We all remember scenes from horror movies when it's night and the roads are lit with flickering street lights. A couple of times when lights turn off and back on, a figure could appear. Well, sometimes it happens in real life, only it's not a masked murderer. In fact, this thing doesn't need a mask.
Michael may not have been the nicest kid in school, but I wouldn't want to wish this on him. I mean, he's been gone for three months. Nobody knows what happened to him, not even the police. He was on his way home after school, doing his usual routine of picking on the smaller kids, and then walked off to into the woods towards the road to his home. That was the last anyone ever saw or heard of him.
The next day, Michael was absent from school. We didn't know why until lunch time when our principle gathered us around.
"Children, children," she said. "I'm afraid we have some bad news; Michael is reported missing." A dead silence fell over the entire lunchroom for a moment. But after the principle left, some of the kids began to voice this joy that the school bully was gone. One kid exclaimed, "'Bout time that jerk fell of the face of the Earth." Another said, "Yeah, you think he was murdered?" My goodness, that was awful! Michael may have picked on me but I wouldn't wish that on him. I went to excuse myself from the lunchroom, I couldn't take anymore of the horrible words from the other kids.
So the days go on by and there has not been one word about Michael. The police have been coming back and forth to the school and looking down the road where he disappeared. I talked to one of the teachers about it. She told me that the police officers said it was more likely a kidnapping. I saw on the news that his parents were pleading for him to return home. This only made me feel the worst for Michael. However, a part of me also felt there was something more going on with this. I don't know what it was, but I had this strange feeling that there was something else in play here.
So, weeks have gone by and the police are well on their way of giving up on their search. I, however, was not. I needed to know what happened to Michael. That's all I kept thinking about while I was lying in my bed. I just kept looking up at the ceiling trying to figure out what could have happened.
"How long are you just going to sit in here by yourself?" my brother, Alex, walked in. I looked up at him and told him I wanted to be alone. He asked me why I wanted to be alone.
"For crying out loud, I just want to be alone! Is that too much to ask for?" I asked in a fit of frustration. He flinched at my reaction. I hate yelling at him, but I really just wanted to be alone to think.
"It's about that kid who went missing, right?" he asked me. "You're thinking about what happened to him." I looked up at him. Is he reading my thoughts or something? He sat on the end of my bed and said to me, "Look, I don't know why you're so obsessed with this. You didn't even like the kid."
"And what's your point?" I asked him.
"My point is that you seem to be over-thinking this whole thing. You've got something on your mind. What's wrong?"
If I told him what I was thinking, he'd think I'm nuts. Hell, I think I really am nuts. My thoughts are far-fetched, but I can think of anything else that could make sense. He's my brother too, if I told him what I thought, he could only make fun of me. Not that he doesn't do that enough.
When we sifted through all of the old newspaper articles and found several cases of disappearances in the town. I'm not at all surprised about where they occurred. They all occurred in the woods where Michael vanished.
So here we are months after the disappearance, and I'm ready to move into the woods myself to see if I could find out what happened to Michael. Don't worry, I'm going with my brother. He's taking our dad's 12-gauge with us. We told our parents that we were going hunting. They told us not to hunt in the woods where the disappearances happened. Well, we made them believe that we weren't. I just hope to God that we make it back home.
After our drive here, we parked by the school. It was at night so nobody noticed us. My brother grabbed the gun and flashlight from the trunk. Before we went into the woods, my brother grabbed my shoulder and firmly told me, "Listen to me, if something happens, you run and don't look back. Do you understand?" I told him that I did. Please God, don't let anything happen to us.
Well with prayers and promises made, we were on our way. The cold winter air threatened to sting our faces as the breeze blew by. However, the chilling fear that run down my spine chilled me worst than wind. The moon light shining made the trees cast ghostly shadows. The sound of the night owls echoed through out the woods. You see scenes like this in movies and read about them in ghost stories, but to actually see them in real life is undeniably terrifying.
