The Hunter's guide to Skinwalkers

So, you wanna go huntin'? Maybe you're hungry, maybe you're looking to sell, or maybe you're just bat-shit crazy and wanna find somethin' to show to the world.. well, here's a guide to the one thing you don't do... don't fuck with the Skinwalkers. Stories of 10 foot beasts, pale as snow, claws like kitchen knives, and teeth like drills. I can tell you one thing... they're fuckin' real...

So a while back... a couple of my mates and I were getting pissed, we had just killed a bear harassing campers and were boasting over our win against nature. I remember my mate, Nathan, said somethin' along the lines of “I bet we can kill anything anyone throws at us!-” but he was cut off by the sound of a glass hammering down on the counter, we all turned round to face the origin of the noise and we saw... some old guy... not your average “veteran who's down on his luck”, I mean some poor fuckin' who's been beaten half to death by life while watching everything he loves die.. "So, y' wanna go huntin'?” He said, his tone low and rough, it seemed like his voice was shaking. “Yeah! What's it to you old man?” Retorted my other mate Alex, he was laughing and trying to imitate this guy's hunch and facial features until he got hit in the face with a glass. The guy looked pissed, properly pissed, like kicked in the balls by the guy who shagged your girl pissed. “Y'know nothin' of these woods boy, if ya wanna be king of the world, I'll give you a challenge you can't back down from..” he chucked an old diary at us “Go claim your glory and come back to me when it's done.” He then swiveled on his stool and ordered another drink. Mark picked up the diary and handed it to me, his eyes full of excitement.

We left the bar and flicked through the diary, entries for a few months past, photographs of what a family and... sketches... dozens of sketches, scribbled in looking like they'd been done in seconds of a human... but not... human.. something lanky and hunched over... every sketch the thing wasn't facing the “artist”.. it looked like it was feasting on something, but that wasn't important, logs on expeditions.. describing his hunt for this.. thing.. Wendigo, Rake, Skinwalker, Shy Guy, Goat man.. multiple names were given to it. “This guy's lost it” someone chuckled “lets just leave it, find some wolves or something that people want gone” but I shook my head.. we couldn't just leave it, this guy may have been mad.. but the pictures looked so similar and... detailed, bullet holes, scratches, scars, every tiny mark was noted. "No..” I heard myself mutter “No, no we gotta do this, imagine what people would say when we drag this thing's rotting shit bag of a body back to town people will call us heroes, we'll go down in history for finding a new SPECIES!” My rallying speech obviously worked and the guys cheered. That was the worst thing i ever did... to this day..

