Straykids horror fic w/ persona!!
The humid Texas air hung thick over Old Alton Bridge, better known as Goatman’s Bridge. The laughter that usually fueled Stray Kids’ variety shows had withered into a tense, metallic silence. Following the Ghost Adventures playbook, Bang Chan turned the night-vision camera toward his own face, the green glow making his eyes look hollow.
"We’ve been here for three hours," Chan whispered, his voice cracking. "The local legends say if you cross the bridge without headlights, the Goatman follows you. We didn't just cross it. We're camping on it."
The group was split into three teams. Bang Chan, Lee Know, and Changbin stayed on the bridge with the heavy gear. Hyunjin, Felix, and Han headed into the dense, suffocating treeline to the north. Seungmin, I.N, and Kira patrolled the creek bed below.
On the bridge, the silence was broken by a sudden, violent thud. A heavy stone had been hurled from the darkness, striking the iron railing inches from Lee Know’s head.
"Who’s there?!" Changbin roared, his bravado masking a genuine tremor. He held a digital recorder out. "Give us a sign! Do you want us to leave?"
The response wasn't a voice. It was a sound of dry, clicking hooves on the wooden planks—coming from both ends of the bridge simultaneously.
Deep in the forest, the temperature plummeted. Han was clutching Felix’s jacket so hard the fabric was straining.
"Did you see that?" Hyunjin whispered, freezing in place. His flashlight beam caught a pair of eyes reflecting back—not yellow like a deer, but a burning, rhythmic red.
"It’s just a prank," Felix muttered, though his hands were trembling as he adjusted his thermal camera. "Chan? Do you copy?"
The radio hissed with static, then a voice that sounded like a distorted version of I.N whispered: “Don't look up.”
Naturally, they looked. Hanging from the branches above were dozens of small, woven effigies made of dead grass and hair. As they watched, the effigies began to sway, though there was no wind.
"We need to go. Now," Han choked out, but as they turned, the path they had walked was gone—replaced by a wall of thorns that hadn't been there minutes ago.
Below the bridge, Seungmin was monitoring the Spirit Box. Through the white noise, a guttural growl tore through the speaker.
> "GET OFF MY BRIDGE."
>
Kira gasped, pointing her light at the water. The reflection showed the three of them, but standing behind I.N in the water was a towering, hunched figure with massive, curved horns and elongated, hairy limbs.
"I.N, don't move," Seungmin said, his voice terrifyingly calm.
I.N felt a hot, sulfurous breath on the back of his neck. He didn't scream; he couldn't. The air felt like lead in his lungs. When Kira swung her light directly at the spot, the figure vanished, leaving only a ripple of black water and the smell of rotting meat.
A blood-curdling scream from the woods—Han’s scream—sent the bridge team sprinting toward the tree line. They met halfway, the forest team bursting through the brush, clothes torn.
"It’s not one thing," Felix panted, his face pale. "It’s everywhere. It’s the woods itself."
They scrambled back to the center of the bridge, forming a tight circle. Bang Chan checked the footage on the monitor. His heart stopped. In every frame of the last ten minutes, the "Goatman" wasn't stalking them from the shadows. It was standing in the middle of their circle, its charred, clawed hand resting gently on Bang Chan’s shoulder, invisible to the naked eye but clear on the infrared.
"Guys," Chan whispered, his eyes wide with pure terror as he stared at the screen. "Don't move. It's still here."
The heavy iron of the bridge began to groan and twist. The group looked down. Beneath their feet, the wooden planks were beginning to smolder, and a low, vibrating hum began to shake their very bones.
The entity didn't want to scare them. It wanted to keep them.
The vibration in the bridge’s iron frame grew into a deafening roar, a sound that felt less like metal straining and more like a collective scream from the earth itself.
"Vans! Now!" Bang Chan yelled, his leader instincts finally overriding the paralyzing fear.
The group bolted. But the bridge felt miles long. Every step they took toward the Texas trailhead seemed to stretch the distance further away. Han and Felix were in the middle of the pack, their breathing ragged, while Changbin and Lee Know acted as the rear guard, flashlights swinging wildly into the oppressive darkness.
