The Whistlers | Creep Cast

28:26So it's like, why is that? What happens at the end of Ruth's narrative that would cause that to be just a cool, cool way to tell a story. Yeah. October 10th. It hasn't rained for two days. The dead man's jacket is nowhere near warm enough for Ira too big, but we don't have anything else. At least it's waterproof. We hear whistlers every night now, just after sunset. Three or four of them calling back and forth. Bill's convinced they're tracking us. We stack rocks around the fire. Well, it's not hard to track you if you're building a fire every night. Well, that's why I think, well, yeah, I mean, yeah.

29:05I guess that's true. I guess the implication is they're freezing and like Ira, it would like die at night like because he needs a jacket and at least it's waterproof. But it's like Bill's convinced they're tracking us. It's just that we walk a ways and then light a giant flame in the middle of the night. Yeah, how do they keep finding us? These guys are too good. Is there a round of glowing fire? We're following a new game trail now instead of the river. The walking's easier. I didn't think twice about it until last night. Bill leaned forward on his elbows at the fireside while the whistlers seem to be circling us.

29:38What if this isn't a game trail? What if they made this? I don't have the energy to think about that. Simple. We're walking a trail they made. If their nightly whooping is urging us into a trap, we're screwed. Ira curls up in a ball when the whistlers start calling. You rise like someone is sticking in with pins. All he said so far is, Let's go. Interesting. I guess. I mean, I think that they're trying to set up the point that they're, they're tracking him because I feel like in my opinion, or if I had to have a bear trap moment, I think that he, I don't think that bill is a whistler, but I do feel like he's marked somehow or something or Ira or Ira, Ira, my bad.

30:23Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, I think definitely Ira is for sure. He's dead weight and they should probably cut him loose. I would say, but of course that's her husband so she's not going to do that you know till the dire straits I don't know though she's getting good dicking from somebody else named Bill that's you curled up in the tent like you're dying and you're saying about your wife Ruth Ruth what should we be doing this she's like no shut up like okay baby

31:02it's actually just me talking to my wife Allison can I kiss you again she's like no we're divorced sure whatever you say such a fun cat and mouse game we play baby with your wife yeah dear wife Dear, dear, dear wife. This is will they won't they think, huh? October 14th. It's hail today. Hard. We had to take shelter under a tree, and when dark fell, there was no whistles for the first time in a week. The silence was somehow more eerie than the threat of the whistlers. I refelt it too. It was about 15 minutes after dark. He stood up and started whooping and whistling out into the rain. Don't like that.

31:54Screaming in a tone that didn't sound like him. Nope. Okay. Nope. I think you need to shoot Ira. I think you need to get rid of that. You need to pull a little fucking of mice of men on them or whatever the fuck or grapes of wrath, whichever one it is where they shoot the guy at the end. Mice of men. Mice of men. Give him one of those. Give him a rabbit and pull the trigger. That's all I got to say. The thing of the rabbits, Lenny, I think. I like her explanation for it is like. The dark's kind of eerie. I guess Ira feels kind of eerie, too. Yeah. Wow, he sure is scared. Poor kid. I would kill him.

32:38I'd kill him. Who doesn't speak anymore. Just mumbles to himself. Yeah. You want to bark, boy? You want to go out there and start barking? Start whooping? Ira, what is it? Whatever you do, don't fuck Bill. I'll go crazy. Yeah, I don't have problems. Yeah, yeah, yeah, buddy. Uncertainty.

33:07Ira, Ira, please stop it.

33:15Bill's like, oh, did he hear about us fucking? Yeah, Bill, no! And that's when he gets up and like rips out the tent and just dead spreads out into the woods. Yeah, yeah. Bill yelled at him to be quiet, but he acted as if possessed, calling out to them at the top of his lungs with the size rolling back in his head.

33:35Bill tackled over the ground and beat him to shut him up. Stop it, I said at first. But when Ira didn't stop making noise, Bill looked at me and I closed my eyes and nodded. He had to knock Ira cold to get him to be quiet. And he was sobbing while he did it, pleading with Ira to settle down. the wind was sharp and i think it saved us every tree was vibrating and creaking and howling whistlers had likely all retreated to their caves maybe they hibernate maybe they'll leave us alone soon that's such a fucking scary visual of your friend like crying and beating you because he's so scared yeah they're gonna fucking kill us you know what i mean yeah you gotta shut up yeah you have to there was there's some story right about that it was world war ii i think where it was like this kid was freaking out in uh in a gunfight and was going to scream and let the others know so his buddies had to like cover his mouth and ended up suffocating him to keep him from yelling i can't remember where that's from uh but yeah that's a horrified visual be like Sorry, bud.

34:42Gotta. We have to be safe. Have to keep everyone alive. October 17th. Ira was his old self this morning, as completely as if we had gone backward in time. He was up before either of us, eating water. He said he took so long to recon the south side of the mountain because the whistlers caught him in a trap. It was a hole clearly dug with tools. They only came out at night, and I didn't get a good look at them. I could hear them. and see silhouettes, but nothing definite. It was too dark. I don't know what they wanted with me. I got out, I climbed out, and I ran. We're well away from there now, finally reaching the end of the ridges and the start of a valley where everything is very green.

35:27I hope the change in biome means a decrease in the Whistler population. Part of me wants to take steps to document as much. It's true, but all of our field notes were lost with Illion's gear, plus the night vision goggles and the cameras. My biggest fear is that we'll all be killed and our disappearance will inspire some other young researchers to come up there and solve the mystery for themselves. We'll become just another line in the sick folklore that draws people to this cursed place. I would hate to be part of that cycle, knowing what I know now. The Whistlers are very real and they don't want us here.

36:05I like how obviously there's still a trap at play, but the idea that all it took to fix Ira was to just beat him unconscious. And he wakes up like, Oh guys, it's good to see you. Actually, that was a bit of a bummer. You know what? You know what guys? My bad. Maybe because they're getting farther and farther away that it's like maybe losing its grip on them. Maybe could be, could be that or it's all part of the plan. November 1st. I dreamed last night that I was pregnant with Gary laws, baby. Nothing else happened in the dream. I was hiking endlessly with Ira and Bill, and all three of us knew that I had been with the dead man, and it bothered us, but we wouldn't talk about it.

36:49I woke up with my period, thank God. I've never been so happy doing laundry. We've made camp by a small lake in the low point of the valley. It's uphill from here to a distant saddle Ira thinks he remembers seeing from the air. It's only about two miles away. Red Hill should be just beyond that, Ira says. But we don't have the energy to push that far yet. We'll rest today and tomorrow we'll move. Hopefully, we'll be drinking beer at the Red Hill Lodge before dark. I assume they're getting water from the river. Where on earth are they getting enough food for three people? They've established that she at least has been hunting or whatever.

37:27Yeah, they shot a porcupine. I'm just saying, at least they've established that she has done that. There is some food happening at some point. Yeah, yeah. Ira's the best shot, so he took the gun to look for rock. Ptarmigan? Tarmigan? I don't know what the fuck that is. I've never seen it. Just say squirrel. Is that what a ptarmigan is? I have no idea. Yeah, oh, it's a bird. It's like a pigeon-looking thing. Okay, can you just say a pigeon? Say goose. Tarmigan. It is pronounced a tarmigan. Okay. Whatever. He took the gun to look for the bald eagle. to look for the endangered species we're eating eagle tonight hire it please just any other bird will do no it's gotta be eagle it's gotta be a bald eagle if I don't commit it's a felony to own these things feathers watch this I don't want to tell you how that motherfucker's gonna be bald by the end of the night let me tell you that I'm gonna pluck that thing dry I'm gonna pluck that motherfucker dry it's gonna be delicious we lit two fires and agreed he's not to go beyond shouting distance but i still worry the whistlers don't seem willing to attack when we're in a group lillian and jeff were both alone when they were killed besides i'm not convinced iroh is fully recovered yet he says nonsensical things in his sleep cries out and scratches that's new i don't care if i was the best shot you should not give that dude a gun No.

39:04That seems like a horrible idea. Bill and I went fishing after the laundry was done. It was stupid doing it in that order. All we caught were minnows, and even that took hours. He was staring at me while we sat. The cold was seeping into my bones, making me irritable. I haven't been warm in weeks. What? He's not himself. You know it. He's better than he was. He's okay. We'll find him a doctor in Red Hill. What if Red Hill isn't on the other side of that saddle? What if we get up there and we're facing another week's worth of empty forest? What then? I realized my eyes were closed. I opened them and the lake seemed oddly bright.

39:43Bill's fingers were pressed against his brow. We'll worry about that when we have to. I'm saying I don't trust him like this, Ruth. He doesn't remember the other night? After the hail? He can't control himself? He could kill us. He's my husband. He's my brother. Oh, hmm. Hmm. The drama, the drama unfolds. Interesting. Wait, who was it that was leading them down this path? I thought it said Bill knew about the saddle at the top of the hill. No, no, no. I think it's, I think it's Ira. Ira. Yeah. It says it's uphill. Ira thinks he remembers seeing from the air. Yeah. Okay. So they're definitely going straight into the whistler.

40:21I have a feeling that's what it might be. I have a feeling there is no, I have a feeling there ain't no camp red hill anywhere. I think they're going straight into a cave. I nodded, but that was all I could do. I've known Bill longer than I've known Ira and spend more time with him most days. Back at home, since we work in the same department. He introduced me to Ira at a Christmas party six years ago now. What should we do? I don't know. But I think we may need to open the idea of cutting the rope at some point. If it gets any worse, it may come to that. Bill started rock climbing on the weekends in college.

40:54cutting the rope it's a metaphor for letting ira die so we can live november 2nd yesterday while ira was still out hunting we heard three shots in the woods two too many to take down a rock ptarmigan and bill and i stood staring tense for just a moment before we hurried to put out the fires pack what we could into our bags ira came running into camp breathing so hard he couldn't say what was wrong. He had no gun and no back. And he grabbed my arm as soon as he was close enough and pulled me through the grass, up the valley, towards the saddle. Bill looked alarmed. He caught up to us and pried us apart.

41:35He yelled at Ira and handed me my haphazardly stuffed pack. All our clothes were still wet, torn from the line, and Ira's eyes were wild. He stared off behind us. Where's the woods he'd run from? It's a warning. I understand it now. It's a warning. Bill tried to talk him down, but then we heard the whistler's eerily musical voices. Never heard it during daylight, and never so close as this. Followed Ira's gaze into the trees and stared and listened. Couldn't move my legs. I couldn't even draw breath. I held onto my pack straps with a stony grip, like it was attached to a balloon that might whisk me out of harm's way any moment.

42:15Ira took my arm again, and now Bill was helping him, Pushing me along the trail until I could run Until we all were running as fast as we could The trail led straight into the open And we all reacted differently Ducking through alders or sweeping wide from the trail To be closer to the cover of the hemlock Ira took the shortest path Straight through the matted grass of the game trail And soon he was far ahead of me And it was all I could do to keep my eyes on him And my legs moving as fast as they would go He was the first to reach the hill Covered in scrub The saddle between two jacked peaks He ducked low as he ran, and I lost sight of him.

42:50Bill's bad foot and pack slowed him down, and I saw him stop and crouch, wide-eyed, beneath the trees. After we'd been fleeing for ten minutes, it felt like fleeting seconds. Ira's vanishing sent panic straight to my toes. It took me no time to decide not to wait with Bill. I had to catch Ira. I kept running until I reached the ridge, my lungs burning, but once I arrived, there was no sign of him. A trail to follow. I lumbered to the crest of the saddle, clapping frantically, looking back over my shoulder for Bill, who was also gone. From so high up, I could see the forest beyond and the river and the flat brown bay at low tide.

43:29No town. No red hill. I clapped, but neither of them clapped back. I was so exposed, but the whistling was distant now. In fact, I couldn't pick it apart from the wind with any certainty. I walked closer to the trees and built two fires with my fire steel and shaking hands. The second in the open of the hilltop, big and smoky. The hemlock makes for thick cover. There was plenty of dry tinder. We left the tent behind and the sleeping pads. Bill had the stove and the cooking pots. Ira had the gun. I have the hatchet, the fire steel, the wet laundry. I made a lean-to with a small roof of bows. and sat through the evening with my back tense against a thick tree and waited, slept fitfully.

44:15I did the same today, kept the fires alive, and now it's getting dark. I should walk back down to the valley to collect the tent, but the sound of the daytime whistle is stuck in me like a splinter. I can't face the creature that made that sound, even after years of looking for it. I never believed the stories, not really. We came here to research the folklore, to listen to elderly trappers and hunters tell the outlandish stories they grew up with to record them for posterity. We should never have come here. No sign of Ira, Bill. Interesting. So now she's alone up there. Yeah, fuck that. It seems that wherever Ira went, Bill gone to, man, this is like the tension they're playing is pretty good.

44:59Like the escalation and the action of moments and stuff like that. Very good. I probably wouldn't have ran after Ira, if I'm being honest. Let the motherfucker run off from the woods again. I would stick with Bill. He's your better bet. But it is her husband. November 3rd. The rain came through my pine shelter last night, but at least I can say it broke me out of my trance. I tied in the hip belt on my pack, added a few hours of wood to both fires, unsheathed my knife, and taped it to my hand. Bill told me to do this a long time ago. if I knew I might have to run and fight at the same time. I'm walking back north towards the place where I saw him fall, towards the place where the whistlers surprised us.

45:43Whistlers aren't the only things to worry about in these woods. There are bears, wolves, coyotes, fearless predators that encircle our warm camp at night. Conventional wisdom is to make noise when passing through denser growth. Avoid surprising a carnivore. Yet, I have long suspected that noise lures the whistlers. Prey species don't announce themselves. They pass in stealth. After what happened to Lillian and Jeff and recently Ira, I have no doubt that we are prey. I resolved to go quietly along the margin of the hemlock, keeping the game trail to my right. The signal fire smoked squarely at my back.

46:18I walked carefully, keeping low, whispering for Bill whenever the wind slowed, pausing sometimes to listen hard. After nearly an hour of creeping and murmuring fruitlessly through the trees, I lost my caution. God damn it, Bill. I shrieked and seconds later, his clap came. Two shocks of sound. I clapped back. Needed two. Then I found him. Damp and chilled to the bone. Slumped against the base of a tall spruce tree not 30 feet from where I'd yelled. The needles where he sat were soft and dry and I sat down right beside him. Overcome. I tore the tape off my hand and held his face in my palms. His eyes were alert, spite everything.

46:59Where are you hurt? He lifted his ankle. It was still wrapped, but swollen now, rising like bread dough. Must have been fractured all along, and our sprint across the valley was the final straw. He was quiet, but grimaced as I wrestled off his sock and the inadequate wrappings. I held his foot against my thigh, feeling the mess of swollen tissue. There was deep blue bruising all across the top of his foot. He took my hands before I could do anything more. Where's Ira? I smelled the smoke from your camp. I shook my head. I couldn't catch him. He didn't have a pack to weigh him down. He's such a fast runner to begin with.

47:37He was over the ridge before me, and once I got up there, he was gone. If he saw my smoke, he hasn't let on. He left you? He had no gear? Yeah, I wonder why that is. I wonder why he doesn't need gear. Yeah, he's probably like a mutant freak that lives in a cave now. Well, I did see him one night, but he was jumping from the treetops and kept hissing at me, but he does that sometimes. He had skin underneath his arms that let him fly and he was whistling. It was kind of pretty but weird. It reminded me of our two-year anniversary. Bill's like, get me out of here. He's like, Ruth, Ruth, I need you to shoot me.

48:18Ruth, I need you to kill me. Point at my temple and pull the trigger. I need you to blow me smooth off. I need you to blow me. He's like, what? A kill, sorry. It came out weird. Yeah, sorry. A Freudian slip there, but just kill me, please. Right now. Oopsie doopsie.

48:41I focused on the foot, knowing I would need something tight and sturdy to wrap it in if I had any hope of moving Bill up to my camp. Took the dead man's blue wool socks from my feet. They were small for Bill and worked like a compression bandage. I rolled both of them onto the one foot And there were tears coming down his face Before I was done I'm sorry But you're lucky I don't think it's broken all the way through Just badly fractured Ira would know He stared at me after I said this But I avoided his gaze I cast about until I found a dry branch Straight enough to make into a crutch Bill is just over six feet tall So it was awkward walking a mile uphill With half his body weight on my shoulder I could see he was in tremendous pain But we made the trek without stopping And it wasn't until he had collapsed beneath my pine shelter That I paused to let myself wonder if I'd pushed him too hard It didn't matter now, I reasoned We were as safe as we could hope to be I fed him the last of the dead man's aspirin and elevated his foot There's nothing else No food, nothing to catch food with I'll worry about that tomorrow Tonight, it's all I can do to keep the roof intact and the fire burning.

