The trees on Fletchertown Road stood like skeletal fingers, bare and unmoving in the cold night air. A dead silence clung to the place like rot. No wind, no rustling leaves—only the distant hum of the highway, gutted by the thick woods. The night was heavy. A feeling crawled up the spine, something primal, something wrong. The kind of thing that makes animals flee and grown men turn back.

The road stretched ahead, cracked and littered with damp leaves, a forgotten artery winding through the woods. It had been fine a moment ago, just another empty stretch of road, but then the atmosphere had changed. The quiet had become suffocating. The air had a weight to it, thick and damp, like the forest itself was holding its breath.

Something was watching.

The eyes came first. Two perfect circles, glowing an eerie, white light, unnatural against the black tangle of trees. They weren’t the wavering, reflective flickers of an animal caught in headlights. They were steady, fixed on their target.

Then came the sound—a scrape, heavy and slow, like hooves on asphalt. A breath, ragged and too close. The smell of damp fur and something sharper, something bitter, a coppery tang that twisted the stomach.

Another step.

The Goatman came into view in pieces. First, the broad, hulking shoulders, covered in coarse, matted hair, dark and thick. The shape of a man, but grotesque, exaggerated in all the wrong ways. Too tall, too wide, the proportions slightly off, like something that had studied humanity from a distance and tried to imitate it but had gotten lazy halfway through.

The legs bent wrong. They ended in thick, split hooves, cracked and caked in filth. His arms were long, too long, almost dragging at his sides, ending in fingers that were human but clawed at the tips, twitching with a nervous energy.

And his face.

The snout was broad and powerful, like an old billy goat, but the mouth—God, the mouth—was something else entirely. Wide, wider than it should be, lined with jagged teeth, not the dull grinders of a grazer but the kind meant for tearing. His breath was visible in the cold air, labored, like he had been running, but his body was still, unnervingly still.

He stared, and he didn't blink.