Number 667

Chapter Two

The girl swung her ratty sneakers up onto the bar stool beside her, the rolls of bowling balls echoing as they trundled down the polished wooden floors. The girl curled her chocolate brown hair behind her ear, flicking her eyes from the seat to the person in front of her.
"I'll tell you the story if you buy me a root beer float." She said plainly to the strange girl in front of her. The girl's aqua blue hair flipped onto her shoulder as she handed the salesman at the counter enough for a root beer float. She slid it over to the girl once it was ready.
"Well played." Said the girl. "I suppose I'll tell you the story now,"
The other girl, whose name was Maple, took the unnamed girl's sneakered feet from the barstool and sat down. Then the girl spoke,
"Once, there was a woman."
No big deal, Maple thought. Nothing secret-sounding.
"But this woman wasn't like other women."
And here it comes, Maple thought.
"She lived in Twills."
Maple shuddered.
"So this woman, she lived in the forest part of Twills, and people said she practised the Dark Magics. You know, spellcraft and such.
"So one day, this woman, she did a spell - no one knows quite what it was - that set a curse on her. It was meant for someone else, but she messed up the spell and set some other thing on herself. Anyways, so this curse, it said that she would die the next day. But this woman, you know, she practised witchcraft, so she knew ways around.
"So no one knows exactly how she stays alive, but legend has it, she's tied to the children that dissapear in Twistville every year. Not Twills. Twistville."
Maple nodded, handed the girl a five, and left, not even pausing to look back.
Two Weeks Later
Once there was a girl named Maple who had blue hair and blonde eyes and lived in the town called Twistville. She always mixed up her speech, and some suspected she was going insane. She had only one friend, named Perry. Perry was a quiet child who always kept to herself. Her black hair was always in two plaits, and everyone thought that she got straight A's in school, but she never told. She always wore her school uniform - the green and white plaid vest with the white blouse underneath and the dark skirt - even though most of the other girls, including, of course, Maple, dressed differently.
One day Maple, swinging her Aqua hair over her shoulder, asked Perry, "What is a fear called that can't be explained?" Perry looked up from her book, "War and Peace", and asked, "You mean like a fear that most people find to be odd in a way that most people do not fear that certain thing? That is called an irrational fear, Maple."
Maple nodded. She huffed out a breath, her gold-yellow eyes glancing towards the pine tree the bench was next to. "Perry?" Maple asked. "What?" Perry replied not even looking up. Maple faltered, glancing at the pine tree again.
"Nevermind."
That night, Maple sat in the middle of the pine forest of Twistville. poring over many books spread out around her.
"Wiccan? No, I'm not sure... Ah! Here!" She exclaimed, pointing a finger to a particuarly yellowed page in an old book called, "The Mysteries of the Malliantwill Practice". She knew for sure, no, she was more than sure, that the woman had been Malaintwill. After all, Wiccan just didn't add up.
Maple exhaled deeply, looking around to her dark surroundings. The lanky figures of the pines towered over her, their branches casting claw-like shadows on the ground around her.
"Alright." She said, looking around nervously. "Alright." She picked up the book and bowed to the full moon, chanting,
"To this moon I owe my debt,
All my being I should not have kept,
I give my souls up to this king,
For he is the power of everything,
And if I made this promise false,
The Malaintwills I shalt not call."
Maple sighed, sitting back down on the crisp pine needles. She had expected a change, but nothing had happened.
Suddenly, everything changed.
It was as if the "off" switch had been pressed for everything in the world. At least, that was how Maple knew to describe it. It was more like... The world had lost everything. Turning around, Maple suddenly saw that she couldn't feel anything. And the trees - they were stark grey! The moon was the only thing that seemed to have color. It was deep, blood red.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" The trees howled and shrieked, twisting, contorting, their branches reaching down for Maple. "Maple Shay, Maple Shay, Maple Shaaaay..." Everything whispered.
And then everything went black.
Maple woke up on the forest floor, the morning light making her dewy blue hair glimmer. She squinted into the sun, shrieking like a banshee when she saw the ugly red scar on her hand. It was no more than a jagged cut in the shape of a lightning bolt with a circle around it, pink, raw, and oozing pus and blood. It felt like someone had tried to carve her hand like wood. With her good hand, she slid the book out from under the pine needles, and flipped it open. The scar on her hand was exactly identical to the symbol for the Malaintwills.