A sudden, localized fog rolled off the creek, thick as wool and smelling of wet fur. In seconds, they couldn't see their own hands.
"Chan? Kira? Where is everyone?" I.N cried out. He reached out, grabbing a hand he thought was Seungmin’s. The hand was cold—unnatural, pebbled skin that felt like sun-dried leather.
I.N pulled back with a shriek, his flashlight beam cutting through the mist just in time to see a tall, spindly shadow retreat into the fog. "It touched me! It’s in the circle!"
"Sound off!" Kira shouted, her voice tight. "Chan?"
"Here!"
"Lee Know?"
"Here, and I’ve got my knife out."
"Seungmin?"
... Silence.
The group froze. The mist began to thin, revealing the bridge was empty behind them. Seungmin was gone. No footprints, no sound of a struggle—just his EVP recorder lying on the planks, still glowing a faint blue.
"We aren't leaving without him," Hyunjin said, his voice trembling but firm. They approached the recorder. As Lee Know picked it up, the device began to play back the last thirty seconds of audio.
It was silent for twenty seconds, then a sound like a wet heavy bag being dragged across stone. Then, Seungmin’s voice, sounding small and distant: "It’s not under the bridge. It's the bridge."
A rhythmic pounding began beneath their feet. Thump. Thump. Thump. Something was climbing the underside of the structure.
Kira pointed her thermal camera over the edge. "There! Below the pylon!"
A heat signature, massive and jagged, was huddled in the rafters. Beside it was a smaller, human-sized glow. Seungmin. He wasn't moving.
"I’m going down," Changbin growled, grabbing a coil of climbing rope from his pack. "Chan, keep the lights on that thing. If it moves, scream."
Changbin lowered himself over the side, the dark water of the creek swirling hungrily below. As he reached the rafters, his headlamp flickered. In the strobing light, he saw it: the Goatman.
It wasn't a man at all. It was a nightmare of geometry—limbs too long, joints bending at impossible angles, and a head that was a bleached goat’s skull fused with rotting black flesh. Its eyes weren't glowing; they were holes into a void.
It was hovering over Seungmin, who was trapped in a web of those same grass-and-hair effigies they’d seen in the woods.
"Hey!" Changbin roared, swinging his heavy mag-lite like a club. "Look at me, you coward!"
The entity turned. It didn't roar. It opened its mouth and emitted a frequency so high it shattered the lens of the night-vision camera Bang Chan was holding up on the bridge.
On the bridge, the remaining members felt the air vanish. Felix dropped to his knees, clutching his ears. Han was white-faced, staring at the woods where a hundred red eyes were now blinking in unison. The forest was closing in; the trees were physically leaning over the bridge, their branches reaching like fingers.
"Kira, the salt!" Chan yelled.
Kira ripped a bag of blessed salt from her kit—a tip they’d taken from the Ghost Adventures crew—and began frantically pouring a circle around the group and the rope Changbin was hanging from.
The moment the circle was closed, the high-pitched screaming stopped. The entity below hissed, a sound like steam escaping a pipe, and retreated into the pitch-black shadows of the bridge’s underbelly.
Changbin didn't waste a second. He sliced through the effigies with a pocketknife and hoisted an unconscious Seungmin over his shoulder. "Pull! Pull us up!"
The group hauled them up just as the wood under the salt line began to char and burn. They didn't look back. They ran—a chaotic, desperate sprint toward the vans.
They piled inside, Bang Chan slamming the doors and locking them. Outside, the forest was silent again. No crickets. No wind.
Seungmin gasped, his eyes snapping open. He gripped I.N’s arm, his breath coming in short, jagged bursts. "It... it whispered to me," he wheezed.
"What did it say?" Han asked, terrified of the answer.
Seungmin looked at the window. Reflected in the glass, behind the van, stood the silhouette of a man with horns, holding one of their dropped cameras.
"It said... 'Thanks for the footage.'"
Bang Chan floored it, the tires screaming on the Texas asphalt as they fled into the night. They reached the hotel in silence, but when they later checked the cloud-upload from the dropped camera, the last file wasn't of the bridge. It was a video, filmed from inside their own van, showing all of them sleeping in their beds three nights before they even arrived in Texas.