49:54Ira will see the smoke and come to us before Bill is ready to walk again. He will. He has to. November 6th. The swelling has gone down on Bill's ankle. I killed a bird, a grouse, by throwing rocks. Seems like a new low. Rock throwing is part of a deeper tier of human desperation we should never have had to access. while sitting immobile Bill has made a bow we'll use the birds seems kind of complex exactly we didn't realize is that Bill was an elf and he actually made an amazing bow also too I just want to say she killed a bird with a rock I mean like that's pretty impressive I mean it's not impossible I'm just saying it's impressive what is impossible is fashioning a recurve bow.

50:49I do think that it'd be funny. She's like, he made a crossbow. It's like, what, what? It's like made of steel and everything. Yeah. This should do the trick. He's constructed a, I forget the name of the scorpions, the giant like Roman crossbow, like our artillery pieces. Yeah. Oh, it's a, thankfully he's constructed a catapult that should throw us to red river. that should launch us the whole way there. Bill, while sitting idle, made a Nissan Ultima, a 2006 Nissan Ultima. He plans to drive out of the forest soon. Thankfully, he built one with off-road tires, so that should get us at least down the mountain.

51:30Yeah, the whistling is getting closer. Bill has made a bow. He'll use the bird's feathers for arrow fletching and maybe for fishing flies. He saved the longest tail feather out for me. to use as a quill, he said, in case my pen dies. Where are you going to get ink? I guess you would dip it inside of the pen. Yeah, I want you to use my blood for that notebook. We need to scout the area before we move again. I could hike to the top of one of the peaks, but I can't justify leaving Bill alone that long. Not that he's helpless, but the awful truth is we're both down to the last of our endurance. We get separated.

52:08If I wind up alone again, I don't think I'll have it in me to keep going. It's bothering Bill, not knowing what happened to Ira. Their whistlers were behind us. He was ahead. If they were hunting, they would have caught me. So, they weren't hunting. What did they want? Why didn't he stop? At night, we hear them in nearly every direction, but they keep their distance. They aren't circling closer like they usually do. It's as if they want us to know we're within their boundaries, trapped within their home turf. if we sleep we sleep in shifts what is what was that thing ira said i get it now it's a warning yeah he's like i get it now it's a warning whatever which i'm wondering if he was trying to allude that like they keep following him they're like hey you guys are going in a bad direction or what yeah yeah that the whistlers are giving them a warning now yeah november 10th no news the weather's dry but much colder than last week winter is late and i worry that when the snow finally comes it will fall all at once burying us in any points of reference i built a windbreak and improved our shelter caught a rabbit helped bill bathe i keep catching him putting weight on his foot rushing things no signs of ira not much sleep november 12th snowed overnight at last just as i predicted came in a big rush a great dumping of powder and then a sunny morning the signal fire on the hill was smothered but bill wouldn't let me go out and relight it he He would have seen it by now.

53:37He said, meaning Ira. Save the dry wood. He made a second crutch and uses both to humor me. But he says he can't be idle anymore. It seems such a risk to move on this weather with you hurt. If we stay here, we'll die. He's talking about building a sled once the snow is thick enough. I can't listen. I'll take the boat at the top of the hill, scout our path, look for game. They 100%, because it keeps talking about how they don't have proper cold weather gear. if they woke up under snow they're dead they have hypothermia they're all their clothes are soaked so like they're not gonna get dry they're gonna die they're 100 % dead at the very least they're catatonic and can't move ain't no building a sled and like taking your homemade bow with you we'll be like Santa Claus not to mention they've been they've been out here for like two months three three months three months when the story started they said we've been out for four weeks they have spent a season out here no ain't no way November 13th nothing much to see from the high ridge yesterday no snow has fallen yet around the bay and it occurred to me that we might just follow the coastline south we could set a new fire every day on the beach leave it smoking maybe a plane will pass maybe Ira will see us from wherever he's hiding maybe the whistlers don't swim Bill says we'll leave tomorrow What about Ira?

55:03He shrugged, looking exhausted. Don't know which way he went. Don't know where to look. Don't know how he is. If we leave, we will never see him again. I started to cry. Bill walked away to the shelter and curled up like he was going to sleep. Turned his back to me. Looked out across the saddle in the valley and tried to keep my tears quiet. It was just dusk. No distant fires. No smoke. If he's nearby, he's cold, he's dying, and I'm helpless. It's full dark now. For the first time in weeks, whistlers haven't made a sound. November 14th. Bill woke me up at dawn. He had hot water and a scrap of rabbit for me.

55:48I'm saving the bones and feet in a plastic bag. Don't know if they'll be any good for soup, but soon they may be all we have. lifted my pack for me to put on then put his hands on my shoulders i'm sorry i don't know what else to do i looked back at him watched while he got into his own pack and kicked snow and dirt over the fire's embers thought of leaving a note for ira to follow or some kind of sign the snow is falling again in pellets every trace of us will be obliterated soon like these jumps in time are insane. Another like four days out here in between the journal entries. Like my gosh, they have got to die soon.

56:28They should have been dead months ago. They should have been dead months ago. If it was like a happy forest with nothing, but like singing birds and rabbits, not with the whistlers praying around November 18th. The hiking has been easier since we got below the snow line but the weather's following us the coast is icing over we're making good time and i think we're both relieved to be off the game trail aside from mud and rough gravel the terrain is much easier here along the beaches than it was up in the trees it's been five nights now since we heard the whistler five nights at freddy's since we heard the whistlers maybe they don't like the cold or maybe we finally left their natural range even the smallest hope is agony we had some luck with fishing yesterday.

57:14An enormous trout was stuck in a low pond after the tide went out. Probably sick, probably already dying. We spent the whole day gorging on it, cutting strips to smoke. I found Ira's gold watch in my pack. I gave it to him for our second anniversary. We had habits of taking it off whenever he worked with his hands and must have stashed it in my bag to keep it safe. I asked Bill if he wanted to wear it, but he said no. No point looking at the time, I guess. I buried it near the fire, built a car on over top, said some words like a funeral. Bill didn't say anything. I had to do something in order to keep moving.

57:52I don't feel certain Ira's dead, but I can't fathom what it means if he's out there and we're leaving him behind. The most horrible thought is that he's the reason the Whistlers are gone. Maybe he's leading them on chase away from us, or maybe they were hunting and they caught him. Their hunger's satisfied for now. Don't think like that. Bill says, but I know Ira's in his thoughts too. Bill's a folklorist, like me, but that's not what drew him here. He wanted to see the Whistlers with his own eyes, like Lillian did. He wanted to document them, their habits, describe them as a species, or science.

58:30Everything that's happened so far fits the stories. Don't, Ruth. But I don't stop, because he knows the stories even better than I do. He knows we're just like all the other characters now. Hunted. Doomed. They pick the groups apart. They separate people. They take their prey one at a time. You don't believe the stories. You never believe them. I opened my mouth, but the words were delayed. I believe we'll never see Ira again. Sleep a little bit apart despite the bitter cold. He's always up before I wake. Bill says he recognizes this coastline There's a pinnacle to the east He calls Fan Phone Point I'd say we're eight days north of Red Hill If we stick to the coast I'm not getting my hopes up Eight days north Jesus Christ I'm like It's gonna be Christmas by the time he gets to the fucking Red Point dude My word Don't worry we only have to walk another ten days Is that an actual place Red Hill 3 forest coastline because it sounds like it's like far north Canada right like maybe western I was going to say California or something like that.

59:46Yeah, but I mean, maybe there are places in California, I guess you could be that far out in like the Redwoods or something, but that, but they're on the coastline, right? Like even North California coastlines pretty well things, right? Yeah. Okay. The only red Hills I see is Colorado and Colorado does not have a coastline. So this has got to be like fictional way, way up West, Western Canada. I would think. November 28th. Ten days since I wrote. It all blends together. The spit of shoreline looks just the same as what we saw days ago. Water just as flat and gray. If it weren't for Bill and the compass, I would assume we were skirting a large lake, not an inlet of the Pacific Ocean.

1:00:30Okay. You know what? Not really a bear trap, but I'll take it. I'll take it. Same. I'll take it. That's me. I'd assume we were going in circles. We do have Fan Phone Point to navigate by and the stars. Weather is cleared. Winter is hesitating again. I worry I'll never see leaves on trees again. Flowers opening up in a field of grass. I worked all the time. Iron and I didn't take a vacation last summer. I squandered so much. Some days, Bill and I don't speak a word to each other. Stop walking. He assembles the shelter. I build the fire. He unpacks the food. I hang our damp clothes. We eat, we sleep, and in the morning, we walk.

1:01:15December 1st. I saw Red Hill first. Our trip of shoreline was getting rocky, so we went up into a stand of cedar and found a steep bear trail. We haven't heard whistlers in weeks, so we beat pots and shouted every few steps, and something about us using our voices made us giddy. Bill started singing a camp song I never heard, something from when he was a child i guessed full of rhymed bodily functions he laughed while he's saying it laughed until tears rolled down his face he had to stop to catch his breath and i walked short ways onward because it seemed he needed a moment alone it seemed he was finally realizing what i realized when we left our camp near the saddle that we had abandoned ira to an unknown fate that he might have died a preventable death because we were too scared and broken to search for him.

1:02:05I walked toward a break in the trees with Bill hyperventilating at my back and saw a straight line far away and a clearing where lighter green grass vibrated amongst dark evergreen. We were on a bit of a ridge and could look down into the distant orderliness of a minuscule town, just a lump of weedy brush and granite rising out of the marshy lowlands. Now I was crying. There was a water tower, a long split rail fence. Distantly, some low buildings and power lines were visible against a curtain of trees. I called to Bill, who ran up beside me and stopped and stared. He wrapped his arms around me in his relief, squeezing me hard against his chest.

1:02:43I kissed him without thinking first, and he jerked his head away, sailing shakily into my hair, but not releasing me from his arms. I'm sorry. I don't know how to... He began, but didn't finish. I asked myself out of his embrace and gestured for him to follow me down the hill. It started snowing. darkness fell when we were still about a mile outside of red hill the terrain was difficult thorny and muddy i struggled with my dimming flashlight focusing intently on my feet and the ground ahead bill grabbed my arm as the moon was rising he stopped me look i looked ahead to red hill i could see the water tower clearly still an armored dome high above everything silhouetted against the sky what there are no lights i blinked search but of course he was right As night fell, nothing had come to life in Red Hill.

1:03:34There were no porch lamps, no glowing windows, no blinking red beacon atop the water tower. The place looked abandoned, as still and dark as death. We can't stop here in the open. Can you make it without your light on? My flashlight was nearly dead, and the moon was rising anyway. I switched it off, and we continued, not struggling as urgently as before. I was aware of the sound my boots made in the soggy ground. Bill's voice dropped to a whisper. It was thick with caution. We'll knock on the first door we come to. We'll lead them to the fact that our chopper went down. What do you think is wrong?

1:04:08What are you afraid of? I was terrified, but I wasn't sure why. I don't know. The moon was directly overhead by the time we reached the split rail fence we'd seen from the ridge. Caution and fatigue had made that final stretch of our journey seem endless. There were sounds in the woods nearby. Not whistlers. Maybe wolves. But I was more concerned about people. Lillian had warned us about the residents this far out in these isolated stretches of forest. The lighthouse keeper had held a rifle to her forehead once when she surprised him after a few weeks away. We passed through the split rail fence and walked across a flat expanse of dirt stuck with poles, tetherball poles.

1:04:45It was a schoolyard. There were no children to be seen, no people, no signs of life. I turned my light back on and Bill did the same. He had a headlamp, brighter and wider than my little incandescent torch. and walked ahead of me through the yard, up toward a chain swing set and a few low buildings that looked like houses. The street between them was hard dirt scattered with rough quartz gravel that glittered in the light. He was bold. He walked up to the low porch of the first house we leveled with, and rapped sharply on the front door. Anyone home? Our helicopter went down. We need help. All was silent.

1:05:21I looked around while he stared at the door, hoping the noise might draw movement elsewhere in Red Hill. No luck. We went house to house, knocking and calling at eight buildings on that lonely street. We ended at the lodge, sort of multipurpose building that contained rooms for rent, a post office, and a meeting hall. It was deserted like the rest. My flashlight flickered and died while we stood on the front porch. Bill tested the handle and found the lodge unlocked. I can't see how anyone would object. He said, tapping his headlamp beam downward and looking at my face, we were both shivering.

1:05:55the pilot said people lived here year round he must have been mistaken this is such an interesting like plot device to use because the story was already creepy it's like you know the the monsters in the woods and being stuck out there but now it's like why is this town empty that doesn't feel right why you know no one's answering the schoolyard's empty it's like it's switched to a completely different setting that ties into the same kind of creepiness that we've seen before It's pretty cool. Inside, Bill felt along the lodge's wall for a light switch, but there was no power. I found a full kerosene lamp on a bookshelf and a book of matches and an ashtray on a table in the lodge's dining area.

1:06:35I lit the lamp and breathed a little easier. Bill walked around the lodge's rooms with his headlamp in his bearings, but I sat at a table with the lamp, holding my head and trying to feel grateful for the shelter. He came back, wiping his hands on his pants. The breaker didn't do anything. There's a generator back in the utility room. Looks like it's got a little fuel left, but I'll wait until morning to try it. When I didn't respond, he came to sit across from me at the table. Abandoned or not, we're going to have to winter here. I nodded. We'll get our hands on a radio. As much food and fuel as we can find.

1:07:10We'll hole up and wait it out. Someone will come for us. I nodded again, but couldn't look at him. All you need is rest. He said, softer now. He led me toward the bedrooms and opened a creaking door for me. The room had a double bed with a pretty cream-colored quilt, a closet with accordion doors, and a wide window that looked out on blackness. Is there a room without a window? He looked at my reflection in the dark glass and looked at the real me. Carried the kerosene lamp and my unsteady grip cast Eerie's shadows. Of course. He ushered me into the room directly across the hall. It was adjacent to a doorway that led away towards a lounge full of deer trophies and enormous television screens.

1:07:51It had skylights and the moon was showing through. The bedroom was nearly identical to the first, except the bedspread was blue patchwork and the window was replaced with a hanging tapestry of sweet pea blossoms. I nodded, set my backpack down, and placed the lamp on top of the dresser so it cast light on each of the four walls. I had zipped my jacket, but Bill stayed in the doorway. I could take the room across the way. Don't be silly. He gave me a serious look, put his pack down beside mine and came to get in bed with me. I suppose it's too cold to sleep apart. He said, taking off his boots and settling rigidly under the covers.

1:08:28Why is it different from sharing a tent? It just is. I thought I'd fall away into the deepest sleep of my life. The wind picked up and the lodge creaked and shuddered around us and thought every other sound was a footstep or a human whimper. at one point i woke bill up dead certain i heard a baby crying stroked my hair and listened for a full minute and pressed me against the mattress by my shoulder before lying back down himself back to sleep i didn't sleep instead i took the kerosene lamp to the chair in the corner and wrote down this strange day bill is motionless in his sleep one arm slung beside him in the place I left.

1:09:06It is different, just the two of us sharing a domestic space. What will become of us during months of isolation? What will we look like to whoever finds us? I hear it again now, wailing that is certainly not the wind. The doors are locked, but that's hardly any consolation. If the whistlers are real, what else could be living in this place? A banshee? A wendigo? something even stranger Bill sleeps through the sound he won't believe me in the morning this I okay so you you you get on to me sometimes for being like I'm bought in well I'm here to tell you I'm bought in like I've been bought in for a while that the story keeps buying me keeps upping the price that like the little character dynamic between Ruth and Bill and like it's weird to share a bed it's weird to have a domestic space and it's like they both feel that they're betraying Ira but there's no way Ira's alive and they're and they've got to settle here for a while but it's still uncanny because there's no one there but it provides warmth and like what else could be out there it's just everything the story every development the story's taken so far works for me I think it builds on itself very well December 2nd I woke up in the chair where I fell asleep riding the lamp's wick was low and it burned down far too much of the kerosene before snuffing itself out.

1:10:29There's a spare can, but it won't last long. I'll have to be more careful. Bill was gone when I awoke. He had covered me with the quilt from the bed. I found him in the lounge inspecting the mounted moose heads and elk skulls. There were books, field guides, and old almanacs scattered on a coffee table. The wood stove was blazing, tickling with heat. Bill wasn't relaxed. He greeted me in a whisper and moved tentatively through the room. I had nearly forgotten about his injury. Let me have another look at your foot. You should rest in bed for a few days, now that we're safe. He shook his head. We're not safe.

