The Island

Chapter 3 - The Messed Up Bear

Morning

"Where's Ben?" Hailey wondered aloud. She should've been woken up nearly twenty minutes ago. At first, she'd thought that maybe Ben had just fallen asleep. But no, Ben was missing.

Hailey figured the weird trance Ben had gone into when they arrived had something to do with it. She shook Bianca and Todd awake. "Ben's missing!" she said.

That definitely woke her friends up.

"What do you mean Ben's missing?" Bianca asked, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

"I mean Ben's missing! The sentence is pretty self-explanatory, Bianca!" Hailey answered.

"Well then let's search for him," Todd said, stifling a yawn. "This island isn't that big, he can't have gone too far."

"Well. He most likely headed into the trees. Especially after that trance he went into." Bianca noted.

"You sure you want to go in there, though?" asked Todd, eyeing the trees nervously.

"Didn't you say they were 'just trees' yesterday?" Hailey asked, folding her arms across her chest, her hips jutted out to the side.

"That was before all this happened!" Todd exclaimed.

"Well, where else could he have gone?" Hailey asked smartly.

"Fine," Bianca said. "Trees it is."

The three walked through the dense forest, calling Ben's name.

"This forest is huge," Bianca said. "He could be anywhere."

"Well then let's keep searching," Todd said, examining the ground. "Let's try that way," he said, pointing to the left. "Branches have been broken off recently, Ben might've gone that way."

The girls agreed, and the trio set off in that direction.

Hailey tried to shake off that 'I'm being watched' feeling that they've all gotten. It didn't work. She still had the feeling. It was like there was something in the woods, plotting how best to kill them.

That's when it happened.

Bianca tripped over a tree root, which opened up and sucked her into the thick of the trees, sort of like the Whomping Willow in Harry Potter.

Except this was like a thousand times worse.

Bianca got dragged across to the tree's trunk, which had opened up like a mouth. Todd and Hailey were too stunned to react, it had happened so fast, as Bianca got eaten by the tree.

Well, at least they thought she was eaten.

Either way, Hailey and Todd, knowing it was too late for Bianca, both fled, heading in the direction Ben's trail led. They both could feel that horrible sense of foreboding inside and were now more desperate than ever to find Ben. He had to still be out there.

Finally, the pair reached a small knot of trees.

There were rocks strewn everywhere, most of them covered in blood, there was even more blood spattered on the ground. Something bad had happened.

"You think Ben was here?" Hailey asked nervously.

"I don't know," answered Todd, his eyes trained on a particularly large puddle of blood.

The pair heard a groan behind them, they whirled around to face...

Nothing.

"Maybe we were hearing things?" Hailey suggested nervously.