You ever get that feeling, out in the woods, that somebody’s watching—but you can’t quite tell from where? I don’t mean the kind that hits when you realize the log has eyes. I mean the quiet kind, the kind that seeps in through the fog and settles behind your ribs. The woods don’t need to shout to tell you something’s wrong. They just go still. 
There was an old man I used to help out—a hermit, some called him, though I just knew him as Otis. Every month, like clockwork, I’d drop a few raccoons by his place. He fed his dogs off them, kept their coats slick and their ribs hidden through winter. We had a simple arrangement: if he was home, we’d jaw a bit. If he wasn’t home or awake, I’d stash the coons in his shed freezer, wrapped in a black garbage bag. No money changed hands, no favors owed. Just two men keeping to their corners of the dark. 
On nights like the one I’m going to tell you about, the woods can keep you guessing—shapes shift, shadows breathe, and a man starts doubting what’s pointing right back at him. 
The air was thick enough to chew. Red – the redbone I was hunting at the time—picked up a track down in the draw and worked it like she meant to prove something. The creek beside us ran slow and black, heavy with the smell of wet leaves and iron. Every step I took made the kind of sound that tells you you’re not alone, even if you are. 
My headlamp carved a path through the fog as I made my way from my usual parking spot, just off the dirt road. Red treed within fifteen minutes, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why she couldn’t ever chase coons remotely near the truck. The tree that took Red fifteen minutes to find took me every bit of thirty to reach, and I had the sweat to prove it. 
I planned to drop off some meat for Otis that night, which meant I’d take any coons Red treed after 9 p.m. That system usually gave me two or three by midnight, enough to keep Otis happy and his dogs fed. I praised Red a little extra since it was only just turning 8:00pm. 
We started back toward the truck, quarter mile uphill. I figured I’d cut her loose again when we got within a couple hundred yards of the road. Halfway there I found a big, flat rock and decided to take a quick breather. I checked it for habitants and sat down, killed my light, and dug for a bottle of water. 
It was dark—thick, layered dark, the kind you can feel pressing behind your eyes. The trees here were tall, mostly oak and pine, stitched together so tight you could lose a man five feet in front of you. I took a sip and let my eyes adjust. 
That’s when I saw them. 
Two lights, about two hundred yards south, down near the bottom of the ridge. They cut through the trees in long, clean sweeps—white, steady, too fast for coon hunters and too quiet. I couldn’t make out or hear any dogs, but they were moving like they were being chased by a pack of them. Between the two lights, heavier than the fog, came a third figure—unlit, moving smooth, like the dark itself had legs. 
I watched for a minute or two before realizing the lights were headed in the direction of Otis’s place. For a moment I thought about minding my business, but curiosity’s a bad habit I’ve never shaken. I started after them, slow, keeping to the brush. Red followed close, her paws whispering in the leaves. 
The ridge fell away fast, the ground slick with moss and wet bark. I moved carefully, letting the trees break my outline. Through the fog, I could make out the lights bobbing, one ahead of the other, steady as a heartbeat. 
As the gap between us closed it became clear they were headed straight for Otis’s place. This was abnormal for a whole host of reasons that immediately came to mind, not the least of which being that Otis didn’t strike me as the kind to have visitors, especially at this time of night. He lived 3 miles into the woods as the crow flies and 5 miles on foot. I had met him purely by chance, having scoped out the most remote and toughest environment in the WMA in search of privacy. Grace, another redbone I was running around with in the woods at the time, treed a couple hundred yards from Otis’s property one night and he beat me to her, scaring me half to death in the process.  
Otis was gifted 150 acres by the owner of the land adjacent to his, where he’d worked for nearly 50 years of his life. When the owner died, his will stipulated that 150 acres butting up to the WMA be given to Otis, and his family couldn’t have been happier to oblige. Otis had become part of their family and had raised his own family right alongside them in the farmhouse they lived in on the 3,500 acre property. 