1:11:07Come look. He led me through the lounge and onto the porch at the front of the lodge. There's no snow or ice on the ground outside. The road's muddy, ground soft enough to hold indentations. From the porch steps, we saw the street and its quartz gravel, the small ruts we made walking from house to house in the dark last night but now our steps are not the only marks in the road there are other prints too evidence of pacing steps and sliding gashes with the gravel has been scraped completely away could be the tracks of dozens of pairs of feet or just a few going around and around the lodge while we slept footprints form an unbroken circle around us evidence of the stalking pacing night watch of the whistlers they've retreated now apparently but how far man that's freaky waking up the next day and there's a perfect circle around around the lodge like over and over again i don't like that at all in the moment i could scarcely breathe i staggered back against the lodge's front door my body crumpling down and heaving in the stories the whistlers don't have tracks bill shrugged and kept a stoic face they look human to me like a grown man dragging his feet his voice was low tired what's wrong with you he shook his head it doesn't matter doesn't matter if this is a game the whistlers are playing or that the people of red hill disappeared last night to make these marks to mess with us doesn't matter if it's aliens or mold people or fucking lillian and jeff and jeff back from the dead we can't stay here now he opened the front door and nodded me back inside we'll gather what we can and keep going south until we find another town.

1:12:53There's a closet. There's a closet with some gear, a good tent, tarps, lanterns, and a stove. You start getting things together and I'll see if I can find a vehicle that runs. I stopped in the doorway. I was breathing so hard I could taste blood. No, we can't split up. We're no safer during the day than we are at night. We can't make that mistake a second time. She is so right. She is so rude. She's such a queen for that. because as soon as he said that, I'm like, that's the worst idea I've ever heard. What are you thinking, bro? How about you stay here and I'll go on the other side of the town where you can't see or hear me?

1:13:27He paused. Fine. I'll take what we need from the closet. You have a look for food in the kitchen. Then we'll pack up and scout out a vehicle together. Agreed? I would assume that the moment they hit that lodge, they would just be scrounging for food, right? Yeah. Also, I would not want to leave. for you've been walking for four months. Yeah. Four months is an insane amount of time. You literally have shelter now. I'm like, why don't you just hang out for a bit? I understand that like they're around the lodge and that's a problem. And yes, it is. It is. But what how are the woods any safer? Exactly.

1:14:10How were you any safer anywhere else you were? Yeah, they were walking around out there too. Obviously, so I nodded but was not completely reconciled with Bill's plan How long can we run before hunger stops us Or the cold or the harsh unknowns of the landscape We saw this region from the air Saw the dead-end logging roads and ghost towns surrounded by miles of wilderness We both know Red Hill has no outlet A single road leads west to an airstrip and a dock that freezes over every January Mail comes by boat, only in the summer Bill knows there's actually nowhere we can run. Maybe the Whistlers know it too.

1:14:50One task at a time. Food. I walked into the dining area, back beyond a buffet table waiting for chafing dishes, into the kitchen. It is thoroughly modern, with wood veneer cabinets and a walk-in freezer with a gleaming door. Someone put a lot of care into this kitchen. Perhaps they photographed it for brochures. Bear tours have become popular among the wealthy and well-armed. The cupboards are nearly bare, as one would expect them to be at the close of the season. There's a bin with a few cups of stale flour inside, a bottle of rancid oil, a gallon-sized can of fruit cocktail, a box of crumbled tea bags, a canister of powdered milk, a stuck-together brick of sugar cubes.

1:15:31I opened the refrigerator, but the stagnant air behind the door poured over me, making me reel and gag before I forced it shut. I glimpsed molding vegetables, rancid meat, obscure plastic wrappings dotted with black mold. I must have gagged audibly because soon Bill was at the kitchen door, eyes wild and shining like he'd been sprinting. What's wrong? The fridge is full of spoiled food. He frowned. That doesn't make sense. They would have cleaned everything out before closing the place up for the season. But if it wasn't closed up... I said, my voice was shaking. The front door was unlocked. The tables and chairs still out.

1:16:08The TV cabinet and the lounges wide open. The currents weren't drawn in the bedrooms. Gas in the generator. Nothing winterized. Like they left in a hurry. Back of my throat had gone dry. I walked to the freezer and yanked against the long steel handle, preparing myself for another wave of pungent odor, but deciding that spoilage in the freezer could be the final piece of evidence that proves the emerging theory. Something had gone very wrong for the residents of Red Hill. Bill stood at my shoulder, watching with a weary hand over his nose and mouth as the door's hinge creaked. The food on the shelves at the walk-in was actually better contained than what had been in the fridge.

1:16:45There was spoiled meat wrapped in paper, looking sunken and gory. The ice and ice cream had all melted within confined containers as if power outages were routine. Besides a deeply musty, almost rubbery smell, first I thought the freezer, though abandoned, was benign. Ruth. Bill sat behind me, his hand creeping shakily along my shoulder, trying to turn me back toward him. Don't look, Ruth. What? Now I looked squarely to the back of the freezer, where a pair of rounded shoes was visible, behind a pallet stacked with sunken bags of frozen vegetables. The steel floor beneath the pallet was shiny with dried fluids that had leaked from the bags, maybe days ago, maybe weeks.

1:17:32Don't. He repeated, but I kept looking, following the shoes to a scrawny pair of legs, bent knees, the pleated black pants and white coat of the lodge's chef, middle-aged woman with wiry white hair and a shriveled gray face. I took a step toward the dead woman, felt my bare feet sticking in the mess on the freezer's floor, Bill's grip tied in on my shoulders. Look at me. Look away. What happened here? Pulled me away, out of the kitchen, through the lounge, all the way back to the bedroom, where he gently shut the door and put me to bed, grabbing me tightly with the quilt. Just as sleeping beside Bill is different out in the wilderness, so death is freshly strange within the confines of the lodge.

1:18:19The dead chef makes less sense to me than Gary Law, the lighthouse keeper. She died indoors, in a place where the beds were still made, where the refrigerator was filled with food. She would have been safe. Why would they ever leave her here? He knelt at my feet with a bottle of water and a washcloth, scrubbing the freezer's sickness off of them. I left my shoes at the front door, ages ago, it seemed. When he spoke, his voice shook. What exactly did you hear last night? You woke me. You heard something. A baby. It sounded like a crying baby. The lighthouse keeper. The lighthouse keeper. He said he sometimes heard the whistlers laughing.

1:19:00laughing like his parents in the reception hall after church on a Sunday. They'll get inside your head. They'll lure you in. You can't let them, Ruth. I was dazed and couldn't speak, so Bill kept talking. I imagine they were already here, in Red Hill, before we arrived. Spook the residents. The power must have failed already. Before she went in there, there was a park on the hook outside. She didn't take it. Must have been in a panic. She went there to keep herself safe. Maybe people started leaving and she couldn't get out. It was all an accident. He said, rubbing my leg reassuringly. They didn't realize she was trapped.

1:19:41There's a bell. An emergency alarm. Her fingers, Bill. Her fingernails. They were scraped bloody on the door handle. Torn up. So maybe there was no one left to hear the bell. Maybe everyone else. But I sat upright on the bed. Couldn't calm down. That night, when it hailed, we would have done anything to make Ira quiet down. They got inside Ira's head, didn't they? Maybe they got inside hers, too. You think her own people locked her in there? I tried to speak reasonably. Tried for academic composure. There's a story, isn't there? One of the old ones. A story about the people the Whistlers don't kill.

1:20:22There's one in almost every group. Every story. Someone. Susceptible. Who comes to a kind of madness. tearing at their own flesh, losing their minds, killing their companions. Lillian thought it was kind of a Stockholm Syndrome. Bill nodded. He told me the story of the family who lived in the outpost north of the lighthouse. It was years and years ago. Mother, father, three children. The father sent a dispatch one day to say he had killed his wife and his kids, strangled them. He had received a warning, he said, so he killed them all. When the rangers arrived, the residence was empty. There's no sign of any of them.

1:21:01No sign of a struggle as if they had banished over the rocks and into the sea. Okay. So that whole vignette was stellar. I got a chill when she's in the freezer and bill says, don't look. And then she says, I see a pair of shoes at the end that got me. That may be like, I was, I, once again, I became conscious of where the door in my room is. Like started looking at my own reflection. that was great but also that mention at the end about the father that called the dispatch and said there was a warning is the same thing ira said before he ran off so maybe it's like it's a warning and you have to kill the people you're with to save them or whatever i don't know um but that's the same thing ira said before he ran off it's gonna be crazy if it's ira walking around the house that's what i think it might be because she said the whistlers don't leave footprints right yeah just gotta be someone so it could be ira it is very windigo in the sense of it's like it is a physical thing but there is a spirit that is trying to like draw you out and there's like a supernatural element to it um yeah that's pretty cool this is like i said i am hook line and sinker currently and scared i'm now scared bill told me to lie down for the rest of the afternoon but i couldn't i'm ready to go i said and we wasted no time we packed our bags in a mournful silence i was greedy and overstuffed my pack taking the quilt from the bed spare batteries candles matches mouthwash from the bathroom and then the remaining kerosene that ain't greedy i i would be ripping the nails out of the walls if i thought it could help me what are you talking about and there's other buildings there you could search too right yeah but i'm wondering if they're talking about weight like trying to conserve their energy yeah i understand she's concerned for that but i would be like there could be a honey baked ham in one of those houses you don't know what you're passing it's true bill found a handgun in a locked drawer plus ammunition he had braved the freezer a second time discovered the drawer keys in the pocket of the chef's coat she wrote something he said when he returned there's a clipboard mounted on the inside of the freezer an inventory login pen chef had scrawled a desperate message on the blank backside of the page.

1:23:47interesting hmm that's what I mean by it was a warning so what are the whistlers keeping back the whistlers must have not been the ones that killed Lillian and Jeff then something else did whistlers are like harbingers I've copied it verbatim I can't stop thinking about it you were right Bill said shaking his head once he was finished reading he crumbled the page and left it on the table Stockholm Syndrome I was wrapping the end of a fireplace poker with duct tape, but slowed and looked at Bill now, considering the chef's words. They caught Ira in a trap. Yes. They didn't kill him. Didn't hurt him.

1:24:25He was well enough to find his way back to us. He escaped them. But I don't want to hear it, Ruth. I nodded and practiced swinging the poker against fire logs. Even now, all we have to go on are other people's words. We came all this way to conduct our own research, and the only thing we've learned is fear. We hear the whistlers, but have not seen them. We fear the unseen, but what if that's a failure of imagination? Perhaps there's something else to be afraid of. Some reason the stories are so few and scattered. Some reason there are so rarely any survivors. Some reason Bill and I have made it all this far.

1:24:59Some unknown. We wrote a note that we left on a side table near the front door. Our names and the date, contact numbers for our families back home, an apology that we didn't do more for the woman in the freezer. We couldn't spare the time and energy it would take to barrier. I put the kitchen parka on over my jacket and pants. Bill layered his clothes under Gary Laws. We took gentle steps away from the lodge, crossed the barrier line of whistler tracks, listening hard. In the light of day, it was clear that Red Hill had been evacuated in a rush. There were split logs stockpiled beside every structure, potted plants drying out on porches, a garage door left open, its contents in disarray.

1:25:39Not many vehicles. Bill said as we walked to the far side of Red Hill, out toward the skinny dirt road that led out of town. So this road must lead somewhere. They got in their cars and took this road out of town. Bill then seemed encouraged. To a dock. To an airstrip maybe. I'm sure a town this size has emergency evac procedures. We could follow this road and end up in a dead end. Still, it's better than not knowing. It's better than planting our feet here and waiting to starve. Or worse. Tucked on his coat and squinted against the bright white sky. We looked into the houses along the main street.

1:26:13Okay, good. I'm like, surely they're going to look, right? Most front doors were left unlocked. One had keys stuck in the knob, dangling. We found a loaded revolver stashed under a mattress and a dog trapped inside a bare kitchen pantry. It was a mutt. Shaggy. Pissed off. We opened the door and it shot away into the woods. Didn't look back. Even that brief scouting wore me out. Bill kept looking over his shoulder, tightening his grip on the gun and staring around at every sound. My shoulders were aching under the pull of my pack straps. At last, we found two worthy vehicles, each with slightly less than half a tank of gas.

1:26:49One, a smallish van, and the other a jeep with studded tires and the key sitting on the dash. Bill leaned his hand on the jeep as if it meant we were saved, but I stood apart, able to shake a sick feeling in the conundrum of the chef's final words. What if we don't leave? What? You said yourself there's nothing certain at the end of the road. We could drive to the coast and get stranded. We could end up on foot again. The woods exposed. We're exposed here. Did you not see those tracks? I did. They surrounded us last night. They were everywhere. And yet, here we are. Standing in the street, alive.

1:27:28For months, the whistlers have been on top of us. But we're still breathing. Tell that to Lillian and Jeff. Tell it to Ira. He was yelling now, panning. Our faces were red. Close. I was blinking away tears, but I wasn't upset, just overwhelmed. One more night indoors. Let me wash and be warm. Just one more time. I'm so tired, Bill. So tired. He didn't agree, not explicitly. While we stood with the Jeep, it started snowing. Just the lightest veil falling between us. We returned to the lodge. We moved around with a sort of quiet, powerless violence, blocking and barricading the doors, drawing curtains, checking and rechecking the guns.

1:28:15We parked the jeep in front of the lodge and loaded the backseat with gear and tools, as if to remind me that our present comfort was necessarily temporary. We dragged the bed into the lounge close to the stove. We moved the lounge's couches and tables towards the windows. They made the bed, almost reflexively, shaking the quilt out between us and draping it over the needed sheets. Night was falling by then. We're getting out of here first light. I'm going to boil a kettle and take a bath. He softened just a little. I saw towels in the closet. Okay, once again, I really like their dynamic. They both feel realistic, neither feel stupid.

1:28:55They both have realistic reasons for what they want. And that little moment of he softened a little and said, I saw towels in the closet. That feels very real, feels very lived in. I want to ask your opinion Hunter what do you do in this scenario like if do I stay or do I go is that you mean yeah yeah you cannot kill yourself hmm well you know me too well I would stay yeah I think I think kind of the nuance of like me the whistlers could have killed us by now if they wanted to that's my thought is like we're way safer here than we were in our tent and they didn't kill us then also we could try to barricade the door.

1:29:35We're safe from the elements and we can like look through the, all the other houses and get food. Like to me, I'm like, it just makes the most sense. That's your best, especially where it's cold. Maybe if it was the summer, it would be a little different, but where it's cold and you can just die in your sleep from hypothermia. I feel like you've got to stay there, especially because this town has to have some kind of radio thing somewhere. Right. Good thing, but there's no power. Well, they sat that generator with half the gas, right? They could just move equipment over there and try to get word out.

1:30:05I would, I would, I would completely exhaust that town before I decided the woods were a good idea again. Yeah. But I also understand his idea of like, those things are close. I don't want to be here anymore. Yeah. But like, he's not dumb. It's a realistic idea, but I would also say stay in town where you at least have a roof from the snow. If we were walking a couple of days, I'd maybe be more inclined, but we've been walking for four months, four months, Four months is an absurd amount of time to be walking through the woods. Everyone's skin and bones. Like no body fat at this point. Everyone's just starved.

1:30:44Yeah, no way. The water pressure is low, but the faucets still work. Drawing from the water tower, I assume. Only need a few inches of cold water anyway. I want to dilute the heat. I was eager to be cleaned of the dead chef and Gary Law, even Ira. I cared to get the smell of the forest off my skin and start forgetting the things we'd done to stay alive. I took my hair down while the water dribbled into the tub. It had grown long and had coalesced into oily tendrils since the last time I washed it. There were split ends and strands of gray. I always liked it long. I thought about cutting it off with my pocket knife.

1:31:22Thought of how light and unencumbered I would feel once the oily heft of it was gone. I think about getting clean the way I think about eating and drinking. It's a need I can't imagine anyone taking for granted. Feels like it may never be completely satisfied. I hadn't added the hot water yet, and I was interrupted by the sound of Bill barreling through the hallway. He opened the bathroom door, saw me halfway undressed with my hair down, and closed it abruptly. He spoke through the door in a rush. It's them. We're away from the windows, the front hallway, listening to them. a howl high-pitched nasally throaty so hard to find the terror is not just something i remember and have learned to feel but innate i experienced the fear of the sound on some deep unconscious level it is a warning leaked into the deepest part of my mammalian brain danger bill had my fire poker and both guns how's he holding all three gave me my choice i took the revolver only four bullets left in the cylinder.

