The Terror Beyond the Trees (currently being made into a short comic)
By M. Ryan Arnold
There’s a monster in the woods behind my house.
I know how that sounds. Trust me, I didn’t believe it either. I was just a regular guy—suburban homeowner, father of two, certified hater of kids on my lawn—until the night I saw it.
It started, as most suburban nightmares do, with me taking out the trash. The moment I stepped into the backyard, I felt it: that primal awareness that something was watching me.
Then I saw it.
It stood just beyond the treeline, half-hidden in the shadows. We locked eyes—its glowing, blood-red eyes—and for a moment, everything else fell away. I froze mid-toss, trash bag dangling limply in my hand, and it froze mid-stride, like we were reenacting a scene from Predator, but nobody had told me whether I was Schwarzenegger or the guy who dies screaming ten minutes in.
Time didn’t just slow; it slammed to a halt. My brain, overwhelmed, decided to process the encounter by shoving random thoughts to the forefront:
Fear: “What the hell is that?!”
Doubt: “Do we even have bears in Georgia? Wait—are bears nocturnal? Why don’t I know this information?”
Delusion: “I’m a human. Top of the food chain, baby. Whatever this thing is, it should be scared of me!”
Flight: “Nope. Nope nope nope nope.”
After what felt like an eternity (probably ten seconds, max), the beast bolted back into the woods. I, demonstrating the evolutionary pinnacle of human courage, sprinted into the house, slamming the door behind me so hard it rattled the windows.
My wife screamed. “Jesus, what’s wrong with you?!”
“There’s a—there’s a thing out there!” I gasped. “A monster! It had red eyes!”
She stared at me, unblinking. Then she rolled her eyes so hard I swear I heard them scrape the back of her skull. “Right. Sure. A monster.” She went back to scrolling on her phone while I stood there, hyperventilating like I’d just outpaced a psychopath with a chainsaw.
Phase One: Denial, But Make It Obsessive
I didn’t sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the monster’s face. I replayed the encounter on an endless loop, each iteration more absurd than the last:
The creature lunges, tears me apart, and I die clutching a half-empty bag of Cheetos wrappers.
I pull a shotgun from behind the trash can (where I definitely keep one for exact situations like this) and unload both barrels. BOOM! Bye, Bye motherfucker!
The creature strolls over, looks me dead in the eyes, and says, “Name’s Jeff.” As if we were two dudes at a barbecue instead of, you know, me and whatever nightmare had been lurking in my backyard. He hands me an IPA—because of course he does—and we proceed to bond over obscure local breweries, craft beer snobbery, and the way overpriced flights of beer make you feel like you’ve really “tried something.”
By morning, I’d convinced myself it was a bear. Or a very large dog. Or maybe I’d just imagined the whole thing. Perfectly normal. Definitely nothing to worry about.
Except I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Phase Two: Let’s Call It Research
A month later, I was back at the treeline, shouting, “Jeff! It’s okay! I’m not mad! Come on out!”
I didn’t expect anything to happen, which was good, because nothing did. Not a rustle. Not a peep. Just me, standing there like an idiot, yelling into the void like a lunatic. Honestly, if the thing had shown up, I wouldn’t have even known what to do. What’s the protocol for this? Am I supposed to throw rocks? Offer it a sandwich? Do I fight it? Run? I hadn’t even thought past yelling “Jeff” like an insane person in my own backyard. It’s possible I was overestimating my own heroism.
It wasn’t until I found an old newspaper article—The Douglas County Sentinel, August 22, 1986—that things got weird. The headline read: “The Terror Beyond the Trees.”
The story described five kids who’d run screaming out of the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest, claiming they’d seen a monster. Black fur. Glowing red eyes. Local authorities dismissed it as a prank, but the “Terror” became an urban legend.
Now I had a name for it. And also, possibly a mild obsession.
