"Three Voices":
I decided to disappear after the divorce. Not in a dramatic way—just quietly. I sold everything that wouldn’t fit in the back of my old pickup, drove north until the cell signal died, and bought forty acres of steep timberland near the Idaho border for cash. No neighbors within twenty miles. That was the whole point.
The first month felt like freedom. I built a small cabin with my own hands, dug a spring line, set up solar panels. I kept one luxury: a shortwave radio that could pick up distant stations at night. I told myself it was for emergencies. Really, I just didn’t want to be completely alone with my thoughts.
One evening in early November, I was splitting firewood when I noticed fresh tire tracks on the logging road that cuts across the far edge of my land. Deep treads, wide stance—someone with a serious four-wheel drive. The tracks stopped maybe two hundred yards in, then turned around. I followed them on foot. They ended at a spot where people sometimes dump trash or shoot guns. Nothing there this time except a single red plastic gas can, brand new, still with the price sticker.
I carried it back, figuring someone ran out of fuel and would return. I left it on my porch.
Three days later the can was gone. In its place sat a folded piece of notebook paper under a rock. The handwriting was neat, almost childlike:
Thank you. Need anything, just ask.
No name. No footprints leading away—I checked.
That night on the radio I caught a faint conversation between two men. They were using channel 19, the trucker channel, but the signal bounced weird, like they were close.
“...told you he’s alone up there.”
“Doesn’t matter. He took the can. That means he’s friendly.”
“Or stupid.”
Laughter, then static.
I turned the radio off fast and sat in the dark with my rifle across my lap. I didn’t sleep.
The next morning I found a second note, slipped under my door while I was out checking snares:
We left you a gift behind the woodshed. Don’t waste it.
Behind the shed was a cardboard box. Inside: two packages of ground beef, freezer-burned solid, and a roll of hundred-dollar bills rubber-banded together—forty of them. Four thousand dollars. The meat smelled wrong, metallic under the frost.
I burned the meat in my stove. The money I hid inside a coffee can under the floorboards.
That afternoon I drove the forty-five minutes to the nearest town with cell service and asked around at the feed store. The old man behind the counter knew every vehicle in three counties.
“Red gas can?” he said, scratching his beard. “That’d be the Cooke brothers. They run meth up the old fire roads. Mean as snakes. Best stay shut of them.”
“How many brothers?”
“Three still breathing. Lost one a couple years back—fell down a mine shaft or something. They don’t like outsiders on their routes.”
I bought extra ammo and drove home faster than I should have.
For a week, nothing. Then one morning I woke to find my generator missing. Not stolen quietly—dragged. Long gouges in the dirt all the way to the tree line. They took the chain too.
I followed the marks. Fifty yards into the woods the trail just stopped. No generator. No footprints leading away. Like it vanished.
I started sleeping in my truck with the keys in my hand.
Then came the night I heard singing.
I was dozing in the cab when a man’s voice drifted through the trees—low, slow, some old hymn I half-remembered from childhood. He was maybe a hundred yards off, walking a slow circle around my clearing. Another voice joined, same song, different verse, slightly off-key. Then a third, higher, almost laughing through the words.
I cracked the window an inch.
The singing stopped.
A voice called out, calm and friendly: “You still awake in there, buddy?”
I didn’t answer.
“We just want to talk. About the money. And the meat.”
I started the engine. Headlights swept the trees. For one second I saw them—three men standing side by side at the edge of the light, all wearing the same dark green coveralls, faces pale, smiling like they were at a church picnic. Then the bulbs blew at once—both headlights dead with a soft pop.
The engine kept running. I threw it in gear and floored it down the rutted track, branches whipping the windshield. I didn’t stop until I hit pavement forty minutes later.
I never went back for my things.
Two months later I read a short article buried in a Montana paper. Searchers found an abandoned cook site deep in those same mountains. Three bodies inside a trailer, shot in the back of the head. The police called it a drug debt gone bad. They never found the killers.
I still have the coffee can with the money. I’ve never spent a single bill. Sometimes, when it’s very quiet, I take one out and look at the serial numbers. They’re sequential. Brand new. Never circulated.
I live in a city now. Lots of lights. Lots of noise.
But every time I smell lighter fluid or hear someone humming an old church song on the street, I cross to the other side real quick.