1:32:26He took the handgun in its full clip. He rested the poker and the hatchet against the wall and stood behind me near the doorway, pressing his body against my back, his mouth to my ear. At least four of them. Close enough I could hear footsteps. Sound came from every direction. The whistles were like car horn blasts, so loud the tendons in our necks tensed. The porch steps creaked, but our angle was awkward. I could barely see the front windows from where we cowered and the low light from the stove and the electric lanterns barely reached the door. We can go out through the kitchen exit. He whispered between hard breaths to the furthest cabin.

1:33:03No lights run for it. She's okay. The next line is it was a fine plan. That doesn't sound like a fine plan to me. I think sprinting in the darkness to another house is the worst thing you could do right now. They obviously know you're in there. they could break through the door if they wanted to. They clearly don't want to. So maybe just sit there and chill out. It was a fine plan. The whistlers might be attracted to the light and heated the stove and the lanterns, but not notice us slipping away. Yet at that moment, I didn't have it in me to flee again. They drove us from the lodge. Who was to say they wouldn't drive us from a cabin back into the woods?

1:33:40Couldn't survive being out there again, not in the looming snow, not just the two of us. I thought of the wash line and tents we abandoned the day we lost Ira and how our flight across the valley had cost us. No, not again. I charged away from Bill, straight towards the front door where the whistlers murmured. I threw open the door despite Bill's warning cry and saw only one figure beyond it, a dark, lanky shape on the bottom step, swaying listlessly, skeletal shoulders hunched beneath a head of shaggy hair. I was blinded by fear and I raised the gun as I stepped out onto the front porch. I fired.

1:34:16I saw his face in the flash, a swollen lower lip, empty eyes, hair clinging wetly to a fevered forehead. He felt like the wind had blown him down, instantly dead, and a moment later I was with him, laying my body on top of his, crying against his face and asking for forgiveness. I couldn't hear anything. Bill told me later that there were no whistles, no sign of them. Just Ira.

1:34:47Oh no. Oh gosh. Oh, okay. Clearly it's the whistler setting this up, right? Or some entity setting this up. That's why he was, but it was him just making the footprints and she just domed her husband. walked out of there just blew him away gosh dude just his blood and footprints on the walkway in the steps bill carried us inside first me then his brother he lay ira on the floor and i laid down with him pressing my face to his stone quiet chest while its warmth ebbed away asking him weeks worth of questions whose answers we can never know now so clearly ira this whole time has been like under the influence of the whistlers or possessed, maybe dead.

1:35:33And this was just like his body being puppeted by them. But regardless, her just stepping out there and shooting him. Oh dude, December 5th. I love this story. This is great. This is classic, like campfire, horror woods, creepy, lost out there kind of thing. I like, this is great. December 5th, Bill left me there with Ira that night. He shut the doors of the lounge and slept in the bed alone i've kept ira's body for three days trying to comprehend it his right arm is missing torn away wound crudely cauterized somehow but deeply infected he was barefoot feet frostbitten his eyes riddled with broken vessels hair missing in patches the nails of his left hand grown and worn like claws he wouldn't have survived the night don't blame yourself since they lost Ira they walked like another two or three weeks right yeah a long time so in this state with a missing arm and an infection he supposedly managed to walk that far I don't mind I think I think the whistlers carried his rotting body set him up on that front porch there ain't no way um that he walked all that way I shaved Ira's face but it didn't help didn't make him look any more human I could hardly see him anyway through the tears the moment you open the door it stopped i'm so sorry are you listening the whistling it stopped all at once i didn't see any of them out there i didn't see anything but you and him i saw his face it's all i saw the prince circled the cabin and ira walked among them we know that much since that night you haven't heard the whistlers not once so that's almost saying that there isn't a whistler it's just like the noise you hear when the spirits you know it's some kind of supernatural yeah it gets closer or it's like it's like a metaphor for the insanity that sets in when you're out here you know all the fork all the folklore pressed on to you that would also that's a hundred percent a you scenario hunter you're like oh I'm missing an arm and I'm dying of infection but I've made it back to my loving wife boom

1:37:44oh honey I'm home December 7th. Bill dug Ira's grave today. It snowed hard that night before and the topmost crust of soil was frozen. Digging was punishing work. Took hours. I thought we were desensitized to death, but I found him sitting on the edge of the hole when it was done. His legs dangling down, sobbing into his hand. I didn't know what to do, so I sat beside him. Ira was inside the lodge still, rolled in a pale yellow sheet, wrapped up so we couldn't see his face. We sat there together for a long time, both of us pretending we were safe and he was alive, and the hole was anything other than a grave.

1:38:22I felt the cold in my joints like shards of glass. Why don't we lie down with him? Bill said, meaning down in the hole. I stroked the back of his head. I couldn't think of a good answer. It seemed to me we'd been offered plenty of chances to die and declined them until now. I looked into the dark of the hole, whose bottom was settling with tiny snowflakes that didn't last. Snow would fill the grave over us. eventually. Preserve our bodies from the Whistlers until the residents of Red Hill came back at the start of the dry season. I've heard freezing's a gentle death, like falling asleep. Bill left my side, carried Ira's body to the grave, hefted him down, and then came up again, standing and pulling me up beside him, taking me away.

1:39:02I'm sorry, he said, though I still hadn't spoken a word. Don't listen to me. That's rough. uh see i've got have i told you about my buddy that almost froze to death no i've got um this friend of mine his name's ian uh he was in nashville and he was kayaking one day uh on he decided to take his kayak out at kayak out to the middle of the lake like a genius and he got way out there. And then like a record breaking blizzard came down on him. I was in his kayak with like super high winds, flipped his kayak. He had to swim to shore and he was in the middle of nowhere. He was in the middle of like a park that was several miles away.

1:39:50And he didn't know which way his bearing was. He was parked several miles up the lake and he's running through the woods. And as he's running for like an hour, he starts to get slower and slower and it gets harder to move and he gets the sudden urge that like his jacket is, um, like too cold. So he takes it off. And as he's walking, he's like, man, I'm really tired. I am so, so tired. And he's like, I bet if I sleep, I'll feel better. Like his brain just gets overwhelmed with the idea of if I lay down, he found a little spot behind the log and he lays down and he was like, if I take a quick nap, I'll wake up energized.

1:40:29And that's a good idea. he was almost asleep and he was like, Oh wait, that's what the cold wants me to think. That's how I die. So it gets this burst of adrenaline and runs through the woods and eventually find someone's house. Uh, he comes up to the door and he's slamming on the door. They call the police on him. Cause they think it's someone trying to break into his, their house. Uh, and he's, he's like outside the window. They're like, I'm calling nine one one. And he's like, yes, please. I'm begging you call 911 and the cops show up. So yeah, but he almost died, but he attested to that, that he was running and then all of a sudden he's like, I should take a nap.

1:41:06A nap will help me a lot. So yeah, that's terrifying. The idea of that you just all of your motor function turns off and you're like, I'm kind of sleepy. I'm feeling a little tired. I feel a little sleepy. This will take a nice little rest. I mean, while they find a grown man frozen to death in the woods of Nashville, Tennessee. The funny, the funniest thing was, so he had his wife, I think he had gotten that kayak for his birthday or something like that. And then his wife hears about it. And then she drives to where he's at, or he calls her and he's in the back of the ambulance, like getting warmed up with a blanket.

1:41:47And the first thing she says to him is she turns the corner of the ambulance and goes so you lost the kayak god

1:42:00yeah hon yeah i lost the kayak the kayak's gone babe sorry yep yep oops my bad oh december 9th we had a baby ira and i five years ago today she was born with a heart defect and didn't live long. Didn't ever leave the hospital. I have scars. Her name was Catherine. Ira left town before the funeral, went to a medical conference two states away. But Bill was there. He got drunk and courted me in his mother's living room. She should have been mine. He said so close I could smell the whiskey. Oh, well, this recontextualizes some of the earlier stuff. It's why Bill doesn't believe me when I say I hear an infant's cries on the wind.

1:42:49He knows it's Catherine's birthday. He thinks about her too. I hear her wailing in the early evening, often just before the whistlers start to howl. An overture. Prelude. We're out of food. Each night we build a fire in the stove and set before it with shaking hands, with cups of tea. There's snow on the ground, snow to reveal that the whistlers haven't circled close since Ira died. There are no tracks but our own. I started asking myself the question in practical terms. If I have some choice in the matter, how would I like to die? If I choose to go as Catherine did, swaddled and sedated in my mother's arms.

1:43:31There's a time when I thought I wanted to die fighting. My knife in my hand, knuckles red from the cold. I'm not sure anymore. I'm not sure I have the patience for that. Everything is different since we buried Ira. Difference is between us, yes. and in the atmosphere of Red Hill. Bill doesn't bustle around the way he used to, doesn't set visual at the windows and watch the distant trees. There's something we've discovered beyond fear, a separate emotion, a detachment. All that matters is the heat of the fire, the weight of the blankets. We hardly speak anymore. It's interesting that Bill previously had like this weird brush with her.

1:44:11It's also real messed up for Ira to leave his wife for a medical conference after their child. that's insane that's kind of that's kind of not great yeah it's a little creepy yeah that's a little don't do that hey guys fellas relationship advice don't do that your kid dies stick around probably good advice december 13th bill leaves the lodge every afternoon now to look for food he says he wants to go alone and i don't argue made a good few finds popcorn instant coffee noodles, dried parsley, half a bottle of bad gin. Each day he circles a little further out, stays away a little later. Last night he didn't come back until an hour after dark, until I'd already heard the mournful chorus of two whistlers far away in the woods.

1:44:57I thought of walking out to them, my desolation. I want to see their faces. I want to know my tormentors. When I try to envision them now, all I see is Ira. Ira at the end, his gaunt face and yellowed eyes. Did they suffer as he suffered? Did I recognize their faces? When Bill came back, he pressed a pack of chewing gum into my palm and went straight to bed. He was limping on his bad foot. He had walked too far. Why were you out so long? He rolled over against his pillow, pretended not to hear. December 15th. There were about six inches of snow on the ground. I spent the day stacking firewood on the porch.

1:45:37Bill stayed close at my insistence. I wandered through town like a tiger in a small cage. There's nothing left to eat in Red Hill. No game nearby. Nothing but coyotes and wolves. In the early evening, he walked across the road with a gas can, siphoned fuel from the van, which is parked outside a gray house just up the street. I watched him from the porch. He looked up from his work to look back at me, meet my gaze through the falling snow. We might go to the coast after all. For all we know, there's a radio out there. Phone, some other means of contact we've overlooked. Maybe the Coast Guard will send a patrol.

1:46:13Maybe someone's been looking for us all this time. Bill stopped staring. His head turned suddenly towards the woods behind the house, like he'd heard something. Snapping of twigs. What is it? I called, but he didn't answer. He walked a few steps towards the woods, craned his head, but then a streak of brown and black emerged through the trees. Went straight for him. There was a deep growl, a scuffle of motion and bill strangled cry a dog the dog we released from the pantry days before i sprang from the porch with a stick of firewood in my hand but was too late bill had slipped in the ice fallen hard against the edge of the van's bumper the dog tore into his leg but released it as bill fell lunged for his face i swung the splittered edge of the firewood against the poor beast skull he was like us starving skittish mutt made savage by the cold bill was dazed scrapping for purchase in the snow behind me, trying in vain to stand.

1:47:09The dog cowered away from me and it seemed cruel to swing a second time. So I screamed instead. The top of my lungs shouted at the dog to run and he did. He turned, he lowered his body and went slowly towards the woods close by, cowering deeper like he didn't want to go back into the trees. But I was full of adrenaline now and yelled a second time so loud that my voice echoed off the houses. Something answered me. It was a strange roar, a rumble like a rock slide mixed with an animal scream, like a panther. Came from the woods where I had driven the dog, and now I heard the mutt whimpering, the screaming and the whimpering, and Bill's muddled murmuring behind me, and I found myself backing toward him through the snow almost senselessly until a new sound erupted and overcame the others, the whistlers.

1:47:55Their voices rose, familiar now, surrounded us until I couldn't hear the shrieking roar, the whimpering dog couldn't hear Bill's exhausted breathing or my own beating heart. I turned, suddenly focused and grabbed his hand. He had been holding his pistol, aiming it unsettlingly towards the woods. I took it now and heaved him upright. He was woozy, bleeding freely in the snow. Gary Law's khaki pant leg was soaked red. There was blood on his head too, scraped from a bolt on the van's bumper, not deep. His eyes were half closed. Stay awake, I said, grabbing Bill's chin more roughly than I meant to, yanking him toward the lodge.

1:48:31The whistler's cries were harrowing but helpful now. They seemed to propel us onward, made us focus on the fear, the imperative of flight. The dog had bitten Bill's bad leg, the one already weakened by his twisted ankle. He could walk, but he was shaking. I helped him across the street, helped him up the porch and into the lodge's dining area. He collapsed into a chair, leaned his body against a table. He was grimacing horribly, and we were losing daylight fast. I cut away his pant leg with my knife. You're gonna need stitches. The dog bite was an arc of puncture wounds with a deep gash torn near his shin.

1:49:06The wound on his head was bloody, but not horribly deep. Not as bad as it looked. A scrape only. A shock. And now the blood was seeping slower. I set an electric lantern on the table. It still wasn't enough light. Headlamps in the lounge. When I went for it, I remembered the bottle of cheap gin. Find it? Bill called to me. There was pain in his voice. I made myself hurry. There was alcohol, hand sanitizer in my pack, and a spool of surgical silk and steel needles. Ira had put the first aid kit together with his own skill set in mind. I poured water on the wounds, washed the blood away, and watched more take its place.

1:49:42Are you okay? I don't know what I'm doing. Wiped sanitizer on a needle and then doused the cash on his leg with it. He reeled where he sat as the alcohol burned. I'm sorry. Shook his head. You're doing fine. I added him the gin bottle before I started stitching It was half full and Bill took grateful swigs before nodding at me to get on with it Skin was harder to pierce than I expected But Bill seemed able to center himself amid the pain He closed his eyes and only grunted a little each time I pulled the thread through He kept saying it was okay and that I was doing fine Finally I tied off the thread and taped a square of gauze over my work I sat at the table afterward, sweating inexplicably exhausted feeling there was more i should do replaying the noises in my head the sequence of events the whistlers and the thing that had answered my shouts bill walking towards the woods the sound the dog what came first it was jumbled already the memory i've recorded it here the way that makes the most sense the moon was rising and we leaned into each other both of us looking away at the deepening shadows looking through the windows for signs of life finding the night remarkably horribly quiet.

1:50:51He drank from the gin bottle again and then handed it to me. It was harsh and cheap, but it took more than one burning gulp. Suppose the dog was running from it? Bill asked. I shrugged. Something dreadful was welling up inside of me. I stood up and turned in a useless circle and felt hot tears falling, felt the desperation and spoiled hopes of the past weeks rolling over me. I was collapsing and leaned towards the table to steady myself. Bill caught me before I could. he stood and held me against his chest one easy movement one hand against the back of my head he was breathing in the same uncontrolled gasp that had overtaken him on the trail before he saw Red Hill when he was balancing between despair and a kind of jovial release pulled my hair down smoothing it between his hands so my head tipped back so I had no choice but to look up at him my vision cleared tears stopped and then we were breathing together our eyes locked and bodies reacting like two leaves tugged down by the same current deciding what came next shook while i lifted my shirt over my head no he kissed me then so i couldn't speak and he was right too there was nothing whatsoever to say i followed him to the lounge to the bed he sat back and pulled me on top of him wincing as he leaned against the cushions but still holding me with the tense grip still saying yes it didn't seem the stove was pumping out much heat but i took everything off wanting him to see me and the body so much walking and hunger and fear had made wanting to feel tangible and whole on this night when our existence was impossible to take for granted kissed my neck while he made love to me whispered that he would make it make it through the winter make it to the coast make it home i had to believe him so it sounds like that's the end of that entry it sounds like the dog attacked and then her yelling attracted the deep growl the real monster out there and then the whistlers come in for defense right that's warning yeah i mean still vague but yeah that's kind of what i'm getting at yeah there's some whatever makes the deep roar is the thing the whistlers are protecting them from i think right december 17th bill was pale the next morning week but he wouldn't stay in bed when i asked him to He hobbled around the lodge, gathering more gear, hauling it out to the jeep, dragging the gas can up from where we had abandoned it in the road.

