Delta Force. It’s one of the United States’ most mysterious special operations groups,
working under the direct authority of the Joint Special Operations Command. To many,
this elite group of soldiers is known only as The Unit - the team you send in when nothing
else will get the job done. Since their inception in the 1970s, they’ve been involved in some of
the most vital counter-insurgency operations of the 20th and 21st centuries. But today,
some of them were about to embark on a mission like no other: They were going monster hunting.
And not just any monster. We’re talking about Siren Head, the forty-foot monstrosity
created by Canadian Horror Maestro Trevor Henderson. But these unfortunate soldiers
didn’t know this quite yet. All they knew was that something evil was lurking in the woods...
It was a situation so strange that to many it would feel like pure fiction, but Americans had
been disappearing in scores within the dense forestry of the Pacific Northwest. Of course,
the occasional disappearance is to be expected - the United States is a huge country,
and people fall off the face of the earth all the time, but not like this.
And what’s more, whatever was causing these disappearances seemed to be growing bolder.
Families in small communities near the forests were going missing from their homes.
People were being stolen off of the streets at night. Chaos reigned in the dark.
Typically, disappearances like this would be the responsibility of local authorities,
or by the FBI if disappearances could be connected across state lines. But given the increase
in missing people, various national security agencies began to take a keen interest in the
phenomenon. They began to theorise that some kind of woodland cult or insurgency group was behind
the over seventy anomalous disappearances that’d occurred during the last two months,
and if a group like this was growing in confidence enough to start snatching people from their homes,
they could be preparing for a grander strike against a high-value target.
Of course, the Pentagon didn’t like the idea of dispatching high volumes of mIlitary operatives
into the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Firstly, such a large mission could alert
the insurgents, and force them into hiding. Secondly, knowing that the military was pouring
soldiers into the forests to address mysterious disappearances might cause a state of unwanted
public panic. This is where Delta Force came in. We’re talking about a special forces group
with discretion in their DNA. Most of the group’s most critical missions are
still a complete mystery to the general public, and this would be no exception.
Joint Special Operations Command authorised six
Delta Force operatives to conduct a secret reconnaissance mission into the Hoh Rainforest,
located on the Olympic Peninsula in the Pacific Northwest. It was both the largest forest in
Washington State, and had the highest concentration of recent disappearances.
The six operators were drawn from Delta Force’s G-Squadron,
the sabre squadron specialised in clandestine operations, and few were more clandestine than
a secret counter-insurgency operation hidden right in the heart of the United States.
If only these six soldiers had any idea what horror they were truly in for...
But still, they had a better fighting chance than most. The chosen six, known internally as “The
Snakes”, had personally been involved in some of the United States’ most vital operations in
the Middle East and Eastern Europe - and their identities were considered so mission-critical
that their true names and ranks were classified. They were known only by the following codenames:
Viper, Anaconda, Adder, Rattler, and Copperhead. They were organised under
the authority veteran field commander Jack Vasquez, better known to his men as Mamba.
If they couldn’t deal with a situation, then the situation couldn’t be dealt with.
The Snakes were dispatched from the Delta Force HQ - Fort Bragg,
North Carolina - to their first checkpoint in the Hoh Rainforest. As the team wandered
into the depths of the forest, bordered on all sides by ancient spruces and hemlocks,
they had no idea that they were already being watched. But the watcher wouldn’t strike just yet.
It’d wait until it had the cover of night and darkness to make its first attack.
As we alluded to earlier, the true cause of all the mysterious disappearances wasn’t some
crackpot insurgency group stationed deep in the forest, it was Siren Head - a mysterious living
nightmare that seems to enjoy one thing and one thing only: Making people vanish without a trace.
It stood among the trees, inhumanly still, as the Snakes walked right past it.
It dulled the quiet crackle of its speakers, teeth chattering silently in anticipation.
More easy prey. Yes, it would take all of them. Every single one. And it would relish in the task.
Though his prey may not have been as easy as the monster anticipated. They were outfitted with
state of the art ballistic armour and night vision goggles. Most were armed with HK416
assault rifles, designed specifically for Delta Force by Heckler and Koch - with the Colt 1911
as a sidearm. A few members of the team, like Anaconda, were a little more traditionalist,
favouring the pump-action M870 Shotgun with the classic M3a1 Grease Gun as a secondary weapon.
Mamba even packed a few frag grenades on his person, as a kind of good luck token.
Typically, Siren Head’s most well-armed prey were hapless hunters shouldering bolt-action
rifles or double-barrel shotguns. The Snakes were in a different league.
As the day began to creep into night, the six elite soldiers broke off into groups
of three - henceforth known as Beta Team, comprised of Viper, Adder, and Rattler,
and Alpha Team, comprised of Mamba, Anaconda, and Copperhead.
They formed two discrete base camps and established comms over a secure radio link.
They’d perform secret reconnaissance missions in shifts, gathering potential intel on whatever
could be causing all the disappearances to report back to their superiors.
Alpha Team were on first patrol, locked and loaded, with their night vision
goggles engaged. They were charged with exploring six pre-determined quadrants
before the end of their shift, and they would make short work of it. Mamba took point,
with Anaconda and Copperhead covering his six. Things were relatively uneventful, until Anaconda
whispered that he saw something moving in the trees. Something big. Mamba asked whether what
he saw could have been an Olympic Black Bear or a Roosevelt Elk, both native to the area.
Anaconda said no. It was much too tall and thin for that. What he saw was human-shaped,
but wrong. It looked somehow...stretched, and he didn’t get a visual on the head.
