“It’s too cold.” I muttered to myself as I shivered, pulling my thin sweater closer to my body. The dead, brown leaves swirled gently in the breeze, and the naked trees shuddered in the biting wind. I almost felt bad for them. They too had been stripped down to just a skeleton, hardly amounting to anything in this cold world. They too could only look forward to starting over in a few months, and completely reshaping themselves at the end of the winter. They only had to survive the winter. The cruel, short, bleak winter days where they-
What was I talking about? They’re just trees. Besides, they hadn’t been uprooted every few months to move from city to city, and they weren’t looking forward to being uprooted again at the end of the semester. I laughed at my stupidity and continued my journey home.
As I recalled my first day at school, I thought about Megan’s story of the witch and her daughter. A small part of me wondered if the legend was real, but that was ridiculous. With this assurance in mind, I arrived at my house and walked inside, promptly tripping and falling over a cardboard box.
“Ouch.” I muttered. As I slowly picked myself up, I noticed the door to the basement, which I had yet to explore. I walked almost in a daze toward the door, but when I reached my hand out to grab the handle, I felt an ominous feeling of dread churning deep inside me. At this point, I wondered if the legend really could be true. I hesitated, but the curiosity was overwhelming. Grabbing the ice cold door knob, I threw open the door to the basement.
Inside was pitch black. At least it was until I flicked the light switch, anyway. Then, illuminated by a light bulb dangling from the ceiling, I saw a concrete lined basement, with an ancient desk and two chairs in the center of the room. Gently covering the entire room was a thick layer of dust. I tiptoed toward the desk, and dragged my finger through the dust, creating a dark line on the desk. As I blew the dust off my finger, the basement door slammed behind me, causing me to jump and the dust in the room to swirl and churn. I bent over in a coughing fit as the dust rose and began to whip in circles around the room.
Suddenly, the dust stopped moving and floated to the ground. That’s creepy enough for me. Still choking on the dust, I shot up off the ground and began to run to the stairs, but came to an abrupt halt when I saw what was ahead of me. Directly in front of me was a teenage boy in dark, ragged clothing. He was hunched in front of the staircase and his head was turned in my direction. In fact, he was staring right at me!