1:53:17I made him some broth, but he wouldn't eat, and in the afternoon he walked away towards the woods, towards the place where the dog ran and the roar sounded. He walked toward the trees and stopped and stared when I hollered from the porch and looked back at me. I tried to follow, to fetch him, but it seemed, even limping, he took two steps onward for every one of mine. He went on until he was in the trees. I decided, as much as I wanted to, couldn't make myself follow. I stood in the frozen road and shouted for him. I didn't have it in me to enter the woods. I lay in bed through the night with open eyes, hearing the whistlers, soft, far away, like a lullaby.

1:53:56I heard Catherine on the wind. The tears come much easier when I'm alone. I found him this morning, sitting on the porch steps, facing out, the eyes in his beard. I touched his neck and he held my arm. He seemed alert. He looked into my eyes. What happened to you? I was nearly crying, but he didn't respond. Just rubbed my arm and let me lead him inside. Watched me through saddened eyes. Later, once he was warm, he said he had gone to the woods to listen to the whistlers. He said he could understand them now. Don't say that, Bill. He cried into his shoulder, pressed my fingers to his lips. He was calm.

1:54:34It's okay, Ruth. We'll go to the coast tomorrow. You'll be safe. We'll be safe. He nodded and held me tighter. December 18th. It was sad, pulling out of Red Hill, watching it shrink behind us until it was closed off by a ridge of granite and a curtain of trees. It felt momentous, almost like this was the beginning of our journey again, like we were grad students. Me with my love of reading and him with his lust for the outdoors. I had married his brother and he always wanted to get closer and one late night in the office grading papers. We had a crazy idea. I wrote the grand application. He planned logistics.

1:55:13Ira took a sabbatical, volunteered, met Lillian at a conference. All we saw was how our interests aligned. We went out for drinks, the whole group, all together, talked about how much fun it would be. We were barely in the Jeep 40 minutes before we ran out of road. Our path terminated in a wide, I love, gosh, that was cool. I love how quickly it transitions from them getting ready for the trip to them right now driving in the Jeep. Our path terminated in a wide lot of pale brown gravel. There was no airstrip, just a rutted lot with puddles that had turned to slush. A floating dock slick with ice and a boathouse with two broken canoes inside and a rusted hole in its roof.

1:55:52I was driving because Bill was ill, leaning against the window. His leg hurts him. It's badly bruised and the scrape on his head isn't healing. He stared straight ahead. Once we were parked, stared through the windshield with tears forming in his eyes. I don't know what he was expecting. It was hard to see that we were at the edge of the earth now. Out of options. You know, in the olden days, people would walk into the sea and kill themselves. There's something poetic about it. Not in real life, I don't suppose. I've never seen anything poetic in a dead body. He reached for my hand across the gear shift.

1:56:31I'm not going back to Red Hill, Ruth. I can't. Not now. I can't look at Iris' grave again. I can't walk to the kitchen and pretend there isn't a corpse in the freezer. I can't. What else is there? He shook his head. There's the rub. I pulled my hand away and got out of the jeep. It was impossible, holding my thoughts together. I wanted to stop struggling, but not to die. I wanted to stop feeling pain, but not to be alone. I wanted to end both our suffering. I wished I had said yes days ago. Bill laid Ira in his grave when he asked if we should lie down too. It was windy at the coast. So cold my cheeks burned.

1:57:10I walked down toward the dock, but couldn't go far without risking my footing on the ice. Bill was watching me from inside the jeep, waiting, I suppose, to hear me say I was ready to give up too. But I wasn't ready. I closed my eyes, felt the embrace of the wind, and deep within the hush of it, I heard to cry again. My little Catherine's cry, and a voice, a man's voice, Ira's, singing to her. Bill got out of the jeep and looked towards the sound. Whistlers, is that what you hear? I walked toward it. Where are you going? I waved that I was okay, and walked around the useless boathouse, a below hill of sliding gravel.

1:57:52At the top, the wind was stronger, swirling with tiny snowflakes and I could see more gray water up the coast. See distant glimpses of shorelines segmented by trees and low surf and a bobbing shape, white and blue lost against a split of dark sand. I rushed back down the hill towards the Jeep sliding in the gravel, panting hard. What is it? There's a boat. Get your pack. Man. Oh God. So good. It feels like the gray water and like them walking in the desolation almost feels like the road, like the end chapters of that where the father and son are walking down the dark coast and it's all gray. But I love how so many horror stories come back to there's a boat on the coast, like we can get out that way, you know?

1:58:40Mm-hmm. It feels like a classic. I don't know why I haven't heard of this before. It's impossible to take the Jeep directly up the beach. There's too much loose gravel, too many jutting black rocks in our path. We had to wind in and out of patches of forest, had to boost each other over boulders, had to trudge around coarse sand. I was relentless, forcing myself onward, climbing every dune to confirm the boat was still in sight. Still a small blue and white catch with bare mast and an enclosed cabin. The sound led me onward all the while. The sound of Ira and Catherine. The sound Bill kept pausing to warn me of.

1:59:16The sound, he said, was whistlers luring us into a trap. It looks abandoned. Bill said once we were near, he was clutching his leg, holding the place where I was sure his bite wound had opened. I never offered to stop, to slow down, to do anything but press onward. I felt certain about the boat, that it was waiting for us, destined for us, our salvation. We slid down a final scree slope and reached the gray pebbled beach where the boat was moored. Or not moored, exactly, but stuck. It was surrounded with driftwood and other debris. Bill looked exhausted. unimpressed. It's a death trap, Ruth. The tide's coming in.

1:59:56Come on. Help me get inside. The tide will take us out and the Coast Guard will find us. The Coast Guard will not find us. This area will be iced over in a month. It's suicidal. Do you know anything about sailing? My dad owned a kinch. We didn't go out much, I wish. As I spoke, Bill turned away from the boat and stared into the trees. He was flexing his hands, trembling. Do you hear that? I did hear it. Snapping twigs, the moaning bend of a branch. Then the whistling. Deep in the trees, coming closer. Bill was breathing hard, backing toward the boat, keeping me behind him. As the whistling rose in front of us, so the wailing rose behind.

2:00:36Crying, singing, summoning me backward. Summoning me into the boat. The tide was already rising. The boat bobbing in water that was almost deep enough to whisk it away. I hear Ira. What? Bill gave me a bewildered, almost angry look. I hear him singing. I hear Catherine. He looked sad for me and reached for me. But I backed away into the water. It rose over my shoes and soaked my socks. Icy cold. Don't, Ruth. I'm getting on the boat, Bill. There's a ladder down one side of the hull. I could wade to it and pull myself inside. I didn't need his help. You said you wouldn't go back to Red Hill. This is what's left.

2:01:15This is the other choice. whistling in the trees grew louder and every second the beach felt smaller more like a trap his face changed the wind rustled his hair yes yeah you're right get on the boat ruth he's pushing her off for sure yeah yeah he's pushing her off he's gonna stay behind yep i turned and waited toward the ladder telling myself he would follow telling myself all would be well why can't you hear it bill said as i reached the ladder as i pulled myself up onto the weather deck Why can't you hear Ira singing? But when I turned around, Bill was halfway up the beach, looking small, facing away from me, skin white and his arms rigid.

2:01:55Bill! The boat was creaking in the deepening tide and the wind was rushing across the sand. The boat jolted beneath me. Something dark appeared beyond the tree trunk, something I could barely see. It was a moving shadow independent of the shifting needles and swaying branches. It was a shape, a being, taller than a man and deliberate in its movements. I raised my revolver in shaking hands. I fired more than once. There was no reaction. The sound was lost among all the others, the screaming and gnashing, the howl of the whistlers. Bill was close to the woods now. He had to see it, but he was paralyzed, as straight and immovable as the trees.

2:02:34I screamed for him, wishing he would look at me, but he didn't move. and beneath me the boat shifted again. I fell at my head on the icy railing and once I had scrambled upright again, Bill had fallen. He was collapsed on the sand and the creature was looming closer to him, coming through the trees, crouching down. The whistling hushed, suddenly, almost completely. Even the wind seemed to ease. Takes its prey one at a time. I couldn't hear Catherine anymore, or Ira, but I could hear the whistlers. The softest warning tone, intelligible now, almost like words telling me to close my eyes. There's always one survivor.

2:03:17Always someone spared. The wind pushed the catch away from the shore and the darkness closed over Bill. I don't remember anything else oh oh dude that end part there's always one survivor there's always one to tell the story oh gosh December 22nd my name is Ruth Gattiger please bring my body back to Oregon if you can my driver's license is in my wallet this account of events is for the families of the deceased for the helicopter pilot and Lillian and Jeff for Bill and Ira's mother and the chef we found in Red Hill. I don't want it published. I don't want to be one more link in the chain of juvenile curiosity.

2:03:58Another mystery in the big book of stories that sends people like us to places like this to die. We had so many opportunities over the years to drop the question, to live with the unknown. We called ourselves folklorists, but we imagined we were adventurers, righteous explorers, exposing a mystery. We imagined we had the right. I never thought the Whistlers were real before coming here. I thought they were a dark side of the human psyche, just one of many predictable byproducts of human life in cold, isolated, untenable conditions. I wanted to sit around a fire with shifty-eyed fur trappers and remote homesteaders and listen to their spooky stories like a tourist.

2:04:39We didn't satisfy our curiosity coming here, didn't pick apart the tangled lure. We only satisfied the hunger of the thing that stalks this place. It's been here a long time, the chef thought, at war with the Whistlers. How long have they kept it at bay? It doesn't even have a name. At this late hour, I find I can't put a description into words, and I don't want to, because I realize now there's some things we don't deserve to know. There are stories we shouldn't tell, unknowns that should remain unknown. I should have done this in the jeep with bill would have been better but not necessarily easier die in the back seat and his arms warm staring out at the ocean the boat ran aground on a sandbar not far from where i lost bill i've been wandering down the coast i made it back to the jeep there are no whistles to follow me now nothing watching from beyond the trees the snow is deep and the land has gone quiet for how long?

2:05:37I don't know I don't know if I was spared or if the evil that lives here is merely biding its time again if you found this, the backpack thank you whoever you are I'm out of gas, out of food, and at night no matter where I look there are no lights in any direction it's cold I'll close my eyes for a little while there's still one round in the revolver I haven't made up my mind end of Ruth's account god damn I feel like this can be taken in a bunch of different ways like I don't know how literal everything is supposed to be versus like the way the story unfolds it almost feels like this is this whole story is like almost like a it kind of reminds me of like I don't know like the ending kind of had the same vibe I don't know why I got the same vibe as like the ending of the left right game with the road yeah the road just keeps going on and on and on yeah it feels like you could interpret the story in a lot of different ways like i was saying like i feel like you could probably even do like uh i don't know like it's just it feels so much like someone processing grief like all these kinds of different things like guilt grief and like the way that uh relationships kind of fade and contort and twist and like i don't i i just don't know i mean like my mind it's all here obviously there's a whole town that was supposed to be there but i mean i don't know to me it just feels like uh all from the perspective of ruth and then her like almost like leading up to a suicide or even like someone dying like it just feels very uh it all felt so uh surreal i think you can even get rid of the like the thing too is we never really ever see the whistlers we don't know what they are but even as just a story of someone who is lost and trying to like find civilization again very captivating but the but the whistler's angle to it that's what brought it into this like almost surrealist interpretation of somebody like dealing with the loss of a child dealing with a failing marriage make with a potential uh uh love triangle kind of thing as well that led to uh that led to their death at least that's kind of like that on the, on the first gut reaction.

2:07:52That's what I'm feeling. Yeah. Um, I agree. I think it's interesting how the whistlers are the monster at the beginning of the story, but as you read, it's like, they're just the harbinger. They're just the thing that tries to warn people of the monsters. I think that's fascinating. Um, this gosh, this has been such a good story so far. Also I'm looking, so I looked it up. Um, I'm looking at the website. Sorry. I found the original story it was posted to r slash no sleep before it went to creepypasta.com okay the username is just the whistlers and this is all it's posted just this account roost account and bill's account uh and yes it was posted 11 years ago so early 2015 or 2014 the first part so one of the um it's been a while since the characters have really grabbed me this way though i don't know like just a lot of uh i just really like the dynamic between bill and ruth yeah and just i don't it doesn't dwell on like the kind of like very tropey horror stuff to make it scary a lot of the horror like i said i mean i really just to to me it just feels so much like uh god yeah just like just a fucking it felt like the personification of like guilt and grief just like i don't know it just because you never all of their interactions feel so natural too yeah the whistlers i mean and like what are they protecting this where are they protecting you from besides like potentially he said like even like that when she was shooting out and she saw thought that she saw like the monster at first i thought it was just gonna be she she shot bill too or something you know are they really seeing these things is the is the madness of the whistlers and stuff.

2:09:32Is that just like repressed shit coming up and manifesting itself to you? I don't know. You know, like everybody kind of has their own versions of what it is. It's just very interesting. Bill's account. The person who brought Bill's journal to my attention has asked not to be identified. He insisted on giving me transcripts, not originals. So in this case, what I'm showing you is exactly what I received. As before, neither I nor my source makes any claims about the veracity of these documents. I'm sure many of you will want to know more about the documents themselves, but unfortunately, my source was not forthcoming.

2:10:04When I asked him how he acquired Bill's accounts, I did so many times. His only response was I didn't. I wish I had more insight to offer you. I'm afraid these new passages raise at least as many questions as they answer. First entry, December 7th. I've got calluses on my hands from burying my brother. If we're rescued today, I'll have to explain that to someone. Some search and rescue trooper, some forest ranger will hold my palm to the light of a chopper window and want to know how I managed to rub the heel of my hand raw. I practice, sometimes. I practice what I'll say to people when we get back home.

2:10:41Dr. Harmon, the department head, will need to know how I got Jeff and Lillian killed doing what was supposed to be straightforward field research. They were both as students, handpicked for great things, led astray by the man who wrote his dissertation on the Russian Yeti, who taught a cryptozoology class disguised as a folklore survey. I got bumped off the tenure track for that. Carmen talked over me in meetings like I wasn't there. Ruth was on the floor with Ira for days after he died. Wouldn't speak. She was holding his dead fingers and fussing to wash all the blood away, crying soundlessly with her mouth open, more like a wheeze.

2:11:16I had to do something, so I picked up her journal, flipped through all the way back to that night in the dark, full moon rising and Ira down in a hole. She isn't documenting the whistlers anymore. I'll see her in the corner by the stove sometimes with their notebook open and the pen just hovering over a page, not actually making words. She's thin as a scarecrow now and her lips are cracking. I wonder about the things that she doesn't write down. Their entire day she didn't see fit to take note of. And there are other things, little details that I don't remember at all. Things I don't remember saying.

2:11:50This is a whole problem with the work we do. Incompleteness, hearsay. Two tonight, to the north, for about an hour after sunset. They separated, seemed to be approaching the lodge from either end of town, then abruptly moved further away. Nothing concrete but the tracks outside and the marks on Ira. They don't seem willing to bother us inside, but we know that's temporary. I took Sam, the helicopter pilot, right out of the lighthouse kitchen. Something broke the window above the sink. It was pitch black and he yelled like a cat. Ira had the rifle ready. It was dark and rainy and he aimed for the pilot in the back of the head.

2:12:29Still no reception. We listen to static long enough and it starts to sound like something. So we keep the lounge radio off. Food running low. So that gives, again, I like how we get little bits to what happened at the lighthouse. The idea of the pilot just got ripped through the window. Yeah. December 8th. Mom will be at the airport when we're rescued. She'll ask about Ira before she asks about me. I have that hanging over me for the rest of my life. But the wrong brother made it out of the wilderness. Cain and Abel, he was the marked one. I can already see the disappointment in her eyes, hear the weepy sign.

2:13:07I'm sorry he's dead. Not as sorry as I should be. He didn't scream the way Jeff did. Didn't scratch and bite like Lillian. He just stared up at me through the blue darkness. Stared as if to concede that the order of things didn't matter. that it could be either of us in the hole and the outcome would stay the same. The day we're rescued, I'll have to find some way to keep the truth under wraps. Those eyes. Ruth isn't on her feet yet. When I got back from scavenging today, she was at the freezer door again, crying. There's a woman in there, a chef, dead. It's all the evidence we have about what happened at Red Hill.

2:13:44Not enough. We should dig a second grave, but the ground is even harder now. Our bodies are broken. and little wounds, cuts, and scrapes, twisted joints and tight muscles. Nothing gets a chance to heal, just pain on top of pain and hunger beneath it all. I went back through the houses today, looking for anything we can use. Pointless to write an inventory down. Nobody had supplies to overwinter in Red Hill. Seems even the chef was planning to head south once the weather came in. Three, maybe four whistlers around a night, very distant north of us. we've got every lantern gathered in the lounge all of them hanging from the antler chandelier around the tendrils of dust it's bright enough to read by almost enough to feel truly safe they'll pick their night soon i imagine only heard them briefly but clear as a bell so it was disturbing when i commented on it and ruth said she didn't hear them lillian's research centered on self-delusion no two descriptions of the whistlers are exactly alike There are similarities between accounts, sure, but she thought every victim was complicit somehow.

