Deer God

A man looking for answers about his daughter's disappearance finds all the help he needs in the forest. 

Transcript

Things had gone from annoying, to weird to life-threatening all in the span of a few weeks with your new roommate Steve. So while you tried to navigate the bureaucracy of getting him out of your house, you moved back into your old family cabin. You try to think of the cabin as your new home. You’re going to be there for at least a month, but it could very well be longer, so you want to get comfortable. And all in all, as far as homes go, it’s not too bad. You’d spent a handful of weekends there as a kid, and you had some fond memories of it. But it’s just so far from everything. From your work, from your friends, from your family. And being so isolated, so alone in the woods is undoubtedly eerie. The walls are less insulated than those of a proper house, and you can hear the forest outside so clearly. The birds during the day, the bugs at night, they might as well be chirping and buzzing and squeaking right next to you. And the longer you’re there the more used to the sounds you grow. But also the more strange things you notice around the cabin. 

Like the way the front door, which is in desperate need of weather stripping, seems to have fresh scratch marks along the bottom sometimes. Or the way you hear the house creaking at night even when the wind is still. Or the way you wake up sometimes, and you swear you can hear breathing near the foot of your bed. But when you gather the courage to look, there’s nothing on the ground  or underneath it. Near the end of your first month there though, on a night you’ve sat outside to stargaze, things get stranger. The moon is full, and you’ve been admiring the night sky for long enough that the chill has seeped into your skin. You’ve lost track of time, but you’re in no hurry to escape the peace of the stars. Suddenly though, a strange sound drags you out of your trance. To your horror, you realize it’s coming from inside the cabin. You creep up to the window, as if you're the thing to be afraid of, and you peer into your bedroom. You see something, fleshy, and gaunt and brown crawling around the foot of your bed. You watch it go in circles like a dog checking for snakes. And then you watch it lay down. But it doesn't touch it’s head down, no it peers out the window at you, like it’s beckoning you to go to sleep already. And looking into it’s strange eyes, the pupils horizontal, you think to yourself “Well, at least it’s better than dealing with fucking Steve.” When you go inside, and cross the threshold to your room, it’s gone. But the dent in the bed is still there. And now alone, but knowing you’re never really alone here, you crawl into bed. And you gently pat the covers where the thing had been, saying goodnight to; The Podcast Inside Your House.

It was the start of summer, six months into my hunt for answers, when I’d walked the paths in Abington woods one too many times to stay anonymous. The hippies who hung out at the start of the forest had seen me around enough that they would no longer tolerate impersonal waves and one-word greetings. 

They pried my name out of me one day. In turn, I learned they were Ronnie and, allegedly, Lilith. But I doubt her parents named her that. 

Ronnie was about my age, perhaps a bit younger. Lilith was still in her twenties and looked exactly like a girl who would decide to call herself Lilith. For a few weeks, I managed to keep them at arm's length. To talk only about things on the surface. To brush them off quickly enough before I departed for my search. Of course, I never called it that to them. I told them I was just hiking. Just getting out often to stay healthy. To keep a routine. 

But when the dreaded day came, the anniversary of the worst day of my life,  they felt they knew me well enough to ask about what was wrong. I’m sure it was obvious that something was. 

I let them pry. 

They hiked along with me for the first time. And as we walked the familiar paths in the warm woods, I told them all about the first time I’d walked these trails. When I’d helped canvas this same forest exactly ten years ago. 

It had been a sunny day when Charlotte vanished. 

And the weather had held for three days afterwards, giving us all hope that the trackers, the bloodhounds, might be able to pick up a trail. When the rain came, our hope started to turn from the bloodhounds to the cadaver dogs. 

Because they could find her too, only in a different state. And even if she were dead, then at least we’d know. 

I told Ronnie and Lilith all about how every hill, every bend in the game trails would give me hope that I’d find the answers I wanted. That each day I became more and more sure we’d find her, what was left of her at least. 

Only when I paused my story did Lilith chime in. “She went to school with my cousin. I remember hearing about her.”

“She’d be about your age now,” I told her. And what I didn’t say was that she reminded me of her, just a bit. But then again, every girl her age did. 

Talking to them always made me wonder what Charlotte would be doing right now if she were still with us. Would she still be in her rebellious years, putting on black lipstick and shacking up with some old hippie in the woods? 

