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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/AnnieMarieMorgan on 2026-05-31 21:32:38+00:00.

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I wasn’t delusional enough to think that I could compete with trained Search and Rescue Officers. If there was something left of Thomas that the dogs couldn’t sniff out. Some sign that the infrared helicopters couldn’t spot. That dozens and dozens of park rangers and military volunteers somehow failed to see, I didn’t think I had any chance of finding it. But what I did believe was that they conducted their search logically. And that perhaps Thomas hadn’t behaved logically when he got lost.

If he even got lost at all.

And no one else was going to go into the woods and try to find him based on something completely illogical. No one else but me. Because he was my best friend, and even though the searchers were packing it in, I wasn’t ready to give up on him.

With each hour that passed on my journey into the middle of nowhere, with every mile I covered, I felt more and more sure that I was on the right track. And I felt more and more certain that Thomas had not gotten lost in the woods. I believed that something had lured him away.

Searchers had only had a few hours between when I sounded the alarm and when a storm came through the area, but it was enough time to garner something very peculiar. Thomas had been heading exactly in a straight line.

Thomas had told me that he was hiking a short backpacking loop over the weekend. But the dogs that the rangers could scrounge up on short notice were certain that he’d left the trail the second it swung south. He’d kept going, straight northwest. And just before the rain began, the dogs tracked him going into a small lake. We might have worried that the answers were in there, but just before the rain washed everything out, the dogs circled to the other side, and they picked up his scent. Exactly northwest. As of he’d swum through the lake in a perfectly straight line so as not to lose his heading.

And it was this heading that I was now following. The rangers had searched in a circle, about 10 miles in every direction from where he vanished. Because they assumed he was lost. I was assuming he wasn’t. I was assuming he had gone somewhere. And wherever it was, I was going to go there too.

When I reached the lake, I didn’t swim through it. Markers left by searchers ensured I wouldn’t lose my path. But past that, it was up to me to keep perfectly northwest.

And over boulders, down steep hills, and through creeks and shallow branching rivers, I kept to my path. And as I saw broken sticks, freshly turned leaves, and even the occasional footprint, I felt increasingly hopeful that Thomas was still alive. I was certain I could still find him, wherever he’d gone.

As I got deeper into the woods, the hills grew taller, and the land felt older. That was a correlation throughout all of the wild places in our state. There was enough flat land that the spots with hills, caves, and ravines were left alone simply because they were more difficult to civilize. So as the hills grew taller, so did the trees, and the flora and fauna grew older.

Plants that had been spared the glaciers thousands of years ago were also spared the axe when humans came through. The honeysuckle of the plains was replaced here with waxy-leaved rhododendrons. Ferns and moss took the place of the lowland grasses. And the shaded streams were all lined with bamboo.

Down here, there were rattlesnakes and bears, beasts long ago driven out of the farmland just hours north. And even older reminders of the past stuck around. The honey locust trees with their giant thorns stood at the ready to protect them from mammoths and ground sloths that hadn’t troubled them for millennia. But the thorns did a great job of protecting those trees from me, and slowing my pace when I had to bushwack in their presence. The threat of rattlers and cottonmouths kept me going even slower still.

I loved the woods dearly enough to know that it was not a safe place. That danger could be lurking under every rock, around every bend. That was part of what made it so special.

As I sweated and slogged through the brush, I found myself enjoying parts of the hike. It had been so long since I’d been able to commune with the woods, and I’d missed it. Enough to find myself forgetting for brief moments why I was out there in the first place.

The sun-dappled leaves, the birds that were so much more plentiful than in the young woods back home, would lull me into almost a trance. Then I’d snap out of it, and I’d remember Thomas’s life was at stake. I’d turn my eyes to the ground, my eyes watching for snakes and thorns and poison ivy. And above all, watching for tracks.

But the further into the woods I went, the more the almost perceptible boot prints vanished. And the more I found myself trying to divine meaning from dents and slips in the mud that could have been nothing more than the natural imperfections of the ground. But I so desperately wanted them to be signs.

As the sun started to grow low, I kept watch for clearings and flat spots. But the woods were thick and unforgiving, and eventually I settled for an old tree well. I left my tent packed and just set up my tarp, tying one end to the ripped-up tree roots, and staking the other end in the dirt.

Normally, I slept like a baby in the wilderness. But that night, jammed into the shallow tree well, with the roots and rocks digging into my back, and dark thoughts digging into my mind, I hardly slept at all.

As I mentally tossed and turned, because physical tossing and turning was impossible in the hole I slept in, I pondered what exactly it would mean if I found Thomas. I wondered what state I might find him in, if I did find him. And of course, I wondered what exactly he might be looking for out here. I wondered if it might be something he’s been searching for for a long time.

Because this was not the first time Thomas had gotten lost in the forest. In this forest no less.

I’d heard the story dozens of times over the years; it had happened just a bit before we met. And as we grew up, his parents told it with more and more levity, as time helped them forget the true terror of the experience.

It had been the middle of summer. A decade ago, half our lifetime ago. Thomas and his family were camping at a park much further north. Different park, sure, but it was the same forest.

And just as they were gearing up for a night of s'mores and scary stories around the fire, Thomas took off. His parents watched him wander slowly, but purposefully, into the trees. And they figured he just didn’t want to make the trek to the camp bathroom.

But as the minutes ticked by, and he didn’t emerge from the dark woods, they knew something was wrong. When they called in the rangers, they could only do so much in the dark.

They found Thomas by chance the next day. He’d been spotted walking through a farm, six miles away. And the man who spotted him had to yell his name over and over again to get his attention. He’d said Thomas was so tired, so dehydrated, he was almost in a trance.

Once he recovered, his parents started quizzing him on why he’d left. And he said he’d spotted a dog, and he was worried it was lost. But it kept running away from him, just out of reach, and by the time he gave up, he was completely lost. But Thomas was hardheaded enough back then that he was sure if he just kept walking, he could find his way home.

In preparation for this journey, I’d dug up the old news story where they’d interviewed the farmer who found Thomas. And I’d traced a line from his farm back to the campground Thomas’s family had been staying in. If he’d gone in a straight line, he could have been heading south and a bit to the west. Towards the primeval center of the national forest. Woods that had been spared any logging, even hundreds of years ago. True old-growth forest.

His heading when he’d vanished this time, straight northwest, left from a very different vantage point. But it also pointed towards those ancient woods.

I’ve always believed in supernatural things, even if I’ve never been lucky enough to witness them. And that was a coincidence I simply couldn’t ignore. I’d become convinced that something had tried to call Thomas away all those years ago, and it had failed. But this time, it had called him away again, and, this time, perhaps it had succeeded.

After my night in the tree well, I was sluggish. I felt both the lack of sleep and my lack of recent exercise. I was no stranger to the woods, but it had been a long time since I’d hiked like this.

I had a satellite phone and a portable GPS with me. And Thomas was supposed to have one or both of those things with him as well, but if he did, he wasn’t using them.

I checked my progress on the GPS and saw I’d covered serious ground yesterday, enough to move slowly today and still reach the center of the forest well before nightfall.

By mid-morning, I was already noticing a change in the trees. They reached up higher, and the trunks grew wider. And the extra sun between them made the undergrowth denser, snagging at my shoes and my pack and slowing my progress.

Though my arms were sluggish, and my eyes heavy, I kept careful watch of anything that might signal I’d reached my destination. I was certain that whatever had called Thomas out here, well, it would be noticeable in some way, wouldn’t it?

I kept watch for some grand waterfall, or a massive cave, anything at all to signal that there was something o...

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