Halloween Eve is just a day away! It's time to tell some more spooky stories.

Campfire stories have a long history. From the first time two people who spoke the same language gathered around the fire all the way to today's movies, television shows, and other entertainment, it's still fun to get scared.

That's where creepypasta comes in. If you're unfamiliar with the term, it's a portmanteau of "creepy" and "copypasta," with the latter being a term used to describe a story that's been copy-and-pasted a million times already. It became popularized on certain dregs-of-the-internet style message boards and has since spread into the mainstream, but it follows that same great campfire tradition of telling spooky stories.

In the spirit of Halloween, here's my version of my favorite one.

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The Hunter

Source
One year, long ago, an avid hunter set off into the autumn woods for a weekend. Deer season was in full swing, and he was hoping to nail a big buck this year like he always did.

Usually this hunter would go with his buddies, but this time around there was just no way they could swing it. Jimbo's wife was sick, so he was out; Ralph just got laid off from his factory job, so he had to pick up hours at the local Wal-Mart to make ends meet. And Sammy, well let's just say Sammy just hadn't been the same after that motorcycle accident. So this time the hunter went, all by his lonesome, deep into the forest in search of his prey.

The trip seemed doomed from the start. The weather report turned out to be completely wrong; instead of seasonably cool, clear weather, it ended up raining nearly constantly just an hour after the hunter set off. To make matters worse, he had stopped to pull his rain gear from his pack and slipped on a suddenly slick patch of leaves, tumbling halfway down a ravine. His pack - and most of his supplies - went down the rest of the way, and upon standing up he noticed a sharp pain in his ankle; there was no way he was going to be able to climb down the rest of the way to get his stuff.

To top it all off, it was starting to get dark. Shivering from the cold, soaked to the bone, and disoriented from the pain in his ankle, the hunter tried to find his way back out of the forest, only to end up hopelessly lost. Still, he trekked on, hoping to find a way out.

Finally, well after night had fallen completely, the hunter stumbled onto a small clearing. At the far end was a dilapidated wooden cabin that had seen better days, nearly reclaimed by the woods on three sides. There were no lights from inside, but as the hunter approached he could see that the front windows were grimy but intact.

Hobbling up the creaking steps of the front porch, the hunter knocked, loudly, on the door. "Hello?" he called out. When he didn't get a response he turned the knob, finding it unlocked. He opened the door and stepped inside, bringing a drift of fallen leaves with him. Using his pocket flashlight - one of the few things that he still had on him after taking that tumble - he took in the lay of the land.

The interior of the cabin was plain, but in well-enough shape. There was a wide stone hearth with the remains of an ancient fire on one wall; along the other was a pair of simple metal cots, complete with musty-looking mattresses. The beds were made, though; each was covered with a scratchy wool blanket and a lumpy-looking pillow. The center of the room had a wooden table along with a pair of chairs. A couple of kitchen cabinets stood along another wall.

Sweeping his light around the single room interior, the hunter was puzzled. The cabin seemed to have been abandoned in a hurry - there was untouched firewood next to the hearth, and several of the cabinets had their doors open, revealing dusty shelves stocked haphazardly with cans of food. The table had a place setting - knife, fork, plate - likewise covered with dust, along with an old can opener and an unopened can of tomato soup. An oil lamp sat in the center.

Too tired to question his good fortune in finding shelter, the hunter closed the door behind him, shutting out the pelting rain. He fished some matches from his pocket and lit the lamp, thankful there was still oil in it, and hobbled over to the hearth. Once he had a fire crackling away, he straightened up, peeling off his outer layers of clothing, and decided to take a better look around his ersatz shelter.

Besides the sparse furniture, the cabin had little else of interest. The only windows seemed to be those on the front wall, though they were coated with so much dust that he could barely see through them; the other three walls were hung with some of the most bizarre pictures that he had ever seen.

Set in large glass frames, each of these pictures were more bizarre than the next. They were all portraits, but they were done in such a grotesque style that it gave the hunter chills. One was the visage of someone who had been flayed, their skin pulled from their face and skull; the portrait's red musculature gleamed wetly, offset by the ghoulish grimace of teeth devoid of lips. Another was even worse, with a woman's lower jaw ripped off, exposing her throat and lolling tongue, her own blood soaking the front of her dress. Yet another depicted a child who had pulled his own left eye from his head, holding the orb in his hand and offering it up to the viewer, the optic nerve hanging limply from his palm.

The portraits went on this way, ringing the cabin's walls on three sides. It gave the hunter the willies, but he wasn't about to brave the storm to look for someplace else to stay for the night. In the end, he just dismissed it as the original owners having really poor taste in art - he was too tired to care, and a quick perusal of the cans in the cupboard revealed they had long since expired. With a resigned sigh, the hunter stoked the fire with the remaining wood, stretched his soaked clothes across the chairs to dry, and wrapped himself in the blankets he found.

Sleep was elusive for the hunter. While his ankle was starting to feel better, he felt like he was being watched every time he closed his eyes. Finally, he pulled the blankets over his head; eventually the crackling fire and the thrumming of the rain on the roof lulled him to sleep, where he was plagued with disturbing dreams featuring the ghoulish characters in the portraits leering down on him.

In the morning he woke, feeling surprisingly better, though something felt off. He unwrapped himself from the musty-smelling blankets and sat up in the cot, blinking in the early light - light that was flooding the cabin from every side. Confused, the hunter looked around the room, wondering where all the sunlight was coming from.

In a moment, he realized what was wrong. The portraits hanging on the walls were now empty. With a flash, the hunter realized that they weren't portraits at all.

They were windows.

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