The back of When the Woods Fall Silent reads as such:
“When the Woods Fall Silent is based off of true events, if you’re willing to believe such things.
After all, anything could be hiding out in the trees or among the desert sands…
Anything at all.”
I’d imagine anyone reading that might think that this novel being based off of true events is just
an exaggeration—a ploy to sell more copies. And while it’s true that I, as its author, hoped that it
might entice the more curious type of person to invest in their own copy, what I am about to
describe is totally and completely true. When the Woods Fall Silent is very much inspired by a
few encounters with something, or maybe even multiple somethings, somewhere out there in the
desert plains of New Mexico.
A little bit of background on New Mexico, for anyone unfamiliar. New Mexico calls itself home
to 23 proud Native American tribes: nineteen Pueblos, three Apache, and the Navajo Nation, all
spread across the land as far north as the Taos Pueblo and as far south as the Mescalero Apache
Reservation. As such, their cultures are perhaps, in my experience, some of the most deeply
embedded into the way of life in New Mexico.
It is this culture that I was raised with, this beautiful mixing pot of ideas and cultural traditions
that are simply a part of everyday life regardless of where you are. Kachina dolls, serapes, and
turquoise fill gas station gift shops for the passing tourist. Every other home is made of adobe
bricks.
I spent my teenage years outside camping, hiking, and backpacking. I learned modern survival
skills in addition to the occasional knowledge passed down from the original holders of the land;
namely, the Tiwa. Sitting around the campfire led to inevitable discussions of ghost stories from
all over.
I learned to fear the woods at night listening to stories of evil spirits trying to lure you out of your
tent or into the rivers with moaning wails. For a long while, that’s all they were. Just stories to
keep me in bed.
When I graduated high school, my newfound freedom was the opportunity I needed to explore
the state. Me and my friends went all over, chasing waterfalls and charting the stars. Life progressed, and eventually, I was the only one left exploring. My solo travel led me out east out of sheer curiosity, to the Texas-New Mexico border. It was a place I had never been. I’d always been told nothing was out there, and I was determined to find out for myself.
The adults guiding me while I grew were unfortunately right. Eastern New Mexico is a barren
and desolate place. The closest fun to be had was at least two hours in any given direction.
Otherwise, you were stuck in town exploring aisles in Walmart, or following the railroad tracks
wherever they led.
It was on a moonless and cloudy night that I found myself with a new friend out on those
railroad tracks, lamenting our decision to come to such an empty place. He, being from Los
Alamos, missed the outdoors as dearly as I; or perhaps even more, if it was possible. Our
midnight stroll led from a random point he chose to drive us to, where the path turned from
asphalt to dirt along fields of tall grass and who-knows-what they were planting out there.
We walked along silently, pulling our coats tight against the wind and keeping our lit cigarillos in
our mouth to combat the cold. He froze quickly and randomly after about twenty minutes of
walking. “Did you see that?” he asked me. I responded that I did not, and inquired what he saw.
“These green eyes, I guess,” he replied. “Hovering.”
We attributed it to the lonely imagination of a mind desperate for another environment and
continued for a time when he stopped me again. “There—it’s right there,” he told me, pointing. It
disappeared when I turned, but not fast enough to think my friend crazy. I saw them, sure
enough, two glowing green light sources, small enough and distant enough that eyes were the
best word for them, flitting about 20 yards in front of us.
We froze, saying nothing. Examining the fields around us with the limited flashlights of our
phones. I knew we were thinking the same thing: what the hell had eyes like that? A cougar,
maybe, and then we may as well call our significant others and say our goodbyes. But out here?
Two and a half hours from any mountain range? (A quick Google search, out of my own sheer
curiosity recounting the tale, reveals the following from the USDA Forest Service: “Historically,
the mountain lion (cougar) has occupied all parts of the state except the open, eastern plains.”)
With a cry, my friend pointed out the eyes again—twenty yards behind us now. My mind
rationed for a reasonable explanation on how something moved so quickly, so silently, to
reposition itself from in front of us to behind us. Before I could find any, it disappeared again. I
turned to him. “Are we too white to stick around?” I asked him, trying to hide the fear in my
voice.
He took a drag of his cigarillo. “Nah,” he said, and turned back down the trail with alarming
agility, regardless of the situation.
