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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/HistoryCurious234 on 2024-09-15 22:51:53+00:00.

I don’t know where to start. I live on my family’s 250-acre property. Being a farm, it’s pretty open with rolling fields surrounding my home, except to the left of my house where there’s a small 2-acre woods. It took me a while to check it out, even though growing up I was always running through the woods wherever we lived, since this particular woods so thick I never spent much time in it. But one day I decided to explore, I grabbed my machete, knowing it would be a slow trek cutting down various plants and vines out of my way. I had made a complete circle around the outside of the woods instead of going through the center, which was full of vines and poison ivy. I had almost made it back to my starting point until I was stopped in my tracks. Sitting in front of me in a small clearing was an old, dirty mattress. I remember audibly saying, “What the fuck?” when I got close enough to see. Even worse, next to the mattress were two things: an old stuffed rabbit doll and a bowl full of water. While it obviously creeped me out being in the woods alone, with nothing but a now dull machete from hacking down various plants, eventually my curiosity got the better of me. I got closer and closer, almost chuckling at my reaction to what, albeit creepy, looked abandoned.

Still something seemed off, and I could feel a pit growing in my stomach. That’s when I looked up. I had been so focused on the mattress itself that I didn’t even notice it was pointed directly towards my house. The weeds in front of the mattress had been lightly trimmed—not enough to notice any difference against the thick backdrop of the woods, but just enough to see my home. I was feeling uneasy and decided it best not to dwell on it too long. “Probably just a spot some teenagers used to hang out on an old mattress,” I thought to myself, no doubt trying to ignore the multitude of questions flowing through my mind. Why would someone clear the weeds to have a direct view of my house? Why wouldn’t someone throw the mattress away? Why put it in the woods right off the edge? All these questions were an obvious distraction to the thought that was slowly growing on my subconscious: Is someone watching me?

By the time I got back to my house, I was almost laughing at myself for the stupidity of it. You really think you’re interesting enough for someone to watch you? What are the chances someone is actually watching me? Eventually, the mattress fully left my mind while I got distracted watching TV. Still, I never felt completely comfortable knowing there that old, dirty mattress was just sitting in the woods next to my home. Every day when I got home from work, I would look towards the woods in passing, and each time I passed by, I got an almost uneasy feeling. Being on a farm in the middle of nowhere, it’s almost pitch black at night except for the light on my front porch that was turned on by a motion sensor that you had to get pretty close to for it to turn on. One night, while getting home from work pretty late, I got out of my truck and grabbed my keys to lock it. That’s when I saw it. As my headlights illuminated the woods in front of me for a split second, two dots reflected back towards me. They almost looked like eyes, but were too big and spread apart to be a person’s eyes, and I convinced myself that I had been seeing things. When I tried clicking the lock button again, my headlights illuminated the woods once more, and I saw nothing. I went inside, feeling a little better, letting the thought slowly float away from my mind. If only I had known what I know now, maybe I wouldn’t have been so calm.

I should’ve called the cops, but can you blame me? If there really was someone there, they would’ve no doubt been gone the moment they saw a cop car pull up, and all that would’ve been found was an old mattress in the woods. While certainly creepy, I doubt the police would’ve given any serious thought to it. I should’ve done something—anything—because no matter how much I tried, I still couldn’t get the idea out of my head: someone was watching me from the woods, but I would never be able to confirm it. The moment I would go to investigate, the person could’ve run upon seeing me coming. I wish I would’ve thought of something, but I tried my best to just ignore it.

A few months had passed, and the idea that someone was watching me  had escaped my mind. At some point, my friend Ryan, who had been living with me, decided to make a dirt bike track through the woods. I showed him the mattress one day while we were walking through the woods, and he just laughed. For one reason or another, Ryan didn’t share the same feelings I had towards the mattress. We grabbed an old machine from the barn with a bucket on the front and lifted the mattress into it. We took it back to the barn and threw it away in the dumpster. I remember a feeling of relief when we left it in the dumpster.

Ryan slowly worked on the track, going back and forth from the machine to his dirt bike, tweaking every turn, jump, and straightaway until, after a few months, he had finished what actually turned out to be a pretty nice and fun track. Running through the woods, it had a few twists and turns going around trees and clearings he had made with the old tractor. Hearing him ride around on his bike and then the sound of an old diesel engine starting up had grown so familiar to me on the weekends that I would almost forget the sounds were even happening. God, how I miss those sounds.

“Hey, I’m gonna go work on the track. I think I’m almost finished with it. It’s going to be awesome!” Ryan said on another Saturday morning. I had gotten so used to him disappearing into the woods weekend after weekend that it had almost become second nature. So much so that I didn’t even notice as the time rolled around to 11 PM that day; I hadn’t seen Ryan in a while. I didn’t even realize that the noise I had been so accustomed to over the last few weeks was also missing. I stepped outside to a silent, chilly night to check on where Ryan had gone. His truck was still parked next to the house, as were mine and my girlfriend’s vehicles.

The old tractor was still sitting behind the house, just in front of the opening that led into the woods following the track. It looked like a deep, dark abyss with the faint light I could see coming off of the moon. I knew going in there alone at this time of night was the last thing I was going to do. So I resorted to every other option I could think of. I checked the barn where we kept the old tractors and found nothing but a calm breeze and crickets in the night singing. I checked the other houses that were on the property for the people who worked on the farm, hoping he had maybe gone over to one of them. Still, I found no sign of Ryan or his dirt bike. I tried calling his phone a few more times before giving up. After hearing his voicemail one last time, I knew there was only one thing left to do.

So I grabbed the only flashlight I could find, one of those old-style bulb flashlights that was barely bright and made everything have a yellow tint to it. After taking a few more deep breaths and desperately trying to think of any other possible place he could be, I finally made my way towards the deep, dark, almost tunnel-like opening that led into the woods. I walked around the entire layout of the track for what felt like an eternity, even though it had only been 45 minutes. I almost started to feel relieved that I could walk out of this dark, seemingly endless forest and think of another place to find him. Still, I had to look one last time…

As I rounded the third pin turn, something caught my eye. Just past the turn, lying on its side in the weeds, I saw something that looked like plastic and was red in color. My heart dropped when all the ideas ran through my head. What if he’s out there hurt? What if he had been waiting for me for hours with various broken bones? Or worse, what if it was too late? What if one of my best friends died because I was too scared to go out into a small patch of woods right next to the safety of my own home? I pushed the thoughts out of my head while starting to move closer to the bike, hoping I’d find a possibly injured but at least alive friend. What I found, in a weird way, was so much worse.

Lying down on its side was Ryan’s dirt bike, with the same stickers that he had put all over it. But no Ryan. I searched everywhere I could, hoping he had maybe tried to crawl back to the house, but I couldn’t find a single sign of him—not in the woods, not near my home, not anywhere. It was almost like he had vanished. Against my better judgment, I went back into the woods, hoping to find some sort of clue. And while I somewhat found what I was looking for, it didn’t make me feel any better or answer the biggest question going through my mind: Where the hell are you, Ryan?

As I got closer to the bike, it looked seemingly normal; it was dirty, but that was to be expected on something with “dirt” in the name. I tried my best not to move it while searching for clues. I was looking closely at the side facing the ground when I noticed something. Sticking out of the back tire was a small piece of metal. I soon realized it was a nail sticking out of the tire—something that wasn’t unusual on a farm. But then I kept looking. There were maybe 15 or 20 nails all along the back tire—far too many for it to be a coincidence. I checked the fro…

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