That was strange, to say the least. Mamba realised immediately that they were dealing
with a different situation to what they’d first assumed, and Beta Team had to be updated.
Mamba pulled out his radio and called in, but he didn’t get a response.
There was a strange buzzing, crackling sound, almost like the device was malfunctioning.
Until suddenly, a voice Mamba and the two others didn’t recognise
came shouting out of the speakers. It just repeated one word, over and over.
“HATE, HATE, HATE, HATE, HATE...”
Mamba shut off his radio. He and the team assumed it must be some kind of
signal-intercepting technology from the insurgents. They’d been rumbled,
and their lifeline to the outside had been cut off. Mamba changed the directive: They needed
to rendezvous with Beta Team as soon as possible and reassess the situation before moving forward.
That was when they started hearing gunfire and screaming.
It echoed through the rainforest with harrowing clarity. Bullets, pained yells,
screams of pure terror - and it was coming from the direction of Beta Team’s Camp.
Mamba, Anaconda, and Copperhead charged in to provide backup to their embattled teammates,
but by the time they arrived, there was nothing left. The camp was decimated.
The little supplies they’d brought in were destroyed. The trees around the encampment
had been shredded by gunfire. And most bizarre of all was the fact that there were no bodies.
There wasn’t even blood. Just Viper, Adder, and Rattler’s discarded guns.
Mamba was shaken by the sight, but he didn’t let it show. Their survival depended on maintaining
composure. He ordered his two subordinates to take the spare magazines of their vanished
former teammates and proceed with him out of the forest. When they attempted to reestablish comms,
all they got was a disembodied voice screaming the word “DIE” again and again.
They were on their own. Their new mission: Escape the forest alive.
The Snakes already had the fastest possible escape route planned out as a contingency,
just in case everything went sideways. Though none of them expected it to go
sideways quite like this. The team formed a tight formation,
their weapons pointing in all directions, knowing an attack could come from any angle.
They just didn’t anticipate it coming from above.
A huge hand descended from the darkness of the canopy - gnarled and rotted, with fingers as long
as a child’s arm. The three men were shocked and horrified, only just dodging its grasping strike.
Mamba raised the barrel of his HK416 and fired off a staccato burst of gunfire,
seeming to frighten the creature away. All that Alpha Team could do was press
on - they didn’t have time to consider the nightmarish particulars of their situation.
Whatever was attacking them wasn’t human, but that didn’t matter.
All that mattered was survival.
Anaconda was using his pump-action to blast suppressing fire into the darkness around him
when he was taken. The hand seemed to come from nowhere, grasping him by the leg and plucking
him from the ground. The elite soldier managed to reach for his Grease Gun and rattle off some
gunfire in the arm’s direction, but ultimately, it was futile. Mamba and Copperhead watched in horror
as the third member of their trio was pulled, screaming, into the dark. Needless to say, he was
never seen again. Just like all the others who’d gone missing in or near these cursed forests.
As Mamba and Copperhead ran for their very lives, the forest came alive with a cacophony
of horrific noises all around them. They heard the crackling hiss of radio static,
the harsh screams and whispers of heavily modulated voices, and discordant fragments of old
songs. The enemy was all around them. Was it one or many? It felt like it was everywhere - and even
for these battle-hardened soldiers, it was nothing less than confusing and utterly terrifying.
Copperhead was starting to crack. He was spraying gunfire all around him, hoping he
might hit something, or at least frighten this mysterious assailant away. He didn’t want to be
snatched in the darkness like all the others. He’d take anything over that. Even though Mamba ordered
him to keep his cool as they ran, Copperhead kept blasting until he was dry-firing. At that point,
he whipped out his handy 1911 and just carried on burning through ammo.
Not that it’d save him.
Suddenly two legs, long as tree trunks, planted themselves in the ground between
Mamba and Copperhead. The latter looked up and screamed at the monster standing before him:
Forty feet of rotting flesh, topped by a rusty metal siren that screamed enraged nonsense.
Mamba levelled his rifle at the creature, but was batted aside like a rag doll.
The creature would deal with Mamba later. For now, it wanted Copperhead.
The soldier fell backwards in terror as those gnarled hands darted down towards him. His
screaming, flailing body was snatched, and pulled into the darkness. Only Mamba was left now - alone
with a monster that had taken five others like him. And his ammo was starting to run low.
Mamba regained his footing, his body still stinging from Siren Head’s first strike. The beast
had once again retreated into the dark, biding its time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
He levelled his rifle and aimed into the inky blackness in front of him. A sudden movement
out in the dark caused him to pull the trigger, firing off the last of his ammo for nothing.
It was in that moment that he felt the looming presence of Siren Head standing behind
him. He’d been outplayed. Game, set, and match. Now, the creature would have its fun,
just like it’d had with all the others. As it encroached, Mamba fell and began
crawling away, the hissing sirens full of chattering teeth growing ever closer.
The desperate soldier reached into his jacket and pulled something out, something that the
creature couldn’t quite make out. But it didn’t matter. The prey was right there, for the taking.
The creature reached out with a long, probing finger towards Mamba’s chest,
as though to deliver a taunting jab. That’s when Mamba tore open his jacket and revealed
his final trump card: Ten frag grenades, with the pins pulled out of all of them. Just for luck.
In his last seconds, Mamba smiled, as the creature seemed to twitch in final hesitation.
The following boom echoed out through the forest, shaking the birds out of the trees. A brief flash
in the dark, that soon faded, until only darkness and silence remained. Mission accomplished.
Check out “Siren Head - EXPLAINED” and “Cartoon Cat - EXPLAINED”
for more nightmares from the twisted mind of Trevor Henderson!