I wanted to go back, but I had to know the truth. This happened to someone I knew, even if we weren't friends. Still, he deserved to at least for someone to take a deeper look into what happened to him. Not only him, but those other children who disappeared. They need their story to be told as well.
As we ventured deeper into the woods, the air around us became more coarse and chilling. The scenery around us began to distort into unimaginable imagery. The shadows looked more like monsters and demons. The owls in the distance sounded more like screams. The church bell chiming in the distance only made the situation more terrifying. It was like entering into another world. It was like entering Hell.
It's been an hour since we started our search. I'm surprised we lasted this long out here. My brother told me that it was time to go. I didn't want to, but I can hear it in his voice; he's scared. I don't blame him. With the environment still twisting into the strange scene around us, I really don't blame him. As much as I didn't want to, I had my brother to think about. He's scared of the woods and he's scared of something happening to me. And the bitter cold wasn't helping either. My lungs were starting to hurt and my feet and hands were numb. I ultimately agreed.
As we journeyed back to the car, I heard heavy footsteps crunching the leaves behind us. I turned around to see who it was. I was hoping to see Michael, but there was nothing there. Yet, the footsteps came closer and closer. My brother turned around to shine the light in the direction, but still nothing. The steps were getting to the point where the thing could have been right in front of us. Then, the air got colder than before. This spooked us both that we didn't want to see what happen next. We both turned and ran for the car.
As we ran, we heard the footsteps running right behind us. The cold air running down my throat and into my lungs was hurting me more, and was beginning to slow me down. My brother was running ahead of me, shouting, "Faster! Run faster!" But I couldn't, I was hurting too much. My legs were beginning to give way when I saw my brother stop. I run up to him and was about to ask why he stopped when he wrapped his arms around me and picked me up.
He started to run again and I looked behind us. That's when I saw it. My God, it was so terrifying. I saw Michael chasing us. Only, he didn't look like what he normally did. He was white, pure white. His once curly brown hair was now flat and stained with mud. He was portly when he disappeared, but now he was bony. His clothes were tattered with his shirt stained with blood that was still oozing out of his mouth. His mouth. It was gone, his skull and teeth showing where his lips were.
I couldn't take what I saw so I closed my eyes tight as my brother continued to run. I didn't open them until we got to the car. He opened the passenger door and sat me down in the seat. He closed the door and jumped over the hood of the car as a shortcut to the driver's seat. When he got in and started the car, the lights turned on as we looked forward. My breath stopped at what I saw. I saw Michael again, but he wasn't alone. I saw other kids standing with him. Some of them were still rotting, others were nothing but bones in ripped up clothes. I knew who they were; they were the other missing kids.
As if seeing them wasn't bad enough, what was standing behind them scared me the most out of anything I endured that night; it was a tall, thin man standing behind them. He had to have been eight or nine feet tall. He was wearing a black suit and tie. His face, my God that face will haunt me until the day I die. What am I thinking? Face? There was no face! There was no face, but I could feel like it was watching me! Oh my God, please don't tell me it wants me!
I screamed at my brother, "Drive! For God sake, drive!" He put the car in reverse at top speed. As we pulled away, I saw at least a dozen tentacles sprout out of the tall man's body in various places. They flared about was the kids opened their mouths and I heard a high pitched scream from them.
The car spun around and it went forward. That image out of my vision, I felt myself breathe again. When we got out to the freeway, my brother slowed down. I asked him why, he said that the cops were everywhere. He also said to me, "You listen to me; you don't tell anyone what we just saw!"
"What? Why?" I asked him. He said to me, "You saw what just happened! Do you think anyone who didn't see it would believe you? They'd think you're nuts!"
"What if we took the cops out to the woods to look for that thing?"
"They wouldn't listen! Are you listening to me? Nobody will listen to us!"
"What about those kids?"
"We can't do anything about it."
He was right. No matter how much sense I wanted to make, he was right. The cops won't believe me. And those kids are probably now under that thing's control. Probably have been for a while. Now it has Michael. What hurts me is that I know what happened to him, but his parents will never know. It wasn't fair.
Happy Samhain