Skip to main content

That night in the forest - 3 days to Halloween

“Julie, hold my hand, please,”

“Can you move faster? We’re almost there.”

“I’m scared Julie. We’ve never traveled this far. And this late at night,”.

The wind moved around them, whispering under the dense canopy of trees. There was no visible path, this deep inside the forest. 

But Julie seemed to know exactly where to go. 
“Come on Peter, we cannot be late!”

A twig snapped somewhere to their left.
Julie and Peter stopped. She strained her eyes, but spotted nothing. What was out there, this late at night?

Peter tugged at her sleeve. His large eyes, shimmered in the paltry moonlight.
“I’m scared, Julie. What was that noise?”

Paler than before, Peter looked at the distant clearing, where he saw a murky shape moving about. He was about to protest again when Julie brushed past him. 

“Julie! JULIE!”, he whispered urgently. “Stop! Don’t go there! I see something!”

She turned around and looked at him sadly. 
“We’re here, Peter. It’s almost time. You know what happens at 3 am.”

“But Julie! That is a bad thing. It will hurt us!”

She placed a small palm on his cheek. 
“I promise it won’t, ok? I’ll protect you always. Now hurry!”

Forlorn and with nowhere else to go, Peter followed his big sister. They crept past the last trees and stood at the edge of the clearing. 

A fire burned brightly in the middle. A dark shape stood by it, drinking something.
Julie nudged her brother. 

“I’ve been tracking it for a while. It always comes here once a month. And you remember what today is, right?”

Peter nodded, glumly. He was well aware of today’s significance. But that didn’t mean, he had to like it.
“Peter, look at me! This is important, ok? I can’t do it without you.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just afraid.”

Julie looked up at the sky. She’d learned to read the positions of the moon. It was time. 

3 am. The Witching Hour. A time when the door between the human world and the paranormal opens wide. And unleashes the monsters from all corners of hell.

 A sudden wind gusted through the clearing as the little girl and her brother stepped out of the shadows. The fire flickered and then died out. Surprised, the dark shape turned around. At first, it saw nothing. 

Then something gleamed at the edge of the clearing. 2 children stood there, quietly shimmering in the moonlight. The man, blinked and looked again.

They were closer now, their eyes red and luminous. The smaller of the two children still had a torn belly, his pearly white intestines popping out. And the girl. Half her face squished in, like an oddly deflated ball.

Memories came rushing to him now. A year ago. The bar where he had one drink too many. The winding forest road he took that night. The sudden screech when he hit something. Too drunk to care, he’d revved his engine and pushed down on the accelerator. A sickening crunch under his wheels, and he’d driven off, thinking about how nice some vodka would be, right about then.

3 am. The Witching Hour. That door was wide open. And not more than 30 feet from where they’d died exactly a year ago, Julie and Peter dragged the man back into their world. 



And now they would make him pay.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

20 perfect kernels of popcorn.

Button has always been a picky eater. No.... scratch that. How about super-sensitive-and-guaranteed-to-refuse-any-new-foods. That's a much better description. It's not just an autism thing. Part of it is probably the sensory defensiveness that comes under the autism umbrella and part of is it anxiety about new tastes and textures. I mean - this kid hasn't eaten candy in his entire life!! Could care less about ice cream or pizza! I know, I know - he sounds like an ideal 6 year old who only eats healthy stuff, but man, this is way worse than that. He accepts 6 foods and that's the 6 food choices he's been sticking to for the past 4 years. Its a constant cycle of dosa-pasta-rice-pretzels-chips-fries. So no....not healthy by any means. And his dislike of non preferred foods is so strong, that he will actually gag at us eating a meal. Its that bad! Eating at restaurants means taking his meal along with us and he's that one kid at the party that's eating his ...

Red Light.

Veena swerved her car, narrowly missing the pothole. The tires caught on some ice and her heart stopped. She clenched her jaw and steered hard. Finally, thankfully, the wheels regained traction. Purring on in a straight line, her car approached the traffic signal. Blink. Blink. Blink. And Red light. They would likely fire her today. The new boss didn’t care about her divorce or mortgage problems. If her ex knew, he would probably say she deserved this for dumping him. For a disorienting moment, she wished she could go back. The abuse, the cheating. Anything was better than this crushing despair.  With no real career or romantic prospects, she felt she was drowning. And so for the first time in her 46 years, Veena contemplated suicide. Why not end it all? How badly would it hurt? She was startled out of her reverie by an SUV in the next lane. A favorite tune, long forgotten blared out of the speakers. A young man, thirty at most was in the driver’s seat. With the bluest eyes...

Girls and Boys and all that noise!

In a curious case of reverse gender inequality, someone asked this question recently. Why is it considered acceptable to say “we want a baby girl”, or even “gender doesn’t matter”. If one wants a baby boy, is it still taboo to express that?