2:14:51That you would go so long fearing something you can't see, and eventually you decide what it looks like. You decide what you believe, and then you see what you want to see. Ruth woke me up later to say she heard the baby. She kept saying my name and begging me to listen, her nails digging into my arm, her face not an inch away from mine. Catherine's birthday's tomorrow. I didn't say anything. I was afraid of making her cry Instead I held her like she was mine My lips to her forehead She went back to sleep Not sure how much more of this we can take Think of the survivor theory all the time The different permutations of it If I shoot myself Will they leave Ruth alone?

2:15:32I remember Kirker Farley The first trapper I ever interviewed Said the whistling stopped altogether Once his last companion was dead Said he walked out of the woods unmolested And found help I want to walk for at least a day first make sure she wasn't hassled with burying me that's how Ira said he would do it take the gun and go for a walk what did he tell her rock ptarmigan he was never supposed to come back that day as he never really did no I could see the logic say the words but can't do it I wasn't the only coward in these woods so that's interesting So Ira, according to Bill here, was going to kill himself in the woods.

2:16:18Right. And then, but that's when he came to the revelation that it's a warning and he decided to come back to tell them. That's the only thing that Kevin from killing himself. Interesting. It's interesting to get another person's. It's interesting to get another person's perspective to how the other person's not necessarily acting crazy, but like how from Bill's perspective, he's like the more rational one or, you know, he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. December 9th. Ephraim Dafoe was the first Whistler scholar to describe the survivor theory, wrote a paper about it. The idea that the Whistlers are in some way dependent on humans.

2:16:53And so we'll always leave one alive. Living human begets more humans. Survivor tells a story, excites curiosity, leads to more expeditions, more idiots in the woods. It applies long-term thinking on the part of the Whistlers planning, cycle of sowing and harvest. Ruth doesn't believe this part of the mythology. Obviously, every story has a survivor. The incidents without survivors don't become the stories. They don't make it into the record. But I think about Kirker Farley, gray mutton chops and a crumpled Stetson, knuckles like oak bark. He was a Korea vet who retired to the wilderness once he got home to cabal of poverty.

2:17:32Spent a winter stranded and snowbound with six other people, all ex-military, all skilled and tough as nails. The Whistlers picked the group apart one man at a time over the space of a month. Finally, Kirker was left alone with his best friend, and that man started to lose his mind. He started howling at the moon. Kirker killed him, his best friend. Knife while he slept. Gentle as can be. Everyone I've ever told the story to said that that's the answer right there. Kirker's just a murderer with the story to cover up his own wrongdoing. Maybe his case really is that simple. At the beginning, Ruth suspected all cases were that simple.

2:18:09I asked Kirker, though, when we sat down together. Knowing they only take one at a time, why would they kill your partner and isolate yourself? Why don't you stay together? Why wouldn't the whole group stay together? Arms locked. One impenetrable unit. He smiled the strangest smile, and he said, Whistler ain't a hound chasing a fox. He's an angler waiting for a shark. Patient. Patient. Patient. Oh. This gives a different idea of the Whistlers. It's not necessarily protecting the humans, it's using the humans as bait. Maybe. Interesting. We've been out here for months now, and I still don't know what he meant.

2:18:46I do know I didn't have the nerve to follow my own logic. I couldn't sit idle and let the Whistlers dictate terms. No Whistlers tonight. When they come back, they'll come in force. They'll be insistent. I made my brother a promise, and I'll keep that promise. But not today. Not yet. There's still the coast. So him and Bill had a conversation that Ira needs to kill himself, right? Yeah. So we should both kill ourself so that she can get out of here. It's like a pack they made. Yeah, because there's always one survivor. Yeah, that explains so much more about Bill's decision at the end to not get on the boat, to walk away.

2:19:26December 10th. Today we found Gary Law's luggage in a cabin behind the lodge. It's nice knowing this is where he came from. It helps put a date on whatever scattered the population of Redhill. The man brought enough pleated slacks out here to start a catering company. Navy and khaki, cufflinks, and polo shirts. He got bare torch brochures and a receipt for a seaplane charter. It's as if this was his first time outside an office. He got the look of someone they'd send search and rescue for, but we haven't heard anyone flying over. I've heard that's something the whistlers can do. They can change what you hear when.

2:20:01Ask what's true and plant what isn't. Lillian tried to record the whistles one night, but didn't pick anything up. All we get is static on the radio. I wonder. No idea how Gary Law made it so far north by himself, on foot. Why on earth he picked that direction to begin with? Ruth gathered up his plane tickets and put it with his ID. It's documents. Worthless documents. We don't have anything of IRAs, but we've got a whole damn library on Gary Law. I never actually saw the man's body. Strange timing. I came back to Ruth burying a man hours after I'd left Ira to die. But he didn't die. He didn't speak except to say that we were wrong.

2:20:42It was a warning. Just a warning, he said. Whistler didn't kill anybody. Neither did I, I guess. December 11th. There's a book in the lounge on traps and snares. I know exactly two traps from scouts. The one where you make something heavy fall on your prey, a deadfall. And the one where you funnel your prey down into a hole. They've each got their drawbacks. There are knots and nooses in this book. Diagrams for cornering bigger game. Ira was the damned Eagle Scout. Ruth likes to remind us of the things he knew that we're both useless for. Today, I left her washing the bedsheets and water so hot it turned her arms red.

2:21:22She saw a tick on the carpet, she said. I probably brought it in on my socks. I would help, but I get the feeling she doesn't want me around the lodge. There's a good rope in the jeep. I made three different leg snares and one neck snare that I don't have high hopes for. The book's got instructions for small elk, boar, bear, and porcupine. I'd be glad to have any of these for dinner, but what I'm more interested in is what might happen if a whistler stumbles across a trap, what they might do to a tethered animal in distress. The academic part of me hasn't frozen to death yet. unlike ruth i've forgotten why we're here i found a pair of pole climbers in the forest i stopped halfway up a mossy spruce and watched the forest for a good long time once the snares were set i picked a little clearing where the ground is spongy not a quarter mile behind the houses across from the lodge but well hidden half the noises of the woods come from the trees themselves creaking and swaying and whispering like they do from my perch i could see the roof line of the lodge, smoke from the stove, and endless green in every direction.

2:22:27There are hills between here and the coast. I heard something just as I was returning to the lodge. A low rumble. Growl. I looked back and saw what looked like a dog streaking away from behind the houses and disappearing into the woods. We freed a brindle mutt from one of the houses. He's been following me in and out of the woods. Doesn't like me getting too close to his house. The gray shack right on the edge of the opening and the trees where I usually hike in. He runs with low shoulders and a mean little snarl. I'm sure he's starving. He finds himself in one of my traps. I may put him down.

2:23:02If I brought him home, Ruth would want to feed him, name him. Can't afford that. After dark, there had to be 20 whistlers around the lodge. It was deafening the sound of them, all in the direction of that gap between the houses, the place where the forest opens up, where I set my snares. I didn't tell Ruth this. Maybe it occurred to her anyway that their activity might have something to do with my time alone out there. I piled wood into the stove and made her put on a pair of socks. She's been biting her nails down to nothing and talking in her sleep. I listened to her through the night. I don't sleep much myself.

2:23:37I love having this different perspective. So it's like, while Ruth seemed the same one and Bill was crazy in the first account, now Bill seems the same one and Ruth is crazy in this account. Yeah, exactly. It's just everybody thinks that they're, you know, of a right mind, you know, and the other person's crazier, acting stranger. Like the basic person writing has to be brave for both of them. You know, it's just kind of it's I always like these back and forth. Yeah. The second perspective adds a lot. I like it. December 12th. Ruth isn't eating. She thinks I don't know how little food there is.

2:24:11Thanks. I don't notice her pretending to chew an empty spoonful of that yellowish fruit cocktail. When she's rescued, people at work will make a fuss over how thin she is, how hard her arms and legs are now. Sickens me, the way we take our bodies for granted. The way we would sit at desks and count calories and deny ourselves a beer after work. Breach. Damn, I'd like a beer tonight. I said it to Ruth just now. She's between me and the stove, braiding her damp hair. She laughed a little. She's pitying my lack of imagination, maybe. Or maybe she's hoping I won't ask her for the other thing I want.

2:24:43Checked the snares today. Caught some kind of fox. Dispatched it with Ruth's hatchet. It was gamey and tough as shoe leather, but we ate it anyway. She'd like jackals till our jaws were sore. There's plenty of salt and pepper, which didn't help as much as you'd think. Nothing in the other traps. The next snare looked disturbed, but the wind might have pulled it off the branches. Hard to tell. Ruth keeps telling me to take it easy. Rest in bed. Get off my bad leg. I can't bring myself to tell her that keeping still sounds like a death sentence to me. If she had heard way, we'd curl up under the blankets together and wait for spring.

2:25:19Spring would come, but we wouldn't see it. The only way any of this matters is if Ruth makes it out alive. When she sees me go into the front door, she asks me to stay where she can see me. Stay within shouting distance. Cross the lounge, give her a kiss before I go, but there's no give, no return. she's my sister when she chooses to be when they come to rescue her that's what she'll say that I was her brother-in-law that I looked after her that I was a decent help to her in Ira's absence that I tried there's almost like a bitterness to him too you know she's my sister when she chooses to be you know kind of making her out to be ungrateful December 13th it's hours after dark I just made it back Ruth saw me limping and chewed me out saying I'm walking too far, putting too much weight on my bad leg too soon.

2:26:10She doesn't know what I do all day. She assumes I'm still going through houses, finding matchbooks and hard candies lost behind sofa cushions. I'm trying to finish it, but I didn't even get the damn noose around my neck. Oh, oh, that's what he was doing. Possible to reach a good branch on these evergreens. It had to be high up so they could see me, so she could see me, so she know it was over. It's how we did Jeff, Ira, and I. Took him hunting, tied him to a tree. Waited until we heard them closing in, until the screams were drowned out by the whistling. And the other thing, screeching and deep growling and the snapping of bones.

2:26:48Okay. That's all right. Well, that is a revelation. That all the way back then they killed Jeff. That's what happened to him. So do you think they went insane or they just so quickly decided that there has to be a sole survivor. I'm just wondering if that was the plan all along. They brought people that they not really didn't care for, but newer. I don't know. Like, I'm wondering if it was always a part of the plan. Well, he says that's how we did Jeff, Ira, and I.

2:27:27So it almost, Benny is losing his mind downstairs and it is not helping my current state. I'm I've already knew where the door was. I was already aware that I'm home alone right now. Dog freaking out does not help that. Penny just runs inside and just mauls my leg.

2:27:48Oh my gosh. So, but sounds like Jeff wasn't willing. It sounds like they tied him up and he was screaming and all that against his will. So it sounds like Ira and Bill made a pact that she would be the sole survivor and decide to kill everyone else off or at least Jeff and themselves. I had every intention of watching them take him, but in the end I didn't have the nerve. I was sprinting away at Ira's side, deciding the horrific din meant only that we'd done our jobs well, that the Whistlers deemed the transaction acceptable, that they would leave us alone for a few more nights. We got back to camp and told Lillian we saw the Whistlers attack him.

2:28:24She believed us because they were silent for a long time after that, almost two weeks. Ira didn't know the stories well, but he was convinced I did the right thing. The lighthouse keeper was certifiable, but he pointed out, rightly, that the only way to survive the Whistlers is to play by their rules. They take one at a time. He said the night the chopper crashed. We were all around his hearth with him, nodding. We all knew it was true. They take one at a time, and they leave one alive. That one alive was going to be Ruth. We agreed, Ira and I, to put the plan together. It had been years since we agreed about anything, but our decision about Ruth was mutual and urgent.

2:29:03He didn't hate me for loving her then. He needed my help. Whistlers make the rules, but we decide the order. Interesting. Man, this bill account does make this go. It's tying in a lot of shit. It changes a lot of context, yeah. Yeah. We heard them closing in that night and dragged the lighthouse keeper from his bed. He was an old man, no trouble. We didn't wake the others. In the morning, we told them we saw him walking off on his own, babbling about sparing the rest of us. We all remember the pilot screaming about his wife and kids. We were all spooked by then, all willing to believe anything.

2:29:38Jeff marked an empty grave with a broomstick, and Lillian cried and called the man a hero. Camped in the woods the next night. Thought we might hike out of Whistler territory before anybody else had to die. But we gave them Jeff next, then Lillian, and then we were down to just us three. Just us three. And suddenly, all I had in common with my brother was that I wanted to live. I wanted Ruth to live. Fell out of the damn tree before I even found a branch. Banged my leg up good. Patient, patient, patient. That's what I keep hearing. Kept hearing. As I scraped away the soil and deepened the hole.

2:30:14As I grabbed roots and hauled away stones. It was already there. Collapsed burrow of some kind. So convenient. Receptacle for my darkest instincts. Ira had poor night vision. More contacts. It was easy in the dark to get him where I wanted him. to scare him into the trap. My hands were freezing. He was a sacrifice, but unaccepted. He was mute when he came back to camp. And even when he could accuse me, he didn't. Why? Why did they march him back to our door? He opened his mouth to say something before Ruth fired. In my dreams, I give him words, an accusation, a condemnation, a warning. Interesting.

2:30:58man. So the trap that he fell into, like I was already there, collapse burrow. So convenient or receptacle for my instincts. It wasn't the whistlers that hauled him into a trap. It was Ira falling into Bill's trap when he had set up, man. And then he comes back, but he doesn't snitch on him. Like perhaps he understands it's part of it. And he was going to kill himself with the rifle before he decided to tell them it was a warning. Ended up dying anyway. Man. Hi again. This will be my last update for a while. And to clarify for audio listeners, this isn't Bill talking. This is the person posting these stories again.

2:31:31I think I owe you all a recap of what's been happening for me in real time since I began posting these journals. When I first met the man who gave me Bill's entries, let's call him Mr. H, I was struck by his stoic, resigned way of sharing them. Even though he was a bit territorial about the originals, to date I have not seen them, he was determined about the idea of sharing the story with a broader audience. I felt silly for the way I'd personalized the narrative earlier on. Talking to him, I stopped feeling like I had harmed anyone by posting Ruth's journal. I didn't feel as conflicted about it as I did at the beginning.

2:32:05I had one last meeting with Mr. H before posting the first transcript of Bill's journal online. Yes, the man lived near me. He was grizzled, older but not elderly. Used a wheelchair but could walk short distances. I found his company a little frightening at first. He wasn't a creepypasta reader, as you might guess. The backpack I bought from the estate sale actually belonged to him. He was a family friend of the grandmother who died, and she had been keeping a handful of his old things in storage. The granddaughter sold his belongings without realizing what she was doing. I returned the backpack and Bruce's pages to him, though he wouldn't tell me how he came by them or why he'd given them to the grandmother for safekeeping.

2:32:44This was on Sunday before I posted the first half of the transcripts. It seemed like the right thing to do. Yesterday, I went back to Mr. H's house. I went to ask if I could have some final pictures of both of the journals together and the backpack. I know I told you I wasn't interested in proving anything, but it seemed the final record would be more complete if I could offer at least one photo that encapsulated all the material. Even comparing the age and color of the paper would be edifying. When I arrived, there was no answer at the door. It was unlocked, though. We lived in a small town. I knocked loudly before letting myself in.

2:33:20I found him in his living room. Hanging from a beam. Toppled step ladder on the floor. I made tears as I write this. I'd never seen a dead body before. Reading about the horrors Ruth and Bill faced, I think none of it was real to me until now. I don't know what he did with the two journals in the backpack. I didn't see them in his house while I waited for the police to arrive. Do I suspect that Mr. H is Bill? Few of you have implied as much. I'm afraid I can't answer the question now. I never asked him point blank. All I can do is leave you with Bill's version of events. It began on the 14th of December, the morning after Bill attempted suicide in the woods beyond the lodge.

2:34:01December 14th, final set of entries. I've talked to a few eyewitnesses over the years who swear whistlers look just like people. Little paler, maybe, dead behind the eyes. I spoke to an old woman, Wilma Darren, a goat herder, who said they can look however they want to look. like a goose or a sheep or a human being. It's when they open their mouths that you hear the truth. And when they change back to their natural form, do you want to describe what that was? So this is again, very Wendigo, but it's also very rake. And that's like a little humanoid figure scampering around. You think maybe the dog was a whistler then?

