brings will set my soul ablaze and bear such sizzling fruits as the literati have only dimly dreamt of.

I have left the door, a jar. My ears are trained on the sounds of the forest.

“Is that the pitter-patter of feet I hear, the coming of the mues?”

I await her eagerly. My spectral mistress.

Judging by this first entry and the collection of materials left behind in the cabin,

we assumed that the writer had isolated himself in the interest of creating without distractions. We brought the notebook outside with us and continued reading it in the daylight, curious what this expedition of his had yielded. Maybe he wound up writing the next great American novel right here, ventured my friend with a laugh.

I was of a very different mind. Or maybe after a week in the woods he couldn't hack it and went back to waiting tables. The entries progressed. I have been connecting with the earth. Barefoot, I have walked the grounds reciting poetry to dusk.

Only when the sun has vanished from the sky do the lunar thoughts come out to play. To ease their way, I have greased the gears with a bit of strong drink. Tonight, the writing exercises will begin. I work in the shadows of the masters, filling in the writing prompt worksheets I brought along. The next.

It is an old adage that the writer ought to write what he knows. Until this very moment, I have wondered is the subject of my forthcoming novel. I have decided, however, that this endeavor of mine, this retreat into solitude, will make a fine subject in itself. Think, a novel about a writer struggling to craft a masterpiece.

I'm not sure such a thing has ever been done. We have no need of an Achilles, an Odysseus here.

“What better and more authentic of protagonist than myself?”

And the next. Four days now, I've sat in stoneness, surrounded only by the sounds of nature. I'm reverting to a more primitive state, the only state in which genuine connections with the creative unconscious can be made. My thoughts remain aloft with Polaris, my senses strain at all hours for signs of the muse.

When she arrives, I will put pen to paper, and the whole grand thing will leap forth.

“Numbered are the days of its gestation and brief are its labor pains.”

It comes many limb and driving.

It sounds like he spent the first few days filling out worksheets and hyping himself up,

uttered my friend. And drinking, just a bit too much, how much you want to betty throws in the towel before the 10-day mark. This word vomit's probably only managed to write before he gave up. We continued. Wonder of wonders, something strange and terrible has happened.

There has been a change in the air. The site was visited by rain and wind for several hours. A soothing and cleansing experience that warded off my pent-up physical fumes.

“The sun tumbled out of the sky, but half an hour ago, and as I sat by the windows,”

paging through my thasaurus, I noticed something in the woods outside. The foliage quite apart from the stirring of the rains, parted as though nunched aside by an unseen hand. I sense a presence here. Plot twist, a homeless guy just discovered the cabin, and let's just say that he's not a fan of Jonathan Franson, I guessed. Keep reading, urged my friend. As you're losing it, spend in too much

time out here alone. The next entry differed from the others and that the painstaking cursive had been suddenly abandoned for rough utilitarian capitals. Up to this point, I have not written more than one entry per day. The paper and ink are expensive, and I promised my wife that I wouldn't waste them, and that my most recent

splurge at the stationary store would be my last until I finally secure a paying job.

“Well, what has gone on this evening is sufficiently important to my mind to risk her wrath.”

An hour, perhaps too, time behaves differently here than it doesn't the city you understand. After my last entry was penned, I stepped outside the cabin to relieve myself. The wind and rain brought with it unseasonal cold. I shivered as I walked a little into the surrounding woods and did my business. On the track back, I happened to hear something, the unestakable sound of feet. Yes, I am certain I've heard a stranger's tread. I was not a little alarmed by this,

and so immediately saw cover. I found see an animal, perhaps a deer or a badger, was behind it. But as I knelt behind a damp tangle of shrubs and scoured the gloom, no such creature came into view. Instead, something tall and slender, and threpoid, came shambling out of the wilderness. The figure was bathed in shadow. So little like to work with, I could only tell that the presence was the rank of limb.

Two rank, I dare say, to be a gardener for Idy human being. It stood a few heads above my own five feet and nine inches. I would not be surprised to learn that it stands in the ballpark of eight feet. It stood there, not entering the premises, but dwelling stalks still along the cabin's periphery. There was something in its odd bearing. Don't ask me to explain it because I've wasted a pager to trying already, which told me it was aware of my presence. It knew I was there,

cowering some 20 feet away in the bushes, and it could well have come after me, could have motioned to me. But it did not. Instead, the figure seemed intent on becoming one with the scenery, unblending into the darkness and stillness until my eyes could not pick it out of the tabloe. And in this, it proved most successful. Now I stared at it a long while and could even now show

you the very spot where I first saw traips out of this surrounding wood. By small gradations,

it vanished from my sight. My every sense screamed out and told me that it was still there. It hadn't moved, hadn't made a sound, and yet my eyes, despite their fixiveness, had inexplicably lost sight of it. I won't deny that I fled into the cabin. Ten, maybe 15 minutes I know to the muck, watching the thing, or trying again to find it, before I returned and slammed the door shot. I wish there was a curtain in this window, and that the latch on the door was meteor.

