Second Sight

Ritual

The woods behind Ava's childhood home were dark. And Ava knew that she shouldn't go in there, but it was just like the cave. There was something hidden among the dark trees that desperately wanted to be discovered. She could feel it. Whatever sixth sense had been activated when she came across the mystery cave at the Causeway was tingling just now, and she followed it closely.

She let her parents know where she'd be, grabbed a headlamp and a flashlight, and headed into the woods. Every crack of a fallen branch in the woods, every hoot of an owl or howl of a wolf, every single sound made her jump and sent a shiver down her spine. The woods may have been dark nearly every night, with the canopy being so thick that it blocked out even the brightest moonlight, but tonight was different. There was something different, something... supernatural about the woods.

Filtering through the thick trunks of the trees, a flickering light started to guide Ava's way better than her dinky flashlight and head lamp were doing for her. The good news was that this time, it was not green or eerie. It looked as though someone had decided to light a campfire in the middle of the Salem Woods. Several little ones, in fact. The closer she got, the more she felt like whatever was flickering to life in front of her was something she wasn't supposed to see. Her hands darted up to her headlamp to flick it off and she fumbled until she could finally switch off her flashlight. With all the mysteries that she had been witnessing recently, the last thing she wanted was to be noticed.

At first glance, there was no one there. It seemed odd to light a fire, and a fairly new-looking one at that, and then just leave it.

Ava gradually took in her surroundings and the mysterious campfires started to make sense. Three women stood at different points around the clearing. One looked exactly like the shrouded woman from the airport. Though she was still draped in her black veil and cloak, she held an ornate dagger in her right hand to add to her terrifying facade. Swaying the knife back and forth to point to different ends of the clearing, Ava could have sworn the mysterious woman was chanting words. There was a foreboding sense that the words were not English, that they were drawing power from an unseen source. 

Compared to the gravity of the woman in black, the other women almost went completely unnoticed. One closest to Ava seemed... solemn. She had a look on her face like she was mourning, but this fire did not look like a funeral pyre. Accompanying her mourning aesthetic was an ancient dress that looked as though it belonged more in the colonial times and early American times of Salem. To add to it, her dress looked singed, like she had been pulled from a fire at the last possible moment. The age of her clothing and her solemnity was a total mystery until Ava focused more on her being and realized... she was translucent, and her feet weren't touching the ground.

"A ghost?" Ava mused under her breath, and then immediately regretted it. The woman in black snapped her head up, and though the veil shrouded her face, her eyes hit Ava with an animalistic ferocity. Ava muttered a curse word and began running. This woman was able to bring darkness to an entire airport terminal; Ava did not want to see what she could do to a college student who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Don't leave us so soon, dear Ava Murphy. It was the same voice as when she was in the airport, and yet this time, it felt like all of her skin was covered in goosebumps. As far as Ava was aware, she lacked the ability to communicate telepathically. But she did her best to reach her mind out to the strange, powerful woman and tell her in the politest way to back the hell off. She was having a hard enough time as it was with seeing creatures everywhere, she didn't need what seemed to be a witch for a stalker.

Oh, dear Ava, you act as though this is a choice, Ava heard through her head once more, this time with a tinge of amusement garnishing the woman's voice. The forest she was running through seemed endless. Ava knew where she was going, she'd wandered through the Salem woods plenty of times. The woods were getting darker, and darker... at first, Ava figured this was part of the woman's power. She felt foolish when she realized that she had forgotten to turn her headlamp and her flashlight back on. Though Ava recognized that it would make her easier to track, she needed light to help her get out of this situation.