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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/greydeus on 2024-09-17 07:53:14+00:00.

I realize now this is all his fault. He made that thing. If you’re reading this, stay out of the woods in Australia. It could still be out there, and it’s smart.

This all started about a month ago. I was startled awake from my couch.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Who the hell is all the way out here banging on my door this early?

I grumbled as I approached my front door and gazed through the peephole. Sure enough, there was a middle-aged man, balding with a wrinkled forehead and not very tall. He noticed the peephole and gave me a wide smile.

Well, this guy isn’t creepy at all; might as well see what he wants. I opened the door, and the man greeted me.

“Hey there! I just moved in across the street… just wanted to say hello. I’m Tulio.” His aged expression shifted to a grin.

Annoyed but not wanting to be disrespectful, I greeted him back. “Nice to meet you. Name’s Ned.” Hiding behind him, I noticed a little girl.

“Come now, don’t be rude. Ned is our new neighbor,” Tulio said. “Say hello.”

“Hello…” the girl muttered, then more clearly this time, looked up at me and said, “I’m Olivia.”

I smiled. My wife and I were expecting to have a little girl. Olivia’s brown hair and eyes reminded me of my wife’s—a beautiful shade of orange-brown like that of autumn leaves. I scratched the back of my head and greeted her as well. “It’s nice to meet you, Olivia.”

I glanced at the house across the street behind them; nobody had lived there for years. My house is in the middle of nowhere, and the other closest house is the one right across the long road that stretches for dozens of miles out of the woods. A strange place to put two random houses, I know. But apart from the terrible phone service and internet, for me, it was perfect.

“If you don’t mind me asking… uh, Tulio, was it? What brings you around here?”

The corners of his grin shifted down slightly. “Well… the city life gets kind of overwhelming, you know? Besides, they need some space too.” He pointed at the van parked beside the road. “I know. Let me introduce you.”

I raised an eyebrow at Tulio. “Don’t worry, haha, it’s nothing strange,” he said, noticing my suspicion. My curiosity piqued, I followed him and his daughter down the driveway leading to my front door and onto the pavement to the back of the van. “They must have grown tired of staying in here by now,” he stated as he opened the doors to the van.

My eyes widened. Inside the van were all sorts of birds: parrots, peacocks, many that I’d never seen before. Tulio gave me a pat on the back and smiled. “Beautiful, aren’t they? These guys are my whole life… I’m an ornithologist, you see.”

“Ah, that explains all these birds then. I’m guessing you couldn’t keep all of these back where you lived, right?”

Tulio’s dark brown eyes looked down for a bit as if contemplating his next words. “Yes, something like that.”

I looked back at the birds. They really were beautiful; all of them had vibrant colors, and there were species I’d never seen before. One of them, however, caught my eye. I’d read about them in a book back in middle school. It was a lyrebird, “nature’s greatest mimic,” I thought out loud.

“I see you noticed,” Tulio said as he climbed into the van and took out the caged lyrebird. “This one is special to me, you see… she was my wife’s favorite as well.” I noticed Tulio’s expression changed to one of melancholy.

“Your wife… where is she now?”

“She passed away not too long ago,” Tulio looked down at the cage of the bird he was holding, his gentle grasp tightening ever so slightly on the wooden handle. “This bird has been with us for many years. It’s all I have left to remember her by. But I like to believe my wife’s closer to us than you’d think.”

There was silence between us for a bit, I knew the feeling he had all too well. I opened my mouth to try and break the silence with some words of comfort when the sound of a woman’s soft voice stopped me.

“Tulio… I love youuu,” sang the lyrebird. It was a gentle voice; even when replicated by a bird, it could give you a sense of ease. I looked down at the bird, its beady brown eyes staring back with intelligence I didn’t think possible of an animal, and then I looked back at Tulio. I could see his eyes begin to dampen with tears, his surprised expression shifting to a grimace as he held them back.

Feeling a bit guilty about what had just happened, I racked my brain for anything I could say. “Wow, that bird’s super cool. You’re super lucky to have something like this; it’s like a living recording of your wife, right?” I stammered.

