Hello guys and welcome back! I have to admit that I completely forgot I had this story finished and ready to post because I was so absorbed in starting my new job well. I hope you'll accept this Christmas gift as my apology :D

Prologue

Something was out there. The little girl stood still and pricked her ears, hoping to catch the sound that had previously startled her once again, but the woods were quiet - and eerily so. A cool breeze had been ruffling her hair all day and she felt the absence of it like a burning sensation on her skin. The chirping of birds that she had grown so accustomed to right up to the point that she could no longer hear them had stopped. There was no rustling in the leaves, no snapping twigs, nothing apart from her own breathing and the heartbeat that was growing louder in her chest.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The girl turned around, hoping to catch a glimpse of the boy she had been playing with, but Michael was nowhere to be seen. She hadn't expected to find him. A game of hide and seek deep in the forest, that was what they had been up to all morning. Now, the girl was alone and scared and wanted nothing more than not to be any of these things. She turned around on the spot, hoping to catch a glimpse of her friend, but all there was to see was the forest, seemingly empty in its full spring bloom.

Only that it wasn't. The girl could feel it all around her, she could feel it in the tingling that spread through her body, reaching up to her fingertips.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

There was something in the air and it had her surrounded. No matter where she looked, it was always there and not there. She couldn't see it, but she could feel it closing in on her. It was almost like being under water, a kind of pressure that made her think the sky might fall down on her at any moment. It was now or never.

"Michael?!" the little girl called out.

No answer. It was as if the words didn't even travel past her lips. Then suddenly, they did. The sounds came back, crashing down on her like an unstoppable force, like a wave that had been held back for too long. It was all there. The wind. The birds. The rustling leaves.

The girl turned around on the spot and ran. Among the trees, she could already see the tall, wooden fence, the wall they had built around their homes and it was coming closer.

Her thumping heartbeat seemed to stop when she noticed the gate and that it was closing, probably before she had a chance to reach it. Oh, she was going to be in trouble.

"Wait!" the girl called out as soon as she could make out the man by the wooden gate.

He stopped and as her steps slowed down, she recognised him as the blacksmith, a nice, elderly man who had forged a doll for her from leftover scraps, but when the girl came to a halt next to him, his usually friendly face was twisted in a deep, dark frown.

"You're not supposed to be out there on your own and you know that," the man told her, his voice firm as he lifted a finger in warning.

The girl gasped for air and it took her a moment to regain her speech. The strange event in the woods had knocked the breath out of her.

"I… I wasn't alone," she confessed eventually. "Michael was with me. We were playing hide and seek."

Something in the man's gaze softened, but it only lasted for a brief moment when the realisation struck him. "Is Michael still out there?" the blacksmith wanted to know.

The little girl answered with a shrug of her shoulders. "I couldn't find him. I thought maybe he had already come back."

The old man blinked, but he didn't reply and that was how the girl knew that no one had come through the gates since they had sneaked out of the town's boundaries together. They would have noticed. Probably. Maybe. Yet if he was afraid, the man didn't show it.

"Go to Michael's parents and see if he's at home," he told her. "I'll keep the gate open for a while longer in case he isn't."

"What if he doesn't come back?" the little girl asked without meaning to. She wasn't sure where the question had come from, but she realised that it had been on her mind ever since the strange silence in the woods.

What if Michael never came back? What if they had gotten to him? She couldn't tell the old man, she couldn't tell his parents. They would never believe what she had witnessed.

The blacksmith placed a careful hand on her shoulder and smiled, but something about the way he did it struck her as odd. It didn't look all that sincere.

"We'll find him," the man said and gave her back a gentle slap, telling her to run off and find the boy's parents.

And she did, dreading the moment she would step through the door and find that Michael was still missing because, in her heart, the little girl already knew.

Michael wasn't going to come back.