I must write down these unspeakable horrors, these blasphemies that gnaw at my sanity before I descend completely into the abyss of madness. It is with trembling hands and a mind teetering on the edge of irrevocable destruction that I recount the events in Woodbury—no, what remains of that damned town, now buried under a veil of darkness that no man, woman, or child should ever dare to disturb.
The tale of Jennifer and Jessica Thompson is a story not simply of conjoined twins, but of something far older, far more eldritch—an ancient pact with powers that even the most devout scholars of occult knowledge would be wise to avoid. The unfortunate souls who dared speak their names, who whispered of the strange practices surrounding their birth, never lived long enough to tell the full extent of their discoveries. But I, God help me, must endeavor to tell it. For the whispers have begun again, the murmurs of that dark chant—Somaneta Forest. A phrase that haunts the wind, seeping into the soil, the very essence of time and space where the boundaries of this world fade into the malevolent reaches of another.
The Unholy Origin
The story begins, or rather, it re-emerges, in that infernal year of 1984. It was not the birth of conjoined twins that startled the residents of Woodbury, but rather the circumstances of their creation. Mrs. Thompson, a woman of haggard appearance even in her youth, had long been subject to the suffocating weight of her childlessness. Over the years, the townsfolk noted her increasingly strange behavior—the solitary walks at twilight to the ancient forest to the west, where no one dared tread for generations. The forest had long been abandoned by rational men, yet older records—grim, dust-encrusted tomes relegated to forgotten corners of the town’s library—spoke of rites performed there in the long-dead past. Rites meant to summon… things. Things older than civilization itself. Whispers of beings that existed before the gods men worship, beings beyond comprehension, slithered through local folklore.
No one knew with certainty what Mrs. Thompson did during those late-night excursions, but after many years, she bore two daughters. Daughters bound in the flesh, inseparable—conjoined at their very core, a grotesque parody of nature itself. The old women who had once been her friends no longer spoke to her, and the men avoided her gaze. Yet the twins lived, if such an abomination of existence could be called life. From the day they were born, a cloud seemed to hang over the town, a stifling sense of dread that none could explain but all could feel.
As they grew, it became apparent that the girls—Jennifer and Jessica—were not like other children. There was an intelligence, a cunning, behind their dark eyes, far beyond their years. They communicated not with words but with strange, guttural murmurs—a language no one recognized. Often, the twins would sit for hours, staring into the forest, their heads inclined in unison, as though listening to some distant, unimaginable voice that called out only to them.
The Experiments of the Mind
The early days of their childhood were marked by what could only be described as experiments of an otherworldly nature. Animals began to disappear, their mutilated remains discovered in the woods, arranged in unnatural patterns—circles, spirals, and symbols so grotesque they defied geometry itself. Local authorities blamed wild animals at first, but the precision with which these creatures had been dissected, their organs laid out as if in some ghastly ritual, defied such explanations.
I have uncovered, through my subsequent investigations, that the twins were already engaging in what can only be described as attempts to replicate the rituals of that forest’s nameless past. Whether guided by instinct or by some malevolent force, the girls seemed drawn to the darker arts, to an understanding of life and death that transcended the knowledge of mere mortals. There were reports—only whispered, never written—of the twins seen standing in the moonlight near the woods, their bodies bathed in silver, their hands drenched in blood. They were not children playing at witchcraft; they were apprentices of something far more ancient, far more unspeakable.
The local doctor who tended to their frequent illnesses noticed strange marks on their bodies—symbols, burned into their flesh, which no rational explanation could account for. It was said that the symbols resembled runes of a forgotten language, a dialect that predated the history of humankind. The doctor never spoke of it publicly, for fear of ridicule, but his notes—hidden away in an attic and discovered much later—confirm this terrifying fact.
The Fateful Visit to Dr. Meyer
By 1998, when the twins were 14, they had grown pale and sickly. They were always fragile, their conjoined bodies placing immense strain on their shared heart and lungs. And yet, there was something that held them together—something more than the flesh they shared. Their mother, driven mad by the whispers she claimed followed her from the forest, brought them to Dr. Meyer on that fateful day in November.
