@scribe-of-stories kissing you on the face rn for giving me another chance to not shut up about him
Okay so the Silence myth started off as just a collection of disappearances. Easy to identify, hard to connect, because people just kept going missing.
It went from place to place, all staying within the town area (or so they told tourists. Locals knew it came and went from the town’s borders as it pleased.)
All they knew, missing men, gone from their homes, their lives- often after taking a walk in the woods for reasons that most couldn’t identify.
When they were with friends, the others reported hearing the victims saying that they needed to go back to check something.
Many last words being “I’ll be right there! Go on ahead!”
Very few things connected the cases, other than that.
And it just continued on like this. For years.
The locals knew not to fuck with it. They learned, after a while, that if you’re just kind and polite, and you stay away from those woods, nothing will find it’s way to you.
Now, no one knew everyone who went missing.
But everyone knew someone who knew someone who did.
And just often enough, you’d meet someone, whispering hushed words in back alleys.
“He used to beat his wife.”
“She used to drug men at the downtown parlor.”
“They were involved in a trafficking ring. We still haven’t gotten my little brother back.”
“I hate to say it,
But I’m glad they’re gone.”
They didn’t start to call it The Silence until they found the first bodies that weren’t completely demolished.
All of them, looked like they’d been torn up by some feral animal.
But the gashes were too deep to be a bear.
And what unnerved the sheriffs, was
Every single body, no matter if they found it between buildings or as far into the woods as they dared to go,
Not just the skin, mind you.
Every autopsy revealed a complete removal of the vocal cords, severed with teeth too thin to belong to anything that would usually be in the woods.
It was like the skin was ripped
But the cords themselves were cut
And torn from the throat.
The thought of someone’s vocal cords being ripped out while still alive stuck in people’s heads.
And, after a rather loud victim was taken (one who had been screaming of, and threatening, mass violence, to the disturbance and discomfort of many neighbors)
An offhanded comment was made.
“.. I guess it got him to stay quiet.”
Over time, people learned to travel in packs, if they knew what was good for them. (Those who didn’t often had an ego that needed to be checked. They didn’t come back.)
And over time, a simple tune was associated with it. It became a part of the town’s culture, and is actually regularly brought up around Halloween as a kind of spirit.
A few people have seen it. It’s near impossible not to, what with the size of it.
But the most people can usually report was the brightness of two glowing red eyes.
It never approached anyone who still lives.
But the locals tend not to talk about that.
Writing it off as a feral animal rather than very pointed attacks.
As people don’t know, however,
The myth makes the legend.
And ever since it gained the name, it has been able to walk the grounds entirely without sound.
Over time, the locals slowly learned that if you could hear something, even if it wasn’t pleasant, then you were safe.
Even a bear will crunch when it walks through the foliage.
But the being in the woods allows the air to make no sound at all.