Immediately, I regretted my words. I’m a dumbass; that was the worst thing I could’ve said. In what world is he lucky? For crying out loud, I should have been able to sympathize with the guy, and this is the best I could say?

But before I could apologize, Tulio flashed me a smile and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his sweater. “You’re right; this little one is a blessing… it’s the reason I’m able to see her again after all.”

In hindsight, that was a strange thing to say, but I was too busy feeling relieved he didn’t take my words of “comfort” the wrong way to notice the grim meaning behind his previous statements.

Regaining his composure, Tulio spoke, “Now, me and Olivia could use some help bringing these guys inside, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” I replied.

Tulio led the way to his house with Olivia following close behind him and then opened the front door. Inside, I was surprised to find that the house was already furnished, and not so surprised to find that everything was painted in a fine layer of dust. Aside from this, the only furniture of note was a large bookshelf and a portrait depicting a white-haired woman, clutching in her hand a long slender blade.

The portrait was beautiful, and as for the bookshelf, its contents were a little odd—books about biology and human anatomy, as well as bird anatomy. A couple, however, caught my eye—strange books about rituals and others about alchemical sciences. I took out another book that seemed the most normal. It read ‘‘Hiding in Plain Sight’’ by Susan Lewis. Disinterested, I placed the book back on the shelf and resigned from inspecting it further.

But then something else caught my eye. A small picture frame on a table by the bookshelf—there was something familiar about it. After looking at it for a while longer, I realized it was a picture of a young Tulio and a woman with long brown hair like that of autumn leaves. Why would he lie about just having moved here? Well, technically he never claimed to have not lived here, but something’s off, I thought.

I decided to stay quiet about it and turned to face Tulio, who was admiring some of his “new” free furniture.

“Lucky me,” Tulio laughed. “Must be from the folks who lived here. Too lazy to move stuff out, huh? Saves me some money.”

“Looks like it,” I replied.

Olivia ran up the dusty wooden stairs, yelling enthusiastically, “I’m gonna look at the rooms, Dad!”

“Okay, but be careful!” Tulio yelled back.

Together, we made our way back to the van and began to bring all the birds inside the spacious living room of Tulio’s house. But when I was picking up the cage of a large parrot, I stopped to look at something. I put down the cage and got closer to the front of the van, where I saw a large bag leaning up against the wall of the van… in the shape of a human body. A strange smell was coming from it.

My heart sank, and a million thoughts raced through my mind in the span of a second. But my rushing thoughts stopped when I heard the sound of footsteps coming up to the rear of the van.

Tulio’s once gentle and aged voice, now sounding cold and empty, called out to me, “Ned, you’ve been taking a while. Everything alright? That parrot should be the last one.”

Deciding the best course of action was to act normal, I stammered, “Y-yeah, sorry, just having some trouble carrying the cage.”

“Oh yeah, that one doesn’t have a handle, huh? Sorry about that.”

I carried the bird past Tulio, his small and unassuming figure now looking much larger in my eyes. Inside the house, I placed the cage down, and then my thoughts once again began to race. That bag could have been anything, but why was it shaped that way? Could this guy really be a murderer? What about his daughter? Does she know about this? When he comes back, what should I do?

The noise in my head was forced to quiet once again as I noticed Tulio returning, and to my horror, over one of his shoulders was the large bag. Act cool. He settled the bag down near the front door. I could feel a cold sweat running down my neck, and stupid as it may have been, I spoke.

“H-hey, uh… just out of curiosity, what’s in that bag?” I pointed towards the large bag he had just set down on the floor. Good going, dumbass, you just asked the now potential murderer about his painfully obvious victim. No way this could go wrong, huh?

“Oh, this?” Tulio looked down at the bag. A pit formed in my stomach as he pulled out a pocketknife from his back pocket. I watched in silence as he sliced open the top of the bag and reached his hand inside, showing me the contents. Seeds. The bag was full of bird feed.

I felt a wave of relief as my tensed body began to finally relax. Tulio put the knife back in his pocket and then approached me. He patted me on the shoulder and said, “Thanks for the help, Ned. My back has been killing me, you know, haha… I’m gonna go ahead and get the birds situated.”

 I let out a n…

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