Dr. Meyer, new to the town and unaware of the sinister legacy of the Thompson twins, laid them down for examination. He did not know—how could he?—that laying them flat on their backs would spell their doom. But I wonder if it was truly ignorance or whether the hand of darker forces guided his actions that day. The twin on the bottom, Jessica, suffocated first, her lungs unable to expand. Jennifer, feeling her sister’s life ebb away, began to gasp, to choke, as if her soul was being ripped from her body.
In her dying breaths, Jennifer’s eyes burned with unnatural fire, her mouth twisted in agony as she uttered the words that would reverberate in the ears of every person in Woodbury for generations to come: “Somaneta Forest.”
The Return of the Eldritch
The twins were buried together, as they had lived. But their death was not the end—no, far from it. In fact, their deaths marked the beginning of something far more terrible. The air grew heavy in Woodbury, thick with an unseen malevolence. It was said that shadows grew long even in the light of noon, and the once-vibrant town fell into decay, as if some unspeakable curse had taken hold.
Animals began disappearing once again, and this time, the mutilations were far worse. What had once been crude experiments now took on a more sinister form. The animals’ bodies were found arranged in spirals and runic patterns that matched those the twins had once scratched into the dirt behind their house. People who ventured near the forest claimed to hear whispers, carried on the wind—whispers of Somaneta Forest, a name that sent chills down their spines, though none could explain why.
But it wasn’t just the animals.
People began to disappear.
Dr. Meyer was the first. His body was found in his office, twisted beyond recognition, limbs bent at grotesque angles that defied the natural limitations of the human body. Around him, scattered like some terrible mockery of innocence, were ribbons—red ribbons, tied in bows just like the ones Jennifer and Jessica used to play with. His eyes were wide open, staring, as though he had seen something so utterly incomprehensible that his mind had shattered in the moment before his death.
The Ancient Pact
It was not until I delved into the forbidden histories of the town, reading by candlelight from ancient manuscripts hidden deep in the library’s crypt, that I began to understand the full horror of what had been unleashed. The pact Mrs. Thompson had made to conceive her daughters had not been with any god known to man, but with something else—something older than time, something that resided in the forgotten corners of the cosmos, where even the stars dare not shine.
The symbols on the twins' bodies, the mutilations, the dark chant of Somaneta Forest—they were all part of a greater ritual. A ritual that had been practiced by the ancient peoples of that land long before the advent of written history, a ritual that called forth powers beyond mortal comprehension. The twins, it seemed, had not died in the traditional sense. Their spirits, bound together by the same dark force that had bound their flesh, had been absorbed into the forest itself, where they continued to exist in a state beyond death, waiting, watching.
The people of Woodbury were no longer simply residents of a cursed town—they were the playthings of ancient forces, pawns in a game played by entities whose very existence defied human understanding.
The Final Descent
The whispers grew louder. The name Somaneta Forest was spoken not only in dreams but in waking hours, as though the town itself was crying out for release from the terrible fate that had befallen it. The boundaries between our world and that of the eldritch began to fray. At night, if one dared to venture close to the forest’s edge, one could see things—shapes, half-formed and writhing in the darkness, things that should not exist, things that belonged to the darkest corners of the cosmos.
I write this now, knowing full well that I may not live to see the dawn. The whispers have reached my own home, the shadows creep closer, and the name Somaneta Forest pounds relentlessly in my mind. It is as though the twins themselves are calling to me, beckoning me to join them in that place beyond time, where life and death are but the blink of an eye.
I know now that the twins’ vengeance was never simply for their earthly deaths. No, their souls, bound by forces beyond mortal understanding, seek to drag us all into the abyss, into the endless spiral of the forest, where time ceases and madness reigns.
I can hear them now, scratching at my door.
The ribbons...
