The Hummel Cannibals

Everyone in the small town of La Arbolita, NM knows the urban legend of Hummel Park. It has been said that a group of cannibalistic albinos inhabit the park and if caught alone at night, will attack to drag you away for dinner. Though no one has ever seen one of these cannibals, many eerie happenings have taken place in the park to cause enough alarm. Stories of shadowy figures appearing between the dense foliage have been reported but never confirmed, and numerous people have entered the park never to be heard from again, their bodies never found. It is also believed that something comes over some who enter the park either causing them to take their own lives or turn on others. Again, nothing can be confirmed since no bodies have ever been discovered and even those who manage to exit the park cannot recall events that occurred within the park as if some kind of amnesia had taken them over.

There is one such story of a man who exited the park in a daze immediately following All Hallow’s Eve. It was morning by the time he came stumbling out; his clothing ripped to shreds, one shoe was missing, and he had little cuts all over him. His skin was slightly greyed, his tattered black shirt barely clung to his shoulders with the remaining bits merely strips of fabric, and his blue jeans were barely in existence. He had gone in with a group of friends, just looking for some Halloween excitement, but they encountered something far more sinister. 

A couple walked to the entrance of the park the following morning with the intention of going on a hike, but they would never make it, and their lives would forever be changed. The appearance of the confused and disheveled man shocked them. 

“Sir, do you need some help?” Seth asked the man as he and his wife approached the entrance continuing to inch slowly toward him. He didn’t appear to hear him so he repeated, a little louder this time, leaning forward slightly, “Sir, do you need some help?” Still, no response. He hadn’t even moved as though he couldn’t hear him. And then he noticed his eyes weren’t even open. They were sealed shut! A criss-cross pattern of white thread was very apparent, even as far away as they were standing from this strange man, as they wove in and out of his eyelids and down through his cheek. Now, beyond alarmed, Seth and his wife phoned the police. 

“Hello, we are out here at Hummel Park at the entrance and there is a man who is completely out of sorts, despondent, and his eyes are sealed shut; we need help out here immediately.”

“His eyes are SEALED shut, you said..?” the 911 operator questioned shockingly. 

“Yes, they appear as though they have been sewn shut.” Without further question, the operator indicated that officers would be there shortly. 

As Seth and his wife Angel waited for the officers, they were unsure of what to do. The man had not moved since they approached him. He just stood in front of the entrance with his head hung somewhat cocked to the right, his arms limp but slightly bent, and he was unnaturally still. It was so unsettling that Angel couldn’t stand to stay. 

“I can’t stay here and wait, Seth. I just have this bone-chilling feeling that I can’t shake. I’m going to go wait in the car.” Seth nodded and handed her the keys to their Range Rover. 

“I’ll wait here and keep an eye on him and wait for the officers. You can go sit in the car.” Angel eagerly took the keys from him, gave him a quick kiss, and headed off to the car. With Angel off to the car, Seth decided he’d look around a little bit. He wasn’t feeling ill at ease like his wife was, concerned, yes, but only for the strange man’s welfare. He never imagined anything sinister to be at work. Despite having grown up in La Arbolita, he has never believed any of the lore surrounding Hummel Park and has visited the park regularly since he was a child. To him, it was just a beautiful old park with amazing hiking trails and enigmatic foliage and stairways. But he didn’t want to stray too far while waiting for the police and certainly didn’t want to lose sight of the mysterious man. 

The man was still as stone almost like weren’t even alive, but that couldn’t be. Dead people can’t stand. Can they? Seth slowly walked to the opposite side of the entrance sign to look around. He thought he might be able to find something that would give him some kind of indication of what had occurred the night before. But when he approached the encapsulating foliage that surrounded the entirety of the park, with the exception of this one entrance, what he saw caused his blood to run cold. He stumbled backward as he quickly sought to retreat from the ghastly discovery, nearly losing his balance tripping over a stone, he turned himself around and ran toward the parking lot where his wife was waiting in the car. No sooner than he reached the edge of the parking lot, the police were pulling up. They happened to pull their patrol car up right in front of Seth as he was hastily making his exit away from the park. The terror in his eyes was unmistakable and the officers knew that this wasn’t going to be a prank or something they would be able to wrap up expeditiously. With the entrance still in view, the officers exited their vehicle to see what the man before them had to say. 

