Stay Out of the Woods

Every since I was a child I was told to stay out of the woods on the outskirts of town.

For a while I thought it was because of my horrible sense of direction and my parents were simply worried I would get lost, but when I got older I began noticing that people who went in those woods didn’t come out.

The first time I really noticed was the time my friend Leo went in on a dare.

It was just supposed to be a stupid high school party trick to freak everyone out before we went back inside and got even drunker than we already were.

A lot of us went to watch him, thinking he was going to chicken out before he had the chance to do anything stupid, but the fun died down when a very drunk and serious Leo stumbled out of the passenger's side of his car.

A few people, myself included, tried to talk him out of it but he was prideful to turn down something as stupid as I high school dare. Of course, the dozens of people chanting his name didn’t exactly help him back down.

“I’ll be on the phone with you the whole time,” he had said. “It’s only for a minute. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Because nothing has ever gone wrong when someone says ‘what’s the worst that can happen’.” I pointed out with a small huff but Leo just waved me off with a drunken wave and said he would be fine.

I was still reluctant to let him go in but there was just no stopping him at this point.

“Just be careful,” I said before he walked past the tree line. He gave me a smile as he took out his phone and waved it at me.

At first, everything seemed to be fine. Dogs barked in the distance, crickets chirped all around us; everything was fine.

The second the shadows engulfed him, an eerie silence lay over the town like a blanket. Every dog in the neighborhood was quiet, the endless song every bug seemed to know ended simultaneously.

I think everyone jumped out of their skin when my phone rang in my pocket, breaking the silence but the atmosphere didn’t change.

I knew Leo planning on calling me while he was there but I couldn’t help but be slightly relieved when his call came through.

“How are you doing in there?” I asked him as my heart began beating out of my chest.

“I don’t see why people don’t come in here more often,” was his response. “It’s so peaceful in here.” His words were slightly slurred together and you could tell he was stumbling around as he walked.

“Well don’t go too far, your time is almost up.” After that, the line was quiet for a while.

At first, I thought it was a comfortable silence but the air turned into something a bit more urgent when a scream pierced the night.

The scream came from Leo but it didn’t come through my phone. I took it away from my ear to realize I had been listening to a phone that was out of battery.

His scream only lasts for a few seconds before we were all plunged into an eerie silence for only a few seconds before the bugs began to sing again and the dogs barked at random things.

People looked around nervously as if they were waiting for someone to tell them what to do until someone finally spoke.

“Well,” a snarky cheerleader said to her cliché star football player boyfriend. “Go in there and make sure he’s okay.” Her boyfriend threw his head back as he laughed at her suggestion.

“I love you so much,” he said as he pulled her in closer, “but you could be in there with a million dollars with a Porsche and I still wouldn’t go in there after you.” His girlfriend scoffed at him before pushing him away and walking up to another guy on the football team.

“What about you?” She asked with a suggestive smile as her hand lay on his chest. “Are you going to have to be the hero today?”

Her boyfriend growled as he pulled her away from the other boy and began walking to woods with a fire in his eyes mumbling something about a suicide mission and how she better love him forever after this.

It was like déjà vu.

As soon as the boy took one step into the woods everything was quiet. He only took one more step before shaking his head and walking back out.

“Nope,” he said as he walked away. “Not doing it. I have too many scholarships for me to die before college,” he determined. “You want to go see if he’s okay then you go get him.”

Everything went back to normal now that he was away from the woods. It was like animals could just sense when there was something about to go in there, maybe they could.

His girlfriend huffed him before marching up to the tree line and stepping into the woods without a second thought.

The cheerleader called out to Leo several times before her voice turned frantic.

The last thing anyone heard from her was her yelling her boyfriend’s name before trailing off halfway through.

With a new fire in his eyes, her boyfriend began running to the tree line only to be tackled by a few of his football friends. He yelled at them to get off but they didn’t listen.

“If you go in there you’re going to die.” His friend tried to reason but that still didn’t take the fight out of him, if anything it made him fight harder.

Over and over again he just kept screaming at them to let him go. He thrashed and punched, and screamed until they couldn’t hold him anymore.

He managed to get everyone off of him. Stumbling slightly as he ran, he disappeared into the woods without a second thought this time.

Everything was quiet for a while. The boy didn’t scream in pain and he didn’t yell for help; it was just silent, then the dogs started barking again.

“Someone needs call the cops or something,” a small voice finally spoke up after a while of nothing.

“Oh yea, that’s a good idea,” someone else said in a snarky and sarcastic voice. “Who wants to be the one that has to explain to the police that because of underage drinking three people died in less than an hour?”

People began yelling back and forth about what they should do but I wasn’t really paying attention.

All I could do is stare at the innocent-looking tree line where my friend disappeared into just a few minutes ago.

My mind seemed to block out the yelling and the bickering, like the noises, were underwater. My eyes were transfixed on the woods, drawing me in.

I hadn’t realized how close I come to the tree line until I tripped on a root and almost fell. One more step and I’d be in the woods, yet I didn’t stop moving.

I vaguely hear the silence that cuts through the air as I step into the woods until there’s an uproar. People yelled my name and begged me to come back but it was like I was in a trance and something in my mind told me to keep walking.

The atmosphere of the woods was different than any other place I had ever been.

It felt like a pressure hung over my shoulders. Shadows seemed to move even though no one was there. It became hard to breathe and I began wondering what calm feeling Leo had felt when we were on the phone.

The numb trance that I walked in here with was gone now and all I could feel was terror coursing through my body yet I couldn’t turn around and leave.

It felt like I had only taken a few steps but now that I look around it looked like I was miles in and didn’t know what direction to go in.

My heart sped up as I looked around wildly, hoping to find a magically door that would lead me out of here, but I saw nothing but an endless amount of trees that all looked the exact same.

Something black moved in the corner of my eye. I gasp loudly at it and move to see what it was but there was nothing there.

My heart pounded in my chest while my lungs felt like they were about to explode.

Another black shadow crossed my vision, this time directly in front of me and this time it stayed there.

It was so dark in here that I couldn’t what was in front of me, only that it was tall and looked like a man, but claws replaced his nails as he bared long fangs that came past his jawline. I take several steps back but the thing doesn’t move.

I turn around to run but I stop dead in my tracks when I see another one right in front of me that looked exactly like the first one.

I gave a loud scream as the thing lunged at me. It’s hands wrapped around my neck before I had the chance to do anything about it. Its claws pierced my skin. I gasp at the pain and struggle to get rid of its hand but his grip was too strong.

Its grip tightened but all I could feel was my blood slowly trailing down my neck. I tried to scream for help but I couldn’t get anything out of my throat.

All I could do was stand there with tears in my eyes as I stared at the thing with no face.

I felt myself grow tired as I began running out of air only to be dropped on the hard ground with a thud.

I feel myself pull in a big breath as I curled up into a ball on the ground. MY blood began to collect in a pool while I waited for death to come.

An ear-splitting scream crawled its way out of my throat when I felt a blinding pain in the center of my back. I tried to get away from whatever was hurting me but it just hurt more.

My movement stilled when blood begins to pool up in my mouth.

My body felt light, my fingertips grew cold, and I was dizzy as the trees all around me become blurry until they all faded into nothing but darkness.

My eyelids grew too heavy to keep open. My body grew weightless as I drifted off into my last deep sleep.