Oh well, a few more logs on the fire will keep me company. I've been waiting for someone here at the cabin, awaiting that primordial goddess of inspiration. But the thing I spied outside the cabin was not my muse. And if it was, I doubt I'll ever pick up a pen again. Okay, okay, set my friends, snatching the book for my grasp. This guy almost lost me early on,

mossy tree trunk and peering up at the dimming sky. The sun was setting, and the clouds were

“stained in warm shades of red and orange. Probably had too much to drink, or the isolation”

got to him. It's pretty quiet out here. I can't really blame him. My friend was ignoring me. Had already begun diving into the next entry. Oh man, oh man, you aren't going to believe this. I sat up. What now? You got abducted by aliens or something? The next entry, red as follows. I'm writing this because, should I die? I have no other way of telling the world what's become of me. My phone has no reception here, and the areas so remote that I cannot hope to reach

civilization on my own. At the end of this planned excursion, my wife will be waiting at the

closest side of ingress, a little metropark. I planned to march out in the daylight hours. I doubt very much that I could safely exit the woods by night. Until then, I have no choice but

“defend for myself. It's about two in the morning as I write this. Since that last update, I haven't”

bothered to leave the cabin but once, an empty food can has made a serviceable urinal, and I've spent most of my nights sitting by the window, my gaze roving and roving after doubt full shadows in the brush. There have been times when I've studied one spot in the forest,

some cluster of trees or tangle of branches, only to feel in my hindbrain that I've touched upon

the hem of something else, something that fills the same space but which my eyes cannot settle upon. I know how this sounds, and if a professional would tell me right now that I'm insane, the lusional, but I would be most glad to hear it and have them drag me off to someplace secure. But I am not crazy. You see, my store of wood was growing a bit sparse. In the entrance of chasing off the cold, I dared to step outside and visit the wood pile. There, like a spooked animal,

my grabbed up as many logs as I could, pressed them to myself and prepared to race back inside. Have you ever lost yourself in a body of deep water? Drown, perhaps. I have. But in my case, there was no water involved. I drowned in the open air as I turned back toward the cabin. Clutching the wood to my breast, I made the quickest quietest steps I could on my return journey, only to reel back in horror and drop a few pieces onto the ground.

I could not breathe. I could no more make use of the fresh air than a fish cast onto a dry shore. The woods all around me erupted into movement. I watched the growths quake and tremble and wave, but all this brought with it not one iota of noise. There was no wind to speak of, but the limbs of the trees whipped about as though in a tempest. Something was on the move, working the outdoors into a furer, but it brought with it no sound. It was as though the shadow

between every trunk and branch had suddenly mobilized, like the black of the sky had stolen soundlessly out of the cosmos and trained its fury on me. I did what instinct demanded. I charged toward the cabin. However small it is, I wagered that his four walls would offer a modicum of protection. But when I stepped inside, my shaky hands fumbling with the door. I saw that I was not alone. There was a figure there, crouched near the fireplace. He stood in the little corner to

the right so that the orange glow of my dying fire could scarcely reach him. I could tell, though, that he was very tall and thin, and his black hands were wrapped tightly around his face. It was not a man. He was too long, too dark, too horrible to be a man.

“Addled by terror, I did the only thing I could. I snatched a pen and this notebook from the desk and”

then went running from the cabin. I must record this, must warn off others from visiting the wretched place after dark. If you are reading this, heed my warning and turn back while you still can, as to what's become of me. Well, I suppose that depends on whether there's an entry after this one. My friend and I turned the page with baited breath. The next page was blank, and so was the next one. Indeed, that ominous entry proved to be the last one in

the notebook. Dude, what in the world did we just read? I asked. There's no way this is real.

but I just have this feeling that it's real. No, no, I continued. It's just not believable.