Some invitations you only get once.
"The Brothers":
I decided to leave the city for good in early 2018. The rent kept climbing, the job was eating me alive, and I just wanted quiet. I sold almost everything, bought a cheap patch of forest land two hours from the nearest real town in northern Idaho, and moved into a tiny cabin I built myself from plans I found online. No power lines, no cell service, just a wood stove, rainwater barrels, and a long dirt road that turned to mud half the year.
The first months were perfect. I chopped wood, grew potatoes, read books by lantern light. The only people I saw were the two old brothers who owned the land next to mine, Tom and Ray. They stopped by once a week in their rattling pickup to trade eggs for coffee or batteries. They never stayed long. Tom did most of the talking. Ray just nodded and looked at the ground.
One afternoon in late October, Tom came alone. He stood at my door holding a paper grocery bag.
“Ray’s feeling poorly,” he said. “Thought you might want these apples before they go bad.”
I took the bag. The apples were small and perfect.
“Thank you. Tell Ray I hope he feels better.”
Tom scratched his beard. “You doing alright out here by yourself?”
“I’m good. Really good.”
He looked past me into the cabin, then back at the trees. “Folks get lonely. Sometimes lonely does funny things to a man.”
I laughed it off. He left.
Two days later I was splitting kindling when I noticed boot prints in the soft ground behind my shed. Heavy prints, deeper than mine, coming from the woods and stopping right at the back wall. They didn’t go anywhere else. Just there and back the same way. I followed them a hundred yards into the pines and lost them on rocky ground.
That night I barred the door for the first time since moving in.
The next morning the prints were back, closer, almost touching the shed. Someone had stood there a long time. I took my rifle and walked the whole property line. Nothing.
I drove into town for supplies and asked at the little store if anyone had seen strangers around my road. The woman behind the counter shrugged.
“Only you and the brothers live up that way now,” she said. “Been quiet for years.”
When I got home, my door was open six inches. I always close it. Always.
Nothing was missing. My canned food, tools, cash box—all exactly where I left them. But someone had sat in my only chair. The cushion was warm.
I started sleeping with the rifle beside the bed.
A week later Ray showed up alone. It was the first time I’d seen him without Tom. He looked thinner. His eyes were red.
“You got anything for a cough?” he asked.
I gave him some honey and whiskey. He sat at my table and drank it slow.
“Where’s Tom?” I asked.
“Home,” Ray said. His voice was hoarse. “He don’t like me coming over no more. Says I talk too much.”
“You’re always welcome.”
Ray stared at the floor. “Some things a man shouldn’t know about his own brother.”
He left without another word.
That night I heard dragging sounds behind the cabin. Slow, heavy, like something big being pulled across leaves. I opened the door with the rifle up. Nothing. Just darkness and the usual forest noise.
In the morning I found a straight line of blood drops leading from the trees to my shed. Fresh. They stopped at the shed door. I opened it with the gun ready.
Inside, hanging from the rafters by its back legs, was a deer—gutted clean, head gone, blood still dripping into a plastic bucket someone had placed underneath. My bucket. The cut was perfect, professional.
I cut it down, dragged it far into the woods, buried what I could. My hands shook the whole time.
Two nights later someone knocked at two in the morning. Three slow knocks.
I sat up in bed, rifle across my lap.
Another three knocks.
I whispered through the door, “Who is it?”
No answer.
I waited an hour. Nothing else.
At dawn I opened the door. On the step was a mason jar full of dark liquid. Blood. On top floated a single human tooth.
I drove straight to the brothers’ place. Their truck was there. Door partway open. I called for them. No answer.
Inside smelled wrong. Old meat and something sharper.
Tom sat in his rocking chair facing the window. His throat was cut so deep his head tilted back unnatural. Ray lay on the kitchen floor in a lake of blood that had soaked into the wood. His wrists were torn open like he’d done it himself with the hunting knife still in his hand.
On the table was a note in shaky writing.
He made me help. I couldn’t no more.
I ran outside and vomited in the dirt.
The sheriff came. They ruled it murder-suicide. Said Ray killed Tom then himself. Case closed fast.
I moved out the next week. Sold the land for whatever I could get.
