Lost Wood, Maryland

The night was cool and cloudless, the stars bright and clear against the black backdrop of the night. No moon graced the skies with her presence that fateful night. A man wandered through the night alone, walking along a dirt road somewhere deep in the countryside. He crested a hill, and there, quite suddenly, appeared a town.

It was a small town, only a couple dozen houses and a main street lined with shops. It seemed old to the man, older than time itself. But that was a silly notion, wasn't it? And surely it should have been marked by at least one or two houses leading up to it, some sort of outskirt or something. But there was nothing to mark the town before you actually saw it. Not even a small house or a sign.

The man shivered. The town was so quiet; it seemed almost to be deserted. But that couldn't be, whoever heard of a deserted town? Sure, if he'd been in the west, which was filled with ghost towns, it would be understandable, but who ever heard of a ghost town in Maryland?

Regardless of how creepy the town seemed to be, the man knew that he had to sleep somewhere that night. And so he went down into the town, ignoring the pesky voice in his head telling him to stay away, to get away from the town at all costs.

As he wandered along Main Street, it occurred to him how old the town really was. The shops themselves sold only very old items, probably from the pre-Revolutionary war era. The man stood thoughtfully out side of one of the stores, looking in on the food supplies it contained. They all seemed so old; he wondered how long they'd been there. His next thought was to wonder if he hadn't somehow stumbled upon a tourist attraction of some sort, but again, there had been no markings to indicate such a thing. And then he heard a sound behind him.

The man jumped and spun around, instantly frightened by the noise. A young child stood in front of him. He was dressed in old clothing; he looked like he would have been right at home in any of the movies about the Revolutionary War. "What are you doing here, sir?" The boy spoke with a soft voice and a minor English accent.

"I'm looking for a place to stay the night." There, you see? He thought to himself. The kid talks just like a normal kid, except for the sir thing. He's not some sort of ancient ghost. The man almost laughed, glad that his fears were completely unjustified.

"You could stay with me for the night." The child's offer came quickly, almost like he was offering to tell him the weather or something trivial like that. The man accepted, and the two of them walked off to the boy's house.

* * *

The boy's house was just as old as he seemed to be, probably again from the pre-Revolutionary war era. The man was amazed at the little things inside the house, such as lack of electricity, and an outhouse rather than a bathroom. The boy seemed very amused by the man's fascination with his house.

The man was curious about why things in the town seemed so old, but didn't want to offend his host by asking. Speaking of which... "Won't your parents mind me being here?" He looked down at the boy who had invited him into the house.

"No." That was all the boy had to offer on the subject. The man chose not to pry. Had he done so, things might have gone differently for the poor man. He was soon settled into bed and told to go to sleep. The man did so, not wanting to cause any trouble.

He woke a few hours later when an eerie sound echoed through the house. It sounded like a bizarre cross between a howl and a scream. The man shivered and glanced at his watch. To his horror, the watch had stopped at eight o'clock, the exact hour when he'd entered the spooky town. And then he heard the howl again. He shuddered and got up, wanting to know what the eerie sound was.

He walked into the hallway and let out a whimper of shock and disgust. There was a head hanging from the doorway into the next room. The eyes were wide and vacant, and the body attached to it was half rotted away. He turned and fled the hallway, intending to flee the house entirely, but was stopped again, this time by a body at the foot of the stairs, also half decayed, this one with a crimson stain spread under it. He fled down the stairs and ignored the dead body he had to step over and tried to open the door. Much to his horror, it wouldn't open.

"Are you sure that you want to go outside?" The eerie voice came from behind him, the eerie young child was standing right there. "It's dangerous out there." He walked up to the man and carefully patted him on the arm. "Don't you concern yourself with these dead bodies. They'll go away at dawn, and you can be on your way." As the boy spoke, his voice echoed eerily throughout the room.

"How can you be so calm?! There are dead bodies all over your house! Aren't you frightened?" The man spoke with a hint of hysteria in his voice, his eyes wide with fright.

The boy laughed. "Here in Lost Wood, we have these little occurrences twelve times a year. Once a month, actually." The boy smirked at him, and suddenly the man was more afraid than he had previously been. That smirk was just not a natural look for a boy. He again tried the door and found, without surprise, that yes, it was still locked.

He hesitantly went to touch the boy and found, again without surprise but with a growing state of horror, that the boy was not solid; he couldn't touch him at all. The boy laughed quietly at the man, then turned and left the room. "You can't go anywhere, you might as well wait out the night here." He called over his shoulder. The man stayed by the door the entire night, watching in horror as more and more bodies appeared all throughout the room, getting newer and newer as the night went on, until, finally, one last body appeared.

The man stared at the body in shocked horror; he couldn't believe what he was seeing. It just wasn't possible. The body was his. He had fallen down the stairs, broken his neck it seemed from a distance. The man numbly walked over and checked the body. Yes, it was his. There was a stab wound at his back, from a large butcher's knife. He stood over the body in shock, and he heard a tinkling laugh behind him.

"Welcome to Lost Wood, my dear man." The child stood behind him again, and all the man could do was stare at his own body.