“First off, monsters, please. Take the obvious fantasy elements out of the equation and all your”

left with is one bad decision after another. This isn't how someone in a life or death situation would act. If you're really scared for your life, do you think you'd bother stepping into the cabin to grab a pen and notebook before running away from a monster? No. For that matter, how did the notebook end up back here? Did he nicely decide to drop it off in the morning? Come on. This was written by a total novice. Someone without enough lived experience to know how people really act.

All right, maybe you're onto something. It admitted my friend. I thought it was pretty

eerie, though. Better than some of those short stories I've read online recently. I shot the notebook and looked up at the sky. Since my last glance, it had been drained of color. Night was on its way, and we started a long walk to civilization ahead of us. Come on. We got to get a move on. I said, let's put this back and head out, yeah. Aw, do we have to return it? Asked my friend, "I ain't the notebook pleadingly."

“Would be cool to take it as a souvenir, don't you think?”

On the off chance that the guy who wrote it ever comes back, I'd rather leave it. We paced back to the cabin and shuffled into the dim interior. I groped through the shadows, navigating only by the thin threats of twilight that came in through the window, and placed the notebook atop the pile of papers. It's getting so laid, set my friend. Maybe we should just stay the night, huh?

We could start a little fire, get cozy. I paned about the dusty abode and gave the matter some thought. And if not for what I happened to glimps in the fireplace, I might have been more agreeable to the idea of an overnight. I started when, glancing toward the fireplace, I noticed a dense shadow parked within it. What I might usually have mistaken for logs or other detritus in the gloom was revealed by the new moonlight, to be a pair of large, black feet. The feet of one standing

within the fireplace. Staring in disbelief at those two feet, I slowly traced the thin, black legs that were joined to them. The mantle blocked the rest of the figure from view, but I could tell that it glanced that the one sheltering inside the chimney was of great height and thinness. Rather, length of limb, one might say. My friend also happened to catch sight of the duiler in the hearth, and our earlier conversation died away at once. We stood there for several moments,

wondering if we weren't hallucinating. We potted our eyes, blinked hard in the murk. When the thing in the chimney spoke, and removed all doubt, however, a thin, almost nasally voice came seeping out from behind the old bricks. Tell me, "How did you like my story?" the figure asked. The two of us stiffened, nearly dropped to the floor.

“Was it? Are it full? Could the thing in the fireplace? Was it frightening?”

We understood, after that, why a few of the details in the story hadn't worked for us. Indeed, it had been written by someone. Something, whose soul acquaintance with human nature had come through the lens of predation. I needn't tell you that we didn't hang around. We weren't about to offer a thoughtful critique. We went running from that cabin into the woods, and we didn't stop until we reached a paved road several miles off.

Had we stayed, my friend and I, surely, would have gotten workshopped into a new ending for the things tale. You've been listening to writers retreat by Ambrose Ebsen. Now, here's diaphonis, also by Ambrose Ebsen. Peyton clutched the camouflage netting to himself and turned a wide eye to the vast wall of woods at his back. For some time, he'd been engaged in this obsessive surveillance of the shadowed

forest, awaiting some fright, some material horror, which never reared its head. His thin neck

forced his eyes round into another lap, and he found himself gazing for the thousandth time at

14 days lost in the wilderness. Then spoke for the first time in what must have been hours.

“The two of us had long since abandoned the practice of idle chatter. To speak was to forego listening,”

and in these damned woods not nearly so empty as they appeared by day, hearing proved more valuable commodity than cheerful talk. Thus, to my mind, the breaking of this carefully cultivated silence promised a disclosure and insight of real value. Or being watched Frank, I can feel their eyes upon us now, said Peyton, whiskers crawling across his cheeks and the tight winds. This camouflage are attempts to be silent. It's all meaningless,

they know we're here, Frank, and they're watching. Many hours had passed since I, too, had last

spoken anything more than a grunter grown. And when I found my voice there, seated by the water's edge,

my reply was scouting. I was angry, not simply on account of his paranoia, or because I hated

“the shakiness and timidity that had possessed him over the course of the preceding days. But because”

he had shattered our precious silence to note something I knew well enough myself. Of course, they're watching you idiot. I spat under my breath. We haven't gotten an hour of daylight left. Things are stirring. Coming to when the woods, which were sluggish at the height of day, keep your mouth shut. I'll hear us. I warned. They'll hear us. My countless hands, blackened by days of wandering, tightened around my scrap of camouflage netting.

The soul souvenir of the camp we'd abandoned ten miles away on that moonlit night. Instinctively, the two of us had clung to the stuff, had gone even to the trouble of dividing it into two equal portions that we might drape ourselves in it and disappear into the natural scenery.

