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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Life-Track-9036 on 2024-10-16 20:51:29+00:00.
They say the mountains of Appalachia are old—older than bones. When you walk beneath the canopy of those ancient trees, with the wind whispering through the pines and oaks, you feel the weight of that age in your chest. It’s a kind of pressure, like something buried deep beneath the dirt is trying to push its way out. But I don’t think it’s something as simple as tectonic plates shifting or the earth’s history rising to the surface. No, what’s under there is alive. And it’s been here far longer than we ever imagined.
It started with a sound.
At first, we thought it was an earthquake. My family and I live up in a cabin in the thick of the Blue Ridge Mountains, miles away from the nearest town. Most days, the only things you hear are the birds, the wind, and the occasional rustle of deer moving through the underbrush. But one night, a few weeks back, the peace was shattered by a deep, rumbling roar. It was nothing like I’d ever heard before—low, powerful, like the growl of a massive beast that had just woken up. It shook the ground, rattled the windows, and set off every car alarm in the valley.
The power cut out. Phones were dead. Everything just… stopped.
At first, people thought it was something explainable. A freak storm, maybe. A landslide deep in the mountains. But I’d grown up hearing stories about Appalachia. There are things here—things you don’t talk about unless you’re ready to face them. The elders in the holler always said the mountains have their own secrets, their own rules. And once you hear something like that roar, there’s no going back.
For the next few days, the sky stayed overcast, heavy with a gray that didn’t seem natural. The animals—rabbits, deer, even the birds—started acting strange, too. They fled. First the smaller ones, then the larger creatures. I saw entire flocks of crows heading west like they were running from something. And in their absence, the silence was suffocating.
The second night after the roar, we saw the trees move.
My wife, Jenna, and I were sitting on the porch, trying to figure out what was happening. Our two kids, Emma and Jake, were inside, glued to the TV even though it only played static. There was a pressure in the air, like the calm before a tornado, but worse. You could feel something waiting just beyond the horizon.
That’s when I saw it. At first, it looked like the trees themselves were shifting, swaying unnaturally, as if caught in some invisible wind. But the air was still. No gusts, no storms. It wasn’t until I squinted that I realized they weren’t trees. No, what I was looking at was something far taller, something massive pushing through the forest, its outline barely visible against the darkening sky.
I don’t know how long we stared, but I remember gripping Jenna’s hand so tight it must have hurt. We watched as something—something *huge*—moved through the woods, just beyond our property line. I swear I caught a glimpse of scales, a flash of something reptilian. But it wasn’t until it let out that same deep, guttural roar that we both stumbled back inside.
“What the hell was that?” Jenna’s voice was shaky, her eyes wide. I had no answer for her. I wanted to say it was a bear, maybe, or some kind of freak animal. But deep down, I knew better. That roar... it wasn’t anything modern. It was primal, ancient.
We didn’t sleep that night. We just sat, eyes wide, ears straining for any hint of that sound returning. But the silence was worse. It stretched on, long and unbroken, as if the world outside our cabin had frozen in place.
By the fourth day, people started disappearing.
We heard about it from the few neighbors we had up here. Old Joe, who lived about two miles down the road, vanished without a trace. His cabin was found empty, his door wide open like he’d left in a hurry. No signs of a struggle, just... gone. Others in the holler reported hearing strange sounds in the woods at night—heavy footsteps, the sound of trees snapping like twigs. But no one saw anything. Or at least, no one survived long enough to tell us if they did.
That’s when the military rolled in.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Helicopters, unmarked trucks, and men in black uniforms swarmed the area, setting up roadblocks and checkpoints. They didn’t give us any answers, just told us to stay indoors, to not ask questions. But you could see the fear in their eyes. Whatever they were here to contain, they had no control over it.
The sky turned a sickly orange on the sixth night. By then, the roar had become a regular occurrence, echoing through the mountains at random intervals. You could feel it in your bones, a sound so low and powerful it seemed to resonate with the very earth. Jenna and I tried to keep the kids calm, but how do you explain to a nine-year-old that something ancient, something beyond human understanding, is stalking your home?