2:34:38I think so. Right. Like right before they leave, it runs out of the woods and cripples him before running back into the woods, you know? Yeah. She was convinced because it, Because as that one guy said, the trapper, it's not that the Whistlers want people. It's that they need the people around to catch something else for something bigger. She was convinced she'd seen one walking across her field one night, all alone, looking like a young man with torn clothes. She brought him inside, fed him dinner, and he didn't speak a word to her. She turned away from him for a moment when she was clearing plates.

2:35:10And when she looked again, he had gone from the table, sprinted silently through the front door. That night, the whistlers came. They trampled her fences in the dark, and she lost half her herd. Found a doe torn to pieces by something. The rangers dismissed her story out of hand. Game warden had some explanation for her about bears. There's no sign of a bear, though. No prints. Nothing interesting about the dead doe. I wonder now if they weren't half right. Ruth has said she thinks the whistlers could be protecting us. That we're not sharks, but more like sheep. sheep of the mercy of wolves and the whistlers are shepherds i don't know now i don't know what to believe the dog's house was the best angle on the woods i went in through the kitchen door and looked through the back windows i wonder if they're out there now having a laugh about my abandoned noose i'm brave inside my own head brave on paper but i haven't checked the snares today and likely won't.

2:36:10I'm thinking, actually, that it's about time we made our way to the coast. It's our last option now, and I'm sick over it. Dead if we do, dead if we don't. The leg is killing me. I'm eating Tylenol and aspirin like candy. We have more medicine than food left, but nothing helps much. The worst pain doesn't come from the leg anyway. It comes from the ticking clock, the whistlers at night, Ruth's face, from knowing I'm a coward, and a failure, knowing she knows. Tonight, she drew me a bath and sat on the tub's edge to wash my hair, her legs against my back, her feet in the hot water. We didn't talk, but I rested my head against her thigh, and she sort of stroked the back of my ear.

2:36:54It's enough for now. December 15th. Damn dog came for me today while I was siphoning fuel from the van. Out of nowhere, but luckily Ruth saw and came running. She tried to scare the little bastard back into the woods, but he wouldn't go. Just stood whining at the trees. backing away from the swing of her stick, whimpering but refusing to flee. Jeff had a theory. He called it the symbiosis hypothesis. He didn't study Whistler's much, but he was big on cryptids in general. People always ask, given that ecosystems only function because every organism plays a cooperative role, how is it possible that a tertiary predator could go unnoticed?

2:37:31Population of any sustainable size has a measurable appetite. His answer was that there must be larger blind spots to account for elusive species. He thought cryptids must exist in pairs, like a clownfish and an anemone. The anemone shields the clownfish from the outside world, protects it with poison that the clownfish is immune to. The clownfish helps the anemone by maintaining it, giving nitrogen, managing parasites, luring in prey. In this way, they operate at a remove from the rest of the ecosystem. They cooperate and might survive when logic says they shouldn't Ruth was a man, stuff like that.

2:38:08Normally when we read a sequel to a story, it's like, well, you could have done without this. It didn't really add a ton, but this is a case where it's like, it changes so much, gives so much more insight to the whistlers themselves, but like putting you in Bill's mindset that he was thinking of all of this. And there was so many different options. And he kept seeing the only option is like taking himself out, man. Ruth was shouting at the dog, shouting towards the woods, back up to me to shield me. We heard something out there as her voice echoed. Something called back to her. A scream. I heard it before.

2:38:42I thought it was a different part of the whistler's repertoire. A screech. A new inflection that comes over them when they go from stalking to attacking. So we heard the night chef died. Same gnashing, shrieking. It echoed out of the cave where we left Lillian. Okay. So in his series of events, she's shouting as her voice echoed, something called back to her scream. And he had heard it the night before a different part of the whistler's repertoire. Okay. So same order of events. She says that she saw the dog, she screamed the loud roar happened. Then the whistle started, right? Yeah. The same like outcome basically Lillian, Lillian with long red hair and Adorian eyes for Jeff.

2:39:26She almost got away from us. She fought. Oh, man. So menacing. She fought. Ira shot her in the leg. Jesus. We told Ruth we were firing on the whistlers when she asked about the sound. Said we could see them, like hard shadows, moving in the depths of the cave. Lillian wore the night vision goggles. I imagine she saw them more clearly than anyone ever has before. We didn't see anything, only heard them. We did hear this sound. A shriek like a wildcat, like a deranged woman. The whistling came after, came second, came from a different part of the woods and closed in. Now the dog was whining and it cowered out of sight and Ruth turned to raise me to my feet.

2:40:10Man, this back and forth is so good. Oh gosh. We were urgent to move, but we weren't pursued. I can't explain the shift, like a drop in temperature, a slackening of the wind. The whistlers were not there for us, but there for it. The whistling overtook the shrieking and then everything hushed at once. It left us alone. Ira said it, said it in a clear voice in the days after I thought he'd lost his mind. It's a warning. The Whistlers didn't kill anyone. What did he see from down in the hole? Said he saw tool marks. Said it to Ruth, but looked at me. Wanted to make sure I knew it wasn't forgiven.

2:40:47I used a folding spade. I thought we were a day's walk from Redhill then, maybe two. You have to give them something if you want to get away. It's what the lighthouse keeper said. It's what the stories say. Play by their rules, you live. Or you have a chance. I gave them Ira. I would do it again. I kept thinking I should have told Ruth everything. Here she was standing in the street with a stick of firewood and no idea what's out there. I hit my head. Wasn't much use, but I heard it again. The shrieking sound and a rumble beneath it. Atmospheric, eerie like thunder. And the whistling. The dog was gone by then, but I can't help thinking he's part of it too.

2:41:28Hair was spiked on his neck, eyes wide. We humans, we've got a way of personalizing things, of signing motives, emotions, help or harm. Patient, patient, patient. Ruth took me inside and cleaned my wounds, stitched up my leg. I bruised everywhere from my fall from the tree. She didn't ask about that. Maybe she assumed it was old bruising still, or just more evidence that I've been pushing myself where I shouldn't. We shared the last of the gin. It's battery acid, but somehow I couldn't get enough. I could see it getting to her as the evening got dark. Not the gin, but the fear. Screech we heard, the anxiety in the dog's eyes.

2:42:07The feeling that the longer we're out here, the less we know. A very final sort of despair, like she might collapse and never get back up again. Even after everything we've done, I couldn't have that. So I rose and took her in my arms, held her, and I realized there was no way to tell her it would be all right. I kissed her, and she let me. I heard her sign and felt the weight of her against me, letting go. There was something tied in her face, more like desperate resignation than love. Maybe that was my own pain getting in the way, my need. I brought her to the lounge and pulled her down with me on the bed, hurting everywhere, not caring.

2:42:46she undressed us both I wonder now that she's asleep she's dreaming of me or him it's funny I'm not afraid of death tonight there's a there's a bitterness in all these like from Bill's perspective of all these sexual altercations right where it's like she owes him or like she gets to be my sister when she wants to be instead of like you know the object of romance and like she not so much to say that he feels like she's using her but he feels like if he's gonna die for her he's owed something you know yeah um i think there's a giant jealousy as well with his brother which is also why i think that he was so willing to sacrifice him and it seems like he he's always been into her because she said that when the baby was born and or when the baby died should have been he was like that should have been mine and then like earlier he said when they made the decision that uh ruth needs to live um ira said you know ira didn't care that i loved her this time like he's known for a while but now he needs to use that to keep ruth alive right um and he's almost bitter about the whole thing bitter he couldn't have her before better he has to die for her now instead of back then yeah it's a very interesting character dynamic that he's determined to die for her but he's like upset with her upset that she didn't get to be his and like the real world you know yeah in a different life yeah yeah it's a fascinating character set up it's very it's not one-dimensional it's very layered because he's also killing people but he sees it as being the right thing because it's for her you know december 16th i'm going to get ruth to the coast i decided this morning red hill's a death trap slow or fast we'll die here if we stay and we have the jeep maybe we'll go fast enough that the screech thing won't follow us maybe the whistlers will close in on it once we're gone.

2:44:39They'll kill it. That's what Ruth thinks. She thinks it's a monster, something old and unspeakable. Some of the people of this region have been inflating with the Whistler since time immemorial. She thinks the Whistlers are on our side and they're keeping it at bay. Time's a factor. My leg's in bad shape. The bite needs antibiotics. We don't have them. She tried to get me to stay in bed, but I won't. There's too much work to do. I got the fuel and gear loaded into the jeep In the mid-afternoon, I decided to walk back out towards the snares I heard her yelling for me not to go too far But she doesn't understand I can hear the whistlers all the time now It isn't just at night, and it isn't just when they're putting on a show I can hear them talking through the day Hear their conversations out under the trees Get clearer and clearer every minute Soon, I think the whistle tones might turn into words Something I can parse It's a relief to be inside my brother's mind like this.

2:45:36Ira wasn't afraid of them. That night it held. I have nightmares about that night. They marked him out for understanding and how they've marked me. And I'm grateful. They'll leave Ruth alone. I went back out to the snares because I was ready at last to give them their opportunity. I'm limping. Easy pickings if I'm wrong. I went as far as the hanging tree and got the pistol ready. Hope feels like madness. I want to see them. The whistlers, the shrieking thing. I want to see them for myself before I die. It's not too much to ask, is it? The murmurs become chatter, came whistling. They were calling me out of the clearing where I'd set my snares away into the trees.

2:46:22I followed them with measured, trusting steps. Somehow I knew they wouldn't leave me behind. They were leading, not fleeing. Snow had an icy crust, and soon I wasn't just following the sound and emptiness. I was following tracks, dog prints. I looked ahead and I saw the dog, the same one, standing in a treeless space where the woods ended. It was the edge of a cliff, snowing granite and scraggly trees. I could hear moving water, and the dog was staring at me, into my eyes like he was possessed of a human mind. Are you one of them? I said. and the dog turned his back to me, wagged his tail once and ran straight ahead, ran straight off the face of the cliff, and the whistlers, they were closer than I knew, their voices erupting behind me and ahead, down in the gully and right at my back, and what I don't know, what I can't know, is whether he jumped for me, or for them, whether they were making noise over his death, or my witnessing it, whether Ruth and I matter any more or less to the whistlers and the hares and foxes and birds we've hunted along the way.

2:47:32I walked to the cliff's edge as a matter of reflex. It was a very long way down. A sheer granite face with icy lines had run off. I didn't see the dog. I saw cars. A dozen? Maybe fewer? Cars and trucks driven clear off this cliff face crashed and mangled, blackened where they'd burned. It happened before we reached Red Hill, but not long before. It was a graveyard, fresh one. Here lies the whole population of Red Hill, the sign might say. It's one thing to be backed against an edge. It's another thing to drive clear off it. There weren't many bodies in view, but the ones I could see were removed from the vehicles, grown, dragged.

2:48:19It's hard to say. That is cool. the whole town was compelled by like the same inclination that now Ira and Bill have like they have to they have to take their own life so that someone else can be saved perhaps or like the woman in the meat locker was it's like maybe there isn't even a greater thing that growls maybe the whistlers just compel you to take your own life to give into the woods like it did to the dog right yeah and there's just there like everyone got in their cars and drove off this cliff that is so sick yeah i'm really am wondering if it's just manifestations in your mind and it represents something different to each person yeah like like her like ruth hearing katherine right like hearing the baby yeah it's just like it puts things in your mind to drive you mad uh man the whole town everything every reveal in this story makes it more in-depth makes it cooler that's such a neat revelation ruth got a paper published in a good journal a few years ago on the subject of mass hysteria.

2:49:19When a group of people panics all at once, they become like a single organism. They might see things that were never there, remember events that never occurred. Everybody defers to the loudest voice and suddenly the whole herd is spiraling to some terrible end at once. There's a whistler story that takes place after a shipwreck. Gosh, this is so good. Oh, oh. 20 people get stuck together on the same beach. It's a fishing boat, so they're orderly people. They've got a hierarchy. Everyone's got a job. But they realize there are whistlers near. The captain starts telling them stories from when he was a boy.

2:49:54Stories of how the whistlers will take the group down one at a time. How their minds will be compromised. They'll turn against each other. So they draw straws and choose an order and with great efficiency every night they send one man out in the woods with a torch and nothing else. They assume they'll be rescued in a matter of days and each sacrifice is for the greater good. bind the group just a little more time. Shows the man never comes back. The group never gets attacked by the Whistlers. Confirmation bias, Ruth said. Rescue boat never comes. They continue in this way until the captain is the only man standing.

2:50:29Having like clockwork. Each man thinking his sacrifice was keeping the other safe. It was all a matter of practicality and fairness and maybe that their own strengths would keep them alive when it was their turn in the wild. Who knows what they saw in the darkness. Maybe the whistlers called them onward, showed them paradise. Maybe the people who drove off this cliff saw a road, a neat suspension bridge. Something happens in the mind. Ruth hears her baby at night. Captain did the talk show circuit for a few years and killed himself. Ruth says this is the most damning part. The captain knew it was just a story.

2:51:06He knew the whistlers weren't real. Little sleight of hand. He picked the order. I picked the order. I think it was a message. The dog, the whistling. There's no shrieking sound, no sign of danger. Just me and the fallen bodies in the cliff's edge. The whistlers were daring me to take matters into my own hands. Keep my promise. Gosh. Oh, this one for me, like just how cool the setting is and this revelation from Bill is quickly working its way up the ranks of stories we've read. I'm like just from the folklore elements to the cryptid elements to how well the tension's been built so far and now seeing like the other side of the coin I am I am about it the two stories merge beautifully it's very compelling yeah it does such a good job at mirroring what was in the first part December 18th Ruth's driving us to the coast things changed for me this morning when I realized we were really going weather was good foggy but not snowing when we get there it's over coast is the last place we can go where we might get help where we find someone living who can get us out of here she looks tired her hands are tied on the wheel which she'll wipe her squeaking as they clear the condensing mist i've thought so much over the years about what she deserves not me not this she knows how i feel she knows since the night Catherine died.

2:52:38It was just mom and me in the hospital waiting room late, drinking scorched coffee and pretending to read magazines. Doctor came to say the baby had passed away, and then they wouldn't let me into the room with Ruth. Only the father's allowed. Wait until visiting hours, the nurse said. I raged the woman with her pinback hair and sickly pink scrubs. Mom kept asking what had gotten into me. I told the truth, broke down crying and said i was in love with ira's wife and realized until that moment that i was jealous of him jealous and angry he was the only person allowed in that room with her and he wasn't there he vanished to tuscaloosa or somewhere to listen to drug reps lecture about catheters too chicken shit to be a man when it mattered right up until the end i told that nurse I was the father.

2:53:30Ira Douglas Gattiger, I said, poking my finger into her clipboard. We all knew I was lying, but Ruth said to let me in. So late at night and I held her in the hospital bed with all the tape and gauze and an IV in her arm. Catherine came by emergency C-section, so it was a double trauma. She was stuck in a recovery bed for Catherine's entire week of life. There was so little I could do. Maybe I was taking advantage. I don't know. My mom looked in on us that night, saw us. She'll have her own ideas about this. Once Ruth is rescued, she'll be fascinated to know why I let my brother die. Gosh, man, just, it goes from painting Bill as like this heroic guy who was like, yeah, maybe he wanted to feel something, but she did too in the last moments.

2:54:19And it was her idea as much as it was his for the two of them to embrace. And like, he's just making the hero play to save her but then like all of this plotting on his end man yeah selfish dude for sure yeah yeah the drive was short i closed my eyes against the window and opened them we'd arrived gray sand and the pale sun in the sky an icy dock there's a boathouse a shack and enough trash in the bushes to say people have been here but not recently not since of corruption came to Red Hill. The corruption. That's what Kirker called it as he told me the story. It was a separate thing. Something the whistlers brought with him.

2:54:58The corruption in the hearts of men. Was he talking about fear? The ordinary fear of the unknown and what it does to a person. Ruth saw me crying and walked out to the dock. She can't look at me. I think she knows how badly I've failed. She knows this could be over for her if I was man enough to be steady with the noose. No, she doesn't know. Doesn't expect me to be the one who dies. Doesn't know what I've done to keep us safe this long. She's a good woman, virtuous like the long-suffering mother in a fairy tale. If I told her the truth, we'd have an argument about whether it was necessary. Whether I'm not just as bad as whatever lurks under the trees.

