I've been scouring the internet, Reddit, 4chan, what have you; I've seen and read things I will never recover from and I still haven't found the moron who doxxed my haunted woods. It gets worse. Two members of our security staff have since reported attempted entries. The would-be trespassers were guided off the property in both instances, but who knows how many might have slipped through the cracks.

Please stop, people. Just stop. You're killing me. I'm tired, frustrated, exhausted and I keep losing hair.

I'm willing to bet a few corpses are going to show up in the springtime. All that snow and ice, once melted, are sure to reveal some gruesome sights. I've informed the personnel and told them to be on particularly high alert. We'll also be looking for new hires in the near future, once we're of means again. Right now, we're hemorrhaging money due to another ill-conceived business scheme my younger brother cooked up. Nothing worth explaining in any further detail, really.

This is such a bad time for all of this, too. We're in more than enough trouble around yuletide each year either way. Starting December 12, one by one, the yule lads have been arriving in town. They love harassing our estate in particular, always have. Thankfully, they'll all be gone again pretty soon. If you don't know about the yule lads, lucky you. They're basically a bunch of pesky old bearded tricksters getting up to mischief around Christmas time. They each have their own thing going on. For example, there's the Spoon-Licker, an eerie-looking, malnourished fellow who steals used spoons to lick food remnants off. Then you've got the Door-Slammer, who runs around the house at night making a lot of noise to keep people from falling asleep.

It was all good fun when we were little. My brothers and I would set up tripwires for the Sheep-Cote Clod, a yule lad with stiff peg legs who likes to harass sheep. We'd stay up all night, hiding in the pen, waiting for him to show up. We'd all laugh at him when he'd walk into our trap and fall. He'd turn red with anger and march off, grumbling and grouching and shaking his fist at us.

We'd also jam the doors using rolled up socks, stuffing them into that crack along the hinges. This meant that whenever the Door-Slammer would try and do his thing, the door would give in just a little at first before whipping backwards, giving him a scare. So the yule lads never gave us much of a fright. It was their mother we were more worried about. I only ever saw her twice, and that was more than enough for me. I wish we'd never had to find out about her at all. Since y'all are so interested in my forest and the hauntings, I'm going to make good on my promise from last time and feed you the story accordingly.

A bit of background; I grew up as the oldest of seven kids in total. Yup, seven. If you've ever wondered what life is like with three little brothers and sisters, it's… well, something. The boys and I got along famously for the most part, although we got into our fair share of fistfights. I never spent much time around the other girls. I don't know why; they just never struck the right chord with me. My brothers however adored me, and they always jumped at the chance to get up to some dumb shit together. There was Jeremy, the second-born; Casimir and the youngest of the boys, Marian. We weren’t particularly bad kids, just a little rebellious. Except for Marian. Despite being the baby of the family, or perhaps because of it, he tended to take things a little too far.

He'd light poop on fire, hide dead mice in our parents' shoes like a cat and trash the living room. I don't know why he did it. Not because we made him! The pranks we pulled as a group never targeted our parents, and we always kept any damage to the house minimal. We loved him, yes, but he could hardly be called a well-behaved child. He was more like one of the yule lads himself.

So one night, I must have been around twelve, we were allowed to stay up a little later than usual to watch tv. They were screening some popular kids' movies at the time, so the seven of us were all lying on the floor, each wrapped up in a warm blanket while Mom and Dad sat huddled on the couch behind us. It was so comfortable, sprawling on the soft bear skin rug with the snow falling right outside our window. Everything was perfect, until the doorbell rang. I instantly jumped to my feet—being the oldest, I always tried very hard to show the most initiative. Leadership qualities and stuff. Before Mom could stop me, I skipped over to the door and opened it as far as the chain holding it in place allowed. I was about to greet the newcomer and ask what business they had in our neck of the woods at this time of night, but my voice caught in my throat.

The woman peering in at me through the crack was the most ghastly person I'd ever seen in my young life. She wasn't just tall but enormous, her giant form hunched over and her large head hanging low. Her gray, matted hair hung down from a tattered, mangy-looking scalp and her nose was long and knobbly. Her pores were huge as lunar craters, her pale skin rough as sandpaper. When she spoke, her cracked lips parted to reveal rotten teeth.

"You look delicious."

A foul odor accompanied her words, and I shrunk back both at the smell and her eerily raspy voice. I stood frozen in fear, my legs refusing to move until I was suddenly pulled back into the safety of our warm living room. My mother moved to stand in front of me, protectively blocking her path. With the door still being secured, I reckoned there wasn't a big threat of her coming in anyways, but I had felt so exposed and vulnerable under her gaze. Like a lamb moments before slaughter.

"Dear Madam," the giantess spoke again, this time addressing my mother. "I am so awfully hungry tonight. Please, please feed me. I need to eat." She reached through the doorway with a bony hand. Her long, dirty fingernails almost looked like talons. "Would you spare a morsel for me?"

"Get lost," my mother spat back at her. Her voice was venomous, lethal, and the most comforting sound I could imagine in that moment. "Don't ever come near this house again if you know what's good for you."

"Don't send me off! Please, most merciful lady… Just a morsel, a little morsel, that's all I'm asking for! You have more than enough…"

"If you don't leave, I'll beat you 'til you're raw, you disgusting parasite!"