The Goatman hadn't found them at the bridge. He had been waiting for them to arrive.
Back at the hotel, the air conditioning hummed a low, clinical buzz that offered zero comfort. The nine members of Stray Kids and Kira crowded into a single room, the laptop sitting on the bolted-down desk like a ticking time bomb. Bang Chan’s hand hovered over the trackpad.
"We don't have to do this," Felix whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the AC. "We can just format the drive. Throw it in the trash."
"If it followed us from the bridge," Lee Know said, his face uncharacteristically grim, "we need to know what we're up against."
Chan clicked Play.
The Video: 02:14 AM
The footage started with a grainy, distorted view of their van's interior. It was shot from the very back, near the trunk. The timestamp was from three nights ago—when they were still in a rental house in Austin.
On screen, the members were visible through the open door of the house, slumped on couches, exhausted from travel. The audio was a low, rhythmic thump-thump, thump-thump. It sounded like a heartbeat, but too slow.
Suddenly, the camera panned. It wasn't being held by a person; the movement was too smooth, too mechanical. It tilted up to the rearview mirror. In the reflection, they didn't see a face. They saw a pair of hooves, stained with dark, wet earth, standing on the van's carpeted floor.
"That's... that's inside the car," Han whimpered, burying his face in Hyunjin’s shoulder. "It was in the car with us the whole drive to the bridge."
Seungmin, still pale and sporting bruised marks around his neck where the effigies had squeezed, leaned forward. "Turn the gain up. There’s a sub-frequency under the heartbeat."
Chan slid the volume up. The speakers crackled. Beneath the heartbeat was a voice—a layered, multi-tonal rasp that sounded like three people speaking at once.
> "Nine souls... plus one for the gate. The bridge is hungry, but the forest is patient."
>
"Wait," Kira whispered, her eyes tracking the movement on screen. "Look at I.N."
In the video, a younger-looking I.N walked past the van to grab a water bottle. As he passed, a long, shadow-like arm reached out from the darkness of the van. The arm didn't grab him; it stroked his shadow. On the footage, I.N’s shadow flinched and screamed—though the real I.N didn't notice a thing.
The video cut abruptly to the bridge. This was the footage from the camera they had dropped. It was lying on its side, staring through the slats of the wooden planks.
They saw themselves. They saw the moment Changbin went over the side to save Seungmin. But from this angle, they saw what was on the bridge with them.
Dozens of pale, translucent figures—human shapes with goat-like heads—were standing in the gaps between the members. One was standing directly behind Felix, mimicking his every move like a dark mirror. Another was crouched over Bang Chan, its long, spindly fingers inches away from his throat.
"They were right there," Changbin muttered, his fists clenching so hard his knuckles turned white. "We were surrounded the whole time."
The video began to glitch, the pixels bleeding into shades of deep crimson. The audio shifted from the heartbeat to a high-pitched, metallic screech that made Seungmin and Kira cover their ears in pain.
The camera on screen was picked up. The lens turned around.
For a split second, the "Goatman" showed itself clearly. It wasn't just a monster; it was wearing a tattered, rotting version of the Stray Kids' tour jacket. Its face was a horrific blend of a goat's skull and human features that looked terrifyingly like a distorted version of Bang Chan.
The entity leaned into the microphone. Its voice wasn't a rasp anymore. It was a perfect, chilling imitation of Bang Chan’s voice.
> "Stay... don't forget to like and subscribe... to your nightmares."
>
The laptop screen turned pitch black. A single file remained on the desktop, titled: HOME_WITH_YOU.mp4.
The hotel room lights flickered and died. In the sudden darkness, the sound of dry, clicking hooves began—not from the hallway, not from the window, but from inside the bathroom of their hotel room.
"Chan," I.N whispered, his voice trembling. "The bathroom door... it just opened."
The darkness in the hotel room was absolute, a heavy, velvet weight that seemed to swallow the light from their cell phones. The clicking of hooves on the cold tile of the bathroom stopped.
"Nobody move," Bang Chan commanded, his voice a low, steady anchor in the sea of panic.
