The Last Logging Road

It was the third day of the government’s ‘stay at home’ order, and Cass was already clawing at the walls of her tiny apartment. The rain had been drumming a monotonous rhythm on the window for hours, and the news was a loop of the same warnings. She needed out. She packed her old canvas duffel with a change of clothes, a bag of dog food, and a six-pack of cheap lager. Her yellow lab, Grizzle, was already dancing at the door, tail thumping against the frame.

She threw the duffel into the passenger seat of her rusted-out ’87 Ford Ranger and coaxed Grizzle into the cab. The truck coughed to life, and she headed north, away from the city limits, into the sprawling pine forests of the Cascade foothills. The rain turned to a drizzle that slicked the asphalt, and the world became a blur of green and gray. She didn’t have a destination; she just wanted to be surrounded by the quiet, by the smell of wet earth, by the absence of other people.

Around noon, she spotted a dirt track veering off the main road, barely visible between the pines. A faded wooden sign, half-rotten, read ‘CLEARWATER TIMBER ACCESS — NO TRESPASSING.’ Cass ignored it. The old logging road had that look of being forgotten, overgrown with ferns and moss, and that was exactly what she needed. She turned onto it, the truck bouncing over ruts and roots, until the trees swallowed the light from the sky.

She drove for what felt like hours, stopping twice to let Grizzle out. The dog would sniff the air, hackles rising, and then refuse to wander far, staying close to the truck. Cass chalked it up to the unfamiliar territory. She passed a few wrecked vehicles, rusted hulks of cars that had been abandoned long ago, their windshields shattered, doors hanging open like mouths. She took photos, feeling a thrill of rebellion.

Then the road ended. Not at a clearing or a turnaround, but simply stopped, as if the forest had reclaimed it mid-stride. Ahead was a wall of dense undergrowth, thorny and impenetrable. Cass killed the engine. The silence rushed in, thick and heavy. Grizzle whined.

‘It’s just the quiet, boy,’ she said, scratching his ears. She grabbed a hoodie, a tin of dog food, and the six-pack, and stepped out. The air was cool, damp, and smelled of pine sap and decay. She found a relatively dry spot under a massive cedar and set up a small camp, just a tarp and her sleeping bag. She cracked a beer, and the fizz sounded obscenely loud.

As the afternoon wore on, the light began to dim earlier than expected. The clouds had settled into the valley like a gray lid, and the drizzle turned to a steady, soaking rain. Cass pulled the tarp tighter and huddled with Grizzle, who was pressed against her leg, trembling slightly.

‘What’s wrong, boy?’ she murmured. The dog’s ears were flattened, his eyes fixed on something in the darkness beyond the truck’s headlights, which she’d left on for safety. She squinted, but saw nothing but the tall, straight trunks of the pines, their shapes dissolving into the gloom.

That’s when she heard it: a low, rhythmic creak, like a branch swaying under a heavy load, but steady, unvarying. It seemed to come from deep in the forest, from a direction where she’d seen nothing but an unbroken wall of green. The creak was joined by a scraping sound, as if something was being dragged over the forest floor. Grizzle let out a low, guttural growl, his lip curling.

Cass turned off the headlights, plunging them into near-total darkness. The creaking continued, closer now. She fumbled for her flashlight, clicked it on, and swept the beam across the tree line. For a moment, she saw nothing but the trunks, their bark etched with… something. Not moss or lichen, but patterns, like symbols carved by a patient, deliberate hand.

Then the creaking stopped. The scraping stopped. The forest was silent, save for the pattering of rain on the tarp. Cass let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

But then the dog began to howl. Not a bark, not a whimper, but a long, mournful howl that seemed to be responding to something out there. Cass pulled him close, hushing him, but he would not be quieted. He howled until his throat was raw, then fell silent, his tail tucked between his legs.

It was then that Cass noticed the tracks. In the soft mud near the truck, there were hoofprints, but they were too large, too deep, and they seemed to be paired with drag marks, as if something was being pulled between them. She had seen deer tracks, moose tracks, even cougar tracks. These were different. They were the size of dinner plates, and they led from the forest edge, around the truck, and then… stopped.

She followed the trail with her flashlight, her heart hammering. The last print was a few feet from the tailgate, and beside it, a small, muddy imprint—like a hand, but with too many fingers. She snapped a photo with her phone, the flash briefly illuminating the trees, and in that frozen frame, she saw a figure. Tall, thin, with antlers that branched like lightning, and eyes that caught the flash like wet stones.

She didn’t scream. She couldn’t. She grabbed Grizzle, shoved him into the cab, and started the engine. The truck wouldn’t turn over. The battery was dead—or something had drained it. She tried again, panic rising. Then the creaking started again, right outside her window. She looked over, and the figure was there, pressed against the glass, its face a mask of bark and moss. It raised a long, knobby hand, and tapped the window with a sound like knuckles on tree bark.

Cass floored the accelerator, and the truck finally caught, lurching forward. She spun the wheel, tires spraying mud, and tore back down the road, forgetting the tarp, the sleeping bag, the beer. Grizzle was barking now, a frantic, sharp sound. She drove without pause, the headlights cutting through the dark, the trees closing in on either side like walls.

She reached the main road and didn’t stop until she saw the lights of a gas station on the horizon. She parked, shaking, and climbed out. The attendant, a young man with a bored expression, asked if she was okay. She just nodded and bought a pack of cigarettes, though she didn’t smoke. She never went back to that road. She never told anyone what she saw, except in this account, and even now, she still dreams of those antlers, and of the sound of dragging, and of the hand that reached for the window, leaving behind a thin, black residue that no one could explain.

Sometimes, when she drives past a forest, she still sees the figure in her peripheral vision, standing just beyond the treeline, watching. And Grizzle, who used to love to run, now refuses to leave her side, and will not go into any woods, no matter how much she tries to coax him. The last time she looked at the photos she’d taken that day, she found one among them, clearly not taken by her: a close-up of her own face, asleep in her truck, with a reflection in the window—a tall, antlered thing, leaning in close to watch.

She doesn’t know how it took that photo, but she knows one thing: there are things in the deep woods that are older than us, and they do not like being found. And the last logging road she ever drove is now just a scar on the land, a place where the trees lean in a little closer, and the ground is soft, and the creaking never stops.