We call up some more mates and gather everything together, .50 rifles, shotguns, .44's and a few knives. In total we have 19 guys, “the more the merrier”, and some sleeping bags, tents and cans of food. We hop in our vans and follow the guy's directions and find a place to camp for the night, and we'll hunt the next day. We light a fire, drink and sing like madmen and eventually start to get ready to sleep, Mark goes off for a slash and I remember the sound of... howling, but not... wolf howls.. low gutteral moans, but too loud for moans.. imagine a guy whose throat has been ripped out is fucking the tightest cunt you can imagine. A few of us heard it and my mate Alex jokes “Hey, is Mark havin' some fun with his girl?” which gets a laugh from the group, like it was the funniest joke in the world... but it wasn't funny for long. I wake up to the sound of screaming, retching and vomiting, I grab my rifle and push myself up and out of the tent to see what the commotion was about. “Oh god, oh god oh fuck me holy shit h-how? HOW?!” Alex was shouting the loudest over the jittery and terrified shrieks of the guys.. I push past and... we see Mark... but... not... Mark.. He was impaled by a branch, his left arm gone, his right hand gone and his torso sliced open, his entrails hanging out of his body and dangling on the dirt, and he is coated in blood and that's when I notice... his face... it's contorted into a scream hut his jaw is missing... along with his eyes. We have to pull him down and chunks of him fall off, causing more vomits and cries. “Oh God Mark, Mark I'm so sorry” Alex was crying now, he'd pissed himself at this point, and I was on the verge of shitting bricks. “Some fucker did this, and we won't let 'em get away!” Some big guy called Ralf, a friend of Alex rallied “Lets get this fucker!” He cries out and we all cheer, grab our shit and follow a blood trail someone found while examining ... Mark.. Except for Alex.. He is sitting by his tent and drinking between sobs. “Y-You ain't comin'?” I ask nervously, to which he smiles weakly. “Nah, nah man, go get that bitch for Mark and me” he sipped his beer and stared ahead. I patted him on the back and jogged after the others. We reached a cave entrance, caked in blood and we could he the crunching of bones and the tearing flesh, so this thing is still feasting? “Enjoy you're last meal fucker” I thought. Ralf decided we would set a trap, and butcher the thing once it was caught off guard. We all nodded and followed our “orders” and we caught a deer, slit its throat and left it to bleed out. I wait and prop my rifle between two branches, and aim it by the deer, others are hiding in bushes or behind trees with machetes, bowie knives and other firearms. Around half an hour later a guy, Sam, got bored and yelled "Imma get this fucker!” He cocked his .44 and marched into the cave. We tried to stop him but he made up his mind and marched in. We were all silent and then... I heard the worst sound I have every heard in my life. A scream, a scream too high pitched to be a guy's but it was, shots rang throughout the cave and it sounded like Sam's throat would break open and then thumps, heavy thumps of a body against stone, then nothing. I hear myself whisper out “Fuck..” and a sob escape my throat before... I see it... this hairless human... tall as the tallest NBA player and then some, lanky as shit and completely naked. That's when shit truly hit the fan. Ralf and a few other guys charged at it and tried to pin it down, but it just cut them down. I cried out “Kill it”, but I barely heard it myself, but we were all on the same page and shot... every fucking round I had, emptied every clip I had but nothing. Fuckin' NOTHIN'! It just kept hacking and slashing and biting and clawing and screaming at the guys in front of it till they were a pile of butchered meat. We had 17 men at the start of the attack.. And they were dropping like flies! Dylan's legs were sliced clean off, Carl had his face smashed under the thing's giant foot, Andrew was smashed into the ground repeatedly until his body began to fall apart, and Ralf... he was lifted by the thing by each arm and it.. it ate his head WHOLE before ripping his torso apart. The others were cut down in a blur leaving 8. Me, Michael, Daniel Nathan, Chris, Max and two other guys stood in pure fear. I couldn't give less of a shit if we killed it at this point, I had pissed myself, I had no second thoughts of the situation and I-I-I...bolted... I left the guys to die.. I looked back to see that Nathan and Michael were behind me, followed by Daniel, Chris Max and two other guys I didn't know and following close behind... the thing, I don't know how it had reached us but it did. I saw it slap one of the guys into a tree trunk with a sickening crunch and he crumpled immediately, and the other guy got sliced in half by one of the thing's massive claws. Max tripped but we couldn't care less, we heard his cries and the crunching of bones as his spine was ripped out of his back and he lay still. We kept on running, I don't know how far but we got to the camp and saw Alex poking the fire with a stick. I remember screaming “START THE FUCKING VAN CUNT!” And he looked up.. his gaze fixed behind us and he looked terrified. And then... angry, angrier than that fucking' twat back at the pub. He picked up a branch and shoved it in the fire. We ran past him and tried dragging him with us to which he brushed us off calmly but.. scarily. We started up the van and reversed out of there, but not fast enough to see Alex beating the thing with the branch, every strike harder than the last. He seemed to be winning and I stopped the car, maybe he'd kill it, and then we found its weakness. FIRE. We heard him shouting and screaming in an unknown sort of language, full of anger and rage... but then the branch snapped... he noticed it... and so did... It. He turned around to run but was impaled by the creature's slender arm, and we continued to get the fuck out of dodge. We made it on to the road and hit the gas, we were going over 80 and I looked back... the thing, covered in blood and guts and pieces of the guys and...simply stared, and then ran with incomprehensible speed and it was gone. We parked outside the bar... well... crashed into a pole and raced inside, crying and shouting. “The... The forest!” Daniel cried before falling to his knees. Chris vomited and cried, hugging himself staring at the ground. Michael was silent and Nathan sobbed into his shoulder. That's the last thing I remember before blacking out.

I woke up in a hospital, Men in Black looking motherfuckers were standing around with some nurses until they noticed I was conscious and the nurses were ushered out. I was then treated to an interrogation of what some Al Qaeda member would expect after being caught planning 911, they gave me no “good cop bad cop” shit and gave it to me straight. Who was with us? What did we find? Did anyone else make it out? How did you survive? I answered without debate once I saw a black suitcase filled with tools beside me. They got me to sign a long piece of paper stating that I would never discuss any of this encounter to any living being. And then they left. And that was that. I was expected to just walk out pretending everything was fine. I never saw that old fuck who got us to enter those woods again, and i hope he's been taken and is being tortured somewhere dark and cold, heh, maybe Iceland. It's been 7 weeks since the incident. Chris shot himself 5 days ago. Daniel has been placed into intense mental care and a Psyche Ward. Michael and Nathan are the only ones I see anymore, we never talk about it... and we live our lives, trying to forget the scarring ordeal... But we never will...

And...that's the story kiddies... but... not really.. I still see that thing in my nightmares, i still hear its screams mixed with the others, and I will never forget Alex's face as that branch broke. So if there is one thing to learn from this, whatever you hear, however much someone offers...

Stay away from Skinwalkers, or be prepared to suffer a worse punishment that any sicko could conjure up... it's coming for me as I write this.. I can hear its shrieks approaching my hut.. I just hope I have time to end it before they do...