She’d always been flighty, moving from passion to passion, still a few years out from having to make real adult plans. I often pictured her doing all the silly things she said she would as a kid. I’ve imagined her as an astronaut, as a princess. As a wildlife photographer or as an archaeologist. 

I’ve imagined her in other places too, in much darker scenarios. Because we never did find her body. But the idea that she might still be alive somewhere was worse to me than the idea that she was dead. 

And it was this uncertainty. Those things I couldn’t help but imagine late at night that had sent me back to Abington woods. As the ten-year anniversary approached, just a few months ago, I went back to what we’d tried that first week. I went back to searching the woods, hoping against all odds that if I wandered enough, I might finally find what I was looking for. 

I told Ronnie and Lilith, “If I can find her, her body, then I just know I’ll feel so much better. I just need to know what happened, even if it’s bad.” 

Ronnie was mostly silent as I talked, but when he could tell I’d said all I was going to say, he gave me a hug. He was sweaty and smelled like weed and nicotine. But it had been a long time since anyone had hugged me, so I held him close. For longer than I would have had we not been in the forest, free from judgmental eyes. 

By the time I was done telling them about Charlotte, about my search, we were nearly at my destination. Because today wasn’t about searching, it was about remembering. And then it was going to be about forgetting. 

When we got to the clearing, they were already familiar with the spot. They knew what lay underneath. 

“There used to be so many of these around,” Ronnie said. And even though the entrance wasn’t visible from where we stood, he walked ahead of us. He took the lead. 

Lilith and I followed him to the broken-down door of a little underground fort. 

“You’ve been here before?” I asked Ronnie. 

“Not in years, but yeah, I think so. A lot of these look the same-” Ronnie stopped as we stepped underground. “Yeah, no, I remember this one.”

We all paused to take in the scent of earth, to let our eyes adjust. And to study the centrepiece of this strange little fort. 

Tied up against the support beams of the back wall was a deer skeleton. Someone had splayed out its front legs and pulled them apart, tying them up in some kind of mock crucifixion. Its skull was tied upright with more rope. Its body was still held together by bits of mummified flesh and tendon. It was starting to come apart, though. Its left leg had fallen off, and the spine stretched lower and lower every time I visited. 

Ronnie walked up to it. He said, “The guys and I used to come here every now and then. This little fort’s held up better than most of the others. But yeah, when we found this deer, all strung up like this, we stopped.”

“You could have told me about this spot, though.” Lilith said, “This is so cool.” She took out her phone and started taking pictures of the carcass.

At one point in time, this little bunker had had a ceiling. But the skeletal rafters and rotted leaves that covered it now let in more than enough light. And the walls that poked out just a bit above the ground were scarcely in better shape, sagging and warping. 

“Why did they build them underground like this?” I asked Ronnie. “It seems like so much more work.”

“It keeps it warmer in the winter. Underground, you don’t even need a fire.”

This bunker still had a little chimney in one corner, though, built out of rocks and mud. It gave the ruins an odd, comforting quality. 

“So people just lived out here back in the day?” Lilith asked. 

“Yeah, I mean that was more my dad's generation,” Ronnie said. “I’m not that old.” He smiled, and she gave him a quick peck on the cheek to reinforce his alleged youth. 

“You’d get communities like this all over the country. More on the West Coast than here. But Kemper, and Bundy, and Mullin, that wave of serial killers kind of put a damper on the whole thing.”

“From what my old man tells me, though, it was beautiful for a minute there. Just hippies living in the woods. Not worrying about society or work or money. Until the money ran out anyway.”

“You guys are keeping that spirit alive though,” I said. 

“We live in a camper with wifi.” Ronnie replied, “Not exactly roughing it. Not like this.”

We each took our time exploring, then, just for a little bit. Lilith photographed every angle of the deer. Ronnie went to rummage through the wet, mummified books that sat mixed in with the remains of what used to be a shelf. 

I sat in the middle of the floor and studied the walls, the way I had dozens of other times. I’d wondered often if these walls were the last sights Charlotte ever saw. 

We’d searched plenty of these little forts when she vanished. Three had gotten possible hits from the cadaver dogs. This one, though, was only discovered after the rain. So whatever had alerted the dogs had seeped into the earth by then. 

This fort had become a regular haunt on my hikes. Which was why I’d come here tonight. 

“Ronnie, Lilith.” I broke the silence. “I came here to do something a little bit… strange.”

Lilith’s face fell. She’d forgotten what day it was. Why I’d finally let them accompany me. 

