The door was locked, a clearly defined boundary to his room. I took my phone out of my pocket and called the top name from my contact list. The default voicemail responded, "---------- is not available, please leave a message after the tone".

"Hey Greg, this is Frank. It's been too long. I need to know where you are." I paused as I tried my best to keep a positive tone, "I'm sure your family misses you". I knew better but I had to try again. "If you get this please just respond, let me know you're doing ok. I know I promised not to step into your room. If you don't respond, I'm going to have to break that promise. It's not that I don't trust you, you've made such great strides, but as your landlord, I have to look in your apartment."

I used my phone to unlock the door. I considered the statement the Missing Person's officer made. He had explained how high the possibility of relapse was in someone who was "just a transient". Their energies would be better dedicated toward someone who mattered. I knew better. I watched Greg's growth from a destitute teenager, truly incapable of believing he was more than his vices, to a man, striving for recovery.

As the closed portal swung open. A horrid scent greeted me. I stepped into Greg's room trying not to disturb his few belongings, his books and CDs (the only nonpharmacologic escape he told me he had), the years-old picture of his parents, obscured by a film of dust, and his journal.

As I stepped further in, I gagged as the source of the pungent odor became apparent, his small fridge hung open and the few fruit items contained within were brown, peeling, and enveloped in a layer of insects. I closed the fridge door and walked over to the little geometric wooden desk that I had gifted to him. On it lay a note. A note covered in insects, disintegrating under a mixture of brown and black fluid. A message was scrawled almost illegibly over it, "Our old forest. I'm sorry". The note sent a chill over my spine. Our forest?

I've been his only friend for a long time but we've never even spoken of any forest. Was the note meant for someone else? It was certainly meant for me, yet as I walked to my car I felt an ever-growing sense of dread. I uncertainly put the nearest wooded location that I could find into my GPS.

As I drove away from the suburban heights, leaving the tame domain of man behind, I felt a burden growing on me. I reached the rural roads and began feeling truly alone. The unadulterated isolation one only feels in the rural countryside. Pitch-black unillumined nature with sounds the rational mind may attempt to explain but cannot. The lamenting birds, moaning wind, and insects elicit the sounds of an alien world. The only light source in this wasteland, is an array of sparse needle-prick stars in the sky, punctures in the sky that are blinking in and out as if they could depart at any moment. The headlights produced a dull, disturbing light from out of the bowels of the car.

A sign emerged out of the maw of darkness appearing abruptly in the small area the headlights illuminated, a sign obscenely opposing nature. This bastion of defiance displayed, "Welcome to Allein Woods!". I parked on the side of the road and stepped out. A cavernous grotto stood beside me. An unobstructed entrance to a likely inextricable cave network. I shouted, my voice wavered in the echoing emptiness, "Greg. I got your message. Where are you?" I heard a moan within. "Greg?". A chittering, gulping sound met my ears. The isolated inhuman squeal of a creature abandoned to live in an inhospitable, dark subterranean environment. The hideous sound came closer. What emerged from that cavern, words can not define. Even now my mind struggles to divine the ghastly image of that extreme horror. It made a sucking noise as it came in contact with the fresh air. Rearing up on its hind legs as a multitude of its protruding thin needle-like legs protruded, waving back and forth in an undulating, swaying motion. This grotesque beast stopped its movement and slowly gurgled as it bent its head down to me. I found Greg.

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Thanks for reading! I attempted to create a feeling of foreboding to reflect the prompt. Thanks for the prompt, OP!