It was an ordinary forest, as far as spooky looking woods go filled mostly with twisted trees, their human branches reaching like fingers and a pile of bark. They mushed together their branches twisted and tangled together. These are far from very mysterious woods. A small stretch of thick fog surrounded the fields of crops the woods where filled with life. Grey squirrels rabbit’s mice and Wolves and a range of birds and blood sucking mosquitoes. It was a typical small town community with a miniature forest. It had grown from centuries old land of grasslands mixed with forests. The old forest was slowly chopped down, turned over, and destroyed as more people came to our community slowly populated with a lot of people. Eventually towns and communities including ours grew together to become cities and untouched land became rare. Some of these tiny places of untouched woods still held secrets. Some of these secrets were perhaps best left alone. The woods sat silent an ugly tangle of dead looking leafless finger looking branches that looked like they belonged in a darker world of the dead. The clouds hung heavy, dark, and grey on this day a thick blanket of fog hanging low in the sky the snow fell heavily the temperatures slowly warmed. In time, the snow vanished and is replaced once again by the woods. A few squirrels and birds still flitted about the finger looking trees a small rabbit nervously twitching its nose, as it sat doing nothing. Two children playing in the woods dared each other to go exploring into the spooky trees. “I bet you can’t go to the fallen tree,” said the older and taller of the two boys. The younger boy stared fazed into the fallen rotting tree lying within the strip of woods. He was not going to let his brother know how scared he was. He could already smell the mossy rot of the long dead tree. Although he had never been close enough to it to catch its smell. His imagination like death and decay and something even darker. He watched a small grey squirrel flit around the trees, untouched by the spooks, ghosts, and monsters his mind screamed must surely lurk hidden inside these scary woods. He swallowed. “Can too,” the younger boy, said, his voice cracking. “I bet you can’t go stand on that old stump,” he said. The old stump was a rotting a greenish brown colour the tree didn’t have to go before it vanished into the mud. The stump remained, standing and threatening beyond the fallen tree now tangled in the woods sharp splinters, wood sticking up as though waiting to cut any foolish boy who tried to climb it and fell. Its wood now was soft and weak with mould its sharp jagged edges looked like kitchen knives. Kevin “humped” at his younger brother. He was just as scared but certainly was not going to let his little brother know that. He nervously pulled up his pants and stepped forward on a mission. He marched into the woods; careful to keep his back to the younger boy so he would not show the scared face he had filled with tears. With a scuff and a shrug, Mikre reluctantly followed his older brother. The little grey squirrel ran up to the high branches as they passed pausing to look back they reached the first point the fallen tree Kevin had dared his younger brother mikre to venture to. It was no victory for either boy. On a forced march of pride, determined not to reveal his fear of some silly trees, Kevin continued on. He crawled over the fallen tree; its rotting length left a mark on his hands the branch’s cracking beneath his weight. His forward march slowed more the closer he came to the wicked looking ancient broken stump. Unable to let his older brother face the woods alone, mikre followed. As he drew near the old stump where his brother had stopped to stare fazed at it, he noticed something unusual looking at the base of the stump. “What’s that? Mikre asked nervously. The boys would never be seen again.
The end