“While trekking along the endless shore or taking our rest, we huddled beneath the textured netting”

like humps of cowardly moss. There are things in this world. I cannot be so easily fooled, however. The senses of these are not limited to base sight, hearing and taste. Their perceptions are filtered through a more panoramic array and enjoy far greater precision than those of humble man. It was a thing of this kind, neither man nor animal, that held us in its gaze from somewhere in the forest. This was the same gaze we'd been running from for almost 14 days.

We had been drawn to this wild country, just like those who'd come before us, by the promise of gold, that our predecessors and the chase that either vanished or died under mysterious circumstances did not deter us in the least. In fact, the two of us, boasting combined three decades of experience and hiking in general bushcraft, hotly noted the failures of the others and drew up new better routes for our expedition,

which would take us deeper into the so-called headless valley than anyone had gone before. Our kit had been state-of-the-art. We'd fancied ourselves strong and capable. Neither had the two of us been deterred by the illegality of our quest. Large swaths of the region had been locked down in decades prior, by conservationists on both the provincial and federal levels, making our search for gold all the riskier. If caught, heavy

fines are in prison meant surely awaited us. Deventure is sometimes to gain, though, depending on how the coin toss went, we would either emerge felons or creosises, and fanciing ourselves clever earth and the sleepy-mounted police we ultimately banked on our coming out the ladder. The two of us stepped into our boat and plunged into the choppy waters of the South N'Honey. It's a volatile river on the best of days, at turns glassily calm and violently turbulent,

snaking for untold miles between towering ramparts of mountain. Even in full sun when may sail for hours in the shade of these mountains, which crowd upon the water from both sides

and choke the valley of light. As such, the drink is always cold, the rare strips of habitable

bank are invariably damp, and night often brings with it rolling waves of mist. By day, we navigated rapids and strove toward the heart of this north-western territory, more than 11,000 miles square. Our nights were spent on the banks of the river, where we pitched our tents, tracked our progress on maps, and supplemented our simple meals

of our sluices, dredging up loads of stinking sediment in search of gold.

“I recall the day we retreated to our first taste of the stuff.”

Parked on a slender patch of shore, some 50 miles deep, our panning turned up a wedge of gold the size of my thumb. At its discovery, the two of us rejoiced like madmen, our cries bouncing off the gray mountain walls. Further investigations of the river bed proved fruitless, but Peyton and I both were convinced that the mother load would be found just a little further downstream. And in the days that followed, our conviction seemed on the verge of being

born out. Subsequent efforts brought up smatterings of gold, a dime-sized piece here, a handful of glimmering pebbles there, all were tucked lovingly into a reinforced sack to be divided equally and sold off at journey's end. With every ounce we added to the sack, our ambitions and fantasies

“grew wilder, more insatiable. I remember now, not without some bitterness, that we would sit”

along the bank eating grilled pike by the fire, dreaming almost until dawn of the highlife. In the end, however, the nhani valley got to keep its gold. The aforementioned sack was among the many essentials we abandoned and fleeing our camp. We lost our tent, slewuses, rifles, and other supplies, too. I wish that I could explain what it was that drove the two of us, able-bodied, experienced, and greed-possessed men, to flee the camp into abandon all we held precious.

Only mortal terror, perhaps, could have seen to such a thing. And certainly, one must be very frightened indeed to attempt navigation of the rapids and pitched darkness, as we did. Our escape had been little better than a suicide attempt, but instinctively, Peyton and I had thought it better to perish at the hands of nature than, to fall prey to the things we met by the tree line. The night our expedition broke down. The night we threw away our lofty plans and

centered ourselves strictly upon the objective of survival was a very pretty one, in retrospect. Though the walls of the valley served to choke out the light, our camp that night happened to enjoy just such a placement as to invite bands of steady moon glow. We could see one another clearly, even when the fire was low, and we were able to gaze a little distance into the thick wood that grew from the mountainside. The edge of the water was lent to dazzling shimmer, and the mist

rolling across our camp, shown like diamond dust. Even hardened and avaricious men can appreciate beauty. We lounged by the water's edge and soaked at all in. We shared a simple meal, studied the glowing tree line before us, and traced the movement of small animals in the wood as we jumped about our impending wealth. We spied many a bat circling the tree tops in search of food, and glimpsed our fair share of red foxes and otters. Had the moonlight not been so

generous, we would have missed out on seeing all of these. We would have missed out, too, on seeing the thing which drew Payton's eye, and made him sit up, his face going almost as pale as the moon might.

