Don't Go Into The Woods

Chapter 6

I shoved the thought of him to the back of my head as I finished off my plate of food. I had just been shown the true colors of both my crush and best friend. I think it was definitely a wise idea to not try and get myself involved in a new relationship of any sort. Those always ended badly for me and I had a long history to prove it. I dropped my fork down on my plate when I realized that I had started to twirl the food across the plate using the fork. I was done eating. It was 7pm on the dot when I left the canteen. The sun had just about finished setting completely and the bit of light provided by lamps hanging from the walls in the passage provided me with enough to make my way up to my bedroom. I could not help but wonder if the guy’s room was anywhere nearby.

Stop thinking about him! I almost screamed at myself.

He was just so dreamy and his accented voice was music to my ears. I closed the door behind me and shoved myself up against it. I had to remind myself that I was not here to make friends and I was especially not here to find true love. I highly doubt that that even exists. I took a deep breath and headed to my bags. I needed to go wash. A good shower should hopefully help me think straight by clearing out my mind.

After finding my bath bag and a fresh clean pair of pajamas, I entered the bathroom, deciding to leave the door open as I was alone here anyway. My thoughts wondered to what was going to happen tomorrow and who exactly was my room mate going to be. I hoped that who ever she was going to be, she was not going to be annoying. I really did not want some chitter chatter box that was constantly popping up in my face. I blow dried my hair as I started up my laptop on the bed after placing my phone on charge by the bedside drawer. My bags were still packed. I was leaving the unpacking for tomorrow as tonight I had some research to catch up on. Tucked under the duvet on my new bed, I placed the laptop on my lap and started searching around on Google for a few answers. My hair was dry and brushed out and I was wearing one of my longish purple pajama tops with matching bed socks on. This place was actually quite cold considering the fact that the seasons were changing to autumn. I could hear the rain gently fall on the window pain behind me as I typed in the school’s name. Nothing all that interesting popped up that I had not already seen before in my previous search. I decided to change my wording and typed in “urban myths of Van Steinberg private school”. Immediately a few interesting websites popped up. I clicked on the most legit looking one and the headline of an article caught my attention at once. It was posted by one of the admins of the site and it read “Student missing. Believed to be dragged away by wolves”. The article was dated 1920 and was reposted by the admin with an actual photo of the student. She looked roughly my age and had the same long dark hair as me. If I really had to be honest, this girl looked oddly similar to me. I got started on reading the article as the urge time know more overtook all common sense I had. It spoke about this girl who had apparently just disappeared one night from the school. No one heard or saw anything the night she had disappeared, but the following day the super attendant found a trail of wolf tracks leading out of the school through its backdoor which had been found broken down and splintered by claws marks. There was a single spot of blood found on her bed which could never be confirmed as back than they never had the necessary technology to do so. The detectives could also not understand how the wolves dragged the girl out while her roommate was asleep and left untouched. That was not all. The detectives were quickly chased away from the school and everything about the girl’s disappearance was hushed up to the point where even her parents were not interested to speak to the police. The case grew cold and eventually all this girl ever became was an urban legend. The wolf girl was her nickname given to those who believe if you stare at the field leading to the woods, you will still this dark haired beauty being dragged away by a pack of wolves. There have been sightings of this before but no one could verify any of them with any actual evidence. I skipped a few paragraphs where her parents had been quoted speaking about their daughter till suddenly my eyes were drawn to one spine chilling fact stated in the article where the detectives explained how they ruled the roommate out of having any involvement in the disappearance of the girl. It was the room number. Room 203. My heart literally skipped a beat at what I had just read. This was her room? I suddenly lost all interest in reading any further. I closed the site, logged off and slammed my laptop shut. Immediately I thought of the friendly piece of advice that Ms. Hatch had given me before I left her office today. Always lock the door at night and she too mentioned the girl who had been dragged away by wolves, but she added that the girl had been found ripped to pieces. Did she know more or was this all just someone’s sick idea of a joke by spreading these lies around to scare people? Well I could not deny the fact that I felt somewhat spooked. I wondered if I should go lock the door, but quickly refused as I could not believe that I, of all people, was actually buying into this. I decided to try and forget about all this scary urban legend stuff and hang around on social media to help take my mind off it. I picked up my cellphone and logged onto Facebook. Of course Kacey had already begun posting pictures of the crazy fun night she was having with all my ex friends and ex crush. He was tagged in all her pictures along with the others and there was a special caption for the picture that was taken of Kacey hanging all over Dain. The caption read, “To new beginnings”. I wanted to click on the angry face emotion option. I decided to be mature and just liked it instead. I still wanted to her to know that I was there watching her every move. Maybe her conscious would wake up and start talking to her about how wrong she is, but I was not at all confident of that happening. Kacey was one of those extremely selfish people who really just did not care about anyone else. I lost interest in Facebook very quickly and logged off. I was about to open all of the text messages that my mom and Rick had both sent me when I heard an odd noise coming from the passage outside my door. It sounded like heavy feet dragging across the floor accompanied by claws which so delicately scratched across the wooden floors. I acted without thoroughly thinking about everything. I flew out the bed and hurried to the door, locking it at once. Taking a few steps away from the door I started feeling very stupid. Why did I react so? I had no clue what was even on the other side of the door. With the weather so bad it could be a window from the end of the passage that was making the noise. Also. Was there not like a janitor for the school? That could also be the one responsible for this. My mind very quickly wondered from a janitor to Ms. Hatch and the Secretary. They had both spooked me earlier. Perhaps it was one of them trying to play a nasty trick on me. Nothing surprised me with those two. Especially since Ms. Hatch knew Rick. I forced myself to calm down and stop standing around like a lunatic. I decided to also not give into my fear by leaving the door locked as Ms. Hatch had conveniently told me to do so. I reached forward to grab hold of the key when my door suddenly rattled. It had rattled so hard that the key almost fell out of the keyhole by itself. I pulled my hand away and stumbled back at once, almost leaping directly back into my bed. Perhaps it was best to just leave the door locked. What harm could it do? I sat upright on my bed, wrapping my arms around my knees with my eyes fixed on the door. My heart was pounding so loud that that was all I could hear as the noise on the other side of the door disappeared completely. Something told me that I was not going to sleep properly even if that was just some sick idea of a joke. My mom truly knew how to destroy my life. Now I was also going to be losing sleep thanks to her.

That was exactly what happened. I only ended up falling asleep some time after midnight and that was simply due to the fact that I had passed out from being so over tired. I did not sleep so well neither when I eventually did pass out. I kept seeing the picture of the missing girl from the internet post before my eyes. I tossed and turned. At one stage I could swear I dreamt of a tall shadow with broad shoulders standing over my bed. I was still too half asleep to fully grasp what I had just seen, but when I eventually woke up briefly during the early hours of the morning, I found absolutely nothing and no one standing there. I dozed off almost immediately into a deep sleep. It was about time too. The rest was all history as I slept. Dreaming of absolute nothing, I finally got the peaceful sleep I wanted.