A faint, blue light emanated from the laptop. The screen had turned itself back on. The file HOME_WITH_YOU.mp4 began to play without anyone touching the keyboard.
The footage wasn't from Texas. It wasn't from the van. It was a high-angle shot of their dorm back in Seoul. The members watched in horrified silence as they saw their "past" selves sitting around the table, eating late-night snacks.
Then, the "Goatman" walked into the frame.
It moved with a sickening, fluid grace, weaving between the chairs. It stopped behind Lee Know, leaning down to sniff his hair. It then walked to the calendar on the wall and circled the date they were supposed to return from the US.
"It’s been there the whole time," Lee Know whispered, his hand going to the back of his neck as if he could still feel the phantom breath of the creature. "We didn't go to Goatman’s Bridge to find it. It lured us there to... to finish something."
A wet, sliding sound came from the bathroom doorway. A tall, hunched shadow detached itself from the gloom. The smell of sulfur and wet earth filled the cramped hotel room.
Kira reached into her bag, her fingers brushing against a small, iron bell they had used for "trigger object" tests. She rang it sharply. Clang.
The entity let out a hiss that sounded like a thousand snakes. In the strobe-like flickers of the dying hotel lights, they saw it: the creature's skin was translucent, and inside its chest, they could see nine small, glowing pulses of light.
"Our shadows," Seungmin gasped, remembering the footage. "It didn't just stroke I.N's shadow. It stole a piece of all of us. That's why we feel so... empty."
Changbin stood up, stepping in front of the younger members. "Give them back. Now."
The Goatman tilted its head, its jaw unhinging in a mockery of a smile. It raised a hand—the one wearing the rotted Stray Kids jacket—and pointed a long, clawed finger at the laptop.
On the screen, the video of their dorm changed. The "past" versions of themselves on screen stopped eating. They all turned in unison and looked directly into the camera lens. Their eyes were gone, replaced by the same burning red pits they had seen in the Texas woods.
The hotel room window shattered inward, but no glass fell. Instead, the shards hovered in the air, forming a jagged vortex. The "Goatman" in the room began to grow, its horns scraping the ceiling, its form becoming more solid as it fed on their fear.
"We have to break the loop!" Han yelled over the rising wind. "The video! It’s the anchor!"
Bang Chan lunged for the laptop, but the creature swiped at him, a gust of freezing air throwing him against the wall. Felix and Hyunjin grabbed Chan, pulling him up as I.N and Kira started chanting the lyrics to District 9—not because it was a spell, but because it was the loudest, most defiant thing they knew to keep their spirits grounded.
Seungmin, realizing the creature was drawing power from the digital record of their fear, grabbed the heavy iron bell from Kira. He didn't ring it. He slammed it down onto the laptop's hard drive with every ounce of strength he had.
CRACK.
The screen exploded into sparks. The audio of the multi-tonal rasp turned into a final, agonized shriek.
The entity in the room began to dissolve, its body turning into black ash that smelled of old wood and rain. The glowing pulses of light in its chest flew outward, hitting each member in the center of their hearts. The warmth returned to their limbs; the "heaviness" lifted.
The lights flickered back on. The hotel room was a wreck—the window was intact, but the laptop was a melted heap of plastic and metal.
They sat on the floor, huddled together, breathing in the scent of normal, stale hotel air. No one spoke for a long time.
"Chan?" Han finally whispered.
"Yeah?"
"Are we... are we going to tell Stay about this episode?"
Chan looked at the ruined laptop, then at the bruised, exhausted faces of his brothers. "No. This is one vlog that stays in the vault. Forever."
As they began to pack their bags to leave for the airport, Lee Know stopped by the bathroom door. On the tile, where the creature had stood, was a single, charred goat’s horn. He didn't touch it. He kicked a towel over it and walked out.
When they boarded the plane back to Seoul, they all felt a sense of relief—until Felix checked his phone. He had a new notification. An anonymous AirDrop file titled: SEE_YOU_AT_PRACTICE.mp4.
He didn't open it. He deleted it, turned off his phone, and closed his eyes. But as the plane took off, every member of the group simultaneously felt a cold, familiar pressure on their left shoulder... as if a heavy, clawed hand were resting there, waiting.
