This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/AshedAshley on 2023-06-26 23:04:10+00:00.

I’ve never really been much of an outdoors person. In fact, I’ve always kinda hated it. My parents were always worried that I wasn’t spending enough time outside, and was spending too much time playing video games. I understood where they were coming from, and I knew they were looking out for me, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t find something that I enjoyed.

That’s why they were so happy when I joined the Cub Scouts.

I mostly joined because of my best friend in second grade, but he eventually left when he switched schools. Part of me wanted to quit then and there, but for some reason, I didn’t. By the time I advanced from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts, the only kids in my age group were myself and one other kid I didn’t know too well. The only other friends I had were still a grade below me in Cub Scouts, so I felt more alone than ever.

As the year went on, it became clear to me that I wasn’t enjoying it at all. I talked about it with my parents, but they encouraged me to at least stick it through to the start of the next school year in September. Reluctantly, I agreed. From then on, I was mostly just coasting my way though it, but everything changed when I heard it for the first time:

Camp Tomahawk.

Before I even knew it, I was hundreds of miles from home in the middle of the woods for a week straight. At the time, I got homesick incredibly easy. I could barely sleep over at a friend’s house without crying, and the first night at Tomahawk was no exception. I went to the Scoutmaster with tears in my eyes, asking if I could be picked up early. Instead, he smiled and walked me down to the small lake not too far from our campsite. He told me to close my eyes and listen to the lake. The sound of the waves gently lapping against the shore, the gentle breeze that rustled the pines, it all put me at ease. But I think what ultimately calmed me down enough to power through the week was the solitary wail of a loon, echoing across the lake.

From then on, that lake became my sanctuary. I’d there at least once a day when I was feeling anxious and just sit there, letting the sounds wash over me like the waves and take my worries with them back out with them. Oddly enough, though, I never heard the loon again, which was strange to me because in my experience, loons are great at making themselves heard. But this was something I never actually noticed until the last day.

By that point, my anxiety was much better, and I would even go as far as to say that I had fun that week. As the sun began to set on our last day, I decided to go back down to the lake to see it one last time for old time’s sake. An orange hue blanketed the rippling water as the sun disappeared behind the horizon, and then I heard it- the single cry of a loon.

I didn’t know this until well after the fact, when I was researching loons as I way to scare myself- as I had done with snakes many times before- but the iconic cry of a loon we’re all so familiar with is actually their way of communicating with their mate over long distances. Looking back, I think that only makes this worse to remember.

I was just about to head back when suddenly, I heard another cry- only, this one was different. Right away, it gave me goosebumps because of how wrong it sounded. It was almost like a recording being played in reverse. The cry seemed to have originated from near a small point off the shore a short walk away, so, acting entirely on curiosity, I went to look.

As I walked along the shore, the last light from the sun vanished, but there were no stars in the night sky, and only a sliver of the moon was visible. The wind also began to pick up as a I got closer. Even as I made various turns and bends along the shore, it always blew directly into my face, as if the forest itself was trying to turn me around. I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard the reversed loon call again, much louder, and much closer. My heart felt like it was trying to break out of my ribcage, and my brain was practically screaming at me to turn around, but my body was on autopilot now, and it didn’t stop until I nearly dripped over the lifeless body of a loon.

At first, I couldn’t tell why it died. It looked fine- no signs of any sickness or wounds. Or rather, it did until I kneeled down next to it. Only then, did I see that its beak was covered in blood. As I looked closer, I realized the entire inside of its beak and as far down the throat as I could look was ravaged by… something.

Then, I heard a splash, followed by the sound of heavy rustling in the leaves not far away. I dropped to the ground out of instinct, and then, I saw a shape running through the brush before it stopped just a few yards away from me. I immediately recognized the laser-focused red eyes of a loon- only these eyes were much higher off the ground and attached to something far more sinister. I didn’t get a very good view of the thing, but what I did see was burned into my brain for the rest of my life. It was big- for a loon, at least- probably around 4 feet tall. It grabbed hold of a tree with some sort of deformed and twisted cross between a wing and a hand, and it slowly turned its head until its piercing red eyes were staring right at me.

Every fiber of my being told me that I was living my final moments. The thing stood there and opened its beak, revealing sharp and jagged teeth. As it stared me dead in the eye, beak wide open. It made that same reversed wail, and then it made a sudden jolt. I flinched, closing my eyes with the fear that this was it, but when nothing happened, I opened my eyes to see that it was gone. I wasn’t taking any chances after that. I sprinted back to the campsite as fast as my legs would take me.

When I made it back to my original resting place on the shore, a few yards away from the campsite, I paused to catch my breath. That’s when I heard it. Far off in the distance, opposite of the direction I had gone, I heard the return cry in reverse of a loon.