Phase Three: Meet the Locals
He gestured to the empty seat across from him. “Please join me.” I hesitated, my brain throwing up red flags, the silence around us growing heavier with the kind of impending doom you feel right before something’s about to go terribly, terribly wrong. What the hell am I doing? I thought, but slid into the booth anyway, because what else was I going to do? Ignore the thing in the woods? Pretend none of this was happening? At that moment, it was too late for that, and Mike, who looked like he knew too much, was about to make sure I did too.
Mike grinned. “Know about it? Hell, I’ve seen it. But you’re not gonna like what I’ve got to tell you.”
What followed was the single most deranged story I’d ever heard, and I’ve been to a family reunion where my cousin Dave tried to convince everyone that the moon landing was staged by the reptilians who secretly run the government, because “you can see the shadow of their tails if you look close enough.”
Mike Seiber leaned in, his face lighting up with the kind of enthusiasm reserved for people who’ve clearly spent too much time alone on the internet. He started weaving a tale so bizarre, I was half-convinced he was just setting me up for some elaborate prank. But no, this wasn’t a prank. This was the kind of thing you only hear in terrible true-crime documentaries, or when you’re a few too many beers deep and someone says, “Hey, you wanna hear about the time I got lost in the woods and saw something… weird?”
According to Mike, the creature wasn’t a monster at all. He was a man—well, technically a man—named Walter, a drifter who’d been living in the woods for decades like some sort of backwoods Sasquatch with a chronic aversion to soap and reality. The glowing red eyes? Turns out, it wasn’t some kind of demonic curse or alien mutation. No, Mike said Walter had chronic pink eye. A condition so severe that it wasn’t just a matter of rubbing his eyes after a nap; this was the result of years of living in filth.
“You’re telling me I’ve been terrified of a guy with conjunctivitis?”
Mike shrugged. “Legends gotta start somewhere.”
Phase Four: Confrontation (Sort Of)
Armed with this new information, I returned to the woods.
“Walter!” I shouted. “Let’s talk!”
For what felt like an entire lifetime (but was probably more like two minutes), the crickets had a chirping contest to see who could make me shit my pants first. Every little noise was like a drumbeat, the kind you hear in a horror movie just before the thing with glowing eyes rips your face off. Then, out of nowhere, a voice—rougher than a sandpaper dildo—came from the shadows. “You brought snacks?”
Out stepped a wiry man with a beard so thick it could’ve been a habitat for endangered species. His bloodshot eyes gleamed in the moonlight, like he’d just crawled out of a cave after a three-year nap, having spent most of that time arguing with a tree and trying to punch the moon. He looked exactly like the monster from my nightmares—if those nightmares were fueled by a complete disregard for soap and a healthy fear of mirrors. His beard looked like a “broom that’s seen some things,” and I could smell him before I saw him—like wet dog, mildew, and bad decisions.
“You’re Walter?” I asked, still clutching my flashlight like it was a weapon.
“Walter,” he corrected. “But the Terror beyond the trees also works.”
“What the hell have you been doing out here?”
“Living,” he said with a shrug. “People started calling me a monster, so I went with it. Keeps ‘em off my back.”
I stared at him, torn between relief and the overwhelming urge to laugh. “This whole time… you’ve just been some guy?”
“Pretty much. Now, about those snacks?”
Epilogue: The Real Terror
Walter and I struck a deal: I’d bring him food once a week, and he’d stop showing up and scaring the hell out of my kids. This lasted a whole three weeks, which was about as long as any truce with a guy who thinks living in the woods is a lifestyle choice. Then, in a shocking plot twist, Walter got mauled by a bear. Apparently, bears do, in fact, exist in Douglasville, Georgia. Who knew?
I’d like to say I walked away with some life-changing wisdom, but mostly I just walked away with pink eye. Twice.
So, what’s the takeaway here? Simple: the monsters in your head are almost always scarier than the ones in real life. Unless, of course, you live in a place where bears are just another part of the local wildlife, and the real monsters are nature’s way of reminding you to stay inside unless you’re prepared to get mauled while trying to throw out your garbage. And that, my friends, is how I became the world’s leading expert in monsters that don’t exist.
End
M.RYAN ARNOLD 