I thought that was the end of it. The event inspired a quick short film that we presented at a
horror film festival in the town that impressed enough people, but that was it. I started carrying a
flashlight with me wherever I had to go somewhere dark—a habit I continue to this day, with a
single exception I am about to discuss—and I resumed my life.
That is, until the winter of 2019.
It was just me this time. I didn’t have my flashlight with me. The wintry moon shone full and
bright in the midnight sky (I kept very late hours in those days). The wind, which I learned was a
constant out across the plains, was pushing my truck along forcefully. As I drove, I watched the
moon. It was to my right and simply put, just a brilliant pale bowl in the sky, so pretty that I
decided to memorialize the occasion with a photo.
I pulled the truck over from the asphalt to the dirt, just above the ditch that led to (you guessed it)
the dead field of crops and tall grass. I snapped a few photos standing on the foothold, never
coming fully out of the truck, when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
I didn’t know what to think. The event I previously described had been well over a year prior.
There was no reason to think of it beyond the silly short that was made.
I looked around frantically, and heard a scratchy sound in the distance behind me, like a knife
scraping against steel. It was miles away—which I later learned likely meant it was close.
And it was.
I looked back over the truck, towards the moon, and that’s when I saw them.
Two glowing green eyes.
And this time, there was no mistaking them as anything besides eyes. They were attached to a
humanoid figure, looking up at me, crawling through the grass towards me. The light revealed
little of its features, and with my heart dropping, I realized its skin was taught and leathery, like a
burned corpse. It lacked a mouth or any hair. I didn’t know what I was looking at.
I couldn’t breathe. The sound in my mind flooded my senses, and before I could even realize
what I was doing, I was in my car and driving as fast as I could, emerald eyes in the rearview
staring after me.
That night was perhaps the worst of my life. I lived on a second story apartment building made
of flat brick, about 20 feet off the ground. I could hear knocks and scratches all around my unit,
above and below and beside, and to my absolute horror, outside the window. It paused with the
sunrise, where I discovered deep and ugly scratches on the outside window, like something…
dare I say it, or even think it?… seemingly tried to scratch its way in.
Following that experience, I began to notice things. Shadow figures dancing in my peripheral
vision, watching me, stalking me home. A tall, pale thing with sunken eyes and a menacing
scowl, always off in the distance. Cloven hoofprints in the snow with a ten-foot stride, starting
nowhere and ending similarly, just outside the building.
I knew I had to get away, but it hardly helped. They seemed to follow me, like I’d broken some
ancient law of coexistence that ordinarily left them in peace.
When quarantine happened in 2020, I was saved. I was away forever, though my mind was
broken and fragmented. I couldn’t go to therapy. Who would believe me? I wasn’t about to admit
myself to a psych ward, thanks to some past experiences.
My solution was research. I made calls and sent emails. I reached out to everyone I possibly
could. To my shock, the more I asked, the more first-hand experiences I found. My friends
described similar things to the emerald-eyed creature. One account even acknowledged multiple,
crawling over a trailer, stated to be as tall as 30 feet.
But the more I heard, the less I understood. Nothing seemed to correlate the stories online. No
one talked about it unless I asked. The adults all thought I was crazy when I described my story,
or they didn’t want to hear it in the first place.
Eventually, a simple conclusion was reached: something was out there, and I would never
discover what it was.
This is the premise of When the Woods Fall Silent. A creature of unknown origin is out there,
and no one seems to be willing to believe the person who knows of it. His search for answers
leads him to dead end after dead end, with many adults telling him to drop it entirely.
And if he keeps searching for those answers, they will destroy him. I stopped my search before it
was too late. Others don’t stop. Others will search until the very question consumes them
entirely, and nothing is left but their shattered mind.
That’s how the things hiding in the darkness get you these days. Maybe once, they could take
people to keep their legend alive; in this modern day, obsession will lead you to annihilation.
So I ask you, as you read this book, a manifestation of my fear, my pain, my haunted memory, to
remember the truth behind it. Think of a moonlit night in the desert plains, and think of burned
skin and emerald eyes. Then ask yourself: what else could be out there, lurking just beyond the
cover of darkness? What unrecognizable creatures hunt beneath the stars, in the trees, on the
mountains, upon the sand?
What will happen when the question goes unanswered? What will happen when the search for
knowledge becomes a spiral to destruction? What will happen when you stare into the void of
knowledge? When it returns that stare, what incomprehensible conclusion will you arrive at?
And ask yourself, dear reader: what will you do when the woods fall silent around you?