Corrolis

It was 1998 when this all occurred.

We just wanted to look around, and that was our biggest mistake.

July 5th, 1998 The sudden ringing of the phone from my apartment woke me up in a flash. I was still half asleep when I was woken, so I almost fell back asleep after the first ring. I forced myself to keep awake and sat up in my bed looking at the clock on the desk.

“2 am?” I thought as I got out of bed.

The phone rang a few more times before I found it in the darkness of my apartment room. I yawned greatly as I felt for it and put it against my ear saying, “Hello? Whoever this is, don’t call me at 2 am anymore”. Oh, boy, did I hate phone calls at 2 am. For months, an unknown Russian telephone company kept calling me at 2 am, so I suspected this might be them again.

To my surprise, it wasn’t a Russian company; instead, it was my friend Bill. He was the one kid in every school that hated everything. Whether it was classes, or simply walking, he hated it.

“Hey man, I gotta tell you something.” He said.

“What do you want? It’s 2 am. What would anyone want at 2 am?”

“You remember that party we had some time at 11 yesterday?”

“Yeah, why?”

“And you also remember how I left in a hurry?”

“What’s your point?”

“Well on my way back home I came across a very spooky path that went into the woods. I was wondering if you, me, and Logan could go along tonight and check it out.”

“Can’t we just do this tomorrow? I’m tired and I’d rather not.”

“C’ mon man. It would be way less spooky if we did it in the day.”

“Alright, fine, I’ll go. But if anything unwanted happens I’m blaming you for dragging me and Logan into this.”

Before Bill hung up he whispered, “Come to my house. Logan will be there too.”

And then Bill hung up. I stood there for a good few seconds to stretch and then went over to get some proper clothes on. I turned on the lights and was blinded by them as I searched around my room to find my clothes. Eventually, I found them and went out of my room.

I exited the apartment building and got in my car to leave for Bill’s house. The drive took a moderate 15 minutes to get there.

I finally reached the neighborhood where Bill lived. I saw him standing outside his house on the front porch as I came over to the driveway. I also had some coffee I quickly made at my room in the car with me. It was the only thing I brought with me out of the car.

Bill stood there as I walked over to his porch and onto it. As I walked up to the porch stairs Bill said, “Well you finally made it. Over 20 minutes have passed since I called you. What were you doing, making coffee?”

“Well, actually I was. Is that a problem?”

“No, it’s just that I expected you to get here earlier since I know how you drive.”

“Yeah, fast, but at 2 am that’s not a problem.”

“I guaranteed myself that Logan was going to be here before you since he lives only about 5 minutes away.”

“Do you know where he could be?”

“He probably fell back asleep and is getting ready right now.”

“Probably”.

We both sat down on some old, rickety rocking chairs that Bill bought from his grandma. We sat there and conversed for a while until another car pulled up into the driveway. We both suspected it was Logan. We both stood up and went down to the car to see who it was. And yes, it was Logan. He got out of the car still in his night clothes and what seems to have been spilled tea or coffee.

“You called me at 2 am to search for a path. I fell back asleep and then 10 minutes later I woke back up and spilled coffee all over myself. Thanks a lot.”

Logan spoke as if he was mad or simply really tired, which makes Logan really irritable. Bill went over and took the backpack out of Logan’s car and said, “What’s this?”

“Oh, it’s just supplies I thought we might need when going down the spooky path.”

“What’s even in here?”

“Just some food and survival supplies of we need them. I tried to bring an entire tent but it wouldn’t fit in the car.”

“This will do. Ok, so everyone get in my car and I’ll drive you to where the path is. Let’s go.”

Bill led us to his car over in the garage and drove it out for us. I sat in the front while Logan sat in the back. We also threw the backpack in the back too. Then Bill drove out of the driveway and onto the road.

It turned 3 am as Bill said, “Ok guys, here we are.”

Bill drove onto a dirt passageway in the middle of the woods by the edge of an old road. He parked it on the path and we all got out. Bill turned off the car and said, “Does anyone have a flashlight? We are going to need one.”

I said, “Well maybe Logan has one. He brought an entire backpack. Hey, Logan, you don’t happen to have a flashlight or two.”

Logan looked up all surprised and said, “What? Oh yeah, I have some.”

He opened the backpack and gave all of us a flashlight. They weren’t the brightest things on the planet but they were sufficient for going down a dirt path.

We started our walk down the path.

The walk down the path wasn’t very eventful. We talked a lot during the walk and took some rests but we never came across anything exciting. That was until the path suddenly ended.

The dirt path went on for what seemed like forever into the middle of nowhere. The only thing around the path was the forest and the light of the moon. As we came down a small curve in the path, it suddenly came to a stop. There was nothing in front of the path after that, just trees. We all looked confusingly at the end of the path wondering where we were and what we were even doing.

“We went down this entire path and all we find is nothing. Great! I wasted my precious sleep for this.” Logan said all irritably.

Bill said afterward, “It doesn’t matter. Maybe there is something beyond the path. We’ll go further and into the woods and if we don’t find anything then we’ll go back and you can sleep, alright?”

“Ugh, fine, but if we don’t find anything, I will literally run back to the car.”