“Whatever you need, man,” Ronnie said. “Do you want us to leave?” 

“No,” I said. 

“Do you want us to help?” He asked.

“If you don’t mind.” 

I’d already filled one corner of the shelter with wood and kindling. I started building a nest of small sticks and dried prairie grass. Lilith sat at the ready with her lighter, and Ronnie brought over some of the sticks and small logs. He started cutting some of the wood with an old rusty saw by the fireplace. 

As I built up the small fire, they watched me with the same silent attention they’d given me when I talked about Charlotte’s disappearance. 

When the fire could survive on its own, I unzipped my backpack. I took out the envelope I’d so carefully packed this morning. 

“I don’t have any scrapbooks anymore,” I said, “I made my wife take those. But she gave me all these copies of pictures to hang up, if I wanted. School pictures, vacations, birthdays. And I keep looking through them like I used to look through the scrapbooks. So now I need to get rid of these, too.”

Defensively, before they could ask, I said, “And Lara, my wife. Ex Wife. She’s got copies of everything. So if I need to get rid of these, then that’s okay.”

Ronnie kept his voice neutral. “Why do you need to get rid of them?”

“Because they don’t look like her.” 

“What do you mean?” Asked Lilith. 

“I mean, they just don’t. It’s like when you say a word over and over and over again, and it loses its meaning, you know? It’s like I’m looking at these so much that I’m forgetting what she looked like moving. What she looked like alive. So I need to get rid of them.”

They didn’t say anything to that. But Ronnie put his hand on my shoulder, and Lilith copied him. And together we burned the last pictures I had of my missing daughter.

We waited for the fire to die down in silence. But then the rays of sunlight outside began to match the orange of the coals, and we realized it was getting late. We started our trek back. I didn’t like the idea of being out in the dark. Not in these woods. 

We parted ways at the little clearing they always hung out in. And for once, I spotted lights in the distance; their trailer. They invited me in for a drink, but I just told them “Next time.”

And next time came much sooner than I thought. 

It stormed all week, and I was too exhausted to brave the weather after work. I was finally going to resume my search when the weekend rolled around, and get in some miles no matter the weather. But when Ronnie and Lilith spotted me heading into the woods, they flagged me down. They convinced me to come inside for some tea, just to warm up first. 

Their trailer looked exactly how one would expect the home of some new-age hippies squatting in a state forest to look. The furniture was all mismatched. There were little trinkets and knick-knacks everywhere. And the art on the walls varied from questionable to concerning. There were old salt print photographs of people they couldn't possibly have known. Paintings and art of everything from kittens to demons were scattered around. I suspected Lilith was responsible for much of the decor. 

“We were going to do a ritual tonight.” Lilith said, “If you want to join us. Just to welcome in the summer, set good intentions, all that.”

I studied Lilith’s jewelry a little more closely then, taking in the pentagram, the inverted cross. I wasn’t sure if I believed in God anymore, not in the last decade anyway. But he had been a constant in my life before that. 

But the storm outside was still raging, and I hadn’t heard from the big man upstairs in years. So I figured, why the hell not? 

Once Lilith cleared their messy coffee table and lit their candles, I was sorely disappointed. We held hands, and we put some crystals into water, and Lilith talked about setting her intentions for a peaceful summer. 

Ronnie said he wanted to get that promotion he’d been gunning for at work. Apparently, he did some kind of computer consulting thing. Which harshed the forest hippie mystique just a bit. 

When it was my turn, I said: “I thought you guys were satanists?”

Lilith said, “We are, but not like the theistic kind. We don’t believe in the devil, it’s just a symbol, to stick it to the man, or whatever you old guys say.”

Her lumping me in with her boyfriend as a fellow old guy turned my stomach just a bit. 

“So you never try like, talking to ghosts or summoning demons or anything like that?”

Lilith laughed. There was a smidge of her purple lipstick stuck to her teeth. “When I was a kid, yeah, but I don’t mess with that stuff anymore. I mean, I don’t believe in it anymore either. But why take that chance? Just in case it is real, I wouldn’t want to actually summon a demon or talk to a poltergeist.”

“So you guys don’t believe in God either? You just think there’s nothing out there?”

“Probably,” Ronnie said. “But if there is, I don’t even know if I’d want to know.” Then he asked me, “Are you religious?”

