ARC II — Terror in the Woods

  The first reports came from hunters.

  They found the deer in a clearing near an old logging trail. The animal had been opened from throat to belly. The cuts were clean, almost deliberate, but nothing had been eaten. The meat was untouched.

  At first the rangers blamed wolves.

  Wolves had returned to the region years earlier, and farmers were always ready to blame them for anything that died out there.

  But wolves eat.

  They tear.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  They scatter bone and hide across the ground.

  This was different.

  More animals appeared over the following weeks.

  A black bear cub.

  Two coyotes.

  A hunting dog that had wandered too far from its owner.

  All opened the same way.

  None eaten.

  Campers began reporting strange sounds at night.

  Something moving outside their tents.

  Heavy steps in the dark.

  Too large for deer.

  Too deliberate for bear.

  Most of the reports were dismissed as frightened campers mishearing ordinary sounds in the dark.

  Until the first hiker failed to return.

  Search teams combed the area for three days before finding his backpack near a dry creek bed. The straps had been cut clean through, as if by a blade.

  No body was found.

  Then a second person vanished.

  Weeks later, a third.

  By the time the case reached the Church, the rangers had already searched hundreds of miles of wilderness.

  They had traps.

  They had rifles.

  They had dogs.

  None of it explained what they were finding out there.

  Because whatever was killing the animals was not eating them.

  And whatever was taking people was leaving almost nothing behind.