The Land Remembers: A Chilling Folk Horror Short Story by Ari Mnemonic

Journal of Harlan Montgomery

October the 16th, 1882

God help me, I saw its face tonight.

Not a man, nor beast, but a shifting thing of bone and smoke-its eyes like lanterns buried in soot, flickering red in the dark. It stood just beyond the firelight, grinning with a mouth far too wide as if the forest itself had learned to smile.

The old folk in town warned me, but I, in my pride, thought myself beyond superstition. “That land ain’t yours to tame,” old Miska Crow said, his one good eye fogged with age and fear. “The woods remember.” I thought him drunk. Now I pray his warnings were wrong, but deep in my marrow, I know they were not.

This is no ordinary predator stalking my land. It mocks me. Hunts me not for hunger but for sport. Each night it draws nearer, changing shape, whispering my name in voices that are mine but twisted. Last eve it wore the form of my late father, standing silent by the well until the sun broke. I dared not look at its feet, lest they float above the earth, as I feared they might.

My hands tremble as I write. I’ve barred the doors, sealed the windows, and stoked the fire thrice over. Still, I know the thing will come. It always does.

They say the native tribes fled these woods long before white men ever drew maps of them. Not from war, nor drought, but because something walks here that should not. They buried its name in blood and earth, and we, the arrogant, tilled that soil and built cabins atop graves.

Now I am left with the price.

I’ve not slept proper in days. My dreams bleed into waking hours, and I scarce know what is real. There is a stench that follows it, wet iron and rotted things. No matter how tight the shutters, that smell creeps in. It lingers in the walls, in my hair, in my teeth.

I could make for town, but the woods are thick and cruel, and I fear it waits for me to run. It wants the chase. It thrives on fear. I see it in the trees when I blink. I hear its rasping breath in the floorboards. It is everywhere and nowhere. A curse not bound by flesh, but by the very land beneath me.

If I do not survive this night, let this journal be a warning:

There is something in the wild that remembers the old ways.

It does not forgive trespass.

It does not forget blood.

And it is very, very patient.

-H. Montgomery

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Journal of Harlan Montgomery

October the 17th, 1882

The sun did rise, but brought with it no comfort. I sat with my rifle across my lap 'til dawn, staring at the front door, certain the handle would turn. It never did. The beast did not come inside,but it wanted me to know it could.

I stepped out this morning to fetch water, and what I found froze me in place: prints. Not of man, nor bear, but some cursed imitation of both. Four-toed, elongated, and sunken deep into the earth, as though the creature weighed thrice what any man might. They circled the cabin twice, then vanished into the brush, mid-step. No trail. No pattern. As if it rose into the air and drifted away.

There were more signs, carvings in the bark of trees near the eastern edge of my land. Not made by knife or tool, but claw. Long gouges forming crude symbols I do not understand. They hum when I near them, not with sound, but in my bones. My head aches near them. My blood pulses wrong.

I tried to sketch one into the margins here, but my hand refused to draw it true. My fingers locked as though seized by some invisible force, and my breath caught in my throat. I dropped the pencil and wept without knowing why.

God help me, I found my own name etched into the cabin door. Not with my hand.

It grows bolder.

I caught sight of it again at dusk, standing where the treeline begins, limbs too long, body hunched and twitching as if it were unraveling and stitching itself together all at once. I fired a shot. Useless. It did not flinch. It only turned, slowly, and vanished into the trees, like mist caught in a breath.

I have begun to question my senses. The shadows whisper now, not words, not truly, but emotions. Dread. Hunger. Amusement. The kind of mirth a cat feels watching a trapped mouse tire itself out.

It knows me. It plays with me.

I am not ill in the head. I have seen what I have seen. My blood is clean, my mind sound, but there is no reason left to trust the world as it was. Not here.

I still have not left. Not because I am brave. Because I am certain the moment I set foot on the trail to town, it will run beside me in the brush. And this time, it will not wait.

I heard a child’s laughter near the back window not an hour past.

I have never had children.

-H. Montgomery

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Journal of Harlan Montgomery

October the 18th, 1882

The nights have grown longer, though the calendar insists otherwise. Darkness falls before its time, and the sky holds no stars,only a vast, black void like the heavens themselves have turned their face from this place.

I dared not sleep. Each time my eyes closed, I saw it behind them, closer than before. I feel it now even in the day, like a splinter beneath the skin of the world. The birds no longer sing. The squirrels have gone silent. Even the insects have fled or perished. The forest around me is not merely quiet, it is listening.

This morning, I found my boots filled with blood.

Not fresh. Not warm. Old, blackened blood, sticky and congealed. No trail. No signs of struggle. I dared not check the well again. The thought of peering into its depth terrifies me more than the woods, and that is saying something.

And then,the voices.

All through the night, it called from every direction. Not just my name this time, but the names of those long dead, my mother, my brother, even a girl I once courted before the war. The voices were perfect. Not imitation, not mimicry, them, as I remembered them. Too perfect. That’s how I knew it was the beast.

I covered my ears and still heard it. A chorus of the dead, begging me to come out. Telling me it was safe. That the curse was not real. That the stories were lies.

