The Willows Free online reading

Enjoy a classic horror story that begins with a hair-raising "Canadian canoe" trip down the flooded Danube. The float trip lands two adventurers on a willow-covered island in the stream, amid sharp shale, rapids, rain, and howling winds. Disastrous erosion and danger soon engulfs the two men. But the campers survive a murderous attempt to secretly scuttle their canoe and steal their food supplies.

When they hide from the perpetrators amid the heavy storm on their small, fast-disintegrating island, the campers also hear voices and gong-like dronings over the willows. Then they try to dodge detection from the aliens seeking to obliterate them, but it soon becomes apparent the outsiders are searching to make a human sacrifice.

It goes from bad to worse, though, as the willows themselves seem to draw ever closer after dark, until one of the Ancient Ones actually locates these terrified, menaced campers and rushes forward to seize and destroy them. But how can they escape without a paddle for their canoe, or food, or fuel, and with nothing ahead for the next 50 miles but willow and rapids?