Sticks and Stones Part 1

A Found-Footage Short Horror Story

Photo by Patrick Mueller on Unsplash

My challenge this year is to write one short horror story based off of a different trope each month.

January was ghosts: Hot and Cold

February was abandoned towns: Holes

March was cursed objects: Apple Head

For April (I’m late I know!) we have found footage. This story introduces Pine Haven, my fictional community that features in my upcoming horror anthology “Pine Haven,” out early June. I’m also going to serialize this story since I can’t tell it all in one sitting.

Enjoy.

Sticks and Stones: Part 1

Detective Richard Wallas sits down in the tattered office chair with a heavy sigh. The kind of sigh that could put an elephant to sleep. Or his kids whenever he opens his mouth, so it seemed.

It was two a.m. and he was supposed to be in bed with his wife. She had even hinted that he might get lucky tonight, damn it. He had brought home a bottle of good wine for their anniversary after all. Not that cheap shit he usually got out at the gas station over by Jo’s bar, but the kind that artsy types would get all chubbed out over, the kind that cost him forty dollars.

What a waste.

Chief Bellevue called him in an hour ago. A hiker had walked into Pine Haven’s only police station and handed off a duffel bag to Officer Ramirez. The bag was a greasy brown canvas sack filled with the following items:

• A pick axe

• A spool of razor wire

• An unloaded Colt M1911 handgun

• A VHS tape

The hiker’s name is Vanessa Rhodes, a college student on vacation up in the Pine with her boyfriend Jesse Flint. Said they were out hiking around the rim trail all day. Got back to their cabin just after sunset. Found the duffel bag on their bed around midnight when they decided to call it quits on the day.

Neither of them had any idea who could have put it there. Both insisted it had not been in the cabin prior to their hike.

Given the nature of the items in the bag, Chief Bellevue thought it important enough to have the Pine’s only detective give it a thorough once over.

The axe, wire, gun, and tape would be shipped off to Carson tomorrow to be analyzed for prints and dried blood. The Pine PD didn’t have the resources to investigate things down to the DNA level.

But at least he could watch the video tape and try to piece things together. To see if there was even a crime to be investigated further or if it was all a prank put on them by some city college twits.

And if it is a prank, I’ll smash that wine bottle over their heads.

Detective Wallas put the VHS tape into the player. One good thing about the ancient customs of the Pine PD is that they kept all the old relics such as VCR players. There was even a Walkman and boombox somewhere in storage, next to the Holy Grail and his wife’s patience.

Wallas turned off the lights in his office and shut the blinds to the window that opened to the rest of the station. Leaned forward on his desk upon which he had heaved the eldritch TV set. Notepad and pencil in hand.

Wallas played the tape. The VCR stated the tape had sixty one minutes and fifty three seconds of video.

Static screen for five seconds before the image resolves.

A man with shoulder length curly black hair is walking in the woods on a trail. He does not fit the description of Jesse Flint (a man with short, straight, blonde hair). Can’t see his face. He is wearing a red and brown flannel jacket and has a leather satchel strapped across his right shoulder.

The trees are Jeffrey pines. No obvious path, they may be walking freestyle through the woods. Blue Jays and woodpeckers can be heard chirping.

He walks for two minutes before stopping and looking at the camera.

He has a square jaw, no facial hair, green eyes. Something boyish and young about the smile he gives off. Maybe in his late teens or early twenties.

He speaks to the camera, “Isn’t it everything I told you it would be?”

A female voice, most likely the person operating the camera, “Yeah if fucking devil bugs are your idea of a good time.”

She laughs and the camera shakes.

The man smiles wider. “They’re just biting you because your blood is so sweet.”

“It’s the gin, trust me. My blood is toxic.”

The man approaches the camera and puts his arms out, off screen, presumably on the woman’s shoulders. He leans in. The camera points down at the ground. Pine needles and sugar cones can be seen.

Wallas writes on his pad: seems to be in Pine Haven.

Off screen Wallas hears the smacking of lips. Fights off his own urge to vomit.

The man backs off and the camera raises to level again.

“Tastes sweet to me. Alright Becca, let’s keep going.”

The man turns around and continues walking down the trail.

This goes on for four more minutes. The only sound is the crunch of pine needles and the song of the birds.

Wallas writes down: Why are they recording all of this dead space? Why not use their phone for this?

Wallas scratches that last part out since he does not know when this was recorded.

The woman stops walking.

“Kyle, are we going the right way?”

“Kyle,” Wallas repeats.