I didn't notice my partner's reaction, not at first. By the time I'd emerged from my thoughts

and asked him some idle questions, he'd gone totally pale and wide-eyed, so that I initially thought him ill. What's the matter? I asked him, "You feel sick?" In answer, Payton raised a shaky finger and thrust it toward the tree line. I wasn't immediately sure what he was pointing at. The region is home to wolves, coyotes, grizzlies, and other creatures that do not make particularly friendly guests, but I found none of these as I sat up and scoured the tree line.

Well, I whispered, "What is it, man?" He was slow in answering.

"There." In the trees, he finally stammered. His fingers still extended, jabbed at the air like a

“lance. "You see that? See what?" I think. I think it's watchin' us, Frank.”

He suddenly withdrew his finger, thinking better of pointing it out. A little I rate, I rose up with a groan, dusted myself off, and went traipsing past the fire toward the trees, eager to figure out what had him so spooked. I didn't make it two paces from Payton's side, my eyes scouring the wood, before I suddenly retreated half a dozen paces. In fact,

being launched by something in those woods. Payton had not been mistaken.

“Precisely, what was doing the watching, though? This was a question much neither of us could answer.”

I know a bear when I see one. I know mountain lions and bison moves deer the whole lot, and I know a man when I see one too. The thing in the woods was none of these. It had no fur, no beard fangs or ready antlers, no claws. For that matter it didn't possess anything like a body at all. Huddled between a mass of naughty pines was a whitish, misty silhouette, a pale figure.

It hadn't jumped out of me from the first glance on account of its delicacy. It's,

if you can excuse me for using such a ludicrous word, ethereal quality. There was no physical body there exactly, just a white vaporous impression of one, as though the light fog had become snagged on a tree limb and it twisted into a semi-human shape.

“I took it for nothing but an uncanny illusion, perpetuated by the fog and moonlight working in union.”

When the initial shock had passed, I firmed up a little and was ready to dress down my companion for having been so easily taken in. But then the thing took a step. Nye bodyless, the vapor-wrapped thing drew nearer. Pulling away from the shadows of the wood as it did, more of its glimmering, translucent outline was buried to the moon and rendered diathanas. It was like looking at a densely woven cobweb in some ways, a human outline and gossamer.

Expressionless, that is, entirely without features, the cloudy presence was nonetheless engaged in careful study of our camp, it faced us with a certain brazenness, leaned like an eavesdropper.

In this land of bears and wolves, I was never very far from my rifle, and this I fetched up from the

“fire side while keeping the apparition in view. Who goes there, I shouted, seeking to draw the”

thing out, though my heart raged in my chest and, Peyton looked ready to bolt from the camp all together, and I swatched myself with reasonable inner talk. This was no phantom, no spirit, or anything of the kind. We had come upon some camper, some vagrant, some well-meaning native, probably. Though this stretch of country was renowned for its emptiness, it had been explored by many prior to our visit. Our odds of encountering another human being and so remote a corner were mighty low, but

they were not zero, after all. My challenge was answered in an unexpected way, while Peyton dealt by the fire shuddering. With a butt of my rifle pressed my shoulder, I made a great show

of taking aim, but I was quickly put off from the task by the emergence of a second figure,

very similar to the first. Another white, gaseous thing came sneaking out of the trees, its wavering outline caught by the pale moonlight. Taking off guard, I lowered my rifle and peered my companion. It had been my intention to ask him if he too had seen this second figure, but before I could spit out the question, a voice came ringing out of the woods and sent it jolt through both of us. How tell you, this is a literal gold mine we're sitting on,

we're about to knock it wide open, Peyton, and when we do, our grandchildren's grandchildren will be taken care of. Peyton and I both blanched, and for a dread moment we locked eyes. The voice from the woods was mine, in pitch and cadence, in the faint pauses and hints of giddy laughter, the utterance was unmistakably mine. These words, however, had not been on my lips for several minutes. I'd spoken them earlier in the night, while the two of us had been conversing

over dinner. Now, they were being thrown back at me from the virgin wood, an echo, several minutes delayed. The first thing I'm going to do when we are clear is find myself a wife, more several, what do you think, Frank? A harem of blondes? Peyton squeezed a handful of what sand hard enough to make a diamond when his own words came tumbling out at us. Why not a few brinettes, too? May I not diversify his fortunes? The sound of our chuckling,

filled the trees and washed against the high mountain walls. The same laughter we'd shared while stoking the fire just minutes prior. Our entire fire side chat was being replayed, performed,

other ears in this wilderness that we'd been listened to, but the most frightening aspect of it

all was easily the quality of the imitation. The party responsible had attained a perfect mimicry

“of us both. Though I still held my gun, I suddenly couldn't remember how to work it.”

