No One Should Be in the Woods - Poem

No One Should Be in the Woods

Branches snapped behind her.

Not twigs—branches. Thick ones. Loud, like the forest was being torn apart as something too big moved too fast.

Alicia didn’t dare look back.

Her lungs burned. Mud caked her jeans, and her boots slipped on the moss-slick ground. She didn’t care. She kept running, ducking beneath low limbs, hurdling over rotting logs, sprinting blindly deeper into the woods.

The moon offered little light. Clouds swallowed most of it. The trail had vanished behind her long ago, and her phone had no signal. It was just her now—her, the trees, and whatever was following her.

It hadn’t spoken.

It hadn’t howled.

It just… chased.

She had first seen it back at the old campground.

She and her friends had found it earlier that day—what was left of it. Empty cabins. Torn tents. Burned-out firepits. No signs of recent visitors. Not even footprints in the dirt.

Except for the ones leading into the woods.

Only Alicia had noticed those.

Her friends had laughed. Told her she was being paranoid. “We’re the first people to stumble onto this place in years,” they said.

Then the sun went down.

And it started.

The first scream came from Ellie’s tent. When they unzipped it, she was gone. No sound of running. No trail of broken branches. Just her sleeping bag, still warm.

Then Mason vanished. One minute he was building a fire. The next, his flashlight lay flickering in the dirt.

Now Alicia was the only one left.

And it was still chasing her.

She tried to think—to reason. It didn’t kill loudly. It didn’t roar or snarl. It didn’t make noise at all. It just… took. Like a shadow that could touch you.

Something flashed in her peripheral vision.

She screamed and turned—too fast. Her ankle twisted. She tumbled down a small ridge, hit the ground hard, and bit her tongue. Blood filled her mouth.

She scrambled up, ignoring the pain, limping forward. Trees blurred around her. Her breath came in ragged gasps. Her flashlight was gone. Her phone cracked somewhere along the fall.

But up ahead—through the thicket—she saw something.

A light.

Faint, but real.

A cabin?

She didn’t question it. She bolted toward it, legs shaking, heart roaring. The light grew brighter. She burst through the trees and found—

A shack. Old. Rotten. Leaning sideways. But inside, a lantern glowed.

She stumbled in, slamming the door behind her. She dropped the wooden beam into the slot—locked it. Then fell to her knees, crying.

Safe. Just for now.

She turned around.

And her breath caught.

The lantern hung from the ceiling… but it wasn’t flickering.

Not real flame.

It was a flashlight. Her flashlight.

The same one Mason had dropped.

Then she saw it—her phone, sitting neatly on a small wooden table. No cracks.

And on the far wall…

Four sleeping bags.

All zipped up.

Neatly arranged.

Identical to hers and her friends’.

Alicia took one slow step back toward the door.

A breath brushed her ear.

And a voice, low and terrible, whispered:

“You made it home.”

The door behind her swung open on its own.

She didn’t scream.

She couldn’t.