From the Dark of the Forest

Part 1

It had been a few years ago since her best friend, Emily, had died that Candice had been afraid of the dark. It was that one fateful night on Halloween - that damp, cold and dreary night, with a musky scent and a tickle of fear and mischief blowing softly in the nippy wind - that her friend had been taken away from her. Never would that horrible Halloween night leave the depths of her memory. Never.

All Hallow’s Eve had started out innocent enough for them. It was a usual spree of trick-or-treating; the two had both decided to go as witches, after delightedly watching a marathon of Halloween specials on TV. Candice’s mom had bought her a black robe fit for any witch, as well as a small broom and hat to go with the outfit. There was no need to buy her a wig, her hair was as black as the robe, making those green eyes of hers pop out even more. Emily’s mom had made her daughter’s costume - a green robe with long black sleeves - but no matter how her mother dressed her, Emily still could never look as mischievous as a witch. Emily’s look was that of an angel: long, wavy golden hair, the largest pair of blue eyes anyone had ever seen, and rosy cheeks with generously-pinched dimples. The two eight-year-olds looked adorable together, and as they set off on their quest for candy, their parents waved them goodbye and thought to themselves how sweet and grown-up they were.

The two best friends held out their jack-o-lantern buckets to houses on five blocks, quite the adventure for a pair of little witches. Only when their buckets were overflowing with wrapped little goodies did they decide to head back home. Those five blocks were long streets, and by the end they were a far distance from their humble abodes. The last street had no more house-cluttered avenues past it; only a large field with high grasses and a small pathway could lead them back to their parents the quickest.

Holding hands, and making sure none of those tall grasses and weeds touched their coveted piles of candy, they hurried along the pathway. They jumped and screeched at every little noise, either a cricket or the long howl of some faraway dog, and huddled together to stay warm. It was getting late that night, it was already past 10 o’clock for them (which seemed like midnight for an eight-year-old!) and the full moon had risen to its height, bearing down on the girls like a search light whilst the rest of the night sky was darker than death. Still, the little girls charged on.

Just when they thought they were back to the good ol’ civilization of familiar households, they met the edge of a forest. They stared into the depths of the wood: the trees were the highest they had ever seen, as well as the gloomiest, their limbs curved downwards as if ready to grasp the next fool to venture into its depths. Only the slightest bit of a path separated the clutter of the menacing, sombre bodies of wood, and beyond them lurked shadows - moving or not moving, the two girls couldn’t tell - darker than the sky above.

“S-should w-w-we go in?” stuttered Candice, her tiny quivering lips unable to stay articulate in the face of fear. Her eyes seemed on the verge of watering.

“There, there doesn’t seem to be any other way,” stated Emily. Her big blue eyes took in her surroundings. She looked both ways, the way her mother taught her to look before crossing the street. The forest spanned the horizons on each side, making it impossible to go around it.

“Maybe we should go back,” suggested Candice. She tried her hardest not to hyperventilate. Her friend was being so brave - scared, but brave - while she was on the brink of crying. “It looks so dangerous.”

“It would take so long,” spoke Emily in a low tone. Her eyes were transfixed on the depths of the forest. “We have to go through it.”

“But, b-b-but I don’t want to go… I can’t… Emily, I’m scared!”

“How about… how about…” Emily put her finger on her lip, and scrunched her forehead. “How about I go in to see if it’s safe, and then I’ll shout to you when you can come in?”

“But what if it isn’t safe?”

That terrifying question stung the air around them, and bit their courage like frostbite. It was such a bitter idea, too bitter for two little girls.

“Well, well then I’ll run out,” stated Emily logically. “I’ll just run out. Oh, well, here I go…”

Emily, with determination in those darling blue eyes, took in a deep breath, and marched forward. The shadows gulped her up immediately, and once inside Candice could not see her best friend any longer. She waited a few minutes, which seemed like hours to her, but she did not hear her friend call out, “It’s safe, come!” It seemed to take so long that, starting to become worried for her friend, Candice clutched her bucket of candy to her chest and took a step forward. She took another step forward, and another, and was finally inside the forest.

