The Berry Stain

I never thought I’d be writing about this, but after a year of silence, I feel I owe it to anyone who might be in a similar situation. My name is Elara, and for the past fourteen months, I’ve been living in a small, isolated cabin in the dense pine forests of the Pacific Northwest. I moved here to escape the noise of the city and to work on my paintings, but I soon realized I wasn’t alone.

It started with small things: objects moving, a faint scent of damp earth, and the occasional chill that ran down my spine. At first, I dismissed it as my imagination, but then I noticed the papers. I had a stack of old sketchbooks and loose sheets that I used for preliminary drawings. One morning, I found a sheet of paper on my desk with a series of faint, crinkled lines, as if something had been dragged across it. The marks were in a strange, swirling pattern, and they were a deep, forest green.

Intrigued and a bit unnerved, I decided to test the entity. I placed a fresh sheet of paper with a set of crayons, pencils, and markers in a variety of colors, and left it overnight. The next morning, the green coloring pencil was out of place, and the paper bore a more defined mark: a symbol that looked like a spiral with a broken line through it. The paper’s edges were crinkled, but not torn, as if a thin, damp hand had pressed down.

Over the weeks, the entity grew bolder. It consistently chose the green pencil, and its markings became larger and more complex. I documented everything, taking photos and notes, but I couldn’t decipher the meaning. One night, I decided to leave a piece of fruit on the desk as an offering, a juicy blackberry. In the morning, the berry was gone, but there was a dark purple stain on the paper, right in the center of a new symbol. The stain looked like blood, and the symbol seemed to have a central dot, like an eye.

I remember the day I finally saw it. It was late October, and the cabin was surrounded by a thick fog. I had left a piece of green construction paper out, and when I returned from a walk, I saw it: a figure, barely there, hunched over the desk. It was insubstantial, like a wisp of smoke, but I could see its long, thin fingers holding the pencil. It didn’t seem to notice me at first, but then it turned, and I saw its face. It had no mouth, only a deep, dark hollow where a mouth should be, and its eyes were like two pits of endless green, the same shade as the pencil. I stumbled back, and it faded, but the mark it left that day was the clearest yet: a perfect circle with a dot in the center, surrounded by spiraling lines, and the paper was stained with a green that seemed to seep through the fibers.

After that, I knew I had to communicate. I left a piece of paper with a simple question: ‘What do you want?’ The next morning, the paper was covered with a complex pattern, and in the corner, there was a single phrase, written in shaky, childlike letters: ‘THE BERRY STAIN.’ I didn’t understand. I thought it might be a name, a clue, or a warning.

I decided to research local folklore. I learned that the forest around my cabin was once home to a tribe that believed in a spirit called the ‘Berry Eater,’ a trickster that fed on memories and left stains on the world. The spirit was said to be trapped in a tree that was cut down decades ago, but perhaps it had found a new home in my cabin.

Desperate for answers, I tried to use a mirror to glimpse the entity, hoping to see its reflection. I set up a large mirror facing the desk where the papers were. When I left it alone for a night, I found that the mirror was covered with a green slime, and on the paper, there was a drawing: a face with a wide-open mouth, and inside the mouth, a blackberry. The paper’s edges were curled and blackened, as if burned.

Now, I’m writing this from my cabin, but I’m not sure how much longer I can stay. The entity has become more aggressive. Last night, I woke to find a green handprint on my pillow, and the window was open, letting in the cold. I don’t know if it’s trying to communicate something profound or if it’s just playing with me, but I’m scared. I’ve stopped leaving out the green pencil, but the stains appear anyway, on my skin, on my clothes, and on the walls. I’ve started to see the symbol in my dreams, and I wake up with a green taste in my mouth.

If anyone reading this has any idea what this entity is or how to stop it, please, I need your help. I think it’s trying to tell me something, but I’m afraid that by the time I understand, it will be too late. The berry stain is spreading, and I don’t know how to wash it away.