“I was,” I replied. “But nowadays, I don’t know. But I’d like to. To know if there’s something out there, I mean.” 

“If you believe in God, though, don’t you also have to believe the devil is real, too?” Ronnie asked.

“I suppose,” I replied. “But isn’t that better than nothing? If there are gods, or demons, or ghosts, anything really, I’d like to know. I think I’d take some comfort in that. Because maybe it means Charlotte is still out there, in some way.”

“And you want to know, even if it's bad?” Ronnie asked.

“Even if it’s bad.” I said, “It’s got to be better than not knowing.”

“Well, don’t go summoning any demons in our house,” Lilith said, and she touched my arm. “But I do still have a lot of my witchy books I used to collect back when I was a kid.”

I resisted the urge to tell her she was still a kid. 

Ronnie got a phone call and had to jump on his computer for work. That left Lilith to give me a tour of their small home. Which really just meant the bedroom and the bathroom, as I could see everything else from the living room. 

The bedroom was cramped, but cozy, with small bookshelves lining the walls. Lilith showed off her and Ronnie’s books. He had a penchant for classic scifi, and she had lots of Young Adult series, books I recognized that used to sit on Charlotte’s bookshelves. 

Lilith gave me a handful of books on the history of the occult, paganism, and rituals. Ronnie was still wrapped up in work, so when the storm broke, I took my leave and walked back to my car. Walking the trails could wait another day. 

Over the next few weeks, I studied the books Lilith gave me. And I kept up my vigil of hiking Abington Woods every day I had the energy, every day it wasn’t storming. Sometimes Lilith and Ronnie offered to join me, and sometimes I let them. 

We talked a bit deeper, got to know each other better. And when they asked me if I was planning on trying any rituals or talking to any ghosts, I always told them maybe. And I didn’t give them any details. 

On the day I felt I had the best chance of finding what I wanted, I parked somewhere new, where I wouldn’t have to walk past their place. On what would have been Charlotte’s 26th birthday, I made sure I was walking into the woods alone. 

It was a cloudy day, but that did little to curb the blistering heat. I found myself rushing to the bunker, eager to finally try what I’d been thinking about for so long. By the time I got there, I was soaked with sweat. 

Daylight shone through the crumbling fort ceiling in thick beams. I’d always assumed dark rituals like this took place at night, but Lilith’s books had taught me that many entities actually preferred the daytime. 

That felt appropriate somehow. Because it felt in contrast to when I used to find myself calling upon God. Early in the morning, before coffee, sunrise, and obligations. Where the day held potential for anything. Potential for answers. I’d find myself asking God to please give them to me.  

At the end of the day, I’d find myself reaching out once again. When the lights were off, and the choice of nighttime thoughts was either to let my mind drag me to the unending sea of possibilities about Charlotte. Or to take the initiative. To reach out with prayers to something that may or may not be listening. To ask it to just let me know, whatever the answer was. Just let me know what happened to her. 

So I suppose it made sense that the night was God’s domain, and Satan could have the day.

I’d read up on all kinds of different summoning spells. And I’d decided to try a combination of the most common things 

I’d brought every type of fresh herb from the store, except for Sage, of course, I didn’t want to scare anything off. I’d brought candles in red and yellow and black, and I’d bought a frozen rat from the pet store, which had thawed in a ziploc bag on the hot hike here. 

I sat on the dirt floor, much colder than the surface. And I placed the candles in the ashes of the crumbling fireplace. The ashes of my burnt pictures of Charlotte. I lit them all, and I put on rubber gloves. 

I cut open the rat, and the blood leaked out in a sludge. I squished hard and got enough red to paint up a pentagram. Then I placed the herbs and a few fern leaves along the points. 

On the cold ground, I sat and read some words I’d cobbled together. But from what I’d read, the main thing to focus on was my intention. 

I was reaching out to anything and everything that might reach back. 

Once I’d said all the different incantations, all the random Latin words I hoped might work, I sat, and I watched the candle flames.

They burned lower and lower, and I tried to stay focused. And only when I felt myself drifting off, starting to get lethargic from the heat, did something finally reach back to me.

The candle flames dimmed, then stopped altogether, but there was no visible wind to blow them out. The clouds above lifted, and the afternoon sun sent little dapples of light through the remains of the ceiling. And on the back wall, the deer carcass shifted.

Its head, already held aloft, stiffened upwards, straining for more height. The sagging spine straightened out. And the hooves nailed on either side made little circles, as if it were stretching its body after a long nap.