The three of us stepped down off of the path and into the forest. We walked for some time while Bill went ahead to advise us of anything. Then Bill stopped and said, “Hey guys I think I found something.”

Logan and I went over where Bill was looking. “What do you see?” I asked.

“Look at all this.”

We turned our flashlights over Bill and we saw something that was fairly creepy. An entire abandoned town it looked like. The roads were completely gone and the buildings were breaking down bit by bit. Most of the buildings looked like houses or stores, and also looked pretty old as well.

“Hey Logan, you wanted something, so here is that something,” Bill said.

“Yeah, I guess it does count as something. What are we even going to do here?”

“We are going to look around, alright? We’ll see if we can find anything interesting.”

It wasn’t long before we found something.

As we searched along the supposed entrance of the town, I found a broken, wooden sign sticking out of the ground. It was bent and broken in many areas, but we could make out something on the sign.

“Hey, guys over here!” I yelled.

They both came running over and Bill said, “What? What is it?”

I shined my flashlight on the broken sign and Bill went over and said, “Could you make out the words on it?”

“There’s something on it but I couldn’t read it.”

Bill wiped off some of the moss that had grown on it and revealed a single word. “It says ‘Corrolis’.” He said.

“Corrolis? What does that mean?” Logan questioned.

“Sounds like the name of the town or something. I don’t know.”

“Well, it’s just a sign with a word on it. Let’s find something that is actually interesting.”

And so we went off again on our little search through the town. Most of the buildings we did search through were empty or had very little in them. One had a broken chair, but that was all we could really find. Until Logan found something quite strange.

Bill and I were looking around a larger building with a few rooms when Logan started yelling, “What is that?! What is that?!”

We both started running in Logan’s direction and found him shining his light on… something, but we could really hear or see it because Logan was covering it up and still yelling.

“Calm down man! What is it?!” I told him.

“L-Look,” Logan said all scared.

What we saw wouldn’t be the last thing we saw that night. There was blood. There were limbs. And there was mossy sludge everywhere. Over by the building Logan was in, there was a dead body. It wasn’t a decomposed pile of bones, no. This was a recently killed person. They had their arms and legs sliced off by something. There was blood everywhere and there was a wet, mossy material that surrounded the body and the ground around it. It was terrifying.

“What…Why…You know what, we need to leave NOW. We need to go back and call the police right now.” Bill started saying quickly.

Bill ran off into the darkness behind a bunch of buildings were the path was. We couldn’t see his light since he ran off in a heartbeat.

Logan stood there shaking, looking at the body. I grabbed him and said, “We need to leave NOW. C’mon Logan, right now isn’t the time to panic.”

Logan and I started sprinting back and we had no idea where Bill was.

“Bill!” I started screaming. “Bill! Where are you?!”

Logan and I both screamed for Bill many times but he never answered. We couldn’t see his light anywhere and we were basically lost at this point. Logan almost broke out in tears at one point and fell on the ground. He started talking but everything he said was either muffled or incomprehensible.

“Logan, please, we need to leave right now. If Bill is gone or lost then the police will find him once we get back. C’mon Logan.”

Logan finally got back up on his feet and said in the same tone as before, all scared and shaking, “Let’s just get out of here. We need to find Bill. We need to leave.”

We both started running somewhere into the woods when we heard screaming. We heard the screams of what we thought was Bill. The screams ended and we both started yelling for Bill.

“Bill!” “Bill!”

“Bill! Where are you?!”

We got no answer.

Suddenly everything went quiet. We could hear no crickets, no owls or bird, nothing. All we could hear were our own breaths and heartbeats.

We stood in the woods looking everywhere around us trying to find the path or something that will help us get back. We found nothing.

I told Logan, “Logan, we need to find the path and get out of here.”

Logan looked at me and said, “It’s too late. Bill is gone and we are stuck out here in the woods with NO way out! What do you want us to do? Just run off and become like Bill? We cannot just go running off into nowhere and just expect to get out of here. We need to actually think this one through, ok? You hear me?”

“Yes I do, but how are we supposed to even know what direction anything is?”

“How about we try going to the opposite direction from where we walked, alright?”

“Ok, but if that doesn’t work then we will have to survive here till morning.”

“That’s the last thing I want to do. We will use every option we have that is not surviving out here first.”

“Ok. Let’s walk in the opposite direction, ok?”

Logan and I were scared to walk any direction, but if it meant getting out of there, it was good enough for us.

We walked in the opposite direction from where we walked and found ourselves back in the old town, Corrolis.

Logan sighed with relief for once and said, “Ok, this is actually good, right? If we can find the entrance than we find the path. Let’s not split up and find it together.”

“Ok then, whatever you say. That’s the only option really left.”

We searched around the town for ages until we came upon where we first saw the wooden sign. We looked away from the sign and found the forest we thought we came from that had the path. We both rushed through the forest to try out best to find the path if it was even there. Logan ran ahead of me as I starting to lag behind him, “Logan wait up!”

Suddenly I saw him stop and direct his flashlight towards the path which I also saw. I thought he was waiting for me or was happy because we had finally found the path. I was wrong.

I caught up to him and he said, “We were too late the whole time.”

I saw what he was pointing at.

The light was directed towards what killed that man, what killed Bill.

A large, mossy, disgusting creature, standing right there.