“Hi, I’m Officer Jenkins and this is Officer Prush. What seems to be the problem here?” he asked while dreading the answer. Officer Jenkins also grew up in La Arbolita, but unlike Seth, he did believe in the lore of Hummel Park. He had never seen anything but he was a bit older and had been around during a time when the disappearance of the townspeople was a regular occurrence. Over the last decade or so things hadn’t been nearly as active. Granted, that could have something to do with the fact that visitors to the park had rapidly declined due to the strange happenings within, but still, the disappearances had quieted. The people of La Arbolita were no longer shaken with terror from the constant unexplained disappearances. And he wanted to keep it that way.

“Oh my God, I’m so glad you’re finally here! There’s a man….and he’s....and I saw blood and bones!” Seth was rambling rather quickly and excitedly. His hands were all over the place as he attempted to describe what he had seen, but much of it was unintelligible. The officers listened patiently as Seth pointed and attempted to set the scene upon which they were about to embark. Officer Prush was a rookie and wasn’t phased by what the erratic man was screeching about. He thought he must be mentally ill and imagining things and looked to his partner for a sign of what to do or say next. And then he saw his partner’s face. He had gone pale and his eyes were wide with the terror in the man’s eyes before them. Officer Prush began to feel a little uneasy as well. 

“Okay, okay, calm down,” Officer Jenkins said slowly and calmly. Suddenly Seth just stopped what he was doing and became oddly silent and still. He appeared to have just left his body, he seemed vacant. 

“Seth! Seth!” screamed Angel as she hurriedly sprinted towards the Officers and her husband. She grabbed her husband by the shoulders and whispered in his ear. The Officers were unable to make out what she was saying but just like that, Seth snapped out of whatever had a hold of him. Angel had a terrified look on her face and when Seth came to, he didn’t understand the immense concern on his wife’s face. 

“Wha--what’s wrong, Angel?” Seth stammered blinking quickly, looking around him in bewilderment. “Officers, it’s a good thing you’re here,” Seth said, yet again. Sensing the confusion and concern not only from his wife but the Officers, as well, he began to wonder what exactly did happen because he realized that he had a whole chunk of time that was just blank. The last thing he remembered was standing in front of the mysterious man at the entrance sign to the park and deciding to approach the area surrounding the entrance to investigate. But that is where his recollection ended.

The four of them stood in silence ruminating on the events that had just transpired. An eerie chill overcame them with a whistle that sounded a lot like a scream, but it just can’t be, can it? The wind can’t... scream. But it did. The wind did scream. And it was angry. The Officers, Angel, and Seth all looked at each other with the same look, the look of utter terror, but there was still the issue of the mysterious man. In an attempt to deflect the tense energy, Officer Jenkins cleared his throat, powerful and breathy, “AHEM, well, let’s get over there to see what’s really going on.” 

Officer Jenkins started toward the park entrance, Officer Prush closely behind him. Seth and Angel gripped each other’s hands and followed the Officers. The leaves crunched beneath their feet and the wind continued to blow, swirling the leaves wildly around them. The air seemed to become thick, almost foggy. The four of them tried to ignore what was going on around them and continued to pursue the entrance to Hummel Park. The fog overshadowed the entrance until they were just a few feet in front of it; it was like a funnel. To their surprise, the mysterious man had vanished. Nothing about any of this made any sense to any of them. Where could he have gone?

While the mysterious man had disappeared, he had left in his wake, something far stranger and eerier than even he had been. Splatters of blood adorned the entrance sign and where the man had once stood, were what remained of his clothes. At this point, the Officers knew that they needed to secure the scene and get the civilians out of there, but before they could even complete their next thought and radio for backup, the wind started howling again with a vengeance, but this time the mysterious man was brought forth once again within its tangled grasp. 

None of them could move. Officer Prush wanted to reach for his gun but for some reason, he couldn’t. All he could do was stand there frozen in place. The mysterious man had formed right in front of him. His clothes were no longer piled on the ground. They inexplicably appeared on his body as he materialized before them. But this time, he did not appear as he once did. Before, he was a man with skin, real skin. Now, he was nearly see-through, not even human at all. His clothes seemingly dangled from ghostly limbs. All four of them were still frozen but it wasn’t fear that froze them. They could formulate thoughts, but they could not move. It was like they were prisoners within their own bodies. The lanky, ghostly figure before them began to move. His movements were strange as if they weren’t his own, as though he were being controlled by someone… or something else. His eyes were still very clearly sewn shut. The stitches were bright red now and appeared in the criss-cross pattern solidifying his lids to his face; his eyeballs could be seen rolling around beneath his sewn lids. His body slowly turned toward the open entrance, which had begun to glow. With a ghastly finger, he pointed into the park. Without warning, their feet moved towards the entrance and it began to glow even brighter. They had no control of anything. Their actions were being willed by something else. Their fear was locked in their minds while their bodies entered the unknown.