I was terrified, but also in awe. Something had heard my call. Something was out there after all. 

Though I guess now it was in here, with me.

The deer skull shifted side to side, examining its decayed body. Then it tilted its head up. And though the eyes had long since decomposed, I knew that it was looking at me.

It skipped right to the chase.

“What do you want?” The words came from the area of its mouth, legible, clear, and just a little bit strange. But its mouth didn’t move. 

I thought about asking it what it was, what it wanted. But it had the decency not to waste my time, so the least I could do was return the favor.

“I want to know what happened to my daughter. She disappeared in this forest ten years ago. Can you help me with that?”

“I know these woods well.” It said, “I can help you.” Its body shifted ever so slightly as it talked. Moving slowly but full of potential like a crumpled spring. “I can show you what the forest saw.”

I waited for it to tell me what it wanted in exchange. But it let the silence hang between us. 

“What do I need to do?” I asked it. 

“Touch your forehead to mine, and think about her.” The creature said. “And if she died in these woods, I’ll be able to show you.” 

“What’s the catch?” I asked.

“I’m not that kind of demon.” The deer said. 

“Something tells me you wouldn’t tell me if you were.”

And once again, it answered me with silence. It didn't prod me, didn’t encourage me. It let the quiet do the work. And work it did. I’d come this far, hadn’t I?

Heart pounding, I lay my forehead on its skull right between the eyes. And I thought about her, about my little girl. 

I didn’t know what it wanted, so I thought about all the usual things, all the mainstay highlights that ripped my heart open anytime I thought of her. 

Her first steps. 

Her first words. 

Braiding her hair. 

Reading to her at night. 

And of course, the teenage years too. The crying and the yelling and the cringey but endearing phases. The driving lessons we never got to finish. 

As I pictured all of these things, I found myself running into the problem I ran into every time. The more I remembered, the more I overrode the original memories, and the more I forgot. But at least now I didn’t have those damned pictures anymore, to remind me of how distorted my own precious memories were becoming. 

“That’s enough.” The beast’s voice drew me out of my trance. But I didn’t pull away. 

“I’m going to show you what happened.” Its skull pressed closer to me, the leathery bits of flesh sticking to mine. “But it’s very important you watch the whole thing. If you move away from me, if you sever our connection, you’ll be stuck there. Watching that memory, over and over again. Do you understand?”

“I understand.” And I pressed my forehead closer, matching its pressure. I wrapped one arm around the back of its skull, steeling myself for what was about to happen.

The images it showed me flashed in quick succession, mostly high up as if I was seeing things from a literal birds-eye view. Or perhaps from the trees themselves. 

From visions that lasted only seconds or fractions of, I watched as Charlotte ran through the forest. And trailing close behind her was a man. I couldn’t tell much about him, only that he had dark hair and wore a raincoat. 

The view I was watching from flashed forward, leaping from tree to tree along branches or wings or perhaps the wind itself. 

I could see Charlotte’s face, terrified, wet from rain or tears. Maybe both. And each time the perspective shifted, her face was a new picture of agony and fear. 

The view we watched from, the view the demon showed me, slunk lower to the ground. It skittered down the tree trunks, as if we were seeing through the eyes of squirrels and chipmunks, as Charlotte ran for her life. 

Only when I got over the shock of seeing her again, in the way I’d so desperately wanted to, moving and alive, did I look at what was behind her. The man was closing in, his face as wet as hers but only from the rain. 

Though he looked younger, with his hair shorter and his beard grown out more, I recognized him in a fraction of a second. Through the epileptic snapshots of the forest view, I watched Ronnie hunting Charlotte like an animal. 

He caught up to her, and our view grew even lower. From the height of the ferns and the honeysuckle, I watched Ronnie drag my daughter along the path that I knew all too well by now.

As the rain lightened up, he pulled her to the entrance of the bunker. Which was made of shiny new wood back then. 

I watched them descend the stairs, and when they went inside, our vision jumped with them. From the perspectives of the worms and the bugs on the dirt walls, I watched what Ronnie did to my daughter. 

Though I could feel the real world, my flesh pressed flush against the rotting skull, I resisted the urge to go back to it. 

There was no respite through the vision of the things in the dirt. The perspective shifted, but the worms that had seen what had happened did not close their eyes, and so I couldn't either. Time slowed, and I thought for sure I’d messed up, and the demon was going to show me this vision for the rest of my life. The rest of eternity. 