2:55:40I might be. I have my reasons, but now she's run out of hope. She doesn't think either of us will make it out alive. She turned her face into the wind. Sharp. Started walking up the beach. Do you hear that? She said. I listened. It was faint. But there. Whistler's. Whistler's coming for me. The man who picks the prey. But they didn't want Ira. Didn't take him. Or they took his mind, but not his body. What about Lillian? What about Jeff? What was really happening beneath all the screaming? Don't go, Ruth. I said. She was walking up the sand, going to where she could see across the beach. But she wasn't hearing whistlers.

2:56:25She was hearing the baby again. I don't remember Catherine crying. She was too small, too weak. There's a boat. Ruth said, looking winded, maybe happy. It was something to do, an option to try. I told her I couldn't go back to Red Hill. I intended that she should go back, keep warm, wait for rescue. She could make it once I was gone. Any of the stories, she would make it. But we dragged ourselves towards the boat on the unforgiving coastline. Sam became craggy, basalt, became forest, reedy and thorny and near impenetrable. She clampered onward almost like an animal, from all fours up boulders, always moving forward, always towards the boat.

2:57:06Every step brought us closer to the whistlers. I could hear them growing louder, hiding in the trees. Dozens, at least. Hollow howling. Everything else, too. The clicking of teeth. The shifting of weight. Yes, there are bodies beneath the voices. A strange corporal reality. Something I may never succeed in defining. She stood at the edge of the shallow, gently laughing water. Suddenly, she was an expert on boats and tides. It was a mistake coming so far. The boat was a weathered shell of itself. Flimsy and with tattered sails and frayed lines. It wouldn't take her as far as she needed to go. She insisted.

2:57:45She said she didn't hear the whistlers. She heard the baby and Ira. Ira singing, afraid so foreign I couldn't even imagine it. She heard them behind her on the boat, calling her to the false safety of the water. All I could hear was ahead of us in the woods. I heard whistlers and their waiting jaws. I heard the danger that they were protecting her from. It occurred to me that maybe the whistlers were offering another bargain. put Ruth on the boat. Let her go. They were offering me a chance to die on my feet, pistol in hand. Yes, I was willing. I was willing if it meant somehow that Ruth would be safe.

2:58:24I told her to get on the boat, move like it was right behind her, stopped, turned. I walked up the beach towards the whistlers, towards the edge of the trees where they hid, where they called for me. Soon Ruth saw what I'd done. She saw I didn't follow her under the sailboat, that I was away and the tide was rising, that I was facing the whistlers, facing the end. She was screaming over the whistlers so she could hear them now. She was screaming behind me, screaming about something I should see. Run, Bill! Can't you see it? Bill! I saw it. The dog. Gray and brown, sharp, forward ears, dabbled dark on the sides.

2:59:02I fell to my knees, thinking, like a fool, that I had them figured out. I was supposed to follow the dog, I thought. I was supposed to give myself up. So I did. My legs weren't working, and I crawled. I crawled over sharp stone and weedy gravel. I stared the dog in the eye. It was silent, like Alma Durbin's young man. Whistler, I decided. Shade of the woods, recalled, further north. whistler in the shape of a dog it was coming toward me tentatively i heard ruth's voice a complaint high in her throat harsh my name screaming my name but the whistler's drowned her out their voices rose to screeching to a din and they descended on the dog right in front of my eyes the dog that was not a dog not a whistler something else something that died with a moan like an earthquake.

2:59:57They tore it apart. The effort went on for many long minutes, long enough for me to realize the dying thing looked nothing like a dog, not in the least. It had long black limbs, sharp angular with joints protruding, short coarse hair that shone. It bled the same deep red of any mammal, long toes curled with black claws, flickering nerve impulses. Part of my mind says it was a bear. Black fur, enormous stature, and that low growl, dark and strong in a way that grips your heart. Could have been a bear. It could have been any number of completely familiar things. There's another part of me that knows it wasn't a bear.

3:00:35Knows it isn't something I've ever seen before. Isn't something I can describe. And the whistlers took it down. Okay, fascinating. So he sees the dog, a real dog at some point. And then the thing comes, it's, it's, that explains why when she hit it, it runs into the woods and then makes a growl. And then the whistlers appear around it. This is some other entity. This is the symbiosis, something else in the woods that hunts people that the whistlers hunt it. So it needs people to be around so that they can find it wherever it goes. And it takes the form of things that have died. Like the guy, the dog that he saw run off the cliff.

3:01:11Interesting. What a cool idea for a monster. And like she, while she was on the boat, she saw it for what it was, a giant thing taller than a man crawling on all fours. But to him, it gives the perception that it is a dog, right? So this thing gives people illusions. Probably, like he said, maybe the people that drove off the cliff thought they were driving on a suspension bridge. Who knows? It gives people illusions so it can lure them away. And then it tears their bodies from the car to devour them. And the whistlers hunt that. That's such a cool idea for a monster. And what did he call it? The shade of the woods.

3:01:45That's such a cool name. Okay. I got back on my feet. swayed once before falling again. The last thing I heard was the snapping of bones and in my fevered mind, they were Jeff's bones and Lillian's and Ira's and Ruth's. They were Catherine's tiny bones and the whole misadventure was my fault. It is, isn't it? I pick the order. All false to me. I didn't wake up until the following morning. By then, the woods were silent. Ruth and the boat were gone. Man, gosh, that's so neat. Okay, so he's saying that like the boat captain, he picked the order. Because it was always going to be him that survives.

3:02:21Because from the letter we see at the end of Ruth's account, seems Ruth dies and this guy's probably the sole survivor. If he's the old man who had Ruth's letter and then like invites the boy who's posting this online over and then ends up hanging himself, right? So if that's all him, it was always going to be, he was always going to be the sole survivor. He just picked the order. All this was, even if he didn't know it, his own design. December 19th. When did the dog stop being a dog? I don't know. The wound on my leg refuses to heal. I can feel the pain of it in my entire body. An ache in time with my heartbeat.

3:02:56Wilma wouldn't tell me what the Whistlers really look like. There's a reason for that. Good reason. They were drawing curtains in our minds, letting Ruth hear her daughter again. Join me in another pitiful creature alone in the woods. I don't know, but I have my suspicions. Like we personalize the story when we shouldn't. They're not protecting us. That much is obvious now. Should have been obvious a long time ago. Anglers waiting for sharks. Ruth and I were not sharks. Patient, patient, patient. We're bait. I see that now. We're bait for something bigger. Is that what they were doing with Ira?

3:03:36Keeping him on the hook? Something took his arm, but the whistlers kept him on his feet. Kept him walking, marked him. Now they've marked me. Put my scent on the wind. I couldn't walk back to the jeep tonight. I got halfway, was hobbling. It's like it's close to useless. I imagine Ruth's hands on it, telling me to stay awake, to stare down the pain. When I find her, I won't let us be separated again. We'll fight our way out of this back-to-back, keep moving down the coast. They want one of us, they'll have to take us both. That was her mindset, the right mindset. We're not the prey. I see that now.

3:04:15Human beings are collateral damage. No, I'm not certain. There are too many stories, memories told by people with polluted minds, corrupted. I don't see the boat. No lights or fires. I had to move further inland than I'd like to find a trail.

3:05:01She's safe. ruth i reached the boathouse but the jeep's gone there are tire tracks to follow down the beach through the mud i slept half the day yesterday pain is blinding i was lost in the woods turned around it was further than i thought and the trees all look the same once you're off course when every step costs so much excuses excuses excuses what will i do if she doesn't make it what have I done? I froze overnight, buried myself with moss. This morning I realized I could just stay down. I regretted ever leaving Red Hill. Stove and blankets. We were going to die anyway. Why not die together?

3:05:43I was so sure she'd have a chance at the coast. When I find her, she'll tell me what an idiot I was. She'll tell me she loves me. She said it that night, after the dog bit me. She was falling asleep, her cheek on my shoulder, my hand in her hair. I love you, Bill, she said, and she closed her eyes. I just smiled, figured she already knew how I felt. I wish I'd said it back. I wish in the darkness I had more of that moment to remember. I love you, Ruth Gadiger. It's the greatest pain of my life, but I do. December 24th. I made it to the Jeep. It's parked skew in a marshy area where the mud would be deadly if it wasn't freezing over.

3:06:28Out of gas. She didn't get far. I wonder if she was running the engine for heat. Couldn't blame her. It's raining a little. Freezing mist. I'm inside the jeep and she isn't here. Her backpack is slumped in the back seat. Her pens and journals stuffed inside a plastic bag right at the top of the pack. The revolver's here. Empty. Found it a good five yards from the jeep on the ice. but no Ruth. I've got three in the pistol. So does that mean she killed herself? Yeah. And now like her body's been drug off? Yeah. So now I think Bill's going to live. So I think he is Mr. H. Yeah, I think so. He was the sole survivor.

3:07:10Yeah. Her last journal entry is a suicide note or that's how it seems. She figured I was dead and tried to drive south and ran out of fuel. If she killed herself, she'd be here beside me. I suppose an animal might have dragged her away if she wasn't in the vehicle. It says here, take my body back to Oregon. She wouldn't have been so careless as to do it out in the open. Not when she had the option. Not when she knew what was lurking close by. It's too dark to go looking now. I'm exhausted in a way that feels almost soft. Welcome. That's a cold getting into me. It's steep now, the chill setting into my bones.

3:07:49Maybe I'll see Ruth tonight. it. Maybe I won't wake up. December 25th, Christmas Day. Her body was dragged. It was easy to see in the light of morning. I stuffed her pack into mine and went looking. There were footsteps in the mud, hers, leading towards where I found the revolver. No blood on the ice. A disturbance where she might have fallen, and then a smear in the mud where she was taken away, up across the ice and through gravel, through sand, inland, into the woods again. I followed the path without weighing the idea first. It seemed we're worth more to them alive. Myra. They kept Ira going for more than a month.

3:08:30He had a rifle the day he saw their true faces. The day the corruption got a hold of him. If I hadn't finished it sooner, Ruth would be safe now. She'd be walking south, wouldn't she? Free to go. We're worth too much to them, the whistlers. too useful. That's why they never finish us off. A survivor with a good story keeps the cycle going, keeps the humans coming. Ruth understood that. Mystery is a hunting tactic. Our curiosity is what kills us in the end. That and our companions. December 26th. Twice I thought I'd lost the trail, but I didn't. Trail changed. Crossed the road from Red Hill and led through a brushy field through snow.

3:09:11Almost turned to walk to the lodge. Pros and cons. Another day or two of this and I might drop, but turning away can mean losing the trail. Here in the field, the drag marks turned into footsteps. Uneven, like she's dragging her feet. Bare feet. Her shoes come off along the way. I found them. Tied them to my pack. If she's walking, maybe she got away. So I'll follow. I won't stop. Tracks are obvious now in the snow. As long as I can keep ahead of the weather, this will all be over soon. South. She's leading me South. So it sounds to me like she did kill herself and then she was dragged by the creatures.

3:09:49And then similar to maybe the dog, the like, or maybe whatever. That I have to Ira. Ira was. Yeah. Yeah. He did like, they become one or they keep them going or makes them to some in between some possessed state. That's probably what happened her and now she is leading him to safely so he can tell the story september 29th the trail the tracks they ended today i was walking in ruth's bare footsteps dragging strides and suddenly they weren't just hers there's a second set of the same steps and a third all dragging and running together i was so fixed on my feet on the tracks on picking ruth's tracks apart from the others i didn't realize i was walking in a circle circle high on a ridge exposed and the tracks leading me around and around a boulder big and gray marked with the vein of white quartz there's no path away from here just a continuous loop of footprints so many of the snow is cleared leaving mud and dead plant matter even a ring like the one we found encircling the lodge on our first morning in red hill then my instinct was to flee to get ruth the hell out of that ring if i could manage it or feed myself to the whistlers give them what i thought they wanted now the circle didn't mean as much to me.

3:11:03I had no energy for fear. Ruth is walking among the Ristlers. For how long? For however long she can stay on her feet. It's not symbiosis. Whatever it is, it starts in the mind, in the head. Maybe they were all like us once, like Ira and Ruth. Maybe that's why they always let one person go. Tell her Rixen, a folklorist. That was his theory. He thought there was no cryptid in the woods, no separate predator species, that the whistlers themselves were just people, corrupted, pushed so far by the harshness of the wilderness that they transformed into something else to survive. Pure need and fear, hunting in a pack.

3:11:44Maybe deep down they have human hearts. Maybe part of them wants to see us survive. Climbed up onto the boulder, stayed inside the ring. It was late evening and I figured they'd come for me. Maybe I'd see Ruth among them. That'd be worth it. That and the stars. I sat on the boulder and could see across the valley. The snow and the distant gray ridges. The sky turning purple and the opening eyes of the stars. The whispers never spoke up around me. They never came. The longer I looked, the more I saw across that valley. I saw a hard, unnatural line. A road. Before long, there was a light on it. A moving light.

3:12:28Headlights winding up a neighboring ridge. And there were other lights. Christmas lights. Window lights. The spangled glow of a small town. Another red hill, but this one populated. This one alive. Ruth left me her flint and steel. Paper. I started a fire and they came for me the next morning. They came for me the way they would have come for Ruth if I hadn't failed. in a chopper, blankets with ointment for my cuts and a splint for my leg. I might lose it, someone said. They might take it off at the knee. What happened? Ranger hollered over the chopper blades. The whistlers. I said, garnering myself a look of mixed pity and disbelief.

3:13:13What are the whistlers? There's no explaining what's actually out there, and I see that this is by design. The ineffability is the trap. I shook my head the way Willman Darren shook her head at me all those years ago and said the only thing that made sense at the time patient patient patient and that's the end wow dude it's fun having a multi-part series that like cohesively comes together in a great way like I like at the end of part one where you expect Bill to die that kind of thing only to have this be like almost a I mean Dante's Inferno kind of experience for Bill who was just kind of a selfish very petty bitter man full of jealousy and this is kind of his own hell I really don't know I still kind of feel the same way after I read after we read Ruth's journal entry to where I don't know how realistic it is or as much as it's like just a complete descent into madness yeah you've heard the story so once you're out there and you get stuck I guess I guess there had to be some initial thing because they were at the lighthouse and something ripped the guy out of the window.

3:14:28And that seems to be the catalyst for everything that went wrong. But how much of it's them actually doing stuff and how much of it's just in your head? You know, I also love like the story. It told so much and like, oh, well, Bill met this and Ruth met this and stuff like that. But it was also so restrained and like, it didn't tell us too much about the Whistlers or the thing, other thing they're hunting. They don't even have a name. Uh, it just looks like a dog to him at least like it leaves so much up to the imagination bite, but also gives you so many pieces to play with. It's like, it sets just like the story does right on that border of folklore where it's like, we, we know enough about it to speculate, but we don't know everything about it.

3:15:09And there's so many stories like the boat captain and people get in the trapper and stuff. There's so much extra lore added to it in such a casual way, such a juggernaut of creativity and uh mystique that was built around this it's just so it's a lot of fun and i think it works the best because it's just an amazing character piece you know like we never we don't ever ever see the whistlers ever you barely even hear what they sound like i mean you hear that you know oh there's the whistlers again but it's just so much about these characters and like the very unconventional storytelling of like how the narrative narrative isn't just straight ahead you kind of get pieces from the past as we push forward through the story and you just get to reveal more and more of these people and intentions and plans and everything else it's just uh extremely strong read man this is it this was this was a sick one like hardly any jokes just because yeah i was just locked in honestly it was great it was so good it was just written so well it's one of the best things it's one of the best things we've read in a while, I think.

3:16:10Yeah, I think so. Gosh, that went hard. And it's a shame that, again, the Amity Argo, this is the only thing I can find by them. I would love to find more of their stuff, but I'm not seeing it anywhere. There's hold on. So there was a No Sleep podcast episode about it. Interestingly, Amity Argo has not put out any other stories. At one point I was remembered it was a pen name throwaway account for one of the more popular no sleep authors so i could i mean that would make sense to me um but there was an audio thing they did uh and it says by amity argo and then it's got like a bunch of voice actor stuff but now i'm still not seeing any names it's starring like jessica mckinvoy and david cummings but there's nothing specifically about who wrote it man i wish i could find out more stuff from this author because it was so well done um please go up vote like we'll leave the reddit link and the creepypasta story please go upvote it give it high ratings it deserves it man I want to know more from this author this was so good it was amazing guys thanks for listening this is a nice big old fat episode this week so I hope you liked it and we will catch you in the next one bye bye we'll catch you in the next one Amity if you're out there please give me your name I would like to give you money and my wife.

3:17:38She's not going to watch the episode this far, but if you reach out, you can have her. That should do it. Bye.

3:18:06Hay игра's detonator H H

3:18:33kan你有 你有