Kyle turns around, still flashing that bleached white smile. Wallas instantly distrusts the man. Something behind those eyes. Wallas had seen it countless times before. The Sunday preacher and his perfect family who was secretly a molester. The city council member, the definition of the nice guy, actually a wife beater.

Kyle has that smile. All on the surface. But look at his eyes and you’ll see it alright. The emptiness. The calculating mind.

Devil’s eyes.

“Becca, trust me. Jim’s cabin is this way. I’ve been here hundreds of times.”

“Then where is the path?”

Kyle shrugs. “Dunno. Maybe the park services stopped taking care of it. Not too popular out here.”

“If that’s true, are you sure it’s safe to be out here?” Becca asks.

“Babe, you know why we’re here. This is important. Doesn’t matter if it’s safe or not.”

Kyle turns and starts walking without waiting for Becca to respond.

The camera cuts out.

Twenty seconds of warped footage.

Wallas stops the tape and sees a green eye with a strand of dirty blonde hair hanging overt it, a tree branch from a pine tree, and a dark sky. The rest is too garbled to know what it is.

The video clears up and shows the inside of a log cabin.

Kyle is seated to the right of the frame in a leather armchair. Who Wallas assumes is Becca—also the same age as Kyle, with dirty blonde hair and green eyes, wearing a light blue sweater and tight gray yoga pants— is curled up in a ball on the sofa to left of the frame, reading a book. A lit fire in the fireplace between them.

Kyle is looking through his smartphone. Wallas is no expert but it looks like his son Daniel’s, an iPhone 15 or 16 or something like that.

“So this is recent,” Wallas says and notes it down. “Then why the old ass camera?”

Neither of them speak for the five minutes that the camera shows of the scene. Just a couple relaxing in a cabin. Uncle Jim’s cabin? There’s a fire going, so it could be anywhere from October to May. But Wallas noticed the birds singing in the earlier part of the video. Woodpeckers usually migrate during that time of the year, not always, but usually. The trees were all evergreens so that didn’t help. Still, Wallas is left with this feeling that something wasn’t adding up.

Were these shot at different times of the year?

Kyle gets up from his chair and notices the camera.

“Babe, did you turn this on?”

The camera abruptly shuts off and more garbled and warped footage, lasting another two minutes.

They are outside at night now. There is a bonfire and Kyle is sitting next to it. Presumably Becca is operating the camera again.

Some unknown insect flies into the fire.

The sound of lapping water can be heard. Must be a lake.

Wallas runs through all the lakes he knows nearby. Halcomb isn’t that remote. Pyramid would have too many tourists around. Rose Lake, maybe. That’d be isolated enough to have no hiking trails leading out to it.

The backdrop is completely black. Kyle’s face is only lit on the right side by the fire. It has taken on a ghoulish quality. His cheekbones are highlighted by the fire, with deep shadows on his cheeks and under his eyes.

“Kyle Freeman, would you like to tell everybody why we are here?” Becca says.

Kyle leans forward and laces his fingers together. “We’re going to prove that Sticks is real.” Kyle laughs in a mock Dracula boohahaha.

Wallas is instantly reminded of Daniel’s penchant for watching ghost hunting videos on YouTube and on TikTok. If that’s what’s going on here, again, why the VHS?

“And who is Sticks?” Becca asks.

“Sticks is the boogeyman in these here parts,” Kyle says in an affected Southern accent. “Folks say he was once a logger up in these hills. Made a pact with the Devil to live forever. The Devil agreed on one condition: that he be changed into a monster, cursed to forever roam these forests and kill for him. Dragging the souls of the damned down to Hell.”

Becca laughs. “And why is he called Sticks?”

“He’s made out of them!”

They both laugh. So does Wallas.

A clinking sound. Not in video. On Wallas’ office window. The one that looks out over the parking lot.

He stops the tape and rises.

Walks over to the blinds and splays two between his fingers to look out.

Nothing but deep night.

He returns to his beat up old chair and sits back down.

Freezes.

The frame he inadvertently paused on catches his eye.

Kyle is smiling. The paused screen makes the image waver and stretch. Makes Kyle look supernaturally morbid. But that’s not what he notices.

Behind Kyle, in the dark, the silhouette of a tall figure. No details can be seen.

Save for two.

The rounded shape that could be a head.

And its height. As tall as a tree.

“Because it is a tree dumbass,” Wallas says. But doesn’t believe.

Another clink against his window.

This time he grabs his gun from the desk.

---

Part 2 shall be coming by the end of May.