My siblings had started listening in at some point. Dad seemed to be trying to direct their attention back onto the tv, but there was no chance of that happening.

"Eat shit and die!" Marian shouted, giggling like he'd just told a joke. Lord knows where he got that language from at his young age. Mom turned to shush him, and the giantess shot him a quick look. There was a glint in her eyes.

"Go away," Mom repeated with a little more emphasis. "You're not welcome here." With that, she shut the door in the woman's face.

"Mom, who was that?" I asked, still a bit shaken up.

"Her name's Gryla," she answered, nervously fumbling with her sleeve. "And she's no one you need to be worried about."

I didn't sleep well that night. I dreamt of Gryla, hiding in my closet. Having awoken with a start, I got up to fetch a glass of milk; the standard procedure for when I was restless. As I padded past the master bedroom, I could hear my parents talk in hushed, aggravated tones. What were they doing up? Intrigued, I lingered, pressing my ear up to the wooden door.

"Why didn't you just give her something from the kitchen?" Dad asked.

"You know it's not really food she's after! If we humor her, that only makes it worse!" my mother hissed. "She'll think she's welcome here and keep coming back! Don't you remember last year?"

"Hey, I get it! I just wish the kids hadn't been around… It really creeped me out, the way she just, you know… looked at them."

"It should!" Mom replied testily. "You think I was fine with it?"

"Does that change anything? That she saw them?"

"I don't think so." Mom sounded uncertain. "At least, I don't know that it does."

"Not being too reassuring there, honey."

"Should I lie and tell you she doesn't freak me out? I've been afraid of her since forever! My parents used stories about her to scare me into behaving back when I was little. Scarred me for life."

A chill ran down my spine and I drew away from the door. Sneaking down the corridor back towards my own bedroom, I was acutely aware of every little sound I made. The slapping of my naked feet on the carpeted floor and the beating of my heart both seemed to be amplified to an unnatural volume. I wanted nothing more than to find myself in the presumed safety of my sheets again, hiding under my blanket until daybreak. That's when I heard something—a tiny, muffled little grunt coming from Marian's room at the very end of the hallway. I stopped in my tracks, not daring to move a muscle. What was that sound? Had I misheard? Pulse thrumming in my ears, I stood and listened, still as a statue. There it was again! A dull thud, followed by a stifled whimper.

I had to go and check it out. I figured my little brother was simply having nightmares like I did earlier, but somehow, I still didn't want to. Every single one of my limbs seemed to be opposed to the idea of going any further. Forcing my legs to move, I proceeded down the suddenly much longer seeming corridor until I reached Marian's room. I gently rapped on the door. No response. Everything had fallen silent inside.

"Marian?" I whispered.

Still nothing.

I slowly nudged the door open, nimbly slipping through the crack only to come to a staggering halt the second I laid eyes on what was inside. There, in the middle of the room, stood this awful, terrifying woman. Her back bent to allow her to fit in under the ceiling at all, she glowered down at me from above. When she opened her mouth to speak, blood dripped from her long, lolling tongue and she stopped to lick her lips, smearing it all over her cheeks.

"What's wrong, dear? I only took a morsel."

With that, she raised her hand and before I could even fully process what I was seeing, I was already screaming.

Her long, gnarled fingers were holding up my little brother's severed head by the hair. His lifeless, glassy eyes were staring right through me; his mouth contorted in a silent cry of fear. Cackling, Gryla dropped the head onto the floor and ducked to worm her way through the open window. I saw her running through the snow outside into the direction of the woods, her dirty gray shawl trailing after her and her laughter lingering in the chilly winter air. When my parents came storming in mere seconds later, my mother broke down instantly. Her wails of shock, of grief, loss and heartbreak were more harrowing than the voice of the giantess. I fell into my father's open arms, pressing myself against him as my body was shaken by sobs. We shut and locked the door behind us, to keep the other kids from coming in and seeing what was left of Marian.

For a while, it was all we could do to sit and weep, all huddled up in a large, shivering pile. None of us got up, not even to close the window through which the cold wind was blowing in. Christmas time was never quite as much fun after that. No one ever set foot into Marian's room again. We buried his head out in the yard, then barricaded his chamber from the outside. That was it. Suddenly, my parents were short a child and I was without my little brother. A life had been erased, with nothing anyone could do about it. A fresh wound to each member of the family that couldn't be healed except through time. You'd think this tragedy would bring us closer together, but I actually believe that this was the night we all started alienating. My mother never let anyone in on her misery except me. To her, I was always the child who'd suffered the second most, the one who'd found Marian's head.

She'd always wanted to make me the official heiress to the woods, and her decision only cemented itself through the bond we thus formed. She stopped doting on my siblings as much. She never neglected them, but made it clear I was her favorite. Dad started kind of resenting her for it, and by extension me.

Yeah, I think that's how we all began drifting apart. We'd never grow back together. The big house would slowly empty, leaving only me and my staff.

Recounting this has been painful, obviously. I hope you'll take it as another warning not to come here. Our property isn't a fun house or a Halloween attraction. I have dedicated my whole life to keeping this forest safe, to keep the things inside from spilling out; so please, have a little respect for my efforts. Just a tiny little bit.

X

Part 1

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7