Beacon Woods

Whatever you do, don’t go into those woods at night.

Photo by Magnus Östberg on Unsplash

Beacon Woods

I.
Last fall, a writer ventured into Beacon Woods at night
Where twisted pines stand guard and the wind blows strange
He swore blue lights pulsed and danced deep inside
Where footprints fade, and the trails seem to shift and change.
For the next three days we searched the brush and tangled vines,
Found nothing but his journal, pages torn—
His final entry: “This is happening by design,
They’re building things of sticks and roots and thorns…”
His wife still waits, safely drenched in the porch light’s glow,
Convinced he’ll stumble home with tales to tell,
But we locals shake our heads because we know
What lurks within that piney hell.
The wise heed warnings learned from tales of fright:
Whatever you do, don’t go into those woods at night.


II.
Lilly Miller claims she saw them in the glade—
Misshapen forms shambling out just at dark,
Not quite like deer, their antlers oddly splayed,
With bodies formed of boughs and leaves and bark.
“Their arms and legs moved wrong,” she said, “They looked obscene,
Like puppets pulled by strings.
Their eyes were made of stone, glowing green,
And when they turned to look, they looked right at me.”
They found her wandering, clothes soaked with dew,
Her camera smashed, its memory card gone.
For weeks her nightmares woke the household, too—
What horrors scuttle through her dreams just before dawn?
The whole town bolts its doors now, because the shadows creep:
Whatever you do in the forest, don’t you dare go to sleep. 


III.
The Henderson twins vanished in July,
Just as the sunset smeared the clouds with blood-red stains.
Their father heard a distant, desperate cry—
Then silence, broken only by the rain.
The search team found odd tracks that led
To nowhere, stopping at a circle in the dirt.
The soil seemed freshly disturbed as if to shed
The evidence that something, or someone had been hurt.
One brother stumbled back three days from then,
His speech confused, his eyes glassy and wide.
He told us how the forest tried to mend
Its broken children—and how one had died.
What remains of his mind is forever marked:
Whatever you do, don’t go in there after dark.


IV.
Old Reverend Mark believed the warnings were lies
Led prayer walks through the forest by day,
Till dusk finally caught his flock by surprise,
The hungry shadows watching them like prey.
The things that attacked seemed almost men—
Crude mimicries of human forms and faces,
With fingers made of twigs, mouths wide open
Bodies of wood moving with hideous grace.
Blue lights descended like unholy stars,
Illuminating horrors of wood and stone.
Three parishioners still carry physical and mental scars;
Five others disappeared, their fates unknown.
Mark’s church sits empty now, its thankful hymns unsung:
If night catches you near those woods, you’d better run.


V.
The forest watches with a skulking predator’s eye,
Its awareness diffused through the roots and soil,
Each tree a soldier, each stone a spy
Sensing those who would make its realm their spoil.
The rangers found strange effigies in the springtime–
Roughly carved forms mimicking human faces,
With skulls of stone and sinews made of vines
Like practice for the bodies the forest is making.
Some say the lights are old forest spirits,
While others claim they’re the result of our sins,
But we all stay away–none of us go near it–
The boundaries between our worlds are too thin.
So heed the warnings painted in blood on bark:
Whatever you do, get out of those woods by dark.

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Sean Downing, poet, musician, teaches high school English and Theater Arts in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. He can often be found in his woodshop, coaxing music from odd scraps of junk, or haunting the trout streams around southwest Colorado. If you see him, don’t tell anyone: they’re probably looking to get an honest day’s work out of him.

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