The thought of intimidating the figures of firing a warning shot didn't cross my mind. I must have known in my gut that such measures would amount to nothing. By all appearances, the things in the woods were not flesh and blood organisms, but mere hallucinations, knots of fog tied into odd shapes by the faint breeze. I simply stood frozen, watching the hazy duo as they watched us. Peyton, though, wasn't able to sit still,

he immediately won't grope for the bank, and I heard him thump into the boat as he rolled it over

and prepared to set sail. "For Frank, come on!" he insisted. "We have to get out of here!" I was afraid, make no mistake, but I was not yet at the point of abandoning our camp.

“What's more, I knew just how dangerous the river would be by night. Though some portions were shallow”

and calm, the rapids further on would prove an almost insurmountable challenge to us in the dark. "What do you think you're doing? Get out of that boat you Investor, you're trying to kill yourself?" Peyton gripped the ore and threatened to launch without me. "Suit yourself, Frank, but I'm getting out of here." "Wait, don't!" There was a great splash as the boat hit the water. And that wasn't on. Suddenly, the two white figures and the woods were on the move,

marching on legs of swirling fog, the semi-transparent things came bursting out of the shadows and made straight for our camp. A distance of mere yards separated me from them, and as they closed the gap, they drifted in and out of my sight. When the moonlight hit them fall on, they wore it

“like a flowing shroud. Fog clung to them so closely that a vague outline became clear through the”

rippling tongues of mist, an outline suggestive of grinning skulls of stick thin limbs and grasping skeletal digits. But when the moon was not upon them, they moved through the mist completely unseen, where blanketed with it, as though it were snow. As such, their progress toward the bank proved astonishingly rapid. Each time they disappeared from view for a breathless moment, they would surface much nearer at hand. The things that drawn very near indeed when I lost my

nerve and went galloping into the boat. I dropped my rifle on the way, and in my panic didn't think to recover it. Tramping into the shallows, I clawed my way into the boat and watched as Peyton worked the ore in a fury, sending us at once down the dark river. While he gouged the water like a madman, I rided myself and fixed my gaze on the shore we'd fled. Our fire still flickered, and our tents, filled not only with our treasure but with the stuff of our survival,

remained pitched along the waterfront. Standing on the edge of the bank, too, were a pair of white silhouettes. The things hovered there, watching as if they'd come to see us off. Eventually, they became one with a fog buried in it, but the weight of their scrutiny persisted for a long while. Five, ten minutes later, we found a bend in the river, and our camp was blotted from side entirely. We had made our escape. What the figures had intended for us if anything was a mystery.

Frankly, we were very glad to live in ignorance of their purpose.

Sometime later, Peyton finally cut speed and allowed the natural current to do its work.

At this point, fairly removed from the camp, there was no great sigh of relief between us, no chatter of what we'd seen. Bayed now in the syrupy shadows of the Nahani valley, we heard the distant rush of rapids and knew that we were soon to do battle with the river in an almost complete darkness. We sat, the two of us, and I took up the second ore. As we approached, the nighted rapids, our silence was that of prisoners led to the guillotine.

There's very little use in my embellishing the facts, or in giving a very thorough rundown of what happened next. Suffice it to say, we lost our fight against the South Nahani. The boat capsized and was lost to us. Somehow, though, we remained afloat in the punishing flow long enough to grasp at a chunk of crumbling shoreline. We did not die that night. But as we crawled up onto the

Panting and cursing. Since was slow in returning to us, but when it did, we began to realize

“just how desperate our situation now was. We had no food on us, nor any means of catching any.”

We had knives in our pockets, and I had a large scrap of camouflage netting on my person. But there was nothing else. No maps, no compass, no guns, and perhaps worst of all, no boat. As best we could guess, we'd gone two or three miles from the camp in total. Apart from the possibilities that the abandoned site was still haunted by the misty things, the two of us knew that we could not backtrack even if we wished to. The rapids were far too

strong. We could never hope to swim against them, and what's more, the gaps in the shoreline

were such that we could not make an approach by land. Our camp and all of our belongings were lost to us. We knew it at once, and were forced to make peace with it. While ringing out our clothing and attempting a small fire for the sake of warmth, we finally got around to discussing the fright that it propelled us down the river, and not without many nervous glances upstream.

