Dead Pines

·1 hr 58 min·11 clips

The building warps into a twisted fusion of a shopping mall and steelworks, frozen in molten metal and eerie silence.

Presented as a series of online forum posts, this horror fiction follows an unnamed narrator who works night security at a large retail distribution center in the rural northeastern United States. The narrator is a self-described recluse who spent years drifting between temp jobs after losing both parents, deliberately avoiding human connection. He recently settled down and took a day job to rebuild his social skills, but transferred to nights after a difficult elderly coworker named Greg made the day shift unbearable. The narrator begins cataloging anomalies at the warehouse: shadows appearing on camera feeds, motion sensors triggering with nothing visible, doors found unlocked or ajar, food wrappers in cold storage, and tools disappearing from inventory. The security phone rings during patrols, forcing him back to the office, but no one is on the line. Despite over 30 cameras, the intruders are never captured on footage. The situation escalates when the narrator hears prolonged screaming at 2 AM and discovers a large pool of blood on the floor along with shredded gauze and an opened set of knives with the butcher blade missing. He calls police, who find nothing. His online community encourages him to set up personal cameras, which capture only a brief blur of someone running. Using infrared equipment donated by a follower, the narrator discovers that the recurring black mold problem is stranger than expected. The mold colonies register as warmer than their surroundings, and microscopic warm spores drift throughout the entire building like snow. He also discovers that four security cameras have been tampered with, their feeds frozen at specific intervals to create a blind spot along a path from an emergency exit to the loading area. Coworkers reveal that the warehouse sits on the former site of Sleepy Pines, a mall with a documented history of disappearances, cult activity, and reality distortions. The narrator researches the location's lore, which stretches back to settlers who refused to build on the land. Greg stops coming to work. The building's landowner visits and unnerves the narrator with his unsettling demeanor. The story ends as the narrator begins a midnight livestream tour of the warehouse that grows from a handful of viewers to over 10,000 as the stormy night unfolds.

As heard by us

Dead Pines follows a remote search into strange rituals, warped reality, and something ancient below the surface.

Dead Pines tracks a man pushing into a remote stretch of wilderness and finding a history of strange rituals, buried harm, and forces that do not stay buried.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want the forest to feel like a warning.

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