Months later I read an old newspaper article someone mailed me—no return address. Back in 1994 a young couple disappeared on the same stretch of forest. Their car was found running, doors open, groceries still in the back. Searchers found drag marks leading away into the trees. Nothing else ever turned up.
The article quoted Tom talking to the reporter.
“People think the woods take them,” he said. “Woods don’t take nobody. Sometimes a man just needs to keep what’s his.”
I still check my doors every night. I live in a second-floor apartment now with neighbors on every side. Sometimes I wake up at 2 a.m. sure I hear three slow knocks.
They never come. But I know one day they will.
"The Circle":
I always wanted a place far from people.
In 2018 my wife and I bought forty acres in the mountains of northern Idaho, no power lines, no neighbors closer than twelve miles. We built a small cabin with our own hands, put in solar panels, dug a well, and told ourselves this was freedom.
The first year felt perfect. We grew potatoes and beans, kept chickens, and only drove to town once a month for flour and salt. We liked the quiet.
One October morning I walked the fence line to check for elk damage. About two miles from the cabin, deep in the trees, I found a patch of ground that looked wrong. The pine needles were scraped away in a perfect circle, maybe ten feet across. In the middle someone had stacked rocks into a low cairn. Fresh rocks, still wet on the bottom. No footprints led in or out—just that circle and the cairn.
I took a picture with my phone and showed my wife when I got home.
“Probably hunters marking a spot,” she said, but her eyes stayed on the photo too long.
That night we heard chopping. Steady, slow thumps coming from the same direction. Not a chainsaw—an axe. We sat up in bed and listened until it stopped near dawn.
The next week I went back with my rifle. The circle was bigger now, almost twenty feet. The cairn was taller, chest high, and someone had laid fresh pine boughs around it like a bed. On top of the rocks sat a single work glove—my glove, the left one I lost months earlier while splitting firewood. I knew it was mine because the thumb was worn through from the maul handle.
I picked it up. Inside was warm.
I ran home and told my wife we had to leave for a few days, go to town, think this through. She agreed fast.
We packed the truck and locked the cabin. As we rolled down the dirt road I watched the rear-view mirror. Half a mile later a man stepped out from the trees and stood in the middle of the track. Tall, thin, dressed in old green canvas like army surplus. He carried an axe on his shoulder. He didn’t wave. He just looked at the truck until the road curved and he was gone.
In town we stayed with her sister. I called the sheriff. Two deputies drove out the next day. They found nothing—no circle, no cairn, no glove, no footprints. They said maybe kids from the summer camp twenty miles away were playing tricks.
We came home anyway. Nothing happened for three weeks.
Then the chickens stopped laying. Every morning the nest boxes were empty. One evening I found all twelve birds lined up on the fence rail, necks broken, heads turned the same way like they were watching the cabin.
That night my wife woke me.
“Someone is in the house,” she whispered.
I heard it then—bare feet on the wood floor downstairs, slow steps, pausing, moving again. I grabbed the shotgun from beside the bed and we waited at the top of the stairs.
The steps stopped right below us. A voice came up, calm and plain.
“You left the door unlocked again.”
It was a man’s voice, older, gravelly. Not angry. Almost friendly.
I shouted for him to get out. No answer. After ten minutes I crept down with the gun. Every room was empty. Both doors were still locked from the inside, deadbolts thrown.
We slept in the truck that night with the engine running and the lights on.
The next morning every window on the cabin had a perfect handprint on the outside glass—palm and five fingers, high up like the person stood on tiptoe. The prints were too big for a normal man.
We packed everything we could fit in the truck and left before noon. On the way out I stopped where I saw the man before. Fresh boot prints crossed the road, deep, heading toward our cabin. Next to them, smaller prints—my wife’s size, but she was sitting right beside me in the truck.
We never went back.
People ask why we didn’t fight harder, why we just ran. I tell them land is cheap up there for a reason. Some places already belong to someone else, and they don’t like sharing.
"The Wilsons":
I decided to leave the busy world behind and build a small home deep in the Oklahoma woods. It was just me, my tools, and the quiet trees around. No phones ringing, no crowds pushing. I grew my own food, collected rain water, and fixed what broke with my own hands. Life felt free, but sometimes lonely. That changed when the Wilson family drove up one afternoon in their old truck.