And then, it came closer.
We were in the living room, candles flickering because the power hadn’t been back on in days. Emma and Jake had finally fallen asleep when the ground trembled. It was subtle at first, like the beginnings of an earthquake, but then it grew stronger. The rumbling. The roar. And this time, it was accompanied by something even worse: the sound of trees falling, crashing to the earth in a domino effect.
Jenna grabbed my arm. “It’s here.”
I couldn’t speak. I could only listen as the heavy, thudding footsteps grew closer. Closer. The cabin windows rattled in their frames, and the sound of breathing—yes, breathing—filled the air. It was so deep, so heavy, it felt like the mountains themselves were inhaling.
I made the mistake of looking out the window.
I don’t know what I expected. But nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. Standing at the edge of the clearing, illuminated by the flickering flames of our dying candles, was a creature out of a nightmare.
It was massive—at least thirty feet tall, covered in thick, jagged scales that glistened in the faint light. Its eyes glowed a sickly yellow, scanning the landscape with a terrifying intelligence. But it wasn’t just its size that froze me in place; it was the realization that what I was looking at wasn’t just a monster.
It was a dinosaur.
Not one of the lumbering giants you see in museums. No, this thing was a predator. Its body was built for hunting, for killing. And somehow, it had survived here, deep in the untouched wilderness of Appalachia, hidden from humanity for God knows how long.
I pulled back from the window, my heart hammering in my chest. “Jenna,” I whispered, “we need to get the kids.”
But before I could move, the creature let out a low, rumbling growl, its head swiveling toward our cabin. It knew we were there.
And it was coming for us.
I’ve heard stories about fight-or-flight instincts kicking in when you’re faced with danger, but what no one tells you is that sometimes, you just freeze. That’s where I was, standing by the window, heart racing, body stiff, watching that thing—*that dinosaur*—move closer, with the slow, deliberate steps of a predator. My mind screamed at me to run, to grab Jenna and the kids and get the hell out of there, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.
Jenna snapped me out of it.
“Mark!” she whispered sharply, her voice cutting through the fog in my brain. “We need to go. *Now*.”
She was right. Whatever was out there was no longer just passing through. It had found us, and there was no telling what it would do when it got closer. I turned and bolted for the hallway where Emma and Jake were still sleeping, my heart pounding in my ears, Jenna right behind me.
I shook Jake’s shoulder first, keeping my voice low. “Jake, buddy, wake up.” He stirred, groaning in that half-asleep, irritated way that only an eleven-year-old could manage, but his eyes shot open when he saw the look on my face.
“Dad, what’s—” he started, but I cut him off.
“No time to explain. Get your shoes on, grab your sister.”
Jenna was already at Emma’s side, pulling her into her arms. Emma blinked, still groggy, confused. “Mom, what’s happening? Is it a bear?”
Jenna didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. The ground shook again, and the sound of snapping trees came louder, closer, as if something was bulldozing through the forest without a care in the world. Jake’s eyes went wide with fear, and he moved faster than I’d ever seen, pulling on his sneakers and helping Emma into her coat.
I grabbed the shotgun from the corner by the door. It was old, something my father had passed down to me, but it was loaded. I didn’t know if it would even slow that thing down, but I wasn’t about to go outside unarmed.
We moved quickly but quietly, slipping out the back door into the cold night air. The clearing behind the cabin led into the forest, thick with underbrush and towering trees. The moonlight barely penetrated the canopy, casting everything in a muted, eerie glow.
I could hear the creature’s breathing, heavy and slow, the sound of something massive inhaling and exhaling. It was close. Too close. We had to get out of its line of sight before it reached the cabin, or we’d be dead.
We hurried down the narrow path that led deeper into the woods, the kids holding tight to Jenna and me, their breaths coming in sharp, terrified gasps. I tried to focus on the trail ahead, but the sounds behind us were impossible to ignore. The crashing of trees, the earth-shaking thuds of its steps—it was like something out of a nightmare, but...
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