What do you think that was? I asked Peyton while emptying my boots of water.

“He did not feel imaginative enough to hazard a gas and only replied, "Do you think we lost him?”

He paused. Do you think… they'll follow us?" Desperate to build up my partner. I took it upon myself to play the strongman. No, we've seen the last of them. I'm sure of it.

Through great effort, we finally got our fire going. Physically and mentally exhausted,

we slept around at like cavemen. I'll be at lightly, and with frequent awakenings. Still shaking off our dread, the two of us spoke very little in the hours that followed, and our ears made much of the smallest sounds. The faintest rustling awoken us truly primal terror. Any perceived deviation from the sounds of nature saws both sitting bolt upright, pale faced,

“and wide-eyed. Every time these reactions of ours were in vain.”

Except for ones. I stood relieving myself a few hours before dawn, and moved to check the dryness of my boots by the fire. When the hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood a detention. Peyton snoring uneasily up to that moment, quieted and shortly awoke, his eyes blinking in apparent confusion and his heavy head on a swivel. Though dosing, his senses too had picked up on something in our immediate surroundings. Together, we

crouched by the fire and looked out across the river. We took in the mountain walls and the chaotic sprawl of pines that grew alongside them. We studied the great stones that jutted here and there from the moist earth and the muddy bank of the river, which still bore the deep gouges we'd made in our hasty clambering. Nothing looked her eye. Our eyes met only the natural world. It was our ears that first alerted us to the presence of a thread. From some shadowed corner

in a nearby copes, Peyton and I could never agree precisely where. We heard voices engaged in

strained conversation. What do you think that was? Set the one. After a long pause. Do you think we lost him? Do you think they'll follow us? Chanced the other. "No," said the first, with a puffed-up bravado that could not but ring hollow in my ear. We've seen the last of them, I'm sure of it. My blood, as well as Patence, froze. Our makeshift camp was a wash and deep shadow. Thinking back to our encounter upstream, I knew that the misty things could not be seen in the dark. Only

in the moonlight did they give the faintest evidence of their presence. Thus, I understood immediately that the things were upon us, that they had followed our progress down river and that they had sat quietly by listening from the shadows. We did not give them an opportunity to step out of the mist and dark, but instead threw on our soggy boots and fled. We abandoned a second fire, our only source of comfort in the wretched wilderness, and went shambling through the brush for what

must have been another two miles. All the while we threw our gazes backward, fearing what the moon might show us. Eventually, the horizon lightened and mercifully, the light of day was poured out upon us.

nervous hours ticked by before the two of us, much reassured by the brightness and warmth,

“decided that we had properly escaped. By the afternoon we grew bold enough to place our focus on”

survival, and we did our best to chart a course back to civilization without recourse to the usual instruments. In the daylight, the terror of the previous night seemed to us a dream, a shameful hallucination. We laughed about it while enjoying the sun's favor. Later, when the sky began to darken and the valley dimmed, we could no longer find it in ourselves to laugh, however. And now, having repeated the cycle of terrified flight for almost 14 nights running, Peyton and I are at Whitsend. Our primitive

traps have brought us very little food, and though our foreras and the woods have been many,

we've come away with almost nothing edible, growing fiebler by the minute, gone and achy,

“we watch from the river's edge as the sun dips out of the sky. Peyton, face up turned,”

loose as a great sigh and whispers to me. "I don't know how much longer we can keep this up, the river goes on and on. I know our plans to follow it, but, as the only landmark we can trust, I put in soothingly. If we stray much from the river, we could wind up marooned in the wilderness. If we follow its flow, however, will eventually meet with civilization, it's only a matter of time." "Yes, he replies,

watching with trembling lips as the sky begins to darken in earnest. But time is the one thing we haven't got, Frank. Tonight, any minute now, there'll be, I stop him with a fierce glance,

“enough. Enough of this defeatist talk, I demand. They can't follow us forever, you hear me?”

Sooner or later we'll give him the slip. "Do you really think they'll leave us alone?" "He asks, like a frightened child." "Yes, yes I do. Please put them out of your mind. They'll give up. I know they will. Peyton is heartened by this, nods, and nestles more deeply into the netting." Nightfalls. Thick silence grows up between us until only the current and the breeze and the rare nightbird can be heard. The night is warmer, we don't bother with the fire. We're hoping to move

it first light, and that soon will come upon a house building some sign of civilized life.