The man stepped out first. He was tall, with a beard starting to turn gray. "Hello there," he called out, waving. His voice was friendly but tired. "I'm Tom. This is my wife, Anna, and our girl, Lily. She's six." Anna smiled from the passenger seat, her hair tied back simple. Lily peeked out shy, holding a stuffed bear.
I walked over, wiping my hands on my pants. "What brings you folks out this far?" I asked.
Tom explained they were from a town nearby, looking to buy land close by. "We want to live like you," he said. "Away from all the mess. Grow our own things, no bills, no rules from others." Anna nodded. "It's for Lily too. Better than city schools and noise." Lily just looked at the ground, kicking a stone.
I showed them around my place. "It's hard work," I warned. "Winters get cold, and you fix everything yourself. But it's peaceful." We talked for hours. Tom asked about solar panels and wells. "How do you handle animals?" he wondered. I told him about fencing and traps for small pests. Anna shared recipes for canning fruits. Lily warmed up and asked if I had a dog. "Not anymore," I said. "But maybe you can get one."
They seemed excited. Tom shook my hand firm. "Thanks, neighbor. We'll be back soon." They drove off, and I felt good having company for once.
A week later, their truck came back, loaded with boxes. They bought the land next to mine, about a mile through the trees. I helped them unload. "This is it," Tom said, grinning. "Our new start." Anna hugged Lily. "No more worries," she whispered to her. We built a basic shelter together, using logs and tarps. Tom worked fast, but sometimes he stopped and stared at nothing. "You okay?" I asked once. He blinked. "Yeah, just thinking." Anna looked worried but said nothing.
Days passed. I visited often. We shared meals. One evening, around a fire, Tom opened up. "Back home, things were bad," he said quiet. "Family troubles. My dad... he's not a good man. Threatened us." Anna put her hand on his arm. "We're safe now," she said. Lily drew pictures in the dirt, happy.
But things started feeling wrong. At night, I heard noises from their direction. Not animals – like footsteps crunching leaves, then stopping. I thought maybe deer. Then, one day, I went over and saw Tom and Anna moving slow, like in a dream. They carried boxes to the truck without talking. Back and forth, eyes blank. Lily sat alone, watching. "What's going on?" I called. Tom turned, his face empty. "Just packing," he muttered. Anna didn't look up.
I got a bad feeling in my gut. "Packing for what?" I pressed. "We're going to check something," Anna said flat. Lily ran to me. "I don't want to go," she whispered. Her eyes were big, scared. I knelt down. "It's okay, kid. Your parents know best." But inside, I wondered.
Next morning, their place was quiet. Too quiet. I walked over. The shelter door hung open. Inside, things were left half-done – food on the table, clothes folded. No sign of them. "Tom? Anna?" I yelled. Nothing. I found their truck down the path, doors unlocked. Inside, their dog whined, thin and hungry. Wallets on the seat, phones too. And a big stack of money – thousands, I guessed. Why leave that?
My hands shook as I looked around. The dog licked my fingers, desperate. I fed it some scraps from my pocket. Then I checked the phones. One had a picture – Lily sitting on a rock, looking up with wide eyes, like something frightened her bad. No other clues.
I ran back to my cabin, locked the door. That night, footsteps came close. Crunch, crunch, stop. I grabbed my rifle, peered out the window. Shadows moved between trees, but no clear shape. A man? More than one? My breath came quick. "Who's there?" I whispered to myself.
Days turned to worry. I told the police what I saw. They searched but found nothing at first. "Maybe they just left," one officer said. But with the money and dog? No way. I couldn't sleep. Every sound made me jump. Once, I heard a low voice outside, murmuring. I aimed the rifle but saw only darkness.
Months went by. I stayed alert, fixed my fences higher. Then, years later – four years – hunters found bones in the woods, not far from the truck. Two adults, one child. Tests said it was Tom, Anna, and Lily. No one knew how they died. Bones too old to tell. Murder? Maybe from Tom's dad, or bad people they knew. Drugs? Rumors said they had cash from that. Or did they end it themselves?
I still live here, but it's not peaceful anymore. I check locks twice, listen for footsteps. What if whoever did it comes back? The woods hide secrets, and now I know – living off-grid isn't always safe. Sometimes, the danger follows you.