But I know lies. And I know when something is wearing truth like a mask.

I’m beginning to think the creature does not merely haunt the land, it feeds on the soul, on fear, on remembrance. My thoughts feel like they are not my own anymore. I caught myself humming a lullaby I have not heard since I was a babe,and when I stopped, I heard it echo back from the treeline.

Exactly. In. Step.

It is not just outside now.

It has found a way in.

The floorboards near the hearth creak even when I do not move. The mirror over the wash basin shows me things my eyes do not see, glimpses of movement behind me, things too fast to catch but too real to deny.

There are scratch marks on the inside of the pantry door.

I never put anything in there but tins and jerky.

Something was trying to get out.

I nailed it shut.

I will not last many more nights. But I will not flee. Let the creature come. Let it show its true face.

Let the land have me, if it must.

But I’ll not be taken easily.

-H. Montgomery

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Journal of Harlan Montgomery

October the 19th, 1882

This may be my final entry.

The boundary has broken. The threshold is no longer sacred.

It began with the fire. I stoked it through the night, as always,but sometime near midnight, the flames turned blue. No wind. No draft. Just cold, licking firelight that gave no warmth. The shadows danced against the walls like things with weight and will, writhing in ways no light should bend.

Then came the knocking.

Not on the door. Beneath the floor. Slow at first. A single knock. Then two. Then four in quick succession, like impatient hands trapped in a coffin. I dared not move. Dared not breathe. It knew I was there, frozen in my chair by the hearth. My rifle lay across my lap, but I tell you now, I could’ve had a cannon in my arms, and still I’d have felt naked before that sound.

And then the knocking stopped, and the whispering began.

It came from every wall at once. Soft. Wet. Words in no tongue I know, yet my mind somehow understood. “You were warned.” “You did not listen.” “The land remembers.”

The door to the pantry, the one I’d nailed shut, exploded outward. Not opened. Burst, as though from something long buried clawing free. Dust and rusted nails rained like hail. And out it came.

Not walking. Not crawling. Unfolding.

It was many things at once, fur and bone, antlers and human hands, a grin that stretched from cheek to ear, filled with needle-teeth. Its eyes were fireflies sunk in pitch, blinking one after another across its face, *too many eyes, too many mouths*. And all of them smiling.

It spoke, but not with a voice. With memory. It showed me my first sin, my first lie, the moment I turned away from faith, the time I struck a dog in anger and laughed. It poured my shame into the room like smoke. I choked on it.

I fired. Once. Twice. Thrice.

The shots disappeared into its form, like pebbles thrown in a lake. It did not bleed. It only laughed, a rattling, choking, childlike giggle that made bile rise in my throat.

It crept close, and the cabin, my sanctuary, began to rot. The wood turned black and pulpy beneath its steps. Mold bloomed on every surface, and the windows cracked, not from force, but fear. Even the house knew it had lost.

I fled to the loft, where I now sit, scribbling by the dying blue glow of the hearth. It has not followed yet. It is waiting. It knows I will come down. It always knew.

I see now that this was never my land to claim. I built atop bones. I hunted what was sacred. I laughed at the old ways and mocked the spirits.

And now, they have sent it.

I leave this journal behind not as a warning, but as confession.

I was cursed not by the natives… but by my own arrogance.

And the wilderness, the old wilderness, has come to collect.

-Harlan Montgomery

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Epilogue

Found Among the Ashes - May 2nd, 1904

By Deputy Elias Granger, Thompson’s Hollow Township

They said the Montgomery place was cursed, but I didn’t believe in such things. Superstitions, old wives' tales passed down to keep children out of the woods. I laughed at them, right up until I laid eyes on the ruins.

What remains of the cabin stands like the charred ribcage of some great beast. Blackened timbers jut from the earth, warped and twisted, as if burned from within. No sign of a storm. No lightning strike. Just, ash, deep and cold, as though the fire had died years ago, yet never truly stopped smoldering beneath the soil.

I came looking for Harlan Montgomery. His kin back East sent word he hadn’t been seen nor heard from in over two decades. When I arrived, I found only silence and a strange stillness in the trees, as if the entire forest were holding its breath.

Near what once might’ve been a loft, I found a rusted lantern and, beneath it, this journal—half-buried in soot, yet untouched by flame. Pages yellowed, but not a word lost. I read them all. Every entry.

The last page ended with ink scratched in desperation, dried with what I fear was more than sweat.

There were no bones. No remains. No sign a man had ever lived there.

Yet surrounding the ruins, carved deep into the trees, were symbols, old, raw, and angry. I could not look at them long. My head throbbed. My skin crawled.

I left before the sun set. I do not intend to return.

The township has since declared the land unfit for claim. No one ventures near it. Hunters avoid the ridge. Locals cross themselves when they speak of “Montgomery’s Hollow.” And on certain nights, they say you can still hear a child laughing in the trees, followed by something that isn’t a child laughing back.

I do not know what happened to Harlan Montgomery. But I know this: something lives in those woods that no man should ever disturb.

If you find this account, heed these words-

The land remembers.

And it does not forgive.

-Deputy Granger