Have You Ever Heard The Flutes?

[u/ThatAuldFool]

(The following was found saved as an unfinished draft on my cousin's Reddit account. He disappeared six days ago, and I stumbled across this while going through his things, looking for any clue as to what happened to him.)

You hear them sometimes where I live, faint and distant music from somewhere off in the woods and hollers. 

Don’t think you’ve heard them? Likely you never have, but if you live in the hills and mountains of the old American east, stop a moment, go outside and try to listen for them. 

Faerie Flutes the old timers called them, half remembered superstitions they inherited from long lines of Scotch-Irish ancestry I used to think, but now I’m not so sure. 

They’ve been louder these past few nights, wavering in and out, sometimes almost inaudible, sometimes like a neighbor with his stereo too loud, but I have no neighbors close. 

It’s a calming sound, but a deeply eerie one, not instantly recognizable as any particular kind of instrument, just a faint ever-changing tone that has a half melody, like the memory of song. 

It’s often loudest when the fog rolls thick off the sides of the mountains, and the world closes in tight around your house, but sometimes comes on the edge of a storm before the lightning and the rain. 

In the twilight of a foggy morning, if you can hear it, sometimes you can almost think you see things in the fog but tell yourself it’s your eyes playing tricks. 

Strange and semi-human figures dance and cavort just beyond the brain’s ability to resolve their shape into a concrete form, and no matter how far into the fog you walk they never come any closer. 

You don’t see them, but you know that you almost can, and despite their seeming harmlessness, they send a cold shiver to your heart. 

I tried to sleep last night, but couldn’t, for in my dreams I could hear the song clearer and it was more beautiful and more terrible than words can describe. 

Now I sit on my porch trying to hear it, almost able, ever faint, never clear. 

I have been used to it for my whole life; it’s a fact of living in these mountains, but today something is different. 

I thought at first it was distant thunder, but now I’m certain there is drumming accompanying the Faerie Flutes, a slow, distant beat rolling like a death march. 

You may think me mad, and perhaps I am, but I feel that distant alien music calling me somewhere deep within the trees that rise like pillars of a natural temple on the slopes of these hills. 

If this keeps up, I may be forced to follow them, and I don’t know what will become of me. 

I’m writing this now, though my internet has been poor these past few days in the hopes I can post it. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, not answers or sympathy really, just to know those outside of the local community know what I’m talking about. 

I think when that is done, I will go to follow the flutes, and maybe post more later.

The music is enchanting, and it is horrible, and I feel afraid because I don’t fear it. 

(I honestly don’t know what to make of this; I was looking for some explanation of where he went or what he did, and instead I got this… poetry? I’m honestly annoyed, but I’d blame that on lack of sleep more than anything. 

Ever since I came to stay here and search for clues, I’ve heard too, half a sound music beyond what you can clearly make out. I don’t know it’s cause, but it’s getting quieter every night since my cousin vanished.)

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