"I'm startled for my brooding when Peyton suddenly speaks up. Do you really think they'll leave us alone?" He asks, tone wavering as if on the verge of tears. "Anger wells up in me, and I turn to him with bald fists. Did I just tell you to stop worrying?" "But Peyton isn't looking at me, and his lips are glued shut in a quivering skull. He's turned around completely, and is staring wide-eyed into the wall of trees and mist behind us." It's time to run. Famished legs are made to

sprint, and the two of us bolt downstream with our heads low. Slipping through banks of fog and hopping past outcroppings of stone, we trace the river's edges closely as we can. The new moonlight is parceled out by the miserly valley. At one point, I nearly lose my footing and tumble into the water. Peyton's smashes is already shaky knee against the trunk of a fallen tree, and only by pure adrenaline does he keep limping along behind me. Our flight is haunted, not simply by the bite figures in

the mist, but by the knowledge that death is likely the only form of escape open to us. This wild territory has consumed us. There is nothing for miles upon untold miles, and despite my assurances to the contrary, I know how isolated we are. Starvation or wild animals will claim us if the things in the shadows do not. Civilization lies far, far from our grasp. It's unlikely we'll ever see another human being again.

But what's this? Peyton and I glimpse a flickering light in the distance, a warm orange glow that cuts through the fog and dark. It's the inviting light of a lit hearth, perhaps, or a farmer's evening bonfire, maybe it's a camp of local Indians. Powered now by hope and all the joy that comes with it, we charge on down the bank toward the light our soul salvation. We are very near the source

Though still a good distance off, shadows shift around it, shadows indicative of a small presence.

“The fire's makers are seated around it, undoubtedly kicking back and enjoying the warmth.”

Peyton and I dash toward them, ready to cry out and thankfulness and desperation, and the outline of the camp comes into sharper focus. And it is then, as the layout of this camp enters fully into view, that our rickety feet lose their pacing, and we stumble to our knees, some yards from the ring of firelight. There at two men seated by the fire, jovial, carefree men, they cast long shadows across

the river. Their tents are stationed close to the waterfront, each boasting a few panels of camouflage netting. Moonlight floods their simple camp, ribbons of the stuff comporing through a ridge in the

mountain walls. The first man, finishing the last of his grilled pike, says, "I tell you, this is

“a literal gold mine we're sitting on, we're about to knock at wide open Peyton, and when we do,”

our grandchildren's grandchildren will be well taken care of." The other, peering up into the night sky, says, "First thing I'm going to do when we're clear is find myself a wife, or several, what do you think, Frank? A harem of blondes? Now, I'll not a few brunettes, too." Quips the first one, a man ought to diversify his fortunes, together the pair of campers chuckle hardly. I feel my heart rise and sputter.

My companion is swooning. He's on off-force, panting in the grass. Somehow, we've returned to our camp. Those tents are our tents. Those words are ours too. The voices are just right, but the two men seated there are not us.

“Both campers stiffen. They know we're there that we're watching, and they start to turn around,”

real slow. Two faces are half revealed by the firelight. White, cadaverous. A thread of white missed towards an empty socket like an eel. Coils of vapor come rolling out of an empty mouth and mingle with the smoke. Suddenly, Peyton looses a little laugh beside me, a nervous, unhinged kind of sound forced past a bluvering sod. Say, he whispers to me, "They look like a friendly lot. Maybe we should ask them for directions."

That was "Diafiness" by Ambrose Ibson. Once upon a time, a young Ambrose Ibson discovered

a collection of ghost stories on his father's bookshelf, and he was never the same again.

Apart from horror fiction, he enjoys good coffee, brood strong, connect with him on his official website, Ambrose Ibson.com. Tonight's stories were taken from his collection "What Gathers At Dusk, Available At Velix Books." When I love about Ambrose's work, in part, is how he takes classic creepy pasta themes and lovingly retools them into very new horrors. As we've seen across these last two episodes,

the spirit of online terror is alive and well. With a little luck, we'll have Ambrose back sometime soon, hopefully to deliver more threatening forms that have crawled straight out of the uncanny valley. My thanks to Ambrose Ibson for the stories these last two

weeks, and as always, thanks to you, fine listeners for joining me. I'll be back with a fresh

cut of horror hill for you next week, so be sure to tune back in. Until that time, stay spooky. You've been listening to the horror hill podcast, a production of chilling entertainment and the creative team at Chillin Tales for Dark Nights. Tonight's episode was hosted, narrated, scored, and finalized by yours truly, Eric Peabody, additional music by Nicky Mixorley. Got a terrifying tale of your own that you'd like

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