The four of them breached the entrance but what they saw before them wasn’t familiar. The normal winding paths were absent and the beautiful foliage was replaced with ominous branches that seemed to be alive. They weaved and creaked with the wind, which had never stopped blowing. The scene before them was like something from a movie, completely unreal. It was reminiscent of the scene from Sleeping Beauty when Prince Philip was battling his way through the violent mangled branches protecting the castle except they did not have to battle the branches to move through the brush here. Instead, these branches were ushering them through the park, or rather, the forest it seemed to have become. Lost within the wonderment and confusion, none of them noticed that Angel had disappeared from behind them. 

It was darker than the depths of the Underworld with the exception of a single glowing light, which the trees appeared to be steering them toward. Their view was narrowed in such a way that they no longer sensed anything else around them except for that beckoning light. They even ceased to recognize each other when abruptly, the wind quit blowing, the trees stopped moving, and the light was swallowed up by the darkness, all was still and quiet. Seth’s vision suddenly reactivated and he was able to see the magnitude of his situation. Desperately desiring to cling to something familiar, he turned around and around and around looking for his wife, but she wasn’t there. No one else was there; he was alone. His feet felt cemented to the ground and the eerie light had manifested itself into shadowy figures. The figures were irregular and didn’t form anything familiar. They didn’t move nor did they make a sound. Too terrified, Seth stood there frozen to the ground quivering wondering what was to come.

“You have been chosen,” a loud voice boomed, but there wasn’t anything there. Seth’s eyes darted all around him attempting to decipher what was going on, but it was no use; he couldn’t see anything other than misshapen shadowy figures. But then an entirely too familiar silhouette emerged from the shadows; it was Angel. Seth was completely taken aback. He rapidly blinked his eyes trying to make sense of his wife, of all people, emerging from the shadows amidst this horrific scene. Her skin was glowing like a lightbulb beneath a sheet and she had been donned in a milky white cascading dress and her hair had been turned grey. Her eyes...her eyes were not the eyes of his wife. The woman he knew was not there. They were sharp like daggers on the hunt. His body went cold as her hands gripped him around his face. Opening his mouth in an attempt to scream, or to say anything really, Angel drove a stream of light into him. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he fell limp; everything went black. 

“Son, son, hey, are you all right?” sensing the shaking, Seth fluttered his eyes open. Turning his head left to right in immense confusion, uncertain where he was, but then he saw the Hummel Park entrance sign. The entrance was returned to normal as everyone is accustomed to seeing it and there was an officer looming over him. He was unable to make out what the officer was saying; he was shrouded in some kind of invisible cloak restricting his speech. It was merely temporary, however, as it dissipated slowly. Once Seth was able to speak, the officers and EMTs surrounding him were eager to hear what had happened to him. He couldn’t understand their frantic faces, but then he saw it. There was a small glow in the middle of this chest that was retreating inside him. Stunned, Seth just stared at his chest as did everyone else. Once the glow had fully disappeared, it left in its place, a very clear indention. It was circular in shape and within it was an arrow pointing down from the top of the circle, two inverted crosses on either side of the circle, and a winding swirl at the very bottom. It wasn’t red or swollen and appeared to be something that had always been there, but they all knew that wasn’t true. 

“What happened here, son?” the officer queried with a slight catch in his throat attempting to hide his fear. 

“I-I don’t know, sir,” Seth stammered in all honesty. He didn’t know what happened. The last he was able to remember was arriving at the park to go on a hike. “I came to go on a hike this morning but that’s all I can seem to recall.”

“Did you come alone or with someone?” 

“I came alone; I think. I can hardly remember arriving. Everything is a blank.” Silence fell amongst them and the sky uncharacteristically turned black. Commotion erupted as the officers and EMTs fumbled about searching for sources of light to battle the darkness. But none of them worked, not even the lights on the vehicles emitted even the slightest glow. Moments later, the darkness faded and daylight returned. Seth was gone but so were the memories of the officers and EMTs. None of them knew why they were there or what may have happened. For the seasoned amongst them, chills went down their spines. It happened again, what exactly that is is still unknown to them, which further perpetuates the fear of La Arbolita. Permanent amnesia plagues those who become entangled within the enigma that is Hummel Park and this instance was no different.

As for Seth, well, he has work to do.