There have always been stories of something in the woods.

Some posit these are cautionary tales, guiding children to stay in sight of their parents, to not go out at nighttime, to avoid unfamiliar fruit, to ignore the strange paw prints slashed into the early morning mud. Indoctrinate the youth with fear so they stay safe, protected, compliant, controllable. If someone is afraid to leave the village, they can’t discover there are other ways to live that might be less cruel or more accepting or even, perish the thought, happy. Historians will say that’s where these legends originated.

Historians are wrong.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about humans, it’s that you love to ignore a warning. Fear gives way to curiosity. Curiosity to eagerness. Eagerness to recklessness. You believe that you alone can best the terrors, save your people, survive the impossible. Until suddenly you’re in the deepest parts of the forest, in a cathedral of darkness, hopelessly lost, no sunlight piercing the veil of branches above you, unsure if it’s midnight or noon. You jump at shadows, praying your torch doesn’t burn out, hoping the sound behind you was just the wind and not a snarl, trying not to breathe the pungent air, as the murky blackness overtakes you and swallows you, flesh, blood, bones, and all. The overzealous adventurers never emerge from the trees, consumed completely. The search parties dissipate despite the pleading arguments of their forlorn families as gradually each intrepid explorer fades into the obscurity of memory.

When humanity emerged, you didn’t fear the inky gloom outside your caves. Your primitive ancestors had no survival instinct. They didn’t move carefully through the world. They trudged and stomped and left their markings everywhere. It made it so easy to hunt them.

But where’s the fun in that?

You humans didn’t come up with these stories. We whispered them into your nightmares and sang them in the wind whistling through the sky. We made them infect you, creep up your spine, claw into your skin, occupy your every waking thought. But you never could express that, just shudder at the goosebumps licking up your arms and dripping down your neck.

The words themselves didn’t come until later, when one poor soul found himself alone in the woods, in our outstretched talons. We had no trouble making the deal: start telling his people about the monsters and we would let him go. Most people would be shocked to know that these myths started with one terrified man, but he singularly eliminated the need for our ravenous stalking. We no longer had to weave horrors into your minds, because you did that for us. And as more and more people learn about the dark, more and more people become determined to defeat it, so the bravest and most foolish of you wander into the shadows, our meals delivered right into our mouths.

So keep telling your stories, because we’re always hungry.