The strange boy

Bang! My head collided with the bunk above me and my hand went up instinctively to a new bump under my blond curls which were tied tightly back in a tight ponytail: my usual style. I breathed deeply trying to push the terrifying visions of my most recent nightmare from my head. That night had taken me back to my Dad's house, spiders oozing from the walls. That was the reason I ran away in the first place but I hadn't had a dream like that for a month. Why was my sub-conscious bringing it back up now? I calmed myself down and lay back on my pillow listening to my cabin mates snore.

Absentmindedly my hand went to the necklace around my neck, carrying two clay beads now, one decorated with a pine tree and the other a dancing centaur. Beside these hung my father's ring which he'd sent me when I went away. I moved my hand to twist it between my fingers. My fingers felt empty air and I jumped up again adding a second lump to my head. The ring was gone.

"It doesn't matter," I told myself, "I never cared about him or his possessions anyway." I went about my day as I normally would or tried to anyway but when I was bored my hand would always go to my neck and I would remember the absence of the one thing I had left of my father. I had to find it.

I went up to the abandoned attic of the big house, the building our guardian lived in to think. After a while it came to me like a voice in my mind.

'You shall sneak out and look for your missing good

Wondering alone until you find a friend

Miraculously your skills should

Lead you to the ring in the end' it said.

That night I snuck out of my cabin, an act that is forbidden here, and made my way out, careful to avoid the security. I crossed the boundaries for the first time in three years and the second time ever. I shuddered remembering the first time I had crossed these boundaries to get into my new home: the monstrous creatures behind us, my best friend yelling at us to run, the smell of her blood petrifying as she took her final breaths. That was not a pleasant memory.

I wandered around with nowhere in particular to go, just like I had when I first ran away except this time I was alone, without my friend's protection and company. The cold began to catch up to me soon and I knew I couldn't stay out here in my T shirt and shorts. I ran to warm myself up until I had found some woods and kept running through them.

When my teeth no longer chattered from the cold I slowed and noticed, from the dim glow of the moon that there was a cave nearby. Good. Caves tended to be warm. I went in and started a fire by rubbing sticks together. I had never been able to do this when I was on the run before; my friends had always done it for me but, thankfully, in the two years I'd been at camp I had learned the skill too. I snuggled up in the warmth and fell asleep determined to continue my search in the morning.

When I awoke, my strange surroundings scared me but I quickly remembered where I was and got up. I noticed I was starving and went hunting for food. I found some berries on a nearby bush and after making sure they weren't poisonous (another thing I'd learned at camp) I wolfed them down until the bush was empty. I then walked back to the cave because I'd left the big warm leaf I'd used as a blanket last night and figured it would come in handy if I was still alive tonight.

When I reached the cave something beside the entrance caught my eye and I looked down. My dad's ring! There it was just lying down beside the cave entrance. I knelt down to pick it up when I noticed what was behind it. A spider web. Why did it have to be spiders? Why couldn't it have followed the butterflies? I shuddered away from it in terror.

When my breathing became even again I scolded myself for being so stupid. It was just a little spider web, no actual spider. I should just take the ring and get back to camp. I reached over to pick it up but just as I grabbed it my worst fear was satisfied. The spider appeared.

I screamed, dropped the ring and jumped back, about a mile I was sure, right into a complete stranger. A young boy, about nine; same age as me. I could see I thoroughly scared him and for some reason his water bottle exploded but I kept screaming. Eventually he put his hand over my mouth.

"Stop screaming," he commanded. This probably should have just made me scream more but for some reason it calmed me down. I stopped screaming and forced my breaths back into an even pattern.

"Why are you in the middle of the woods?" he asked.

"Um, I lost my ring and came to retrieve it," I told him.

"In the middle of the woods?"

"Yeah." I knew he wouldn't believe me; what kind of nine year old girl was allowed to wonder the woods alone because she'd lost a ring? But he just shrugged.

"Guess that's no weirder than while I'm here," he said.

"Why are you here?" I was suddenly curious.

"Some fat, ugly ladies with one eye were looking at me so I freaked out and ran," he replied. I frowned in thought: was it possible? No, I decided, he must have just been hallucinating.

"Why were you screaming?" he asked.

"Spider." I sounded pathetic. He laughed, picked the ring up and handed it to me. We'd better be on our way then. He grabbed my hand and pulled me with him. When we were out of the woods he looked at me apologetically.

"I'd better go back to school now; I'm probably expelled. Can you make it on your own?"

"Expelled?" I wondered. I thought that was just a myth made up to scare kids.

"Yeah, It's ok, I get expelled every year." He sighed and we parted.

I was nearly at camp when a man walked up behind me. He wore a black cloak that covered his whole body except for his mouth. As soon as I looked at him I immediately felt sleepy almost as if he was hypnotising me. The next thing I knew I was back in my bunk, breathing heavily with a new lump on my head. I had quite a collection now.

The memory is fading quickly so I am writing it down. I'll probably have forgotten it all in the next minute which is weird because I always remembered my dreams. Maybe it's because... I don't even know what I was writing about now. Strange.