I watched as Ronnie did to Charlotte all those things I’d worried about late at night. When I found myself praying to God for answers that he never gave. 

But this thing had granted me these answers so freely. 

Eventually, when Ronnie was done toying with her, he killed Charlotte, and it was a mercy. 

I watched her draw her last breath. Looking at her face, I felt that same strange feeling I got when I looked through those old photo albums. Like I was looking at her so much that I was forgetting what she looked like. Had her hair been that dark? Hadn’t her freckles been more pronounced? But in that vision, in that moment, perhaps forgetting her face was a mercy. 

The beast kept me in the vision long enough to watch Ronnie drag Charlotte's body through the woods. To watch him build a fire and burn her up. And by the time he was done, the heavy rain had washed him completely clean of blood, 

When the demon released me, I didn’t fall to the ground. I didn’t yell. I didn’t even cry; I simply thanked it and walked out, heading towards my closure. 

The sun overhead had vanished during my vision, and dark clouds now swirled above, dampening the heat. 

When I got to Ronnie and Lilith’s house, I was overjoyed to find Ronnie home alone; it felt like fate. I invited him to walk with me, and though the sky threatened rain, he agreed. He could tell that something was wrong. 

As we walked, I pried more about him and Lilith. I asked him how they met, but I didn’t really listen to the answer. I asked him, “Don’t you feel strange dating a girl half your age?” 

And he said, “Hey man, I live in a trailer in the woods, I can’t exactly be picky.” 

He asked me what was really bothering me, and I told him nothing. Which he knew was a lie, but he didn’t pry. 

Instead, he stopped walking, and he wrapped me up in a hug. I let him, savoring the calm before the storm. Relishing in my own secret knowledge that I knew his secret. The secret he was probably getting off on keeping from me. Helping me to look for my daughter when he knew damn well what had happened to her. 

As we walked to the bunker, I looked to the birds and the branches up high, watching pines and finches and wondering if they were watching me back. I wondered if the God of the forest was silently cheering me on. I stepped past ferns with care, and when I spotted a squirrel skittering down an old maple, I flashed a smile. Letting the wonderful spirit of the woods know just how unbelievably happy it had made me. 

We got to the cabin, and we climbed down into the dirt with the worms. 

I pulled out my pocket knife, and I stabbed Ronnie right in the back. Just deep enough to give me an advantage in the fight. But it never came. 

I slashed at his arms too, and he only ever put them up in defense. And when I started to accuse him of what he did, what I’d seen him do, he only ever denied it. 

On the far wall, the deer watched us intently. And though it said nothing, I knew it was pleased that I was finally enacting justice for the wrongs that had happened in its woods. 

I only had my pocket knife and my lighter. But that was more than enough to enact revenge. To do to Ronnie a fraction of what he’d done to Charlotte. 

And only when he stopped breathing did the deer chime in. 

It told me, “Bring me his head.”

I was more than happy to help my new friend. I picked up the old rusty camp saw from the ground, and regretted that I’d forgotten about it when I was killing Ronnie. 

I sawed through Ronnie’s neck, and I was amazed at how much blood he still had inside him. When I was done, I brought the present to my new God, and I set it in the middle of the pentagram at its hooves. 

I expected it to break free of its binds, but for a beat, nothing happened. Then I heard rustling behind me. I looked back and saw Ronnie’s body standing up on unsteady legs like a newborn fawn. He stepped closer, and I moved to let him pass. 

Ronnie’s body walked up to the deer and put its hands lovingly on its skull. Then with one yank, it severed the head from the weak bonds that held it to the wooden beams. As well as from the tenuous connection it still had to its spine. 

Ronnie’s body placed the deer skull on his bloody stump of a neck. And as if he had lungs that still worked, he let out a satisfied sigh. Then, in the deer's voice, it thanked me, and it walked out. 

And only when I felt the first drops of rain fall through the rotted ceiling did I remember something I’d forgotten when watching the forest God’s vision. Sometimes that hadn’t quite clicked to me as I watched Charlotte die. 

I remembered that it had been a sunny day when Charlotte vanished. 

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Podcast inside your House! To hear every tale of terror as they are released, subscribe to our show on your podcast app or on Youtube or follow us on Instagram, Tumblr and Bluesky. Until next time; remember that the act of remembering itself is entirely subjective.