No dark matched that of the woods. Only her feet could indicate where the forest floor was, for everywhere she looked she could not designate on either side of her what was there. She stumbled about blindly, the trees prickling her and poking her with their long, outstretched branches, where she thought she could hear once in a while the sound of a rustle, of a breath, of a grunt. She’d whimper to herself and clutch her bucket to her chest even closer, but the fear could not go away. Prickles ran down the edge of her spine, her body covered head to toe in goose bumps. She thought she felt a snake slither past her feet, but could not tell. She could not tell anything, shut up in the prison of darkness itself.

And then she heard it. She heard the bloodcurdling, horrifying shriek of her beloved best friend. She jumped a foot from the ground and shrieked along with her, but her shout was a parody compared to Emily’s. The cry sounded excruciatingly painful, she could feel the agony in her voice.

Candice burst into tears, and she cried out, “EMILY!” but no one returned the cry, except for that same disgusting screech from far in the distance. She bent down and vomited, while her body trembled in fear. This can’t be happening, nothing bad can happen to Emily…

The shriek started to slow down, as if Emily was losing strength, and then the sound died. All that was left was the sound of rustling far off into the trees, and Candice had no idea which direction it was coming from. But she did hear the sounds coming, coming closer to where she was standing. She could hear a startling growl of a giant beast, something so foreign, so disgusting. Slowly, the rustling of leaves and the sound of stomping neared her way, and soon enough, the complete darkness of the forest was pierced by the blinding glow of two large red eyes. The creature of nightmares had appeared before Candice.

Candice shrieked, dropped her bucket and ran for her life. She raced through the trees as she was tossed side to side by them, but she didn’t care. With what seemed like instinct she pushed herself through the clutter of trees to escape the nearing growls and stomps of the monster behind her. She could feel the heat from the beast. Finally, she saw a stream of dim light seep through a crack in the trees.

She sprinted forward like a bolt of lightning and ran along the path, never looking back. As she ran, she screamed her lungs out and cried. It all felt like a nightmare to her, she couldn’t even feel her body after she left the forest. She rushed through the field and through the five blocks of streets to her house, where she collapsed at the doorstep. Her mother screamed when they found her, and her father picked her up in his arms and laid her on the living room couch. She yelled and lashed out in hysterics, telling them that Emily was in the forest and a monster had hurt her. She begged them to call the police, and they did, though her mother tried to calm her down and tell her that Emily was not hurt by some monster.

“There are no such things as monsters,” she told Candice, trying to hold Candice’s quivering little body down. “There’s no need to fret!”

“You - don’t - und - er - stand!” she shouted. “There’s - a - mon - ster - that - got - her!”

The police were contacted right away, and Emily’s parents were told the news of Emily “getting lost” in the forest, as the grown-ups interpreted it. Emily’s mother fainted when she heard the news, and later pleaded to the police for them to find “her darling little angel”.

The police performed a search along the perimeters of the forest right away, but proclaimed that it was too dark to be able to do a thorough and effective investigation in the forest at night. Emily’s parents were furious, but what could they do? They stayed up all night and waited by the phone, praying for the police to call saying that they found their child.

The interiors of the forest were thoroughly investigated . So cluttered and dark was it, even in day, that the goal of finding any trace of Emily seemed impossible. The citizens of the town waited on baited breath to hear word from the police about what happened to her. Neighbours gossiped about it like the disappearance enough was evidence that murder was at hand. Close friends and family consoled each other, encouraging themselves that there still could be a chance Emily was only lost in those woods - “That forest is so big and confusing, why haven’t they cut it down yet?” - and soon enough the police would bring her back to them, safe and sound. The teachers at school kept themselves solemn and quiet, telling their pupils to keep Emily in their prayers, and warning them never to stray into the forest. Candice, on the other hand, could not leave her room, and only stayed in her bed and shivered, screaming and lashing out at the memory of that shriek, and those glowing red eyes.

The police finally came across evidence by the end of that week. On the seventh day, they found in a small gap between a concentrated clutter of trees a mangled and mutilated body torn to unrecognizable shreds. The only indications that showed it was Emily’s remains before them were the strands of golden hair thrown beside it, as well as her scattered bucket of candy. Investigators tried to figure out who or what had killed the poor girl, but none of them knew. It was no dog, no wolf, nor any bear, and though it was definitely not human, the creature that had murdered her seemed to be more skilled and cruel than any usual forest animal.

A/N: Part 2 is coming up VERY soon, where we see how the citizens of the town - especially Candice - react to the news of Emily’s death, as well as Candice's future.