When the lights were about 100 yards away from Otis’s place and there was no doubt that the cabin was their final destination, I decided to tie off Red to a small pine tree. I hated to leave her, but I didn’t want her around if any of the horrible scenarios I had dreamt up along the walk actually came to fruition. I wasn’t sure how she’d respond, so I grabbed a couple dog biscuits, I kept a few on me that I’d reward her with sometimes if we didn’t shoot down the coon or if she looked like she could use a boost. I cut the top quarter off my water bottle and placed what was left between a couple rocks and a nearby stump. She had food and water, I thought to myself, but will she stay quiet? By now I was envisioning a full-blown shoot out unraveling as I approached, so the thought of a barking dog as a distraction was somehow reassuring.  
Getting Red situated allowed the bobbing lights to beat me to Otis’s place. I was still a solid 100 yards out, still elevated above the cabin, but I could now see that those lights did in fact have arms and legs. They reached the clearing around Otis’s cabin. One beam swept across his porch, briefly illuminating the 3rd, lightless figure, while the other drifted toward the shed. The unlit figure broke from the fog and climbed the porch steps quick, hand to the door. A second later, the light nearest him clicked off—snuffed clean, just as the door to Otis’s cabin was opened. 
A sliver of warm light flared across the porch, thin as a knife edge, then vanished as quick as it came. The door shut again, and the cabin went dark. 
The second light—the one by the shed—was still burning, cutting short, nervous paths along the wall. Whoever wore it was working at the latch, trying to get inside. At this point I noticed the large bag, it looked to be black but it was just off to the side of the intruder away from his light. I crouched behind a pine now 50 yards out, hardly breathing and not exactly sure what my next step should be.  
The shed intruder was ultimately successful. He had somehow opened the lock, grabbed what I now realized was 2 large, black plastic garbage bags, and disappeared behind the closed shed door. The woods swallowed the sounds. No voices. No footsteps. Just the low pulse of frogs somewhere by the creek and the quick tick of my watch. My heart was about to come out of my chest, and I knew Red would start sounding the alarm for me any minute. I decided it was now or never, and began slowly making my way towards the cabin, my .22 in hand.  
Then, out of nowhere came the hum of an engine turning over. Otis’s old C10, which he kept on the backside of the shed that I was facing the front of, had come to life. The sound was muffled at first, then clearer as the headlights flared low through the fog, lighting up the front of the cabin as it came to a hard stop at the front porch. I was close but the brush was thick, and I was still operating without a light. I could see the truck parked in front of the cabin, but nothing beyond that. Within 20 seconds the beams slid across the trees and caught the wet bark, turned everything white for a heartbeat, and then swung away as it sped off down the long dirt road that led to Otis’s property.  
It moved fast, deliberate, until the sound of it thinned out and vanished. 
I waited a solid minute before I straightened up. Nerves easing, but unsure if the danger was now gone, or if it was just beginning. The cabin sat quiet, no porch light, no movement. Silent.  
I knew I had to get back to Red and as if on cue, she started yapping, just as I was about to play call of duty in real life. By the time I reached her my nerves had calmed down and I was able to think more clearly. At the end of the day, I didn’t hear any shouting, shooting, and come to think of it, I didn’t hear Otis’s dogs make a sound during any of this commotion. If there was something truly nefarious going on, wouldn’t I have heard, something? Old Mr. Otis had more guns in that cabin than our local police force, could someone have gotten in, and out, before he could of gotten off at least one shot?  
I don’t know who was happier to see the other, me or Red, but I decided we’d both had enough excitement for the night and would turn in early. I decided I’d come back the following day, Saturday, a little earlier than normal, and see what I could dig up in the daylight.  
What I found that next day left me with more questions than answers, and a pain in my gut. As I approached the house it looked as it always did, but unlike every other time, Otis wasn’t outside tending to his fire, working in his garden, or doing any of the other hundred things I’d seen the old man do from afar over the years.  
I reached the shed first, and from 30 feet back I could see it. All those potential scenarios I’d been running through my head for the past 24 hours came flooding back, only now, at least one of those tragic scenarios, was real. The side of the door, the latch, and the lock, were all covered in blood.